Sorting out the controversy over covering public meetings, Danny Davis holds a town hall, and other West Side news
The Westside Weekly Review for the week of Feb. 23 - March 1, 2025
We’re back, ladies and gentlefolks. I had mostly recovered from whatever flu-like thing kept me bedridden last weekend and still dogged me for the first two days of last week.
This time, we’re doing something a little different. I want to discuss an issue that roiled Chicago journalism community and the Pilsen neighborhood last week, and shows no signs of going away quite yet. It’s something that all of us community journalists have to deal with at some point or another. On Feb. 20, Ald. Byron Signcho Lopez (25th) kicked Block Club Chicago reporter (and Westside Review contributor) Francia Garcia Hernandez out of a meeting that was clearly advertised as a pubic meeting, and the reasons as to why shifted as the controversy blew up.
There will be the usual roundup of West Side news and the preview of the upcoming events further down the page, but first…
Why aldermen can’t just retcon public meetings
It is a story that many West Siders reading this will find familiar. A bar with a troubled history got temporarily shut down by the city after a shooting outside a bar late last year left a man dead. The local alderman moves to reopen the bar after the bar owners agree to a safety plan, which worries some of the neighbors, who feel the city/alderman are being too lenient, given its history.
Sigcho Lopez held what was billed as a public meeting (more on that later) on Feb. 20. And tucked away in Garcia Hernandez’s initial article on the city’s decision was one sentence about how Sigcho Lopez’s chief of staff Lucia Moya kicked a Block Club reporter out of that meeting. Several reporters I know noticed that sentence, and it led to some discussion on Twitter.
The following Tuesday, Feb. 25, Block Club posted an article where Garcia Hernandez made it clear that the reporter was her and elaborated on what happened - she was asked to leave 20 minutes into the meeting, and reporters from two Spanish-language television stations were allowed to stay. The article also quoted several free speech experts sounding off on whether Garcia Hernandez’s rights were violated, and states that Moya didn’t realize there were other reporters at the meeting, or they would’ve been kicked out, too.
When asked Monday why some journalists were allowed to stay but not Block Club, Moya apologized and said she wasn’t aware the other reporters — for top Spanish-language TV news stations Telemundo and Univision — were in the room. Their camera operators had been told to stay outside.
it also quotes Sigcho Lopez as accusing Block Club of making up the First Amendment controversy where there was none.
When asked about the meeting Monday, Sigcho Lopez said he was sorry a Block Club reporter was “the victim of such a thing, but the real story is the victims of our community.” He said his office acted based on our “interpretations of the law.”
Sigcho Lopez said he will continue to advocate for and protect the community, including those who have been victims of violence, from having “sensitive conversations” recorded.
“I [will] probably be the only alderman that continues to fight for First Amendment rights in the city of Chicago. And I take offense for this kind of reporting that is irresponsible,” he told Block Club.
After the story broke, Sigcho Lopez released his own statement saying that the issue was that Garcia Hernandez tried to take pictures of the meeting, not that she was a reporter. He also accused Garcia Hernandez of not being sensitive to the needs of the victims of crime. (More on that later).
In a subsequent interview with CBS 2, Garcia Hernandez said she stood by her reporting.
Now, I have covered meetings like this before, where a bar or a liquor store gets in trouble with the law. The meetings are usually fairly narrowly tailored toward the effected block, and how much they are advertised depends on the alderman. It isn’t that unusual for aldermen not to really put the word out beyond a particular block.
What’s striking about this meeting is that the notice (which, by all accounts, was only distributed within 500 feet of the bar) has “Public Meeting Notice” right at the top, and it is described as the public meeting in the English and Spanish versions of the text further down. Garcia Hernandez’s article says that it was “widely circulated on social media by neighborhood groups,” which is what I would expect to happen based on my experience covering the West Side (that’s how I got tipped off to those things half of the time).
Garcia Hernandez’s article mentions that Moya “acknowledged “the language around the notification” — which called the meeting “public” — gave the impression the meeting was open to everyone.”
She said the meeting was organized as a “restorative justice” approach to bring together neighbors who had circulated a petition calling for the bar to close, the bar owner, the alderman’s office and police to discuss “safety and cleanliness” concerns.
Notably, the flier didn’t say a word about the restorative justice approach, or this being limited to neighbors. And Moya didn’t explain why they chose to use the language that they did in the notice above if a public meeting wasn’t their intention.
Here is how Garcia Hernandez described the meeting:
The meeting was held at 6 p.m. Feb. 20 at Cooper Dual Language Academy, a public school at 1645 W. 18th Place in Pilsen. Several public officials and city employees were in attendance, including Sigcho Lopez, 25th Ward Chief of Staff Lucia Moya, Chicago Police Cmdr. James Baier (12th) and Ivan Capifali, acting commissioner for the city’s Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection.
