Almost 200 people packed into the Lincoln Park Library on Thursday night to hear our report to the community on the Lincoln Park land grab.

Watch the coverage from Fox Chicago News.

Read the Chicago Tribune article

Read the contract between the Chicago Park District and the Latin School that started this whole affair.

Our speakers included:

Jan Koch – neighborhood resident, dog owner and advocate for open land. “I’m here to preserve the spot for our pets and to to preserve Daniel Burnham’s 100 year old dream. What are we going to have left for the next 100 years? If we keep on chipping away, we won’t have space for left for our dogs, for our older people, for our children and anything to show them the legacy of a great Chicago city…Keep the 100 year dream alive. Keep it public. Keep it public for all of us!”

Jack Harris – local resident and park enthusiast. “We walk dogs, we play softball there, we use the park all the time…If you take this park and restrict the use, you won’t have the ability to share it. The space is used for people to watch the Air and Water Show, and groups like PAWS – I’m a big dog enthusiast – won’t be able to use that space…I’m definitely against this…They did a back door deal here.”

Norman Siegel – former Director of the New York Civil Liberties Union and successful litigant to halt the construction of a soccer field complex on Randalls Island for the use of a consortium of New York City private schools. Read the article “Some local people told me what was happening. I’m a proud graduate of the public school and the plan sounded bad and contrary to what everyone saying that we couldn’t legally fight it – that only encouraged me to fight it more and we went before the judge and it was voided…There was a campaign in the court of public opinion and as well as in the court of law. Our public campaign focused on privatization of public park land. There were times when I sang Woody Guthrie’s song, “This Land is Your Land” and despite my bad voice, it went over well. The whole concept of playing to play, that public park land is precious, that public park land is the people’s land, that we should not give it to 20 elite private schools that are overwhelming Caucasian when the public schools are 85% students of color. Continue to stress that the plan stinks. We should be fighting for our precious park land. On the legal front, in New York City whenever there is a major change in the use of the land we have a Uniform Land Review Process which has to go through the Community Board, the Borough President, City Planning Commission and the City Council. The city and parks department in this deal giving access to the fields they never went through this process so we talked about the rule of law and we maintained that everyone has to follow the rule of law, including the city of New York. Second, we found out they were going to change some of the fields to from natural grass to artificial turf and that kicked in environmental concerns about hazardous toxins being emitted from the artificial turf and we found that they had not done an environmental impact study that is required. They didn’t follow the rule of law. The agreement between the city and the 20 private schools should be voided and the judge bought that argument. I got pro bono assistance from a major law firm. Find someone who will take the fight on and the pro bono backup that I got. Sometimes the Davids of the world beat the Goliaths. It’s a good fight. It’s a fight that has to be fought. It’s an issue not just in New York and in Chicago, but all over the country. You’ve got to draw a line in the sand and fight back. And sometimes you get lucky enough with a good argument and a good judge and you win. But my experience for almost 40 years now is that the fight is equally important. The fight is important to put people in power on notice that they can’t abuse our rights and that public property is for the public and can’t be given away even for large amounts of money. And that’s a fight you have to fight because if there’s no fight and no resistance then this stuff will increase. If you fight back at least they know there’s a fight. I learned long time ago that you can be bright but stamina outlasts the bastards.”

Jean Snyder – Kenwood Park Advisory Council. “We’re a small community park but we have issues eerily similar to yours. This fall bulldozers arrived in our park and started tearing up the grass and lo and behold they were creating a regulation size baseball field for teenagers to play hardball in our small community park. We have an advisory council but they never notified us, they never told any neighbors, they never did anything except have this sweetheart deal with the league…It has been a very, very strange experience. The Park District continues to thumb their nose at us…Our Alderman told us she didn’t know anything about this ahead of time. But she’s jumped into bed with the private league. The only action the Park District has taken toward the neighborhood is to call the President of the advisory council when we started asking questions and say the alderman and the private league don’t like you and the advisory council is de-authorized. We’ve only be in existence for ten years but they can’t find the paperwork. So we feel your pain we’re with you spiritually. God bless you for moving on the way you are.”

Peter Zelchenko – Latin School alumnus. “I went to Latin School and I was a member of the soccer team in 1977. I don’t remember doing very well that but what we did learn at Latin School was how to respect our neighbors. We had a lot of moral lessons there. I think it’s very important even you’re part of an institution – that if something is wrong – to speak up about it and not be shy or afraid of the repercussions. We’ve heard over and over again that what has happened here is fundamentally wrong. There were lots of alternatives. No one was brought into the discussion. I’m hearing from others in the Latin School community – from parents and faculty – who are just as upset about this as I am. It’s so important not to show fear. We’re doing fundraising because it looks like we have go to a law suit.”

Jonathan Fine – President of Preservation Chicago “We started in 2001 as a grass roots campaign and I’m really pleased to see a packed room. It means your community is activate, engaged and angry. You should be angry. You’re not alone. What is going on here is common place. The way to have a democracy is to start participating in the democracy and driving the agenda. Most of what we do is advocate for historic buildings but last year we added for the first time a public park, a public space – Promontory Point, to our list of seven most endangered places. This was an attempt by the Park District to renovate the point at 55th and Lake Shore Drive. Their idea of renovation was to take out all of the limestone and replace it with poured concrete and this was a historic landscape and the concrete was going to cost twice as much as simply replacing the limestone. A group formed called the Coalition to Save Prom. Point and they worked tirelessly. They brought in their elected officials and were able to turn the tide against the horrible plan of the Park District. So the fact is you can win if you’re organized and motivated. I encourage you to stay the course. Write the mayor and your alderman.”

Michele Smith – Democratic Committeeman, 43rd Ward “The only kind of surprises I generally enjoy are the ones that occasionally happen on my birthday. The kind of reaction that this meeting has generated, the number of people here – filled with community members, parents, park users, sports enthusiast are just the kind of influence the park district deserve to have. And it’s just the kind of input that our community regularly needs to have as we go forward. While public schools like Lincoln Park and Walter Payton lack the facility to host their own games, it does seem a bit fishy that a deal that favors a private school gets priority from our public officials. I applaud all of you who choose to get involved because the most important thing is that government occurs in the sunshine. So I hope you’ll continue to be involved.”

Herb Caplan – Chair, CKLPP Legal Committee. “Like you, when I heard about the soccer field I felt impotent. What is going on? Why are these things happening. We’re citizens. We’re tax payers. We’re users the park/ I felt like I counted for nothing. I expect that many of you might feel the same. But this is the wrong approach. The fact that we had this meeting and you’re here – the fact that over 1,000 people have signed our petition shows us that as a group we have the power to achieve the ends we want to achieve. Our project is to stop the construction of the soccer field immediately and to force the Park District and the Latin School to submit this back to the community to examine, to discuss, to evaluate and then to control what happens in our park that we are accustomed to using. As everyone has said the park doesn’t belong to the Latin School. The park doesn’t belong to the Mayor. The parks belong to the people. We’re not going to allow the city administration or the Latin School to change what has historically been our use of the park. You’re not powerless. Together as a group we are a power and we’re going to exercise that power and we’re going to get the result we want.”