/ Heroes / 2007 Chicago Heroes Bios / Beauty Turner
Beauty Turner
Beauty Turner leads a bus tour of Chicago. Missing on her tour, however, are the Sears Tower, Wrigley Field and every other landmark you’ll find in a Chicago guidebook.
That’s because Turner’s excursion is a trip through Chicago Housing Authority projects, some of which are no longer standing. A product of Chicago’s public housing herself, Turner is now the assistant editor of Residents’ Journal, a bi-monthly magazine.
The tour is Turner’s attempt to share the history, personalities and sense of community that define Chicago's infamous public housing developments. Many of these developments have been torn down as part of the Chicago Housing Authority’s $1.6 billion project to replace low-income high rises and with new mixed-income communities.
“Today these women are in South Chicago, Danville and Inglewood,” Beauty has said. “They had to abandon their homes and their communities. A lot of the people dependent on public housing won’t be able to afford the new condos,” she explains. “They won’t ever be able to move back to the place they called home.”
With that as her motivation Beauty Turner has spent her time writing award-winning investigative articles and commentaries and co-directing the Advocacy and Outreach Initiative. She is a well-known community activist as well as a regular columnist for the Hyde Park Herald and other community newspapers.
For the last several years, Beauty has worked as a research assistant for Professor Sudhir Venkatesh, a sociologist at Columbia University and has founded an organization called Poor People Millennium Movement - dedicated to helping poor people with important issues.
A moving speaker at events, panels, and universities, she has served on the Executive Committee of the Coalition to Protect Public Housing and also on the Steering Committee of the October 22nd Coalition, a campaign against police brutality.
Today many voices that would normally be silenced are now being heard thanks to her work.
Monday, May 12, 2008
Saturday, May 10, 2008
One of Beauty's favorite Lanston Hughes poems
A poem from Langston Hughes
Between -1931-1940
“A poem after Ms. Beauty Turner own heart”
Listen!
All you beauty makers.
Give up beauty for a moment. Look at harshness, look at pain
Look at life again.
Look at hungry babies crying.
Listen to the rich men lying.
Look at starving China dying.
Hear the rumble in the East.
In sprite of it all.
Life must not cease,
Because the fat and greedy ones.
Proclaim their thieving peace.
Their peace far worth than the war and death-
For this is better than living breath.
Free! To be Free!
Listen! Futile beauty makers-
Work for a while with the pattern breakers-
Come for a march with the new-world-makers’
Let “Beauty” be!
Between -1931-1940
“A poem after Ms. Beauty Turner own heart”
Listen!
All you beauty makers.
Give up beauty for a moment. Look at harshness, look at pain
Look at life again.
Look at hungry babies crying.
Listen to the rich men lying.
Look at starving China dying.
Hear the rumble in the East.
In sprite of it all.
Life must not cease,
Because the fat and greedy ones.
Proclaim their thieving peace.
Their peace far worth than the war and death-
For this is better than living breath.
Free! To be Free!
Listen! Futile beauty makers-
Work for a while with the pattern breakers-
Come for a march with the new-world-makers’
Let “Beauty” be!
Friday, February 15, 2008
God's eyes is on the sparrow
Ms. Beauty Turner
Founder of Poor People Millennium Movement
Americans poor people are locked down inside ghettos of material privatizing and spiritual debilitation , just like the late Civil Rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said. And all of us can almost feel the presence of a kind of social insanity that will erupt like a volcano into a lava of acid that will devour the land with violence and destruction.
Examples: Fights breaking out in school yards like Hyde Park ,Wendell Phillips, Englewood, Dunbar, and others.
Gun shots being sprayed out of a revolver like raid in a roach infested project apartment.
Even in areas that was once consider sacred Ivy League colleges,
(Columbine ) (NIU,) Chicago University.
We need to ask ourselves what are we doing wrong as a society,
when young people are afraid to go to school and receive a quality education because they are being gunned down by their lockers, we as a society needs to ask ourselves what is being done that created this state of mind.
