The regeneration of Roseland
Alysia Tate

Case Histories in Alcohol Policy, published by the Trauma Foundation of San Francisco, contains first hand experiences of alcohol policy advocates on the front line as they deal with the problems faced by people in their own communities. Below, we reproduce, in slightly adapted form, one of the chapters. It chronicles the advances and set-backs in one campaign. Readers of the Globe will learn a great deal from the story of Roseland and the Revd James Meeks. Of course, the political, legal, and social circumstances are peculiar to Chicago but the general principles of successful advocacy remain universal and can be adapted to local situations.

In late 1996, the Revd James T. Meeks, of the Salem Baptist Church in Chicago and at least 200 volunteers - about 80 per cent of them church members - began a crusade to rid their neighbourhood of unwanted liquor stores and taverns. It was a battle already waged throughout Chicago, in 26 of the city's 50 wards. Though many wards are growing more diverse, the city's reputation as the nation's most segregated still has merit. Most of the neighbourhoods that championed the cause, Meeks' included, have been overwhelmingly African American, with sizeable low-income populations. Meeks and his organization brought fresh energy to the fight. Taking advantage of a 1907 state law, they voted to shut down 29 establishments in the November 1998 election. Thirteen others were voted dry in other parts of the city in that election. The law gives voters the power to ban the sale of all alcohol (whether consumed on the premises or not), of carry out liquor only, or of hard liquor only in the smaller voting precincts which make up a ward. It provides a unique degree of local control in such a large city. In the past decade, voters in the 9th Ward, where Salem is located, have used this power more frequently than those in any other, voting to ban altogether the sale of alcohol in eight voting precincts. Although about two dozen of the establishments remain open as their owners challenge the vote in court, community leaders say the campaign has provided much-needed inspiration to a neighbourhood many abandoned long ago...

...A sympathetic mayor and revamped law helped further [the] cause. But much of the credit lies with an organisation at least 10,000 strong that has made its home in the far South Side Roseland neighbourhood.

Mobsters to Moratoriums

It almost seems fitting that this city, once home to Al Capone and the bootlegging and prostitution that gave him legendary status, could become a national example of local control over alcohol.

As city officials annexed chunks of previously unincorporated property in the late 1800s, residents in middle-class neighbourhoods sought ways to protect themselves from what were then known as saloons. In 1894, the City Council adopted an unwritten policy: all aldermen would respect any colleague's wish to keep a portion of his ward dry. A state law giving city residents sweeping powers of local control - the power to dry up any voting precincts or individual addresses - was passed in 1907. By 1909, nearly two-thirds of the city was dry with the remaining licensees "jammed" into slums, working-class neighbourhoods, and the Loop, the city's central business district. Later came Prohibition and Capone, and huge profits from alcohol for him and his gang. And although in April 2000 a federal judge struck down the part of the law that allowed voters to target specific addresses as a violation of due process, the law overall has withstood numerous legal challenges. It is a national anomaly, says Jim Mosher, an attorney and senior policy advisor at the California-based Marin Institute for the Prevention of Alcohol and Other Drug Problems. No other big city allows voters such local control.

A study published in the May 1999 Journal of Studies on Alcohol, showed that a typical New Orleans census tract with two liquor stores, convenience stores, or grocery stores that sold alcohol had a homicide rate 24 per cent higher than a census tract with one such business.

The Illinois "local options" law (also known as "vote-dry") that now allows residents to ban such outlets requires petition signatures from 25 per cent of a precinct's registered voters to put a "dry" vote for that precinct onto the ballot.

Until 1995, loopholes typically protected bar owners. The city clerk was allowed to accept only the first set of petitions in a given precinct - whether the signatures were good or not. Thus bar owners could file phony sets of petitions, causing all sets to be thrown out. Beginning in 1995, a set is thrown out, the next is substituted until a valid set is found, partly due to lobbying from Mayor Daley, multiple filings are allowed.

