News
Thursday, October 18, 2018
Jumping Ship Politics The Contrarian Media News Behind Our Scenes Staffer Ryan Smith says goodbye to the Reader
Posted By Ryan Smith on 10.18.18 at 05:15 PM
Shortly after Sun-Times Media bought the Reader, CEO Edwin Eisendrath admitted he didn't really know what an "alternative" publication in Chicago had to offer these days. Alternative to what?
In some ways, he had a point. Alt-weeklies have increasingly become a victim of their own success. The countercultural beat of weed, LGBTQ pride, edgy theater, and punk music that once set the alternative press apart have increasingly become permanently etched into mainstream urban life. The entrenched power structures that used to vehemently oppose the rights of gays—Republicans, the police, and the military—now regularly march at Pride parades. Billionaire businessman J.B. Pritzker wants Illinoisians to be able to smoke weed for fun. Riot Fest, punk rock's annual nostalgia fest, doesn't inspire anything resembling a riot.
Clout City News Politics Rauner and Prizker tout government transparency while blocking access to records
Posted By Mick Dumke on 10.18.18 at 02:08 PM
This story was originally published by ProPublica Illinois.
Since he first entered politics as a candidate five years ago, Illinois governor Bruce Rauner has pledged his commitment to open government.
As he put it during a debate last week with challenger J.B. Pritzker before the Chicago Sun-Times editorial board: "Transparency is great."
As he fights for reelection, making the declaration is a great move on Rauner's part—and an easy one. Voters are demanding more and more information about what their governments are doing with their tax money, and every candidate at every level is wise to speak in favor of sharing it with them.
But what Rauner means when he vows to be transparent isn't so clear, given his administration's habit of fighting against the release of information. The governor's office won't even disclose how often it blocks the release of records sought by the public.
Monday, October 15, 2018
News Politics Where and what to vote for this midterm election in Chicago
Posted By Maya Dukmasova on 10.15.18 at 10:00 PM
The spring Democratic primaries may be the hottest elections in Chicago, but there's plenty of action on this midterm ballot too. This November's election features an opportunity to decide Illinois's next governor and attorney general, Cook County's new tax assessor, and a few contested county commissioner, state legislator, and congressional seats. Plus you can choose whether to retain dozens of judges in our civil and criminal courts.
First things first, however: registration. To vote, you must register. Luckily, you can do this at the polls. If you've never voted in Chicago before, you should bring two forms of identification, one of them with your current address—like a utility bill or a report card. You can find more information about ID requirements for voter registration here. You can vote in Illinois even if you have a felony conviction, by the way.
Wednesday, October 10, 2018
Books Politics News Making All Black Lives Matter: Barbara Ransby talks politics and protesting in 2018
Posted By Julia Hale on 10.10.18 at 06:00 AM
Barbara Ransby, a history professor at UIC, author of Making All Black Lives Matter, and one of the keynote speakers for the March to the Polls this Saturday, October 13th, hosted a book talk and discussion panel Tuesday at the SEIU Healthcare headquarters on Halsted. The panel also included Jaquie Algee, a board member and organizer of Women's March Chicago, and Chicago poet and playwright Kristiana Colón, cofounder of #LetUsBreatheCollective and creator of #BlackSexMatters.
Monday, October 8, 2018
News Politics Media In a face-off against Pritzker, Rauner tries a little Reagan-style voodoo economics
Posted By Ben Joravsky on 10.08.18 at 06:00 AM
They were about 12 minutes into the most recent gubernatorial debate last Wednesday when ABC Seven political reporter Craig Wall asked J.B. Pritzker the tax-rate question.
"Mr. Pritzker," Wall asked, "don’t you think the voters deserve to know how much you intend to raise taxes and what those rates would be?"
Pritzker responded by explaining why he thinks the state needs a progressive or "fair" tax that sets a higher rate for the rich. But he said he wouldn't be settling on rates until he had negotiated a deal with state legislators.
In other words, he ducked Wall's question.
Friday, October 5, 2018
News Race Criminal Justice The Jason Van Dyke case showed the danger of being ruled by fear
Posted By Ryan Smith on 10.05.18 at 05:28 PM
Jason Van Dyke was found guilty of second-degree murder today, but in an overwhelming number of cases in America, if a cop shoots someone because he's angry he's considered a murderer, while if he shoots someone because he's scared, he's innocent.
We don't really know what was going on inside of the head of Jason Van Dyke when he shot LaQuan McDonald. It's possible that he was legitimately fearful when he shot the teen 16 times, as he and Laurence Miller—a Florida-based clinical psychologist—testified in the former police officer’s defense.