Instead of using an automate weapon a book, that can uplift ones mind to a higher plane, a higher level, their choice of weapons today are becoming guns that can only cause despair.
Words like hope and care, and compassion doesn’t even enter into our children Webster dictionaries.
which could lead to national ruin. The true responsibility for the existence of these deplorable conditions lies ultimately with the larger society and much of the immediate responsibility for removing the injustices can be laid directly at the door of the federal government.
We who are in the city of big shoulders are resting on a slanted messed up attitude that every thing is okay.
We as a nation is facing a morale dilemma, that threaten every grain of soils that makes up our so called great America.
If America which to remain a great nation they must address the agonizing suffering of the poor. And than and only than can they lift their voices and sing in the purist of harmony and unity and reclaim what is rightfully our-Our home sweet home! The land of the free and the land of the brave, and liberty and justice for (ALL)
We need economic justice in the poorest of community a massive surge of jobs with livable salaries, as well as housing for the poor.
We who have lived in the bowels of the ghetto’s, in the crust of the barrios and down in the valley are lifting our voices in unity today.
And saying- Do the right thing!
For God’s eyes are on the sparrow and he sees all!
Founder of Poor People Millennium Movement
Americans poor people are locked down inside ghettos of material privatizing and spiritual debilitation , just like the late Civil Rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said. And all of us can almost feel the presence of a kind of social insanity that will erupt like a volcano into a lava of acid that will devour the land with violence and destruction.
Examples: Fights breaking out in school yards like Hyde Park ,Wendell Phillips, Englewood, Dunbar, and others.
Gun shots being sprayed out of a revolver like raid in a roach infested project apartment.
Even in areas that was once consider sacred Ivy League colleges,
(Columbine ) (NIU,) Chicago University.
We need to ask ourselves what are we doing wrong as a society,
when young people are afraid to go to school and receive a quality education because they are being gunned down by their lockers, we as a society needs to ask ourselves what is being done that created this state of mind.
Instead of using an automate weapon a book, that can uplift ones mind to a higher plane, a higher level, their choice of weapons today are becoming guns that can only cause despair.
Words like hope and care, and compassion doesn’t even enter into our children Webster dictionaries.
which could lead to national ruin. The true responsibility for the existence of these deplorable conditions lies ultimately with the larger society and much of the immediate responsibility for removing the injustices can be laid directly at the door of the federal government.
We who are in the city of big shoulders are resting on a slanted messed up attitude that every thing is okay.
We as a nation is facing a morale dilemma, that threaten every grain of soils that makes up our so called great America.
If America which to remain a great nation they must address the agonizing suffering of the poor. And than and only than can they lift their voices and sing in the purist of harmony and unity and reclaim what is rightfully our-Our home sweet home! The land of the free and the land of the brave, and liberty and justice for (ALL)
We need economic justice in the poorest of community a massive surge of jobs with livable salaries, as well as housing for the poor.
We who have lived in the bowels of the ghetto’s, in the crust of the barrios and down in the valley are lifting our voices in unity today.
And saying- Do the right thing!
For God’s eyes are on the sparrow and he sees all!
Saturday, February 2, 2008
Our Journey to Justice
Our Journey to Justice
By; Ms. Beauty Turner
"We shall overcome,are lyrics that I heard many years ago,
during the civil right movement as a small child, those
verses, and lyrics still lingers in my head like sweet poperie in the air,
and the taste for freedom still linger on my breath like sweet potatoes pie.
Every word that I speak toward freedom is like a breath of fresh air and a colorful bouquet of roses.
"How sweet it is!"
“We shall overcome one day!”
But yet we who are baby boomers, who were mere children in the early fifties and in the early sixties, the time of a struggle for civil rights and change.
When the loaves of brown bread were being baked, split-up hand out and given away by the slices , by those who led the movement. we were mere youth.
We as children, innocent as we may be, looked up with our big brown , sad eyes that glowed at every accomplishments at those who were the fuel in the economic engine that drove the civil rights movement to new heights .
