179: Cicero
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Father Jim Castigar isn't exactly sure what he and his parish did to get on the bad side of town hall, but he's pretty certain that their meeting with the town president was the turning point. His parish is filled with Mexican-Americans, and they had some complaints about the way the local police were treating them. They presented these complaints to the town president at a big meeting in the church, and it got pretty heated. The town president got mad at them, and they got mad at her. There must have been 500 people there, and they booed. They actually booed the woman. In most towns that would be the end of it, no big deal. Not in Cicero, Illinois. Next thing Father Castigar knew, town hall refused to give the church a permit to hold its annual way of the cross procession at Easter. A Mexican Catholic tradition they'd held peacefully in seven years. They fought, they got the permit. Then came the tamale dispute. The church youth group was going away on a retreat, and they needed to raise some money to do it. So they made, stayed up all night making tamales in the hall, and they were out in front of church, selling it for a donation for the youth group retreat. So I'm just aftermath. I'm still vested. I come out in front of us. I was greeting people and standing on the front porch of church, and a policeman comes up and says, "I have to give you a ticket, Father." I said, "What for?" I was quite surprised, actually. It was the ticket read for running a business without a license. So I went to court with a lawyer, just a friend, and the hearing officer said, "Well, you know you're right, there's nothing in the ordinance that says that you need a license, but they clearly meant it to be in the ordinances, but it isn't." So, even though it's not there, you're guilty. Then the lawyer that was helping me asked if it would be necessary for a seven-year-old child selling lemonade on the street and sisterhood to have a business license, and the answer was, "Yes." The youth group didn't give up. They decided they wanted to get a business license to sell food, fair and square. This meant hepatitis shots and a TB scan and a special training course on food sanitation. They did all that, then applied for a license. Just one hour later, they say, an inspector showed up at the church and told them they couldn't get their license until they put in a third sink and some other improvements. Then there was the parking problem. The public school near the church had always left its lot open on Sunday morning for people to use when they went to Mass, that is, until the city cut off access. Director of the school, the principal told me there was an anonymous phone call saying that people were driving through too quickly, very quickly, in the school at on a Sunday. My room was right above this parking lot, and I'd never seen anybody drive quickly through it, so I thought that was kind of strange. There was another anonymous phone call, which said that they had someone on Sunday morning had bumped into the fence, done damage to the school property. Even the principal himself told me, "I don't see any damage at all, but I can't do anything about it. We have to close the parking." So they closed the lot. They said the parking lot was not structurally sound for parking cars. It was kind of strange since it's called the parking lot, and because of the teachers parked there every day, the garbage trucks, big heavy garbage trucks go across, it certainly seems that the parking lot's fine. The City of Cicero insists that it is not targeting the Church for political reasons, for the timing of these incidences of coincidence, that the town president Betty Warren Maltese is a Catholic herself, and would never wage war via city inspectors. But longtime residents are skeptical of these kinds of explanations. Leo Sato's moved to Cicero when he was a kid. "I can put it to you simple." Hitler had the SS. The communists have the KGB. Cicero has the code enforcement, okay? Cicero is like the Twilight Zone. I mean, these are not things that are normal towns in Illinois. You know, it's not the same in other communities. Ray Hanania was a newspaper reporter who went to work for the town as press secretary for three years. In other communities, when you get mad at the mayor, you have a dispute with them. You don't go home worried about whether you're going to get sued or, you know, whether someone's going to compounding on your door and inspect your house, you have a disagreement. You know, you move on, and even some people will end up being friends. In Cicero, it's like, you know, you cross the line, that's it. Cicero is just different. For most of the 20th century, there were direct links between Town Hall and the mob. For most of the 20th century, Town Hall didn't hesitate to strongarm anybody. The city officials decided they didn't like you. You obeyed, you suffered, or you got out of town. And then, finally, Cicero got into a fight that had had trouble winning. From W.B.E.Z. Chicago, in Public Radio International, it's this American life, I'm Ira Glass. Today in our program, Cicero, Illinois, the story of a town and a bubble, and what happens when the bubble pops. It's the day before we go any further that Cicero is just over the border on Chicago's West Side. And although officially it is called a suburb, what it actually looks like is just another West Side Chicago neighborhood, working class families, brick bungalow houses. For decades, Cicero was this place that did not want outsiders moving in. That fought violently against blacks and other minorities coming to town.
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