Bughouse Media Coverage

Relive the day by listening to Chicago Amplified's recording of the Bughouse Square Debates. Go to http://www.chicagopublicradio.org/Content.aspx?audioID=27206.

The Wall Street Journal's online story of the event is also available. Go to www.wsj.com, scroll down and click on "see all video offerings" in the Video Center Section. Choose "Chicagoans Get on Their Soapbox".

Bughouse Schedule Updates

Scott Speegle, Operations Director of Illinois, Obama Campaign, will be speaking opposite Pat Brady or Julie Brady for the McCain Campaign at 1:00 pm on Saturday, July 26.

The Dil Pickle Club

THE DIL PICKLE CLUB TO BE REVIVED AT THE ZEBRA LOUGE

Radical "Chicago Renaissance" nightspot will be resurrected by editors of Lumpen and Stop Smiling, following the Newberry Library's Bughouse Square Debates in Washington Square Park.

Chicago—The Dil Pickle Club is scheduled to resume activities on Saturday, July 26, 2008, at the Zebra Lounge in the heart of Chicago's Gold Coast neighborhood. Editors from Lumpen and Stop Smiling magazines have programmed a night in tribute to the historic and Dil Pickle Club (Dil with one L!) featuring "short speaking" about the history of "hobohemia" and topics of controversy, new writing, piano cabaret, and performance art.

What:
The Dil Pickle Club

Where:
The Zebra Lounge
1220 N. State Pkwy
Chicago
[Clark/Division Redline or several CTA Bus Routes]

When:
Saturday, July 26, 5 PM to 8 PM

Features:
Free Admission, Live Music by Tom King Clear, Short Speaking by Gale Aherns, New Writing by Michael Marcinkowski, Picture Show by Robin Hustle, Performance Art by Matthew Nicholas and Eric Warner, and Surprises.

Created by local artists, musicians, writers, and organizers, the Dil Pickle Club invites interested parties to mingle and participate in a series of art parties without boundaries. The first happening will occur after the Newberry Library's Bughouse Square Debates in Washington Square Park, down the street at the legendary Zebra Lounge piano bar.

Admission is free. For more information e-mail dilpickleclub@gmail.com.

***

About the Dil Pickle Club
Founded in 1914 by former Wobbly Jack Jones, Jim Larkin, and the cadre of Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.) and the Charles H. Kerr Company—and made famous by "clap doctor" Ben Reitman—the Dil Pickle Club became known as the controversial center of the "Chicago Renaissance." Writers Sherwood Anderson, Carl Sandburg, Djuna Barnes, William Carlos Williams, Vachel Lindsay, and Kenneth Rexroth, mingled with radicals, unemployed workers, prostitutes, gangsters, and slumming Gold Coast socialites at the famed "Pickle." The irreverent spirit of the Dil Pickle Club was illustrated by the motto emblazoned on the club's door: "Step High, Stoop Low, Leave Your Dignity Outside."

Although its original location (reached by squeezing "Thru the Hole in the Wall Down Tooker Alley, to the Green Lite Over the Orange Door") is long gone, the new Dil Pickle Club will meet three times yearly, in July, November, and March, featuring works by Chicago artists and their international cohorts.

About Lumpen
Lumpen is a family arts, politics, and culture magazine based out of Chicago. Visit lumpen.com

About Stop Smiling
Stop Smiling is the magazine for high-minded lowlifes, a bimonthly arts & culture publication based in Chicago and New York City. Visit stopsmilingonline.com

Two New Soapbox Debaters

We just confirmed two new Soapbox speakers today:

Enrique Perez, The Arrogance of Power: Why the Local Stuff is Also Important. Enrique Perez is an active member of his neighborhood, South Loop. In addition to publishing the weekly "Enrique's Community Updates," he is on the board of the Dearborn Park Advisory Council.

Herb Caplan, Who Is Stealing Our Parks? Herb Caplan was a long-time trial attorney for the City of Chicago. He is volunteer counsel for Protect Our Parks (www.protectourparks.org ). He will be talking about Protect Our Parks' efforts to stop the Park District from turning public lands over to private interests. Specifically, he will describe their recent lawsuit against the Park District and the Latin School for building an artificial turf soccer field in Lincoln Park.

2008 Schedule of Events!

Noon – Official welcome

12:15 - Presentation of the Altgeld Award to Dawn Sherman, a student from Buffalo Grove High School who spoke out against a mandatory Moment of Silence

12:35 - Main Debate with Representative John A. Fritchey vs. Joseph Morris

1:05 - Putting the main debate in context with speakers from the Obama and McCain campaigns!