After his election in 1989, Daley pushed for a change in city law that made community input part of any liquor licensee's approval process. Stores had to give notice to registered voters within 250 feet of their businesses; in 1997, the city took over that responsibility, sending out notices itself. The city's three-member License Commission holds hearings in which residents can give comment. A number of city attorneys hit the streets in 1996 and 1998 to hold workshops on the law for residents, and provide them with copies of the law and sample petitions. Those efforts were well under way before Salem took up the fight.

Familiar Fight

The problems presented by liquor outlets are far more obvious in the city's mostly poor, largely black communities, such as the South Side Auburn Gresham neighbourhood that surrounds St Sabina Catholic Church.

Fr Michael Pfleger, who leads the church, has become the city's best-known activist against alcohol, particularly in terms of how it is marketed to young people. For Fr Pfleger, it is not a new fight. In the early '80s, much of his effort focused on drugs, particularly crack cocaine. Everywhere he went, he said, people told him he'd have to do something about tobacco and alcohol first.

So he and his supporters started counting billboards advertising those products. They found 118 in a 10-block radius of the church and painted over many of them. They surveyed local stores to find out how many were selling to children.

They even spent more than two months along 79th Street with young people conducting their own sting operation, and discovered that 22 of the 34 stores they targeted were selling to teens who "looked 13 and 14."

Within three weeks of the sting operation, the city began its own programme aimed at cracking down on such sales thanks at least in part to the efforts of St Sabina's members. In 1994 Fr Pfleger led a campaign that resulted in a citywide ban of grain alcohol, an ingredient used to make crack.

"When our children see grain alcohol-a drug-use product - sold in corner stores, it tells them this drug thing is legal and accepted," said Pfleger. "It's one thing to keep talking about the plague of drugs; it's another to begin taking action to end it."

But Pfleger didn't really get involved in Meeks' campaign with Salem Baptist members. Meeks said other religious leaders didn't offer to join in and he didn't ask. It was a project they could handle themselves, he said. Pfleger agreed.

"The whole beauty of this vote-dry initiative is it gives power to the people who are there," he said. "You don't get a victory if it depends on outside influence."

Heating Up

In 1998 Mayor Daley's campaign against unwanted bars and liquor stores revved into high gear. Legal assistance, he announced, would be provided to community groups squaring off against industry attorneys. Residents' complaints about problem liquor stores had increased in the mid-'90s.

Daley didn't like "irresponsible" store owners who allowed crime to fester in and around their establishments. Residents on the city's North and West Sides began taking advantage of the mayor's receptiveness. Fifteen precincts had passed local options in 1996. The number grew to 20 in 1998.

In spite of the growing popularity of vote-dry initiatives, License Commission officials instructed residents that they should be used as "a last resort," according to one of Mayor's aides. Steps that should be taken first, he said, include negotiating directly with bar and liquor store owners. Daley didn't focus on negotiating when he kicked off the 1998 campaign, however. "That's what democracy is all about," he announced, according to news reports. "If you decide in your precinct to do this, you will have the full support of my administration."

Daley made that pledge before a crowd at Salem, where Meeks and his fleet of volunteers, hard at work on the issue, had become the issue's prime advocates.

They began organizing in 1996 to put a measure on the 1997 ballot, only to discover that a county official had given them the wrong election year. They learned that they couldn't put the measure on the ballot until the next city election, which was in 1998.

Blooming Again

Crime also has taken its toll in the community of Roseland, both in terms of lives lost and a community's reputation shattered. Meeks and other Roseland residents must drive or take buses out of their neighbourhood to find a sit-down restaurant, a chain grocery store, a bowling alley, or a roller rink.

Until recently, the neighbourhood's main 20-block commercial strip had 29 bars and liquor stores on and around it. Over time, it changed from a shopping district that drew young and old alike to a strip of stores that cater mostly to teens. Three hundred businesses, according to Meeks, left between 1974 and 1994; many were never replaced.

