Richard R. Guzman – Page 77 – Arts, Diversity, Social Change…Faith

The Gateways Festival Orchestra: The Color of Concert Music

The event described below is part of a series of initiatives of the Anti-Racism Taskforce of the Northern Illinois Conference of the United Methodist Church. See below for details. The color of concert music is white. Its gender: male. So goes the popular perception. To start a conversation on t.....continued>

Beauty in the Time of Pandemic

Below is a 3:30-minute video of a small but momentous occasion. My son Aaron—a wonderful musician and talented teacher and conductor—leading the Gage Middle School orchestra, Riverside, California. He’s been teaching there for 20 years and thousands of students. When he first got to Ri.....continued>

Pentecost Means No “Supremacies”

We celebrate the Church’s “birth” on Pentecost Sunday, the day the promised Holy Spirit arrived. This year we celebrated on May 20th, a Sunday where at my church—one of the most diverse in America—its large Filipino group took charge of the service. The VIDEO below sh.....continued>

Ornette Coleman: Lessons in Freedom (excerpt)

This is the first of 16 short excerpts from my radio series Voices and Freedoms: A History of Jazz. Based on my book of the same name, the series (and book) were produced at the University of Virginia in the nation’s Bicentennial Year. The show, syndicated by the Intercollegiate Broadcasting.....continued>

Ronald L. Fair: “We Can’t Breathe”

May 2020 Update: Another “I-Can’t-Breathe” incident. I could not watch the video of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 26, 2020. But I heard it while my wife described to me what she was seeing: a police man with his knee on the neck of an already-subdued bl.....continued>

Songs by DAN GUZMAN: “CBS”

“CBS” (COOL BLACK SICKNESS) a song DAN GUZMAN co-wrote and performs with Brad Hoskins. Fat Cats, Moses in the desert with the Great I Am, bleeding seas, and things tumbling from the sky. Apocalyptic dread. Cool grooves. It not only sounds good—it&#.....continued>

VIDEO: Sen. Dick Durbin visits Emmanuel House

Update: IN APRIL 2018, EMMANUEL HOUSE MERGED WITH LONG-TIME PARTNER ORGANIZATION THE JOSEPH CORPORATION TO BECOME The Neighbor Project. THIS INCREASED THE NUMBER OF FAMILIES SERVED FROM AROUND 25 AT THE TIME OF SENATOR DURBIN’S VISIT TO NOW, IN 2020, A NUMBER APPROACHING 3000. WATCH A VIDEO.....continued>

Charity has beginning…(Part 2)

Posted on December 29, 2016 by Richard Guzman

Part 1 of the article below ends with Bryan Emmanuel Guzman talking about the contributions he hoped to make to change the world. Part 2 now begins with reference to that desire. We post this article about Emmanuel House—written by Jenette Sturges for the Aurora Beacon—as part of commemorating the 10th anniversary of Bryan’s death. Founded by Rick and Desiree Guzman as a living memorial to him, Emmanuel House was, in 2016, named one of the “Top 100 Most Innovative” social change organizations in the world. Also in 2016, Rick announced Guzman for Aurora, the organization behind his run for mayor of Illinois’ second largest city.

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That contribution has touched more than just the few families who live at Bryan House at any one time.

Families like the Labradors are now following in the Bryan House tradition. They’ve since opened their home to another family of Cuban refugees, helping them get on their feet.

“They were located to Florida,” said Yanary. “They said it’s hard to find a job, so we said the only way to help was to come here and live with us.”

Both families came for last Sunday’s early Thanksgiving celebration, joining in the prayer before dinner.

“We give thanks for the amazing number of ways you’ve blessed us,” prayed Guzman, “and we ask your blessing for these families on their journeys in this country and in this wonderful city.”

Among those blessings is the expansion of the mission of Bryan House to a larger umbrella organization. Dubbed Emmanuel House, the new nonprofit, with the support of the local church community, aims to bring the same model established at Bryan House to working poor families while also helping to stabilize Aurora’s near East Side.

Around the beginning of the new year, Emmanuel House will be up and running, welcoming East Aurora families — typically, those who earn about 50 to 80 percent of median income — into a series of homes on the East Side that will use the same Bryan House model of temporary rent-free living to save for a down payment.

“The only other requirement besides income is you have to already be living on the East Side, and you have to buy your home on the East Side,” said Guzman.

Families go through an application process that emphasizes recommendations from other community members, and the waiting list for these East Side Emmanuel House apartments is growing.

Each home will be sponsored by an area church that provides financial support to the operation of the house, but also emotional support to the families who will live there.

Already, one home on Claim Street is undergoing renovations — the house had been gutted by former homeowners and needed everything from new wiring and plumbing to a new furnace — and should open within a few months. Another, on Spring Street, is a short sale that’s under contract and awaiting bank approval.

