An armful of free vaccines will be available Saturday at La Villita Park, where attendees also can get information on public health, immigration — and maybe even arranged to have a free tree planted in front of their house.
The office of Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez (25th) is organizing the event along with community groups from the Near Southwest Side and the People’s Response Network, a grassroots organization dedicated to public health.
The fair will be from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the park’s north entrance, near Whipple and 27th streets in Little Village. No registration is necessary.
Vaccines for COVID-19, flu and monkeypox will be available, as will a slew of child vaccines, including polio and whooping cough, which cropped up in Oak Park in 2020.
Organizations will distribute free home testing kits for COVID; offer tips for saving money on utilities; share information on bilingual schools; and even register people to get a free tree planted at their home as part of the city’s “Our Roots Chicago” initiative to plant 75,000 trees in the next five years.
Sigcho-Lopez and public health advocates have slammed the city’s response to the COVID-19 crisis, saying the pandemic is not over and the city drastically needs to expand its public health services.
In the last month, around 12,000 people have died in the U.S. from COVID, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and organizers of the event bristled that masking and testing aren’t required, even though about 5,400 Chicago Public Schools students and staff have contracted the virus since returning to schools, according to CPS data.
The park in Little Village was chosen for its symbolic significance. South Lawndale, which includes Little Village, was one of Chicago’s most affected areas, according to the city’s COVID-19 Community Vulnerability Index.
“The purpose of this fair is very simple: All these organizations are doing what the city should be doing,” said Dr. Howard Ehrman, an organizer of the People’s Response Network and former assistant commissioner of the Chicago Department of Public Health. Ehrman has been a vocal critic of the city’s pandemic response and the agency he used to work for.
The public health department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Ehrman, who served in the health department during Mayor Harold Washington’s administration, criticized how the department has shrunk in the decades since then, saying that while the city has received billions in federal coronavirus aid, that cash has gone to contractors instead of building up the public health department.
“The city is no better prepared for the next pandemic — whether it’s monkeypox, polio or anything else,” he said.
He said the city health department hired just seven new nurses after receiving $626 million from the U.S. Centers from Disease Control and Prevention and called on the city to install nurses in schools, recalling how he was vaccinated at his South Shore elementary school alongside his classmates.
“Now they’re asking parents who are working two or three jobs to find the time to take their kids to get vaccinated,” he said.
A spokesman for the city health department had no immediate comment on those assertions Thursday.
Michael Loria is a staff reporter at the Chicago Sun-Times via Report for America, a not-for-profit journalism program that aims to bolster the paper’s coverage of communities on the South and West sides.
