As we stood astride bicycles in the shadow of Alison Saar’s Monument to the Great Northern Migration last week, Bronzeville-based transportation     advocate Ronnie Matthew Harris, 47, told me that community organizing is in his blood.



            Go Bronzeville started as an initiative of the Chicago Department of Transportation, along with similar programs in Pilsen, Garfield Park, Albany Park, and Edgewater. The programs educate residents on how sustainable transportation can help them save time and money and improve their health. After the program ended, Harris got CDOT’s blessing to continue     running Go Bronzeville on a mostly volunteer basis. Nowadays the group hosts neighborhood bike rides, mans tables at community events, and, via a city     contract, promotes the Divvy for Everyone program, which offers $5 bike-share memberships to low-income Chicagoans.





            “It was for reasons of public safety,” Harris said. “In the late 70s and early 80s, this community was so volatile,” he said. “On State Street between     Cermak Road and 51st Street there were three different housing projects—the Harold Ickes Homes, the Dearborn Homes, and the Robert Taylor Homes—each with     its own competing gang. Gang members from the Dearborn Homes couldn’t really go west to wreak havoc because of the Dan Ryan Expressway, and because the     cultural norms were you didn’t go to Bridgeport.” (Which, at the time, was a mostly white neighborhood infamous among Chicago’s black population for its     violent racism.)



            Reached by phone this week, Cortney Cox, the property manager for the South Commons building adjacent to the gate, said he wasn’t sure why the fence and gate were originally installed, but that     it might be possible to open the gate and allow the public access to the property. This, he said, would require a formal proposal by Harris and/or others,     a site visit with the advocates, and a vote by the condo board.



            Hopefully Harris’s work to highlight the importance of walking, biking, and transit access in the neighborhood will lead residents and decision makers to     rethink which transportation projects should be prioritized.   v