On an overcast morning, three women traversed the littered sidewalks of Harbor Avenue in South Chicago, taking Polaroids for use in Housing Court of a dilapidated building with broken windows and gaping holes.
Two weeks ago, Leonor Avila and Angelina Espinosa would have been joined by their friend Arnold Mireles, who with them succeeded in cleaning up or tearing down more than 50 buildings in this working-class neighborhood on the city’s southern edge, a neighborhood struggling for economic stability and against gang violence.
Mireles was killed Dec. 29 and his slaying remains unsolved, although police are investigating whether it may have been connected to his community work. He battled slumlords, gang members, drug dealers and problematic liquor store owners.
Police said Saturday that authorities were investigating the possibility that three people were involved in his slaying.
Those attempting to pick up the many threads of Mireles’ life work, though, are daunted less by fear of retaliation than by the sheer volume of what he did.
At the Juan Diego Community Center, which was Mireles’ headquarters, his colleagues have compiled a list titled, “What Arnold Did.” It covers 18 items, including building community gardens and providing translation services at police beat meetings.
In the days since his death, people in South Chicago have done everything from bringing hot dogs to the community center to presenting ideas for memorials at a church meeting. His death has become a catalyst for them, uniting a diverse community of Latinos, African-Americans and whites living in an almost forgotten part of the city wounded by the closure of steel mills over the past two decades.
“All that matters now is that we continue his work and follow in his steps,” said Olivia Hernandez, 54, a board member and director of the community center, who has fielded dozens of calls from people wanting to help.
Rosa Perea is one of the people–some friends, others strangers–who have come forward since Mireles’ death and plan to follow in the footsteps of a man they say sacrificed his life for the neighborhood. She joined Avila and Espinosa taking pictures of the eyesore buildings in the community, and she will take on Mireles’ job as a community organizer at the Juan Diego Community Center.
“I am not going to be Arnold, but I really think he would want me to do this,” said Perea, 30, a soft-spoken woman with wavy black hair who was one of Mireles’ closest friends.
Perea worked as an HIV/AIDS educator at the community center, a simple office with mismatched furniture founded four years ago by a group of Christian women to promote community development and health education. The community center in the 8800 block of South Exchange Avenue is where Mireles spent his last hours on a cold winter night, pasting photographs of dilapidated buildings on cardboard posters to bring to Housing Court. He was shot in the head just steps from his basement studio apartment, which is only a block from the community center.
In the basement of Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, 3200 E. 91st St., about 200 residents packed a community meeting in honor of Mireles on Thursday night. Many of them filled out forms to volunteer.
Sylvia Ortega, 39, a local school council member at Sullivan Elementary School, said she would like to help with the tutoring and court watch programs and translate for the Spanish-speaking residents of the community.
“I’m embarrassed that I haven’t done more,” said Ortega, a lifelong South Chicago resident. Mireles’ death sends a signal that residents need to work together, she said.
“I don’t believe we should be alone,” Ortega said. “I don’t believe we should be afraid.”
Mireles helped organize beat meetings in three churches and was a friend to police, who played bagpipes and saluted him at his funeral. Other churches also are pledging to work with the police. Parishioners at Sweet Holy Spirit Full Gospel Baptist Church of America, which recently opened a new church in the area, have pledged to work with the CAPS program.
“We want to have an impact and bond with the community to let them know we are here,” said William H. Warren Jr., an elder at the church who came to the meeting at Our Lady of Guadalupe.
Others have suggested ways to honor Mireles’ legacy. Two elementary schools are considering naming their buildings after Mireles. This year’s Mexican Independence Day parade on the Southeast Side will be in his honor. Scholarships are being developed, and a monument may be built in the neighborhood.
“What he wants of us is to work, work, work and to fight, fight, fight for the community,” said his sister, Sonia Mireles Reedy, during an emotional speech at the community meeting. “Let’s come together as a community.”
The work has already begun for Avila, Espinosa and Perea, who were in Housing Court without Mireles for the first time Thursday afternoon. They sat quietly in the back of the courtroom until a clerk called the case, and they rose before the judge, a city attorney and the defendant.
The defendant told the judge she would make improvements to the building, explaining she also has financial constraints. When the judge asked whom the women represent, the defendant pointed out that they are not her next-door neighbors and should have no say in the matter.
“We can still see your house,” Perea interrupted. “It’s an eyesore.”
Espinosa piped in: “We represent the community.”
The judge told the defendant to come back in two weeks for another hearing, and the women left the courtroom with neither a victory nor a defeat, for now.
Espinosa and Avila, two sisters who have lived in South Chicago the past 40 years, said they will continue with the court watch program because it is what Mireles would have wanted.
“We have to go forward with what he had planned,” said Avila, 63, a retired data processor wearing on the lapel of her brown blazer a CAPS pin, a gold angel and a white ribbon passed out at the funeral inscribed: “I love you Arnold.”
“I want to do this kind of work for my community,” added Espinosa, 61, a homemaker, who said she is not afraid of any retaliation.
Mireles had wanted to rid the neighborhood of 50 additional blighted buildings, Perea said, and she expects that they will reach that goal.
“We’ll help knock down the other 50, and together we will have 100,” Perea said, sitting across from Mireles’ neat desk, left untouched in the community center.
She is already gaining a sense of what Mireles’ whirlwind schedule entailed. In a week she has doled out raffle tickets for prizes at a pinata party; tutored elementary school children in math and reading at Immaculate Conception Church ; applied for the Americorps VISTA program to fund her thus far volunteer job at the community center; and attended Housing Court in the Daley Center–twice.
On Monday night, she will also help lead the first CAPS meeting at St. Kevin Church , 10501 S. Torrence Ave., since Mireles’ slaying.
“I am not trying to fill his shoes because he had very big feet,” Perea humbly told those gathered at the church. “I need your help.”