We sung, we danced, we marched and we bleed in the streets from dog bites and from billy clubs striking us like Ernie Banks hitting a homerun, from those who took an oath to serve and protect us !
Chicago finest on our journey to justice!
Now in the twenty first century in a new millennium we are faced with the same types of problems that we thought that we had overcome.
Nooses in a tree, we as a people still are not yet free!
Today in the new Millennium we find ourselves reaching out for just the mere crumbs of what the civil rights movement left behind; none put away for the future generations.
We find ourselves back on the same path as we did in the Civil Rights days, a path laced with injustices. People, politicians and preachers that is bathes in the same colored as we are have sold us out like Black slave catchers, that hit us with the leather bull whip harder than any white slave master.
We who are black are being barricaded , locked out and forced out of a city and pushed out in a wheel barrel like used up derbies and laid by the side of the road, like road kill, when it comes to housings, jobs, and a pursuit of happiness.
We need to pick ourselves up, brush ourselves off and begin again on our journey to justice.
Our Journey to Justice can not be deterred by those who have their hands in the cookies jars of despaired!
Our journey to justice can not be turned around and derailed by those who don’t know what freedom is!
Here in the twenty first century forty years after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. marched on the crumbling , cracked up pavement in the windy city streets of Chicago for housings, education and jobs. Can we as a people lay down and be stepped on.
We need to be like gum, crazy glue , stuck on the issues and never giving up on us!
For our poor black babies, our poor white babies, and our poor red, and yellow babies deserve a future.
As a baby boomer who were raised in the time of change , who understood our journey to justices I will not wither, I will not sway, and I will not fall, but stand tall and stay on the battle fields for justice!
By; Ms. Beauty Turner
"We shall overcome,are lyrics that I heard many years ago,
during the civil right movement as a small child, those
verses, and lyrics still lingers in my head like sweet poperie in the air,
and the taste for freedom still linger on my breath like sweet potatoes pie.
Every word that I speak toward freedom is like a breath of fresh air and a colorful bouquet of roses.
"How sweet it is!"
“We shall overcome one day!”
But yet we who are baby boomers, who were mere children in the early fifties and in the early sixties, the time of a struggle for civil rights and change.
When the loaves of brown bread were being baked, split-up hand out and given away by the slices , by those who led the movement. we were mere youth.
We as children, innocent as we may be, looked up with our big brown , sad eyes that glowed at every accomplishments at those who were the fuel in the economic engine that drove the civil rights movement to new heights .
We sung, we danced, we marched and we bleed in the streets from dog bites and from billy clubs striking us like Ernie Banks hitting a homerun, from those who took an oath to serve and protect us !
Chicago finest on our journey to justice!
Now in the twenty first century in a new millennium we are faced with the same types of problems that we thought that we had overcome.
Nooses in a tree, we as a people still are not yet free!
Today in the new Millennium we find ourselves reaching out for just the mere crumbs of what the civil rights movement left behind; none put away for the future generations.
We find ourselves back on the same path as we did in the Civil Rights days, a path laced with injustices. People, politicians and preachers that is bathes in the same colored as we are have sold us out like Black slave catchers, that hit us with the leather bull whip harder than any white slave master.
We who are black are being barricaded , locked out and forced out of a city and pushed out in a wheel barrel like used up derbies and laid by the side of the road, like road kill, when it comes to housings, jobs, and a pursuit of happiness.
We need to pick ourselves up, brush ourselves off and begin again on our journey to justice.
Our Journey to Justice can not be deterred by those who have their hands in the cookies jars of despaired!
Our journey to justice can not be turned around and derailed by those who don’t know what freedom is!
Here in the twenty first century forty years after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. marched on the crumbling , cracked up pavement in the windy city streets of Chicago for housings, education and jobs. Can we as a people lay down and be stepped on.
We need to be like gum, crazy glue , stuck on the issues and never giving up on us!