Uni Muniz and her son, Issac, will be the first family to move into Emmanuel House.

“Being widowed, and with this so close to home, I jumped at the opportunity,” said Muniz, a massage therapist and volunteer at the Jesse Torres Boxing Club, also on the East Side. “There’s something about owning that just makes you feel a little bit better about yourself.”

But the goal isn’t just helping individual families, said Guzman. Helping families become homeowners helps stabilize an entire community.

“All other things being equal, when you own a home versus rent, families have 12 times the wealth, and you move less often. The stability means kids are more likely to graduate high school and college,” said Guzman. “The community ends up significantly better off, too. More people becoming homeowners helps create jobs and greater neighborhood stability, and people who own homes become more engaged.”

Home values also increase in neighborhoods where more people own their homes rather than rent.

Just like at Bryan House, families will pay market-rate values for rent, but all those funds go into a savings account. They’ll also have an established record of savings and of regular payments on their lease, and they’ll get financial counseling from Joseph Corporation to prepare them for taking on a mortgage.

Muniz said she can’t wait to have her own home for the holidays.

“For me, it’s something you can leave to your kids,” said Muniz. “If the parents own a home, the kids are more grounded. Mine are all grown up, but it still applies — that’s mom’s house.”

—End of article. Read PART 1—

♦ Go the Emmanuel House main page on this site, or to the Emmanuel House website.

♦ Go to a video chronicling Senator Dick Durbin’s visit to an Emmanuel House site in 2012. One of its features: Uni and Isaac’s Emmanuel House story. You can also catch a glimpse of Isaac marching up front with Guzman for Aurora in the July 4th Parade.

Charity has beginning…(Part 1)

Posted on December 22, 2016 by Richard Guzman

As part of commemorating the 10th anniversary of Bryan Emmanuel Guzman‘s death, below we post Part 1 of a front page article about Emmanuel House written by Jenette Sturges for the Aurora Beacon. Go here for PART 2. Founded by Rick and Desiree Guzman as a living memorial to Bryan, Emmanuel House was, in 2016, named one of the “Top 100 Most Innovative” social change organizations in the world. Also in 2016, Rick announced Guzman for Aurora, the organization behind his run for mayor of Illinois’ second largest city.

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Families routinely pull out old photo albums around the holidays, to remember loved ones who have always had a seat at the table but have since passed, or to recall the joys of past Thanksgiving and Christmas get-togethers.

But few of those old family photos probably include treks to African refugee camps.

John Mushunduzi, 19, smiled wide as he sprawled out on the living room floor, looking through a photo album of his family surrounded by the leafy green foliage of sub-Saharan Africa.

John looks much the same, tall and lean, with close-cut hair, but his sister is unrecognizable. In the photo, taken in a refugee camp after they fled their home in the Democratic Republic of Congo, she is small, skinny and bald. Now in the U.S. more than three years, her hair, shorn in the refugee camp, has grown long and she’s gained more than a foot in height.

On Sunday, the siblings teased one another as they looked over the album together. John, now a senior at West Aurora High School, puts his family’s upheaval simply.

“It wasn’t easy,” he said.

Having a place to live, especially one that gives refugee families a place to establish themselves in America, has made the adjustment a little easier.

And on Sunday, the families of Bryan House gave thanks for that home as they gathered for an early Thanksgiving dinner. Thirty-nine people, only a portion of the families who have lived at the refugee home, crowded into the kitchen of Rick and Desiree Guzman over a turkey and large dishes filled with rice, meat, bean and vegetable dishes representing the cuisines of seven countries.

“We were living rent-free at IMSA and we took the money we would have been spending on rent and saved for a down payment,” said Rick Guzman, who founded Bryan House with his wife, Desiree, and now chairs the organization’s board. “We just thought if we could do it, a lot of refugees and working-class families could do it, too.”

So Bryan House got its start five years ago in the Guzmans’ own home when they welcomed in the Labradors, a family of three Cuban refugees the couple had met through Desiree’s work at World Relief. Rey Labrador, his wife Yanary and their daughter Amanda had sought asylum in the U.S. after Rey started running into trouble with the Cuban government.

“When they asked us to be the first family, I never in my mind thought it would be this big, this many families,” said Yanary. “It was just something new for us and something new for them.”

A few months after moving in with the Guzmans, the Labradors had saved enough for a down payment and bought a home in Aurora.

“The best part is that it’s mine,” said Yanary. “It’s not a big house or a castle, but it’s our house.”

Just as the organization was getting off the ground, Bryan Guzman, Rick’s brother and a student at North Central College in Naperville, died unexpectedly.

So the fledgling nonprofit took his name.

