As we expected, the Reader has done a hack job of “reporting” the situations occurring in Wicker Park [August 26]. It is curious that the Reader printed Jeff Huebner’s story two weeks before the Around the Coyote (ATC) festival, which the Reader is sponsoring this year. The article has been sitting in their office since last year. There was some useful, albeit incomplete and inaccurate, research which will hopefully spur some lively discussion and perhaps action, on the process of gentrification.
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First of all we are not a bunch of “frat boys” terrorizing people we don’t like. Some of us are not even boys. The Lumpen Times is comprised of an ethnically and economically diverse group of humans who work together to provide an alternative to mainstream dialogue. This is only one of the realities omitted by the Reader’s story.
The interviews with Andy Sickle and Chris Molnar were done last winter and no follow-up was initiated. The so-called facts of The Lumpen Times involvement in publicizing the boycott of Bookseller’s Row (which we are no longer boycotting) and the “censoring and terrorizing” of C.J. Laity and Letter eX, are inaccurate and misreported. Basically, the Reader has rekindled old problems and printed the same old lies. For example, they allow Laity to make bizarre accusations and go on to list unclaimed acts of violence and vandalism implying Lumpen participation. If he’s actually imagining “gangs of anarchists coming in to the bookstore . . . [to] lynch” him, perhaps his paranoia deserves clinical attention rather than press coverage.
Your Friends,
The Reader had a promotional booth at Around the Coyote. It also published the program guide and sold ad space in it. However, the paper’s participation in the festival did not in any way affect the content of my story.
