Renaldo Chatman was released from Stateville on Christmas Eve after serving 18 years for robbery. He was given a bus ticket and told he had 24 hours to check in with his parole officer. His brother in Chicago took him in, but outside the wall it was tough to get on his feet. “For 18 years all my bills and meals was paid by the state, and I was basically told when to sleep,” he says. “So I had no responsibility.” He had no luck finding work. “Doors get slammed in your face. On the application they ask you if you’re an ex-offender, and if you say yeah that’s the end of the interview.”
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Chatman is one of six ex-offender employees in a North Lawndale Employment Network transitional jobs program called Sweet Beginnings. NLEN is a five-year-old nonprofit organization dedicated to finding work for community residents. Its apiary sits behind a cement wall and chain-link gate on Fillmore in the shadow of the original 14-story Sears tower, where the company once had its headquarters. The Sears campus was a huge employment hub for North Lawndale up to the mid-70s, and the lot where the hives stand served as the company’s loading docks. “Sears moving out of here helped create the disinvestment and desolation you see right now,” says NLEN’s Tom Wetzel, who manages sales and marketing of the honey. According to NLEN, North Lawndale’s population dropped from 125,000 at its peak in 1960 to 41,768 in 2000. The 2000 census reported that 26 percent of those people are unemployed, compared to a citywide 6 percent. Fifty-seven percent of all adults in the community have either served time or spent time on parole or probation.
“We recognize that there is this madness mentality that gets you in trouble and there’s a certain type of madness that you need in order to cope and live successfully behind the wall,” says NLEN executive director Brenda Palms Barber. “But you need a different set of coping skills out here. If you show up on time for our programming, we think you’re gonna show up on time. If you don’t, how can we have confidence in your ability?” The following month Chatman made it on time. He went through four weeks of anger management, cultural adjustment coaching, and conflict resolution training as well as honing his job-search skills. Upon graduating he was placed with an organic farming project on the south side. “They give you a reason for getting up,” Chatman says. “I’ve had to be up every day at eight o’clock, be there, or be terminated from their program.”
Urban bees are said to be more productive and make tastier honey than their country cousins because there’s a greater abundance and variety of nectar sources in the city and they travel shorter distances for it. NLEN’s apiary is located midway between Garfield and Douglas parks, but the bees have plenty of white sweet clover and aster to plunder right in the lot and along the railroad tracks that run along its north side. The current owner has donated the use of the lot to NLEN for two years, and the city’s offered the group three nearby vacant lots for the program to expand into.
“I always say in order to get the bees’ attention to hurt you, you have to kick a hive,” says Thompson. Earlier this summer someone began sneaking into the apiary through a gap in the gate and doing just that. The beekeepers started finding broken bottles on the lot, and eventually a number of hives were knocked over. “It may have killed a queen or two,” says Thompson. “Some of the equipment got damaged, but not very badly. I hope no one got hurt when they were doing it.” Since then neighbors and the police have begun keeping an eye out, and after more chains were added to the gate the vandalism stopped.