1:45 - Soapbox speakers take the stage! The following speakers have been confirmed:

• Keith Bolin, from the American Corn Growers
• Allison Carter, from the ACLU-Illinois; speaking on US Torture Policy
• Nick Kreitman, Elmhurst College Students for a Democratic Society
• Jing Luo, from the American Medical Students Association; speaking on Health Care Reform
• Erwin Lutzer, from the Moody Church; speaking on “Why God is Not More Tolerant Than He Used To Be”
• Michael Mackaplow; speaking on social fairness and political correctness
  
• Joseph Paschen, writer and bartender; speaking against Chicago's anti-smoking ban
• Paige Philips, bi-sexual activist; reading from The Grapes of Wrath
  
• Rob Sherman; Why the Proposed Million Dollar State Grant to Pilgrim Baptist Church is Unconstitutional
  
• Don Transue, architect of gunmap.org; speaking on expanded gun rights
• Kelly Underman, from the University of Illinois in Chicago; speaking on “Your Life Doesn’t Wait: Why Abstinence Only is Failing This Generation"

3:15 - Poetry reading sponsored by the Poetry Foundation: "Let America Be America" by Langston Hughes

3:30 - Dill Pickle Award presented

3:40 - Open Mic

"America the Wright Way" Announcement

The broadcast of "America the Wright Way" (formerly "Wright Across America") which includes a feature at last year's Bughouse Square Debates will air on March 24, 2008 at 7pm on the Travel Channel.

Tune in and relive the day!

2008 Bughouse Square Debates!

Although not many other details have been finalized, we do know the date of the next Bughouse Square Debates: Saturday, July 26, 2008! As in the past, the Debates will have music and vendors along with the beloved soapboxers, and the event will be simultaneous with the Newberry Library Book Fair, so save the date and plan to spend the day in and around Washington Square Park!

(Are you interested in participating as a soapboxer? Write an email to programs@newberry.org and tell us why!)

“WRIGHT ACROSS AMERICA” With Ian Wright at Bughouse this year!

Breaking News!

Ian Wright, a popular face of travel familiar to millions all over the world, will be a soapboxer at this year's Bughouse Square Debates! He is in Chicago this weekend filming a new series - “WRIGHT ACROSS AMERICA” - wherein our hero will take a unique look at the USA and its most popular tourist destinations. His current series, Discovery Network’s “Globe Trekker” regularly achieves 30 million viewers worldwide.

From the Music City to the Big Easy and Vegas to L.A. Ian’s no-nonsense style will offer a refreshing look at America and its home-grown tourism industry. In each film Ian will try to get to the heart of each city. He will meet people who will help understand each city’s unique character. The series will be broadcast, across the world on the Discovery beginning in the fall of 2007. Discovery has commissioned a series of six one-hour shows to be filmed across the USA over the next 35 weeks.

So, join us on Saturday at 1:30 pm to hear what Ian has to say and watch the cameras roll!

Bughouse Schedule is up!

TAKE IT TO THE PARK!
THE NEWBERRY LIBRARY
BUGHOUSE SQUARE DEBATES
IN PARTNERSHIP WITH THE MCCORMICK TRIBUNE FREEDOM MUSEUM AND THE POETRY FOUNDATION

SATURDAY
JULY 28, 2007, NOON TO 4:00 PM


Noon: Black Bear Combo Marching Band

Walt Whitman “I Sing the Body Electric” performed by
three outstanding Chicago area participants in “Poetry Out Loud,”
The Poetry Foundation’s National Poetry Recitation Contest for High School Students.

OPENING REMARKS
12:45 PM
Cindy Mitchell, Mayor of Bughouse Square

JOHN PETER ALTGELD AWARD PRESENTATION
TO JORGE MÚJICA, IMMIGRANT RIGHTS ACTIVIST
1:00 pm

SOAPBOX SESSIONS
1:30 PM
Each Soap box orator gets about fifteen minutes. All three soapboxes run simultaneously.

Soap Box 1
Speaker 1 - Erwin Lutzer, Jesus in the Spin Zone: Why the Early Church Got It Right

Speaker 2 - Gale Ahrens, In the Spirit of Surrealism, Overthrow Everything!

Speaker 3 – Keith Bolin, How Far from Farm to Fork? Local Food Systems and Your Health


Soap Box 2

Speaker 1 – Bob Matter, Car-sicko: A Prescription for Socialized Transportation

Speaker 2 – KittenINFINITE, Don’t Legalize Prostitution. Decriminalize It.

