Film screening in Austin neighborhood discusses impact of systemic racism on 1995 Chicago heat wave deaths during first day of 2020 One Earth Film Festival
Cooked: Survival By Zip Code discusses the 1995 Chicago heat wave and the role structural racism had on the staggering amount of deaths in the city’s black communities. Courtesy of One Earth Film Festival.
During the summer of 1995, a heat wave caused 739 predominantly black, elderly and poor Chicagoans to die heat-related deaths during a five-day period, overwhelming communities, families and city staff tasked with dealing with the deadly crisis.
With the 25th anniversary of what is called one of the worst heat disasters in Chicago’s history coming this July, the One Earth Film Festival, along with filmmaker Judith Hefland, are hoping to shed some light on the impacts structural racism has had on black communities in Chicago. Hefland’s film, Cooked: Survival By Zip Code, was shown on March 7, to festival attendees and community members at the Austin Branch Library on the city’s West Side in the first official day of the 2020 One Earth Film Festival. The two-week event holds screenings of films centered on the environment, sustainability and climate every year across the Chicagoland area in order to educate, raise awareness and facilitate discussion.
The event involved a screening of Cooked followed by a discussion with Hefland, the film’s director and producer, along with Athena Williams, executive director of the Oak Park Regional Housing Center and Orrin Williams, executive director of the Center for Urban Transformation. Hefland made the film after reading Eric Klinenburg’s book Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago, which documents and analyzes the heat wave that mostly impacted black communities on the city’s West and South Sides. She says she was shocked more people didn’t know about it, a natural disaster that, as it unfolded, revealed an unnatural cause: how structural racism impacted who died and where.
Before the screening, Hefland spoke to the audience, expressing that although this wasn’t the first time the film has been shown, this was probably her favorite screening since the films debut in 2018.
Judith Hefland (left) speaks with Athena Williams (middle) and Orrin Williams (right) at a screening of Cooked: Survival by Zip Code on Saturday, Mar. 8th. Photo by Maia McDonald.
“What I love about this film festival is that they do it where people live, in these neighborhoods where these deaths did occur, and in neighborhoods where that are in zip codes are that definitely experiencing extreme disparity along racial lines, who have experienced the long-term impact of a lack of investment and who are experiencing the long-term impact of segregation,” Hefland said.
People who attended the screening were also able to buy produce from Forty Acres Fresh Market, a startup grocer founded to address the lack of healthy food options on the West Side. Owner Liz Abunaw talked about why the film would resonate in a community like Austin, the second largest neighborhood in the city, which struggles with a lack of grocery stores and other types of investment.
“'The morgue typically receives about 17 bodies a day and has a total of 222 bays,” he said. “By Saturday—just three days into the heat wave—its capacity was exceeded by hundreds, and the county had to bring in a fleet of refrigerated trucks to store the bodies...'"
“This movie resonates so much with what’s going on in Austin in terms of higher rates of diabetes, stroke, high blood pressure,” Abunaw said. “It talked about how 63rd St. and Halsted used to be this bustling community of small businesses and now they’re gone. And what that does to a neighborhood over time where there’s no investment, where people are expendable and we’re trying to turn that around in the Austin community.”
To Abunaw, the service Forty Acres provides to the community is about more than just food. To her, it’s about increasing community and economic development in the parts of the city that could really benefit from it.
Some of the produce offered for sale by Forty Acres at the Cooked Film Screening. Photo by Maia McDonald
She also hopes to open a grocery store on Chicago Ave., to not only provide the community with fresh food but also add cooling spaces where community residents could go on a hot day. Cooked argues that communal spaces like these just aren’t present in the black communities that needed them, both then and now.
“It’s [about] creating the infrastructure in this neighborhood that prevents another 1995,” Abunaw said.
Taking a look at the 1995 Chicago heat wave: What caused the deaths and what was the impact on black communities?