For our poor black babies, our poor white babies, and our poor red, and yellow babies deserve a future.
As a baby boomer who were raised in the time of change , who understood our journey to justices I will not wither, I will not sway, and I will not fall, but stand tall and stay on the battle fields for justice!
Saturday, September 22, 2007
Too many sparks of injustices in America
The sparks flew in the sixty when Civil Rights Leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
was assassinated, many stores and homes burnt down after Black folks riot in the streets,
No Justice no peace!
Now in the twenty first century Hang men loops are hanging from the tree's in a small Southern town in Jena Louisianan.
Six young black boys are being sent up the river without a paddle or a life line after an allege beating of a white boy.
Black children hauled off too jail like a sack of potatoes after a fight that they did not start only after asking some white kids on a hot sultry simmering day can they sat under a tree for shade.
Hang men Loops hung from a tree a racist statement by any one means.
Still today we are still suffering and feeling the lashes from the whips of injustice that our ancestors had too endure.
I say too America if you are still too remain a great nation then Injustice by any means must not be tolerated
Stop the beatings , start the meetings, and let Freedom ring out from the bowels of the ghetto's, to the grassy hills of the white house to the Ivory luxury towers in the cumbering clouds, to the vast black holes in the universe and let Peace begin and we march out of Louisianans as the best of friends!
was assassinated, many stores and homes burnt down after Black folks riot in the streets,
No Justice no peace!
Now in the twenty first century Hang men loops are hanging from the tree's in a small Southern town in Jena Louisianan.
Six young black boys are being sent up the river without a paddle or a life line after an allege beating of a white boy.
Black children hauled off too jail like a sack of potatoes after a fight that they did not start only after asking some white kids on a hot sultry simmering day can they sat under a tree for shade.
Hang men Loops hung from a tree a racist statement by any one means.
Still today we are still suffering and feeling the lashes from the whips of injustice that our ancestors had too endure.
I say too America if you are still too remain a great nation then Injustice by any means must not be tolerated
Stop the beatings , start the meetings, and let Freedom ring out from the bowels of the ghetto's, to the grassy hills of the white house to the Ivory luxury towers in the cumbering clouds, to the vast black holes in the universe and let Peace begin and we march out of Louisianans as the best of friends!
Beauty's Anti-War Speech
Ms. Beauty Turner
Anti-war speech
3-19-08
At-6 pm Federal Plaza
In Chicago.
This morning I woke up to a speech that made me shake and shiver, A speech that President Bush had wrote, a speech marking the anniversary of the fifth year in the war in Iraq.
It was a speech about because we acted,
In his speech he did not mention because we acted on a place that had proven not to have weapons of mass destruction- the so called real reason for the war. Was never mention.
Because he acted there are over 4000 American soldiers that have lost their lives.
Because he acted there are over 30,0000 wounded American soldiers men and women where many of them only went to the
Army because they were poor and racked with poverty couldn’t afford a quality education.
There’s over a million Iraqi people who have lost their life’s.
And many more are dying as I speak!
Because he acted the American people are in an economic downfall, a Katrina type world wind that is drowning us in heavy debt! we are losings our homes to demolitions and foreclosures.
We are losing our jobs like a two year old is losing his or her baby teeth. One at a time .
In my community we are still picking cotton a piece of lint out the base of our pocket-with no real opportunity to fuel our economic engine due to a recession.
Trillions of American dollars are being dumped in an open pit never to be retrieved..
Yet America is no better off than the day they started the war.
Our babies in my community is scared with terror out of their minds while walking and being shot down like rabbi dogs right here on American soil while going to American schools basically because of a lack of resources,
Health care there is none, funding for school, there is none, funding for housings there is none- because he acted!
Stop this war and bring our troops home!
Change is a word that is often used in the political arena.
The word Change is being thrown around like loose cooper pennies in every direction. But in order to Change this trend of an unjust war-
Change will come and it will come "because we acted" from the power of the people!
All power to the people!
