Let The Night Ministry take you by the hand and show you souls in hell. Virgil to your Dante, a View-Master of the Damned, forcing your well-fed face against the eyepieces and clicking through scene after awful scene.
The old woman, covered with huge MRSA sores — methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, a hard-to-treat staph infection — slumped on a Humboldt Park bench. Those aiding the homeless deal with MRSA all the time. But police don't, and seeing her so rattled a pair of District 14 cops that they hurried over to a nearby Night Ministry medical bus making a scheduled stop.
"Can you help us please?" one officer said.
The teenage girl ejected from The Night Ministry shelter, The Crib, because there wasn't enough room for all the young adults with nowhere else to sleep that November night to curl up on foam mattresses on a church basement floor. Her housing plan for the night was a CTA fare card with $2.50 on it.
"What am I going to do?" she cried, tears rolling down her cheeks, standing on a windswept Addison Street L platform. "I don't know where to go."
And the three abject crack cocaine addicts huddled in a nest of blankets on Lower Wacker Drive. I was tailing a Night Ministry nurse carrying a backpack to get to the cut- off places where the medical bus couldn't navigate — there are always hells below this one, lanes and narrow subterranean warrens below Lower Wacker Drive.
I asked the trio if they minded my taking their photo. But honestly, they didn't care about anything other than getting drugs into their bodies as quickly as possible. Nearly a decade later, I'd be surprised if any of them are still alive.
Why was I there? The Night Ministry is not only the last strand in Chicago's fraying social service network, caring for all those people too lost to even try to avail themselves to what scant aid is available.
But they're also very good at letting the Sun-Times show the public the work they do. They've helped me write dozens of stories over the past 30 years, ever since I called them in 1995 to talk about sex workers the Cook County sheriff's deputies were arresting along Cicero Avenue. Whenever I've reached out to the Night Ministry for insight, they rise to the occasion.
That's rare. Many organizations do good work but botch the communication part. They don't respond to inquiries, or they answer three days after the story ran. Or don't understand the assignment. Last week I reached out to Catholic Charities for a column on medical anxiety among the needy, asking to be put in touch with one of their social workers.
What I got was self-promoting boilerplate beginning, "As a cornerstone human service provider and trusted partner within our region, Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Chicago provides vital services, including food, direct financial assistance, housing, counseling, and other support for more than 370,000 vulnerable people across Cook and Lake counties ..."
All true but never addressing the matter at hand, therefore useless to me.
I'm writing this today because the Sun-Times has joined with The Night Ministry for a joint cup rattle. The paper, itself a struggling 501(c)3 charity like The Night Ministry, has a goal of drawing 1,500 new donations to help keep the newspaper going. A small portion of each donation to us in March will go directly to The Night Ministry.
To continue reading, click here.
The old woman, covered with huge MRSA sores — methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, a hard-to-treat staph infection — slumped on a Humboldt Park bench. Those aiding the homeless deal with MRSA all the time. But police don't, and seeing her so rattled a pair of District 14 cops that they hurried over to a nearby Night Ministry medical bus making a scheduled stop.
"Can you help us please?" one officer said.
The teenage girl ejected from The Night Ministry shelter, The Crib, because there wasn't enough room for all the young adults with nowhere else to sleep that November night to curl up on foam mattresses on a church basement floor. Her housing plan for the night was a CTA fare card with $2.50 on it.
"What am I going to do?" she cried, tears rolling down her cheeks, standing on a windswept Addison Street L platform. "I don't know where to go."
And the three abject crack cocaine addicts huddled in a nest of blankets on Lower Wacker Drive. I was tailing a Night Ministry nurse carrying a backpack to get to the cut- off places where the medical bus couldn't navigate — there are always hells below this one, lanes and narrow subterranean warrens below Lower Wacker Drive.
I asked the trio if they minded my taking their photo. But honestly, they didn't care about anything other than getting drugs into their bodies as quickly as possible. Nearly a decade later, I'd be surprised if any of them are still alive.
Why was I there? The Night Ministry is not only the last strand in Chicago's fraying social service network, caring for all those people too lost to even try to avail themselves to what scant aid is available.
But they're also very good at letting the Sun-Times show the public the work they do. They've helped me write dozens of stories over the past 30 years, ever since I called them in 1995 to talk about sex workers the Cook County sheriff's deputies were arresting along Cicero Avenue. Whenever I've reached out to the Night Ministry for insight, they rise to the occasion.
That's rare. Many organizations do good work but botch the communication part. They don't respond to inquiries, or they answer three days after the story ran. Or don't understand the assignment. Last week I reached out to Catholic Charities for a column on medical anxiety among the needy, asking to be put in touch with one of their social workers.
What I got was self-promoting boilerplate beginning, "As a cornerstone human service provider and trusted partner within our region, Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Chicago provides vital services, including food, direct financial assistance, housing, counseling, and other support for more than 370,000 vulnerable people across Cook and Lake counties ..."
All true but never addressing the matter at hand, therefore useless to me.
I'm writing this today because the Sun-Times has joined with The Night Ministry for a joint cup rattle. The paper, itself a struggling 501(c)3 charity like The Night Ministry, has a goal of drawing 1,500 new donations to help keep the newspaper going. A small portion of each donation to us in March will go directly to The Night Ministry.
