On a recent Saturday morning in Veterans Park on the far southeast side, Olga Bautista crouched on the bocce court drawing lines in the sand with a stick. Eighteen girls, ranging in age from three to 18, sat on a bench, watching. “This is Torrance Avenue,” she said, pointing at the line down the middle, “and this is 95th, and over here’s 100th. That’s South Deering, and there’s Jeffery Manor. I grew up over there.” She gestured to the area south of 100th Street.
Every girl down the row gave an answer: “Running around!” “Playing cops and robbers!” “Talking with my friends.”
“That’s why Martin Luther King took up the campaign for civil rights,” Bautista said. “You have a constitutional right to be in public places and have fun. It was a hard fight for the right for you to play here. This is why we stand up for our rights.”
After seven months of planning and curriculum writing (Mazon is a former junior high school teacher), they held their first meeting in September 2015. There are about 25 members now, and while technically it’s supposed to be limited to female-identified people between the ages of seven and 18, younger sisters and brothers sometimes tag along.
The Rebel Bells meet the first Saturday of every month, either at the home of one of the leaders—or mentors, as they prefer to be called—or in a church basement. Volunteer Rebels and Bells prepare breakfast and lunch and clean up. Every meeting is built around a lesson. Right now, the girls are in the middle of a three-month sequence about the Black Lives Matter movement. Last month, they visited the DuSable Museum, where they learned about racism. Of the artifacts on display, the item that stuck with them most was what one of the Bells, ten-year-old Alexandra Williams, describes as a “deformed fork” used to keep slaves from resting their heads and going to sleep. At this month’s meeting, two of the Rebels, Kat West, 18, and Natalia Ortega, 13, taught a lesson on and institutional racism, which they devised on the bus ride home from the Climate March in Washington, D.C.
The Rebel Bells joins girls ages seven to 18 to learn about community and self-respect
Later in the afternoon, after lunch, West led the girls in a discussion on what it means to “matter,” and played a game of charades to demonstrate different ways of letting other people know they matter.
“We’re ready!” they yelled. “We’re coming! We’re the Rebel Bells Collective!” If you’d like to find out more about Rebel Bells and help support the group, go here.
