All Articles Tagged "cabrini-green"
Where Are They Now? The Cast of “Good Times”
Source: valdefierro.com
If there’s anything I learned from watching Good Times, it’s that even when you think you’ve got it bad, you could have it worse–like the Evans family. I’m just saying, these people went through every bad thing you could think of in their housing project in Chicago (allegedly Cabrini-Green). From JJ getting shot, to James Evans dying and Penny getting abused and burned with an iron by her mother, “Good Times” gave it to you REAL. Realer than reality TV, and that’s probably why so many people adored the show, and almost 40 years after its first airing, still do. The show ran from 1974-1979, but if you were wondering what the cast is up to now (and not the 8 million people who guest starred), we’ve got you covered. As usual, be prepared to click.
Source: urbanbushbabes.com
Ja’net DuBois
Talk about being the coolest neighbor ever! The character of Willona Woods was sassy, smart, beautiful and had a joke for anybody who thought they were going to play her (that goes for you Bookman!). But aside from being funny and cool, she clearly had a big heart, taking in Janet Jackson’s character of Penny after finding out she was abused, and always being there for her girl Florida. After the show ended, DuBois (who sang and co-wrote the theme song for “The Jeffersons”) went on to do films like I’m Gonna Git You Sucka, and have recurring roles on shows like “The Wayans Bros.,” did voice work for the show “The PJ’s,” (she won two Emmy’s for her work) and most recently did work for the TV series, “G.I. Joe: Renegades.”
Source: johnnybmoore.wordpress.com
Tags:
cabrini-green, Cast, chicago, classic, comedy, Good Times, hard times, Madame Noire, projects, TV, where are they nowFor Cabrini-Green Residents, a Rough Reception at New Home
(Chicago News Cooperative) — On a cold morning last December, a former teacher’s aide and grandmother named Annie Ricks was the last tenant to leave the last high-rise at the Cabrini-Green public housing development. The focus of national media attention, she was the star of the end of an era. But after that day of farewells and photographs, she disappeared from public view until Tuesday’s monthly meeting of the Chicago Housing Authority’s board of commissioners. She stood at the microphone with her 19-year-old son, Raymond. She was nervous. He was silent; his right hand was in a soft cast. “I’m tired of my kids getting jumped on,’’ she told the commissioners. Since moving into the Wentworth Gardens public housing development on the South Side on Dec. 9, 2010, “my life has been a living hell,” Ricks said in an interview.
33 Cabrini-Green Families Have 180 Days to Find New Housing
(Chicago Sun Times) — The Chicago Housing Authority — citing safety concerns — plans to evict the 33 families still living in the Cabrini-Green rowhouses that have not been rehabbed, the agency said Thursday. The CHA says the rowhouses are “dangerous and no longer suitable for residents,” citing recent arrests for drug dealing, among other criminal activities. The residents are being given 180 days to find somewhere else to live, according to the CHA.
City Warned on Cabrini Housing
(Chicago Sun Times) — A federal judge this week put the city on notice that it has to speed up efforts to acquire the former Near North high school site for redevelopment into replacement housing for former Cabrini-Green residents — or stand in violation of a 2000 consent decree. Under the agreement reached with tenants a decade ago as the Chicago Housing Authority began its historic Plan for Transformation — tearing down high-rise public housing throughout Chicago — the city was to acquire the site owned by the Chicago Public Schools at Clybourn and Larrabee for new housing.
Cabrini-Green to Exit With Poetry and Lights
(New York Times) — The last high-rise at Cabrini-Green is coming down starting Wednesday, stirring strong emotions among former residents who remember the troubled housing project as their home and community, as well as a place of menace. Those feelings will emerge in an unusual light display that will accompany the demolition. Earlier this month, young people who lived in and around the project gathered nearby at the Seward Park field house to record poetry that will determine the rhythms of pulsating colored light beamed from the windows of the 15-story building. The lights will be extinguished, apartment by apartment, as the high-rise comes down. Students and faculty members from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago developed the custom LED lights and computer software that fires the lights in sync with the teenagers’ voices. Individually programmed lights in each apartment will reflect off the multicolored walls.
Cabrini-Green Goes Dark
(Wall Street Journal) — Annie Ricks and seven of her children moved into the notorious Cabrini-Green Housing Project in 1990 and found things even worse than she feared. “Gunshots all over the place,” she said. “Fights, noise.” Thursday morning, she is scheduled to be the last of 15,000 residents to move out, marking the end of one of the most troubled chapters in U.S. public-housing history. The crumbling 15-story building Ms. Ricks is leaving is one of just three of the original 23 high rises still standing on the 70-acre site, a mile from the city’s upscale Magnificent Mile. Private developers along with the Chicago Housing Authority have already built about 2,000 of the more than 5,000 units of mixed-income housing planned for the site.
The End of The Notorious Cabrini-Green Projects Evokes Mixed Emotions
Tearin down the ‘jects creatin plush homes
My circumstance is between cabrini and love jones
Surrounded by hate, yet i love home
-Common from Respiration
As the last families are moved out of the Cabrini-Green Housing project, the notorious Chicago public housing complex whose name became synonymous with failures of public housing, will be completely demolished and enter into the annals of history. The end of Cabrini-Green, whose public housing towers were made famous in the 70s sitcom “Good Times” and has often been studied by policy and social welfare experts in the U.S., has evoked mixed emotions from long-time residents, who feel pushed out by developers, and those who are happy to see the end of large complexes that act as a hotbed for violence and poverty.
Last Remnant of Chicago’s Infamous Cabrini-Green to Close
(Washington Post) — For decades, Chicago’s Cabrini-Green high-rises – with their fenced-in balconies and horrific high-profile crimes – were a symbol of the failure of public housing in the United States. Their closure this month marks the end of an ugly era. The Cabrini high-rises were, to some, towering testaments to how Chicago public housing couldn’t safely give shelter to the poorest of the poor. But to the final group of residents being rousted from the last building, Cabrini-Green was simply home.
Cabrini-Green’s Last Stand: Families Prepare to Move Out
(Chicago Sun Times) — It almost seems forlorn in the surrounding emptiness, a 15-story hulk of concrete with telltale, steel-fenced, open-air galleries characteristic of old public housing. This is 1230 Burling — the last Cabrini-Green high-rise standing.
“Cabrini, down, but not out.
“It’s not just a building. It’s not a place. It’s a feeling.
“Now that’s just the way I feel. It taught me what was real. …”
Michael McClarin, the building’s rep on the Cabrini Local Advisory Council, recites a poem he composed, as he makes his way from his ninth-floor apartment to the LAC office on the first floor. On Oct. 15, 27 families received 90-day eviction notices from the Chicago Housing Authority, bringing the end in sight for what once was one of the nation’s most notorious public housing projects.