Since I cover Pilsen and Little Village full time for Block Club, I attended the meeting along with other reporters and neighbors.
Sigcho Lopez saw me there and we exchanged greetings. He didn’t initially tell me I had to leave.
During the meeting, officials announced the bar would reopen. About 20 minutes in, neighbors began to express their concerns.
That’s when Moya, Sigcho Lopez’s chief of staff, gave me the boot, saying the ward office hadn’t secured permission from Chicago Public Schools for reporters to attend. Moya went on to say the meeting was only for neighbors who lived in a four-block radius of the bar. But two reporters from local TV outlets were not kicked out. Their camera operators were asked to stay outside.
I asserted my First Amendment rights to report, but left because of the police presence in the room, and because I didn’t want to interrupt neighbors’ testimonies.
Here is how Sigcho Lopez’s statement described it (emphasis his):
Upon arrival, the media outlets who entered the school spoke directly with the security and Principal for guidance, and followed their directives that they could remain in the school, but not enter the auditorium. About 20 minutes into the meeting, residents and participants were alarmed by a reporter, now known as Francia Garcia Hernandez, who was using her camera. [Moya] approached and greeted her. [Moya] explicitly stated “I just wanted to let you know we notified Telemundo and Univision that it is a closed meeting because we did not notify CPS we would have media present. We told them they can conduct any interviews outside of the meeting, but the meeting is closed to the media” Which then led Francia to respond and offer if she should leave and [Moya] responded with “yes”. Francia stated she was following the open meetings act, to which [Moya] replied with “but we did not notify CPS and it is closed to the media”. Francia acknowledged the policy and proceeded to leave, on her own accord.
The other media outlets had positioned their cameras in the hallway facing the camera at the door that was open of the auditorium.
And there are several things about that second statement that caught my eye. We know that reporters from the TV stations did reach out to Sigcho Lopez’s office ahead of time. But we know that they didn’t “[follow] their directives that they could remain in the school, but not enter the auditorium” because they did enter the auditorium. The “a reporter, now known as Francia Garcia Hernandez” bit was weird, because, per Garcia Hernandez, the alderman saw her at the meeting and recognized her. Which he should have, because she’s been covering Pilsen for months at this point, and he and Moya know what she looks like.
There also seems to be a contradiction about whether Sigcho Lopez and Moya knew that there were reporters in the audience. They came in with camera crews and allegedly checked with security. The statement mentions that they interviewed the alderman, the business owners and the residents after the meeting. It also mentions that “two other reporters were allowed to stay who did not engage in the prohibited recording activity.” Yet the statement reiterated what Moya told Garcia Hernandez in a follow-up interview - that she had no idea that reporters were in the auditorium at the time.
(For the record, I find the idea that the reporters somehow weren’t noticed after leaving their camera crews in the hallway… unlikely. There’s no way they could’ve walked into the auditorium without someone on ward staff seeing them, and the staff knew the reporters were coming.)
We know that Garcia Hernandez took at least one picture of the meeting (because there is one in the second article). But if that was the reason why Moya approached her, then both accounts give no indications that Moya offered to let Garcia Hernandez stay if she didn’t take any pictures and deleted the picture(s) she already took. It would have been easy enough to do.
Another thing that strikes me is that the flier makes no reference to pictures or video recordings not being allowed. And, according to both accounts, nothing was mentioned at the start of the meeting, which is when ward staff/whoever is running the meeting usually go over housekeeping. Like, say, that attendees aren’t allowed to take pictures/record videos/livestream (it’s rare, but it had happened. For example, I’ve been at a meeting where attendees were asked not to take pictures because there were victims of domestic violence in attendance).
Now, Sigcho Lopez’s statement asserted (and he gave screenshots to back that up) that TV reporters reached out to his office ahead of time, and they were told that recording wasn’t allowed. But, again, nothing seems to have been mentioned at the start of the meeting, and Sigcho Lopez and/or Moya had an opportunity to mention the whole no-recording thing when the meeting started, but chose not to. And while Garcia Hernandez did technically leave on her own accord, there was Moya telling her that she should leave, and the implicit threat of the police kicking her out.
25th Ward officials insisted that CPS had a policy controlling media access, which… I covered plenty of meetings that took place at public schools after regular school hours, or on weekends, and that has never, ever come up.
Now, the whole thing is already dubious at best. Sigcho Lopez and Moya are claiming that the meeting isn’t something the flier sent to neighbors described it as, dubiously claimed that they didn’t know who Garcia Hernandez was and… well, depending on which statement you believe, they either they didn’t notice the TV reporters or they were fine with the TV reporters being at the meeting because they’d didn’t record anything.