And although murder rates fell dramatically over the last decade in the 5th Police District which covers most of Roseland, the district averaged 52 murders per year between 1990 and 1998, according to annual reports published by the Chicago Police Department.

In spite of this situation, many of Roseland's residential streets have neatly kept lawns as well as well-organised block clubs, small neighbourhood associations where families plan events, clean sidewalks, organise to solve problems, and simply know and watch out for each other. They had grown tired of watching the liquor stores come in as the other stores left.

A campaign to promote economic development in Roseland, therefore, meant ridding it of many of those establishments, Meeks said. He has seen firsthand the problems that poorly managed liquor stores and taverns can bring: selling to teens, allowing drug dealing, or just providing hangouts for potential criminals. Meeks helped conduct a neighbourhood study which revealed that 60 per cent of the area's crimes-including prostitution and drug sales-revolved around liquor stores and bars.

"Something had to go," Meeks said. "We were not going to be able to encourage people to come in and put retail stores and shops in our community."

Solid Foundation

In 1996, church leaders decided it was time to do more for Roseland. Fostering economic development meant fighting liquor stores, they decided. Salem's members care about their church and respond when Meeks calls, said church administrator Veronica Abney. But the start of their fight against alcohol was their first attempt at a large-scale legal and political battle, she said. Salem became a launching pad, she said, for a new political leader in the ward and prompted other churches to look to Salem for help and advice in fighting alcohol outlets in their neighbourhoods.

Roseland residents had already used vote-dry before Meeks arrived, though not on such a large scale. In 1991, for instance, they voted to ban the sale of alcohol in one precinct. The following year, they tried to pass similar bans in two precincts, but were successful only in one. Two more precincts were voted dry in 1996. Neither effort relied on, nor generated, a lasting organisational structure. But 1998 would become an unprecedented election year, with a solid organisation pressing for a vote in four precincts.

Never before, Meeks said, had the community banded together in such a sweeping campaign to oust unwanted liquor stores. Over the last several years, he said, residents had lost patience as crime continued around many of the liquor stores and few other, much-needed businesses came to Roseland.

According to Meeks and his supporters, Meeks came up with the idea for the larger push in 1996. As he looked at the urban blight that plagued the community, Meeks said, he started thinking about what he could do. Reading Charles Sheldon's In His Steps, a book which, among other things, chronicles a failed campaign to ban alcohol, helped crystallise the idea in his mind. Others helped him execute it.

Meeks and his staff did their homework, according to Neal. They gathered statistics about the spread of liquor stores in the neighbourhood, even mapping their locations citywide to show how Roseland stacked up against other communities. Quantifying the problem, Neal said, made the problem undeniable to those who attended Salem Church when Meeks began preaching about it.

Meeks appealed to church members in sermons. Never were there fewer than 100 to 200 volunteers. The number eventually reached close to 1,000. Different people often came each time to ask questions and get instruction, and Meeks and key staff members met each weekend to make detailed plans for the day in a designated "war room" in the church. Volunteers, in teams of two to four, went door-to-door through the community to win residents over to their cause.

Church staff and key volunteers kept track of where each group was at all times. Twenty-five volunteers were made deputy registrars, registering interested residents to vote so they could sign petitions. They contacted every block club president in the ward, especially those in precincts where liquor stores were targeted.

But the campaign was not without its problems. The group first mobilised in anticipation of the 1997 election, when they thought they could get the issue on the ballot. But after mounting an initial campaign, they found out that there was no municipal election that year, and had to repeat their efforts several months later as the November 1998 election approached. While that was disappointing, Neal said the group learned much between the two campaigns, including the power of the opposition. "The next time we went out it just gave us even more focus," he said. "I learned this was a big fight and the liquor industry was not going to give up."