Forty Acres Fresh Market owner Liz Abunaw speaking to a customer during the Cooked: Survival by Zip Code screening in Austin. Photo by Maia McDonald
One of the main thesis’ discussed Cooked is how the segregation, lack of investment and inequity present in communities on the West and South Sides were exacerbated by a particular extreme weather event. From July 12 to July 16, 1995, Chicago experienced temperatures exceeding 100 degrees. According to the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC), July 16th’s temperature of 104 degrees (with a heat index of 119 degrees at one point) at O’Hare International Airport broke records as one of the highest July temperatures ever recorded. In the same NCDC news report, “the combined and cumulative effects of several days of excessively hot temperatures, high humidity, intense July sunshine, and trapped pollutants” were listed as factors that contributed to the large death toll.
Chicago police officers remove the body of a man who died at the Sutherland Hotel during the heatwave back in 1995. Some people attempted to escape the heat in their own homes by going to hotels. Photo by Phil Greer/Chicago Tribune.
Cooked also discusses the reasons that mostly black communities were impacted by the extreme heat, with significantly less deaths occurring on the city’s North Side. For starters, those with preexisting medical conditions were already more susceptible to dying from the heat. Also, most of the deaths caused by the heat were found to have been in homes that couldn’t afford to turn air conditioners or in ones that didn’t have working units to begin with. Many of these homes were lived in by elderly people who stayed alone and who didn’t have large social networks: people without others to rely on in a worst-case scenario. These homes often had windows that were either locked or nailed shut for fear of crime, trapping the excessive heat in and resulting in the hundreds of deaths that occured during that infamous July week.
The sheer number of deaths quickly overwhelmed the medical examiner’s offices.
According to the film, bodies had to be loaded in refrigerated semi-trailers for additional storage room as facilities at the medical examiner’s office quickly filled up. In a 2002 UChicago interview, Heat Wave author Eric Klinenburg described the dire situation.
“The morgue typically receives about 17 bodies a day and has a total of 222 bays,” he said. “By Saturday—just three days into the heat wave—its capacity was exceeded by hundreds, and the county had to bring in a fleet of refrigerated trucks to store the bodies. Police officers had to wait as long as three hours for a worker to receive the body. It was gruesome and incredible for this to be happening in the middle of a modern American city.”
“What I love about this film festival is that they do it where people live, in these neighborhoods where these deaths did occur, and in neighborhoods where that are in zip codes that are definitely experiencing extreme disparity along racial lines..."
And the impacts of the heat wave didn’t end there. The high volume of electricity being used, most of which could be attributed to the use of fans and air conditioners, resulted in widespread losses of power. According to the NCDC, Commonwealth Edison, the sole power company in Chicago, reported a record number of electricity demands between July 12 and July 14,1995 as a result. Firefighters had to hose down drawbridges over the Chicago River which had trouble operating. Roads suffered as well, the heat causing many to buckle while residents opened around 500 fire hydrants, causing water pressure to decrease.
Once the heat broke, the official body count became a major issue. At the time, the number of deaths was recorded as being over 400, a number that would increase as official autopsies were completed. Ultimately, 739 deaths were recorded between July 14 and 20 and later attributed to the heatwave, a majority of which were black people living in neighborhoods like Roseland and Englewood on the city’s South Side and Austin and North Lawndale on the city’s West Side.
Discussing the film as a community: How did Austin and others respond to Cooked?
A community resident listens to Cooked film director Judith Hefland’s comments after a screening of the film in Austin. Photo by Maia McDonald.
Following the screening, people were given an opportunity to share their zip code and their thoughts on the film, which also discusses how the disaster preparedness movement in the U.S. largely excludes black communities. Alice Wedoff, who grew up in Oak Park and lives in Garfield Park with her two sons, spoke very emotionally about the film. She says growing up, she was often told which neighborhoods not to go to and to not cross Austin Boulevard which divides the Oak Park suburb from Chicago’s Austin neighborhood.