But Sigcho Lopez took it a step further. In both the original on the record response and the subsequent statement, he tried to use the tropes for how media covered community of color against Block Club Chicago and Garcia Hernandez. The original response described Block Club as '“corporate media” (which, as a nonprofit, they aren’t by definition) evoking media companies that parachute in and sensationalize the bad (while only occasionally covering the good). The statement builds on this theme, saying that “for far too long, the media has used the trauma of our community to their advantage and financial gain.”
Block Club is one of the Chicago media outlets that led the charge for more sensitive coverage of more vulnerable populations. Garcia Hernandez is not exactly a stranger to covering sensitive topics where reporters have to be careful about how much detail they report. You will notice that, in the one photo that was published, all you see are the backs of people’s heads (except for one person on the left).
Trying to fit Block Club and Garcia Hernandez into a mold that Sigcho Lopez knew would get a negative reaction seems… ill-informed at best.
Now, the reason why I spent so many paragraphs on this is because it goes to something much broader than any one bar and any one alderman. Reporters need to be able to cover those meetings because, well, not every neighbor is going to be able to show up to one of those (they might be at work, or sick, you name it). Not without limits - again, there are situations where reporters legitimately need to be careful about who they photograph or record. But reporters are members of the public. They have a right to attend public meetings. They don’t need to check with the ward staff before attending a meeting, because they are members of the public.
The aldermen and their staff can’t just describe meeting one way in a public notice and then try to claim it was something else and that public notice isn’t a public notice. And they certainly can’t accuse a reporter of not following the rules of engagement that were never made clear in the first place unless they called ahead of time (which reporters don’t have to do because, again, they are members of the public, and members of the public shouldn’t be expected to do it if they were at public meetings).
Aldermen, like all public officials, are always going to try to shape the narrative in their favor. They are always going to take issue with something reporters report. And reporters are always going to do their best to cover their beat, no matter what the alderman does. If they can’t find the information directly, they’ll figure it out somewhere else.
Here is the thing. Sooner or later, every alderman needs the reporter to get the information out about something or other. Aldermen and reporters don’t always have to get along, but they do need to have some kind of a working relationship. Alienating them just creates obstacles. Savvier West Side aldermen, like Ald. Chris Taliaferro (29th) understand that fundamental reality.
Aldermen who decided to escalate a confrontation are only hurting themselves and their constituents.
Last week in West Side news
Austin Weekly News covered Austin Coming Together’s community meeting on establishing a land trust to try to keep homes affordable in Austin.
Block Club Chicago reported on a pretty innovative North Lawndale program that pairs middle school girls with grandmothers for mentorship and support.
“That is reinforcing self-love, self-esteem, self-efficacy and also gives an opportunity for [middle school girls] to celebrate one another by acknowledging and affirming each other.”
Austin Weekly News also covered the grants several Austin organizations received through Oak Park-River Forest Community Foundation. While this isn’t the first time the foundation gave grants to organizations east of Austin Boulevard, what’s notable about this batch was that they were specifically focused on programs that seek to improve behavioral and mental health in kids, teens and you’d adults.
Speaking of mental health support, WTTW 11 profiled East Garfield Park—based Above and Beyond Family Recovery Center’s (2942 W. Lake St.) mental health support and addiction recovery programs.
And, in a bit of a holdover from last week’s news, I wanted to direct your attention to Cook County Chronicle’s and Austin Weekly News’ coverage of the meeting on the future of the Armitage Industrial Corridor at the beginning of February. I feel like, if we could somehow combine the two articles, we would have perfect coverage of the meeting - the Chronicle’s coverage gave the background and what the Department of Planning and Development is proposing, while Austin Weekly’s coverage talked about what folks in attendance suggested.
Coming up this week on the West Side
This one is cutting it a bit close, but we would be remiss not to include it. Later today (March 2) at 3 p.m. to 5 p.m., Cong. Danny Davis (D-7) is holding a town hall at Austin’s New Life Holiness Church, 5450 W. Gladys Ave. According to the text sent out to constituents, it will feature “a thoughtful discussion on the role of Black churches, activism, voting rights, and economic empowerment.”
Chicago Park District is holding a series of Teen Opportunity Fairs to give city youth opportunities to get summer jobs and/or find out about other programs. The West Side fair is going to take place at Malcolm X College on Saturday, March 8, at 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Per the park district, “This location will provide a space for applicants to apply for jobs and participate in both mock and on-site interviews; as well as feature a vendor fair across two conference rooms.”
Also on March 8, Sigma Gamma Pho sorority is hosting a youth symposium at 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. at East Garfield Park’s Alain Locke charter school, 3142 W. Jackson Blvd.