Speaker 3 – Edwin Yohnka, Why Defend the Offensive?: The Importance of Free Speech


Soap Box 3

Speaker 1 – Michael Silverstein – Electoral Justice for The Supremes!

Speaker 2 – Steve Dale, Do Dogs Belong in Café Society?

Speaker 3 – Rebecca Steinmetz, Why Your Neighborhood Needs a Sex Shop


MAIN DEBATE: Voter Slam
3:00 pm

Immigration Reform: Build a wall, offer amnesty or do nothing?
Staged by the Bread and Butter Forum and Second City
Co-hosted by BBF founder Marj Halperin and Second City regular Jordan Klepper.

The Voter Slam format invites people to answer the question in 90 seconds. Speakers are invited to consider immigration reform in the context of economic security for working Americans.

To participate in or attend future Voter Slams, e-mail voterslam@aol.com. For more information on BBF, visit http://www.breadandbutterforum.org/.

Newberry Library Bughouse Square Debates Honors Activist Jorge Mújica

The Newberry Library’s Bughouse Square Committee is proud to present the 2007 Altgeld Freedom of Speech Award to Jorge Mújica in recognition of his role in the struggle for the human and civil rights of non-citizens and for fair and just immigration reform.

Each year the award goes to a courageous defender of free speech and ideas. The Award is named for the former Illinois Governor (1892-96) who sacrificed his political career by pardoning Haymarket anarchists who had been condemned in 1887 for their words rather than their deeds.

Read the entire press release on the Newberry's Web site. Join us for the award ceremony on Saturday, July 28.

The Bughouse Square Debates is public domain. You can come and scream your head off if you want (see the following post for details). This year things will begin with three Poetry Out Loud National Recitation Finalists reciting from memory “I Sing the Body Electric” by Walt Whitman. The poem was part of his lifework Leaves of Grass, once in Boston deemed obscene literature and pressured for censorship. But Whitman being Whitman refused to think of it under any circumstance. And the rest of course is history. Now the poem is by law in the public domain and free at a click. How would Whitman have loved the Internet?

What I can answer is that the poem is the first I loved, as a circulation assistant (page, as we were called and called pulling books from the closed, cold stacks) in the General Reading Room of the Newberry Library. We called ourselves Space Monkeys. This is where I had my best education, serving book after book alongside a team of the best finger-licking good friends I could hope for. While the genealogists dug in lineage, we tapped another in the mine of the library. And in afternoons in Washington Square Park. And hours after hours in the Zebra Lounge down the street. And still sometimes as old friends.

So this is my electric invitation to my old colleagues from the GRR. To my fellow Space Monkeys. I hope somehow they find themselves through this blog and join us for this year’s Bughouse Square Debates. This means you: Julie Lynch, Elizabeth Aubrey, Prentiss Kwabena Slaughter, Seth Ford, Lisa Adrienne Horrigan, Jenny Beinke, Heather Smedberg, Rosie Chase, Janice Dillard, Laura Carroll, Darran White, Lisa Baldassari, Cindy Romanowski, Maria Villanueva, Carly Corder, Sean Jones, Susan Kunkle, Amber Cooper, Sean Raleigh, Kate Henningsen, Jeff Guntzel, Josh Leopold, Adrian Lucia, Alicia Duell, Diana Sudyka, Lisa Schoblasky, Analia Rodriguez.

Sometimes someone else said it best:

I have perceiv’d that to be with those I like is enough,
To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,
To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough,
To pass among them or touch any one, or rest my arm ever so lightly round his or her neck for a moment, what is this then?
I do not ask any more delight, I swim in it as in a sea.

—From "I Sing the Body Electric," by Walt Whitman

Be a Soapboxer!

Rachel Bohlmann, director of public programs at the Newberry, announced on the John Williams' Show how you can get involved in this year's Bughouse Square Debates.

Interested soapboxers can call 312 255 3834 to leave a 30-second Soapbox Audition. Please remember to leave your name and phone number.

Also, don't forget you can get involved with the Voter Slam's main debate on immigration. Details in the previous post.

Voter Slam Set for July 28th

First Outdoor Slam Tackles Immigration at the Bughouse Square Debates!

The Newberry Library has invited the Bread and Butter Forum to stage a voter slam during its annual Bughouse Square event at Washington Park (Clark and Walton) on Saturday, July 28. The voter slam starts at 3 p.m. and will run for approximately one hour.

Our question is this:

Immigration reform: build a wall, offer amnesty or do nothing? How can immigration reform promote economic security for working Americans?

Surveys show that a majority of Americans favor a legal path to citizenship for American’s 12 million illegal immigrants. Most economists say that immigrant labor is needed for certain industries, like agriculture and food service, but they acknowledge that immigrant labor forces down wages for working Americans.