To continue reading, click here.
It's obscene that mega corporations and the top 0.1% pay so little in taxes with accountants and lawyers fighting tooth and nail to hold on to every penny while so many are out on the streets barely surviving a hellish existence. I remember Bill Gates laughing it up on some late night show about how he could lose 99% of his wealth and still be a Billionaire. Of course, Musk and Trump gutting every federal program just so they and their ilk can pay even less. It can't go on forever. ""In the souls of the people, the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage."
ReplyDeleteWell Neil, this article finally got to me. I finally signed up for a monthly contribution to the Sun Times. I didn't get the Cadillac subscription so you will personally have to invite me to all the events. Thanks much for the work you do.
ReplyDeleteJeff, I'm glad you found a subscription price that worked for you. I was recently tossed aside and treated shabbily by the Sun Times; still reeling from the experience. I've been a subscriber of Sun Times newspaper delivery for several decades, and have the receipts for every year. This year's renewal came as a surprise. Almost double the previous year. No budging from the circulation department, so my subscription will lapse in a few days. What really hurts is I sent separate donations to WTTW AND the Sun Times because I support local media. I can't help but think they saw my donations, and thought I was someone they could extort for exorbitant delivery fees.
DeleteWhen I called to cancel, I told the person I spoke to that I could purchase the paper at newstand price almost every day of the week, and still save money . So when my subscription expires next week, I will walk to the local newstand and buy the paper on the days that Mr S has a column.
I feel terrible because I sent generous checks to support local media in 2024. Something is not right about this.
I regret sending checks to support independent, local media, as I believe it somehow skewed my offered subscription price to exorbitant levels. Will I continue to send donations to the Sun Times? No. Do I feel betrayed? Yes.
Why not simply donate to both? Easy to do. Important to do.
ReplyDeleteCoincidentally, we renewed our S-T subscription last week and I was pleased to note the reference to supporting The Night Ministry. Truth be told, however, I was prompted to ante up by the daily references in the paper to the fact that, as of today, "a 3.99% processing fee will be applied to all payments made via credit card." On the upside, I haven't been required to watch the 30-second fundraising video since then, so maybe they fixed that.
ReplyDeleteThat credit card fee is becoming more and more common at restaurants that we patronize. After years of barely using cash at all, we've been prompted to do so to avoid the fee.
And yes, I realize that that's a very first-world problem, the mention of which is quite out of place following this column on homelessness and the selfless folks struggling to combat it.
Also regrettably off topic, I thought the story on Page 10 of today's paper was remarkable. Another bit of "not The Onion" news: "References to a World War II Medal of Honor recipient, the Enola Gay aircraft that dropped an atomic bomb on Japan and the first women to pass Marine infantry training are among the tens of thousands of photos and online posts marked for deletion as the Defense Department works to purge diversity, equity and inclusion content, according to a database obtained by The Associated Press."
I long suspected that that B-29 had been a diversity hire.
Yeah. Those big and burly B-29s really had a thing for other planes. It was widely known at the time, but the Army Air Force kept it hushed up. They only came out of the closet (AKA hangar) for missions.
DeleteHomelessness in America? Blame it, like so many other things, on Reagan. It was not such a huge problem until it skyrocketed on Reagan's watch, during the severe recession of the early 80s. And like so many other things they ignored, the Rethugs just kicked it down the road,
Sure, there were plenty of unfortunates sleeping on Lower Wacker when Nixon and Ford were in office, but not like in the decades that followed. Homelessness will only grow worse under Orange Julius 2.0...a lot worse. Today's bureaucrat is tomorrow's beggar.
As much as our social chaos owes much to Reagan, I believe the popularity of deinstitutionalization is also to blame. Illinois public mental health facilities were notorious hell-holes; public outcry and the availability of psychiatric drugs led to many of them being emptied out, into the streets.
DeleteAgreed. Didn't that also happen on Reagan's watch? Previously, both the Sun-Times and the Daily News had dispatched undercover reporters and photographers to some of those hellholes, and they came back with prize-winning stories about the horrors they experienced. One of the worst facilities was, ironically, in Dixon. Which was Reagan's boyhood home in the 1920s.
Delete"Deinstitutionalization" of the mentally ill led to the incarceration of the mentally ill into the penal system. Not a great trade-off.
DeleteI'm not a rich man and live on a fixed income, but I do have a beating heart. So I managed to scrape up a few bucks to make an extra donation after reading this yesterday. (I've been a digital subscriber for a number of years.) With all that's falling apart across our once great union it feels important to do what little I can in my own community to help those who have fallen through the cracks. And Lordy how those cracks are widening.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your generosity.
DeleteAn example of o ur failure as a nation that we have such a problem; we should and could be able to house, feed and support people in need. Thank you for this piece.
ReplyDeletethe Night Ministry staff deserve a salary 4x what they are getting. Like the intake coordinator at Haymarket who was recently mentioned in Mr S's blog posts, these people are the true heroes of our times. I salute, applaud and thank them.
ReplyDelete