Ants in the City

As we walked Chicago and absorbed the diversity of structures, people, and communities, I could not help but feel like ants crawling around a city so big that one could spend a lifetime observing all its little intricacies. However, I did not think of us as ants simply because of our size compared to our environment, but also because ants tend to work together to accomplish tasks much more significant than themselves. I see similar things in the city where hundreds of construction workers expand and protect the city from deteriorating, which allows the wealthy to continue building their empires. This brings me to the major difference between our human cities, and massive ant colonies; Humans are inherently selfish. When walking through the city, it is easy to get lost in the wonders of human accomplishment, but at the same time, it is easy to forget about the blood and tears that these blocks have been built on. Though ants have to make sacrifices to ensure a more successful future for the colony, majorities in our society have selected minorities to corral into dangerous areas of work, essentially choosing them to be sacrificed for their benefit. Humans have rarely treated those of different backgrounds with respect and after the wealthy were happy with the city that immigrants had built, they started to gentrify the most desirable neighborhoods, displacing already struggling families. Throughout the last century, ever-increasing numbers of immigrant and minority families have been forced out of their homes because of the rising cost of living. This is where we learned that these underrepresented communities are making a stand against gentrification by painting murals that put the culture and familiarity of home directly into the community. Not only do these murals make these shrinking communities feel at home, but they also serve to deter builders from gentrifying neighborhoods by expressing their claim to the land. I feel like although murals might not deter a capitalistic builder from poaching buildings, they create a sense of unity in the community and something that people would fight for. Although I think that minorities are employing many tactics such as murals to hold their ground, the communities are being chipped away at over the years as builders tear down old and affordable housing and replace it with new and expensive housing that the local community cannot afford. This forces them out in a way that they don’t have much power over, and seeing the development of murals in the city to protest this gentrification has been both beautiful and insightful. At the end of these walks, I feel like I’ve seen a lot of beautiful murals that I cannot appreciate for their beauty but rather for the fight that is behind every one of them.