’ ’ ’
Anti-war speech
3-19-08
At-6 pm Federal Plaza
In Chicago.
This morning I woke up to a speech that made me shake and shiver, A speech that President Bush had wrote, a speech marking the anniversary of the fifth year in the war in Iraq.
It was a speech about because we acted,
In his speech he did not mention because we acted on a place that had proven not to have weapons of mass destruction- the so called real reason for the war. Was never mention.
Because he acted there are over 4000 American soldiers that have lost their lives.
Because he acted there are over 30,0000 wounded American soldiers men and women where many of them only went to the
Army because they were poor and racked with poverty couldn’t afford a quality education.
There’s over a million Iraqi people who have lost their life’s.
And many more are dying as I speak!
Because he acted the American people are in an economic downfall, a Katrina type world wind that is drowning us in heavy debt! we are losings our homes to demolitions and foreclosures.
We are losing our jobs like a two year old is losing his or her baby teeth. One at a time .
In my community we are still picking cotton a piece of lint out the base of our pocket-with no real opportunity to fuel our economic engine due to a recession.
Trillions of American dollars are being dumped in an open pit never to be retrieved..
Yet America is no better off than the day they started the war.
Our babies in my community is scared with terror out of their minds while walking and being shot down like rabbi dogs right here on American soil while going to American schools basically because of a lack of resources,
Health care there is none, funding for school, there is none, funding for housings there is none- because he acted!
Stop this war and bring our troops home!
Change is a word that is often used in the political arena.
The word Change is being thrown around like loose cooper pennies in every direction. But in order to Change this trend of an unjust war-
Change will come and it will come "because we acted" from the power of the people!
All power to the people!
’ ’ ’
The more thing change; the more they stay the same
The windy city “Spark” letter from the Publisher
Mama use to say “The more things change the more they stay the same”
"The more things change the more things stay the same"
By: Ms. Beauty Turner
There were no welcome signs when we got off the boat, only hard metal steel chains
wrapped around our necks, waist, ankles, feet and our hands, there were funny dressed white men with puffy sleeves as well as some black ones standing over us with a long sharp bull whip ready to hit down on us, if we looked at them half way funny.
We didn’t get to see the clay pot green grand lady statue holding a torch symbolizing freedom and liberty and justice for all that are here in America.
The large amount of sweat that fell from our brow was from the heat as well as from being frighten in the belly of an unknown ship.
That must have distorted our vision or maybe it was the smell of rotten black corpses that made us sick to our stomachs as we took that long voyage from the dark continent of Africa.
Or just maybe the statue of Liberty wasn’t even created yet.
Still yet today the black man is still suffering and feeling the lashes the whips their pain of our ancestors who were made slaves here in America.
“’The more things change the more things stay the same,’” my mama use to say now I know what she mean.
In the civil rights days black folks, white folks, Baptists, Catholics, Jewish’s as well as protestants, and gentiles marched in the city streets trying to bring Clearly a human rights issue.
Big black and brown dogs with mean snarling faces and long sharp rusty yellow blood stained teeth latching onto little black and brown babies feet, as well as their teeth getting stuck in our nappy greasy hair, as well as them there dogs taking a plug out of our arms, when we was marching for our civil rights back in the early 60th and early 70th .
Even back then black folks were living in overcrowded shacks behind the railroad tracks with no running water, black smoky coal to heat your stoves if you had one.
Black folks were swollen and pregnant with poverty back then and guess what that economic engine still haven’t started up yet today here in the twenty first century.
Drinking at black and white only water fountains, using black and white only restrooms.
Signs hanging above a sink like a picture in a frame tacked to a wall reading clearly BLACK ONLY, WHITE ONLY.
Now in small southern towns, hang men nooses swinging, hanging, dangling from old oak trees,reading racism with every green leaf.
The more things change the more things stay the same.
Relocated residents from public housing are poor, devastated, underrated, and totally underestimated and are becoming homeless at the drop of a politicians hat behind this big ambitious CHA Transformation Plan.
