Pilsen's Oldest Day Of The Dead Procession Celebrates Fisk Coal Plant Closure

By Chuck Sudo in Arts & Entertainment on Nov 1, 2012 7:27PM

"Wondering"

The city's agreement with Midwest Generation earlier this year to close the coal-fired Fisk and Crawford electric plants were met with enthusiastic support in the Pilsen and Little Village communities that had to deal with the fallout from the pollution those plants produced.

This makes for a fitting celebration when the 33rd Annual Dia de Muertos Celebration: Muertos de la Risa in Breathtaking Pilsen gets underway 4 p.m. Nov. 2 at Dvorak Park. Pros Arts Studio in collaboration with the Pilsen Environmental Rights and Reform Organization (P.E.R.R.O.) and Columbia College Chicago have joined forces to mesh tradition, community activism, costumes and spectacle to provide Pilsen residents with a forum to celebrate their successful fight against Midwest Generation, while remembering those whose lives were cut short by the pollution the Fisk plant emitted from its smokestacks.

This is the oldest Day of the Dead celebration in Pilsen and, in our opinion, the brightest. Rallying the community together against a common bogeyman should only make tomorrow's festivities more energetic.