For Linda Tigue, who works in the cafe at House of Peace, the fight was moral, not just economic. She had watched things get worse in Roseland during the nine years she had called it home. And after helping a former neighbour whose husband had attacked her in a drunken rage, she had seen firsthand how alcohol could destroy lives. "She couldn't understand how socially drinking could wind up in that situation," Tigue said.

She decided to volunteer in the campaign and circulated sheets of petitions. It wasn't hard convincing people to sign, Tigue said, even though opponents had begun a campaign of their own to encourage people to remove their names. Some of the opponents, Tigue said, even ended up on her side.

All they had to do was look out their windows to see the spread of the unwanted stores. In fact, she said, she didn't realise how many residents were eager for change. Most were more than happy to sign her petitions. "Many prayed we had had something like this a long time ago," she said.

When the ballots were counted on Election Day, a total of 634 voters agreed to ban liquor stores in their four precincts, compared with 402 who backed the stores. The 9th Ward, it appeared, would now ban the sale of alcohol in a total of seven of its precincts. As they celebrated their victory, supporters had little idea of the fight that remained.

Stumbling Blocks

Just a handful of the stores and taverns voted dry in Roseland have actually closed, thanks to appeals from owners and industry attorneys, who charge fraud was wide-spread in the vote. West suburban Franklin Park attorney Michael E. Lavelle told Illinois Appellate Court justices in an April 5, 2000, hearing on the case that election judges illegally assisted voters in the voting booths, judges and others shouted through windows at voters and coerced them, some booths were located outside of judges' view, and judges sent some voters to the wrong precincts to vote.

One justice joked about the charges. "That sounds like a Chicago election," said Appellate Court Justice Michael P. Tully. "Is there something wrong with that?" The justices, however, may take Lavelle's allegations seriously enough to send the case back to a lower court for trial, where Lavelle would argue that the election should be declared null and void. "We're saying the sum total of all the fraud that existed is a reason for throwing it out," he said.

Jim Scanlon, attorney for the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners, however, argued that Lavelle was making "broad, sweeping generalizations" without enough specifics, despite accusations of wrongdoing such as voting machines being placed outside of judges' view. "There's no allegation that this was done intentionally by judges of election or with an intent to commit fraud," Scanlon said.

Justice Tully, however, indicated Lavelle may get his day in court. "The presumption I would have is that it's improper, it's probably fraudulent," he told the attorneys. "To say this was a fair election would be a disgrace." But Tully and other justices are not debating the constitutionality of the law, notes Jennifer Hoyle, spokeswoman for the city's Law Department. Only the results of one election are at issue. Some opponents, however, take a stronger stand.

As the law grew more popular, industry leaders claimed Daley was simply anti-restaurant, anti-bar from the start. Others challenged the law on different grounds. "We feel the initiative is racist," Tracey Walker, spokeswoman for the City-Wide Liquor Association, told the editorial board of the Chicago Sun-Times. "Vote-dry is being publicized as the saving grace of the African American communitybut in some instances the vote-dry initiatives are damaging," she said.

Though he opposes stores that do bad business, the group's president, Larry Stevens, said liquor store and tavern owners "get a bad rap" they don't deserve. Politicians and community leaders, after all, get notice of licenses up for approval before the stores open their doors, Stevens said. Before resorting to vote-dry, community members should ask owners to participate in redevelopment efforts. "Why can't we be a part of that, since we're already in the neighbourhood as business people?" he asked. "Some people may want to change their business just to stay in the neighbourhood."

Stevens' group sent about 30 of its members to the 9th Ward to pass out palm cards and talk to voters on election day in an attempt to convince them to oppose the measure, he said. Local owners hired their own attorneys to help circulate counter-petitions urging residents to remove their names from the petitions that placed the measure on the ballot. Local owners also used their own attorneys to challenge the measure in court, but Stevens said the organisation, if asked, will gladly spend some of the $20,000 to $30,000 it takes in from members and liquor companies each year to assist the effort.