Voter Slam Format
If you’re new to the voter slam format, here's how it works. It's not unlike a poetry slam but the topic is politics and your answers don't have to rhyme. We pick a topic and recruit one expert to spend 5 minutes at the beginning framing the issue. We recruit 10 to 15 “slammers” of varying viewpoints to speak for 90 seconds or less. Off-topic responses may be cut short.

If you want to participate, please send an e-mail to pubprog@newberry.org with your name, contact info and position on immigration.

Ernest Hemingway, Also Banned

Poems from another frequently banned author: Oak Park's own Mr. Ernest Hemingway:

Ernest Miller Hemingway (1899-1961)
The Age Demanded

The age demanded that we sing
And cut away our tongue.

The age demanded that we flow
And hammered in the bung.

The age demanded that we dance
And jammed us into iron pants.

And in the end the age was handed
The sort of shit that it demanded.

Notes
1] Gerogiannis notes that "The title and the rhythm are borrowed from the second part of Ezra Pound's `Hugh Selwyn Mauberly'" (139).

Poems: D. H. Lawrence

In keeping with the recent post about the American Library Association's "Banned Books Week" I'll be posting some poems by authors whose work has been frequently banned. First up, D.H. Lawrence.

David Herbert Lawrence (1885-1930)

"Stand Up!"

Stand up, but not for Jesus!
It's a little late for that.
Stand up for justice and a jolly life.
I'll hold your hat.

Stand up, stand up for justice,
ye swindled little blokes!
Stand up and do some punching,
give 'em a few hard pokes.

Stand up for jolly justice
you haven't got much to lose:
a job you don't like and a scanty chance
for a dreary little booze.

Stand up for something different,
and have a little fun
fighting for something worth fighting for
before you've done.

Stand up for a new arrangement
for a chance of life all round,
for freedom, and the fun of living
bust in, and hold the ground!


"Relativity"

I like relativity and quantum theories
because I don't understand them
and they make me feel as if space shifted about like a swan that can't settle,
refusing to sit still and be measured;
and as if the atom were an impulsive thing
always changing its mind.

Banned Books Week Event on Sept. 29

A little far in advance - but put it on the calendar for a post-Bughouse Square event.

Celebrate your freedom to read during the 26th annual celebration of Banned Books Week. Join the American Library Association, McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum, and the Newberry Library for a Banned Books Week Read-Out on Saturday, September 29 in Pioneer Plaza—at Michigan Avenue and the Chicago River. From 1:00 pm–4:00 pm join highly acclaimed authors Chris Crutcher, Carolyn Mackler, and Robie Harris and local Chicago celebrities as they read passages from their favorite banned and “challenged” books. For more information, visit the ALA's Web site at www.ala.org/bbwreadout.

Black Bear Combo: This Year's Bughouse Band

We are happy to report that the Black Bear Combo will provide the soundtrack to this year's Bughouse Square Debates. Their website is here:

http://www.blackbearcombo.com/

This renegade marching band from Chicago will open up the festivities on Saturday, July 28, 2007, at 12:00 PM. Live drums, a tuba...what more could you ask for?

John Williams, Bughouse Square Judge

John Williams, WGN-AM's afternoon host, will reprise his role as a Soapbox Debate Judge this year at the 2007 Bughouse Square Debates. He, and two other judges, choose the winner of the Dill Pickle Award, and present the coveted larger-than-life Dill Pickle statue.

On his program, John discusses the news of the day, sports, television programs, movies, books, and, on occasion, he will take calls from “Thomas Jefferson” and a cast of other historical characters.

New Partners for 2007 Bughouse Square Debates

The Newberry Library is pleased to announce a partnership with the McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum and the Poetry Foundation for this year's Bughouse Square Debates. Planning is underway. If you are interested in participating, contact the Newberry's Public Programs Office at (312) 255-3700.

Bughouse 2007 - Get Involved

2007 Date Announced!

Bughouse Square Debates

Saturday, July 28, 2007, from 12:00 PM - 5:00 PM
Held in Washington Square Park across the street from the Newberry Library

Bring your loudest heckling voice for an afternoon of soapbox oratory, Bughouse music, and poetry. Prizes will be awarded to the best speakers and hecklers. Exercise your first-amendment rights and relive the exciting public debates that immortalized Washington Square Park. Enjoy music and historical reenactments. Afterwards, voice your opinions on today's issues in our open-mic segment.

Admission is free to both events. For information, or to get involved, call (312) 255-3700.