“I see that fear everyday and I hear that fear from family and friends who say ‘oh you live in 60624’ and it makes me angry and it makes me sad. I had a gun pulled on me on Wednesday and I wasn’t afraid,” Wedoff said. “I was sad because [these deaths are] criminal and the fear is what is making this okay for everybody because [these neighborhoods are seen] as just a pariah. It’s just a place you don’t go.”
Wedoff, who works as a Chicago Public School teacher, later added, “the issues around segregation have been with me for a very long time. I think segregation is one of the biggest evils propagated by our country so when you see this [film] and it’s hit over your head again how segregation is not just hurting people, it’s killing people, it makes me angry and it makes me want to do something.”
Hefland’s own family experienced extreme weather in 2012 with Hurricane Sandy. It was this experience that opened her up to the racial and social injustices natural disasters could reveal. Similar disasters like Hurricane Katrina and Maria had huge impacts on the film Hefland said, with the same issues becoming more and more apparent to her as time went on.
“We don’t really want to look at [these things] and the denial of looking at the long term impact of systemic racism, it’s a very hard thing for white people to look at,” Hefland said. “It’s easy not to and then there’s a terrible disaster and then you’re forced to. But on what terms and then what does it mean? Did they die of the heat or did they die of something else? Did they die of incredible negligence and fear and all of the things that add up to something just being for so long?”
Attendees of the Cooked screening listen to Hefland discuss the film at the Austin Branch Library. Photo by Maia McDonald
Where do we go from here?
With COVID-19 (also known as coronavirus) concerns rising as the number of confirmed cases continues to climb across the globe (105 and climbing in Illinois), Hefland pondered to the audience if we are seeing a repeat 1995: a situation in which the shortfalls of the American healthcare system are revealed. With the virus spreading quickly and the first COVID-19 related death in Illinois being a black woman from the Auburn Gresham neighborhood in Chicago, the same concerns raised by the 1995 heat wave are beginning to pop back up. Hefland believes it will be up to communities themselves to fill in the gaps left by the American healthcare system in order to avoid preventable deaths. Community healthcare workers, to her, is the first place to start.
“Those community health workers, if we have them, they become essential parts of the social cohesion of any street,” Hefland said. “People know them. They’ll say ‘oh I’m known as the asthma lady, I’m known as the breast lady, I’m known as the high blood pressure lady.’ When they work with a Forty Acres or an RX Health Initiative, when they work in contact with a Growing Home, and it’s all a part of an integrated system, that’s what’s gonna give people much better health.”
“I want people to know that you can’t think about, talk about and try to address the long term impact of the climate crisis without addressing the long term impact of structural racism.”
There needs to be a deep investment in local healthcare communities, Hefland believes, groups that already know how to reach the most marginalized parts of those communities, understand and address their needs. This is especially important, Orrin Williams says, with many black people lacking proper healthcare to begin and there being a reluctance to get checked up.
“A constant theme is that we don’t want to go to the doctor,” Orrin Williams said at one point. “We don’t want to know what’s wrong and even if we do, we don’t get state-of-the-art or good care.” He later added: “Folks in the community that know how to deal with this stuff and navigate are essential but we’ve got to pay for it.”
And having more films like Cooked: Survival By Zip Code shown in black communities through events like the One Earth Film Festival can be where it starts. Williams says black and brown communities can and do have the knowledge to address these types of issues but it can be hard to “activate” when you become used to the way things are, especially with larger institutions working against you.
Hefland hopes her film can continue having a positive impact and starting important conversations in communities like Austin. To commemorate the 25th anniversary of the 1995 Chicago heat wave, Hefland wants to work with middle school and high school teachers for a workshop that would tie a piece of the film’s thesis to something already being taught in their curriculum. She says this can help the material stick better.
Hefland’s also hoping that with the anniversary of the heatwave and the number of confirmed coronavirus cases growing each day, people’s eyes can be opened to the ways in wish black communities are disproportionately more impacted by disasters, and that’s a fact hasn’t changed within the last 25 years.
“I want people to know that you can’t think about, talk about and try to address the long term impact of the climate crisis without addressing the long term impact of structural racism.