Condominiums, Townhouses and Lofts are tipping the scale on the low end while extremely low affordable housing is being whacked off like a mob hit in the most vulnerable areas where public housing once stood.
Little black and brown babies as well as their mothers who are on welfare such as TANF,SSI, PENSION, FOODSTAMPS AND tax credits jobs are franticly searching for places to stay that they can afford, all while schools are closing while we the black man was dozing, oh what a different a day make.
Chicago is the experimental ground and guess who are the little gray mice that trying to get the cheese.
Still yet today white men dressed in blue pin stripes suits, with corporate briefcases and so called black leaders setting in high prioritizes places, still have their whips up in the air as they drain the system of us by putting strict criteria’s on us that they know that we can’t pass.
Otherwise doing what they did in the days of old keeping the poor in their so called places.
Just like mama said “The more things change the more they stay the same!”equality to the black man struggles.
Mama use to say “The more things change the more they stay the same”
"The more things change the more things stay the same"
By: Ms. Beauty Turner
There were no welcome signs when we got off the boat, only hard metal steel chains
wrapped around our necks, waist, ankles, feet and our hands, there were funny dressed white men with puffy sleeves as well as some black ones standing over us with a long sharp bull whip ready to hit down on us, if we looked at them half way funny.
We didn’t get to see the clay pot green grand lady statue holding a torch symbolizing freedom and liberty and justice for all that are here in America.
The large amount of sweat that fell from our brow was from the heat as well as from being frighten in the belly of an unknown ship.
That must have distorted our vision or maybe it was the smell of rotten black corpses that made us sick to our stomachs as we took that long voyage from the dark continent of Africa.
Or just maybe the statue of Liberty wasn’t even created yet.
Still yet today the black man is still suffering and feeling the lashes the whips their pain of our ancestors who were made slaves here in America.
“’The more things change the more things stay the same,’” my mama use to say now I know what she mean.
In the civil rights days black folks, white folks, Baptists, Catholics, Jewish’s as well as protestants, and gentiles marched in the city streets trying to bring Clearly a human rights issue.
Big black and brown dogs with mean snarling faces and long sharp rusty yellow blood stained teeth latching onto little black and brown babies feet, as well as their teeth getting stuck in our nappy greasy hair, as well as them there dogs taking a plug out of our arms, when we was marching for our civil rights back in the early 60th and early 70th .
Even back then black folks were living in overcrowded shacks behind the railroad tracks with no running water, black smoky coal to heat your stoves if you had one.
Black folks were swollen and pregnant with poverty back then and guess what that economic engine still haven’t started up yet today here in the twenty first century.
Drinking at black and white only water fountains, using black and white only restrooms.
Signs hanging above a sink like a picture in a frame tacked to a wall reading clearly BLACK ONLY, WHITE ONLY.
Now in small southern towns, hang men nooses swinging, hanging, dangling from old oak trees,reading racism with every green leaf.
The more things change the more things stay the same.
Relocated residents from public housing are poor, devastated, underrated, and totally underestimated and are becoming homeless at the drop of a politicians hat behind this big ambitious CHA Transformation Plan.
Condominiums, Townhouses and Lofts are tipping the scale on the low end while extremely low affordable housing is being whacked off like a mob hit in the most vulnerable areas where public housing once stood.
Little black and brown babies as well as their mothers who are on welfare such as TANF,SSI, PENSION, FOODSTAMPS AND tax credits jobs are franticly searching for places to stay that they can afford, all while schools are closing while we the black man was dozing, oh what a different a day make.
Chicago is the experimental ground and guess who are the little gray mice that trying to get the cheese.
Still yet today white men dressed in blue pin stripes suits, with corporate briefcases and so called black leaders setting in high prioritizes places, still have their whips up in the air as they drain the system of us by putting strict criteria’s on us that they know that we can’t pass.
Otherwise doing what they did in the days of old keeping the poor in their so called places.
Just like mama said “The more things change the more they stay the same!”equality to the black man struggles.
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