In 2007, when Bryan House grew into an actual house—the organization had raised enough through sponsorships to purchase an apartment building on Lake Street that is home to five families—a brick was laid at the foundation of the building in Bryan’s memory, inscribed with an excerpt from an e-mail he sent that was found after his death: “I’ve always envisioned myself as someone who would change the world—even though I haven’t done that much to contribute yet.”

The tribute seemed fitting, said Guzman, since Bryan had been involved with the refugee families from the start. Now he is contributing, said Guzman, “not to his own memory, but to real solutions to the urban poverty and housing issues that we all cared about.”

—Read PART 2 of this article—

♦ Go the Emmanuel House main page on this site, or to the Emmanuel House website.

♦ Go to a video chronicling Senator Dick Durbin’s visit to an Emmanuel House site in 2012. One of its features: Rey and Yanary speaking with him about their Emmanuel House experience.

Posted in Family, Social Change | Tagged Bryan Emmanuel Guzman, Bryan House, Desiree Guzman, Emmanuel House, Guzman for Aurora, Jenette Sturges, Rick Guzman, urban poverty | Leave a comment

Ida B. Wells Boycotts the World’s Fair – Part 2

Posted on December 15, 2016 by Richard Guzman

[ Read Part 1 of this post. ]

Chicago eventually became Ida B. Well’s home base. What drew her here, away from her significant writing and crusading in Memphis, was controversy over the “White City” of the 1893 World’s Fair. Blacks were being poorly represented in virtually all aspects of the fair, from woeful underemployment to insulting, stereotypical exhibits featuring watermelon and Aunt Jemima. Controversy focused on whether Blacks should actually attend a “Colored People’s Day” proposed for August 25th. Wells and many other Black leaders opposed attendance, and Wells spear-headed a drive to publish the pamphlet titled The Reason Why the Colored American Is Not in the World’s Columbian Exposition, portions of which I included in my book Black Writing from Chicago.

Fragment of an original cover on display at the Field Museum’s 2013-14 exhibit on the 1893 Fair.

After the rigors of raising sufficient funds for publication, enormous local and national debate on the project’s merit in the first place, and many complicated intrigues—mainly concerning whether the venerable Frederic Douglass would or would not participate in the boycott and in the pamphlet’s writing—The Reason Why finally did appear…and on time, too, though Wells had to scrap several ideas for it, including publishing it in several languages. She had time only to print French and German translations of her preface. The pamphlet included Wells’ preface and her essays on class legislation, the convict lease system, and lynching. (See Part 1 of this post for short comments and examples of these chapters.)

Finally, Douglass did contribute an impassioned introduction. I. Garland Penn wrote on “The Progress of the Afro-Americans Since Emancipation.” Then it was left to Ferdinand L. Barnett to give “The Reason Why.” A Chicago lawyer who had started the black newspaper The Conservator, and who was one of the original leaders of the opposition to segregated exhibits, he and Ida B. Wells fell in love during the course of these World Fair struggles and married in 1895. Here is what her future husband wrote at the pamphlet’s conclusion:

“In consideration of the color-proof character of the Exposition Management it was the refinement of irony to set aside August 25th to be observed as ‘Colored People’s Day.’ In his wonderful hive of National industry, representing an outlay of thirty million dollars, and numbering its employees in the thousands, only two colored persons could be found who occupations were of higher grade than that of janitor, laborer and porter, and these two only clerkships. Only as a menial is the Colored American to be seen—the Nation’s deliberate and cowardly tribute to the Southern demand ‘to keep the Negro in his place.’ .…it remained for the Republic of Hayti [sic] to give the only acceptable representation enjoyed by us as the Fair. That republic chose Frederick Douglass to represent it as Commissioner through which the Colored American received from a foreign power the place denied him at home….The World’s Columbian Exposition draws to a close and that which has been done is without remedy. The colored people have no vindictiveness actuating them in this presentation of their side of this question, our only desire being to tell the reason why we have no part nor lot in the Exposition. Our failure to be represented is not of our own working and we can only hope that the spirit of freedom and fair play of which some Americans so loudly boast, will so inspire the Nation that in another great National endeavor the Colored American shall not plead for a place in vain.”

The actual status of black participation in the fair, the success of Colored American Day, and of the pamphlet itself remain controversial, and Wells herself is said to have admitted to Douglass that her youth might have caused her to over react. Nonetheless, The Reason Why remains a landmark in Black writing.

♦ Read PART 1 of this post.

♦ Go to a list of Black Writers on this site, and to the main page for Black Writing from Chicago.

Posted in Black Writers, Chicago Writing, Social Change | Tagged 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, Black Writing from Chicago: In the World-Not of It?, Ferdinand L. Barnett, Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, The Reason Why Colored Americans Are Not in the World Columbian Exposition | Leave a comment

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[ Read Part 1 of this post. ]