Although he heard that owners paid homeless people to push their message on election day, Stevens said his group had nothing to do with such tactics.

Stevens' group and the Roseland owners, however, did get consulting help from lobbying experts at the Wine and Spirits Distributors of Illinois, according to executive director Paul Jenkins. The group represents 30 companies statewide. The law, he said, represents a kind of "social engineering" that unfairly places the blame for problem liquor stores on law-abiding owners, many of whom live in black neighbourhoods. In response, Meeks says only a few bars and liquor stores in their neighbourhood are owned by African Americans, and even fewer owners actually live in the community. Meeks and Beale say they are working to help those that want to stay open without selling liquor. And both are puzzled by the lack of response they got to their offer to pay 75 per cent of the salaries of anyone employed by such establishments while he or she underwent job training.

Meeks said he worked with the city to create the programme and informed owners about it through certified mail. On the first day of the training, two people showed up - one an owner who came to see if it was legitimate, the other a woman who used to work for a neighbourhood liquor store.

Whether Roseland will take up the fight again if a judge rules the election invalid remains to be seen. "Definitely, the community would have to step up and push for this if that's how it works out," Abney said, because the four-year effort has exhausted church leaders.

But no matter what happens, the campaign has been a successful one for Meeks, all the more so because it happened in a community that hungered for change but had lacked the leadership to create it. He has talked with leaders in Baltimore, New York, Memphis, and other cities who would like to follow Chicago's model. He says he's willing to help however he can. In his mind, and the minds of his supporters, he was simply carrying out God's work. "The poor have no defence mechanism to fight these giants," he said. "In the absence of defences, you have a helpless and hopeless people. We just stood up with the poor."

Lessons Learned

Meeks and his supporters linked alcohol to their neighbourhood's other problems. When he called for help in fighting the industry, volunteers certainly answered. But they also made their share of mistakes, and learned much along the way.

Recruit supportive elected officials to your cause. Mayor Daley's appearances and willingness to provide legal assistance from City Hall helped Roseland's campaign, say organisers. Daley is making strong inroads among supporters in the 9th and other black wards.

Build a group of volunteers . In this case, an institution provided the campaign's base of support. But Salem had made efforts to provide programmes and events to strengthen ties among members well before the campaign began. Once it began, those members could be mobilised quickly and effectively.

Create and communicate a vision . Part of the reason so many volunteers signed up in Roseland, says Neal, was that Meeks communicated so clearly what the problem was and what could be done. "You have to have the vision written out for them in a way that's easy to understand," Neal said. "Then let them do what they do best," which is go out and talk to others about it, he added.

Use the issue as a vehicle for local alliances. Although they did not really work together, Meeks and Pfleger said consulting with each other is a helpful, important part of such local battles. While you must caution against "outsiders coming in and pushing an agenda," said Pfleger, it's good for leaders to share ideas and back each other's campaigns. Certainly, it can provide common ground for much closer alliances, even in neighbourhoods with significant racial and economic differences.

Strong leadership can mobilise local people to action. Strong leadership in the 9th Ward inspired and motivated volunteers to get organised and work together for a common goal. "Empowering a neighbourhood that believes it can control what happens here," said Pfleger, is the most important part of a successful campaign.

Don't underestimate the opposition. Roseland organisers did not expect to see homeless people trying to intimidate voters outside the polls, or for most of the stores to remain open two years after they voted to close them. As Neal said, "This was a big fight and the liquor industry was not going to give up."

For more information:

The Revd James T. Meeks
Salem Baptist Church of Chicago
11816 S. Indiana Ave. Chicago IL 60628
773-371-2300 www.sbcoc.org

The Revd Michael Pfleger
St Sabina Church
1210 W.78th Pl. Chicago IL 60620
773-483-4300 www.saintsabina.org

Case Histories in Alcohol Policy
Published by the Trauma Foundation
www.tf.org