But an officer can be frightened and still act unjustly. It's worth interrogating that fear and deciding whether it's enough to justify murder, and if so whether it provides enough to base a system of justice upon.
Chris Hayes's 2017 book A Colony in a Nation does a masterful job of explaining how our, country once founded on principles of justice for all, now looks a lot like a police state.
He attributes a lot of the problem to a generalized sense of fear—particularly white people's racial fear of nonwhites. "We obsess over order, fear trumps civil rights," Hayes writes. Fear of crime waves, of terrorist attacks, gets converted into
Today, the fear of what could happen if the Van Dyke verdict went the other way, and protesters—largely African-American—took to the streets in a rage caused all sorts of overreactions in Chicago.
The Chicago Police Department deployed 4,000 additional officers to the downtown area in anticipation of unrest. Many corporate offices in the city either told their employees to stay home or told them to leave early as soon as a verdict was reached. High schools across the city canceled sporting events. DePaul evacuated its entire Loop campus.
The entire Loop campus is being evacuated, including The DePaulia staff from our offices in the DePaul Center
— The DePaulia (@TheDePaulia) October 5, 2018
We will still publish our new issue on Monday as scheduled.
Stay tuned for more updates. #DePaul #LoopCampus
All of this was deemed necessary even though, as WBEZ’s Natalie Moore noted on Twitter, there hasn't been a full-fledged riot in Chicago in 50 years, and while plenty of activists took to the streets after the 2015 release of the video showing Van Dyke shooting McDonald, the marches were overwhelmingly peaceful.
The case of Van Dyke isn't just a story about one man's exaggerated fear in the face of a 17-year-old who wielded a three-inch blade. It's the story of the strange contradiction at hand in Chicago and in America as a whole: the more safety we experience, the more we fear the loss of it and the more irrationally we act.
News Criminal Justice Family of another teen slain by Chicago police reflects on Van Dyke verdict
Posted By Brita Hunegs on 10.05.18 at 04:35 PM
Jason Van Dyke was found guilty of second-degree murder and 16 counts of aggravated battery with a firearm this afternoon, nearly four years after he shot 17-year-old Laquan McDonald and more than two years since the video of the incident was released to the public.
Three years before McDonald, in 2011, 19-year-old Calvin Cross was shot and killed by Chicago police officers in West Pullman. Chicago cops weren't yet mandated to wear body cameras. There were no dashcam recordings of the incident either. Cross was shot three times by officers Macario Chavez, Mohammed Ali, and Matilde Ocampo. He died on the scene.
News Housing Landlords for rent control? You heard that right
Posted By Maya Dukmasova on 10.05.18 at 08:41 AM
Last week several hundred people packed a state senate hearing room and spilled out into the overflow seating for the latest chapter in the local fight for rent regulation. The hearing, chaired by state senator Mattie Hunter of Chicago, was one of a series soliciting responses to a bill that would not only repeal Illinois's Rent Control Preemption Act but actually establish rent control within the state for the first time since the early 1970s.
Hunter introduced Senate Bill 3512 last February as a companion measure to state rep Will Guzzardi's House Bill 2430. Guzzardi's bill merely proposes to repeal the 1997 Rent Control Preemption Act—a prohibition on any kind of rent regulation, anywhere in the state, that was crafted by real estate interests and jammed through many U.S. statehouses beginning in the 1980s, with the help of the ultraconservative American Legislative Exchange Council. But Hunter's bill goes much further.
Wednesday, October 3, 2018
News As the hotel strike winds down, a new strike pops up in the West Loop
Posted By Brita Hunegs on 10.03.18 at 08:16 AM
As the hotel workers' strike winds down, another union is ramping up a strike of its own. Members of the Painters District Council #14 launched a picket Monday at 1000 W. Washington, where the owners of the building, Lieberman Management Company, have contracted a nonunion company, CertaPro Painters.
Victor Hernandez, a business representative for the council, sees this form of labor as mistreatment, "I'm fighting for working-class people to earn a decent wage," said Hernandez. "I know what these people are making, and it's way under the prevailing wage of Illinois."
History Media News Boom! The Intercept’s Jeremy Scahill is at war with American exceptionalism and imperialism
Posted By Ryan Smith on 10.03.18 at 05:59 AM
There was no obvious moment when the torch passed during host Jeremy Scahill's interview with Seymour Hersh on a recent live episode of Intercepted, but it wasn't difficult to imagine one.
Like Hersh, Scahill was born on the south side of Chicago, and his worldview was partially shaped by his family's experience in the city he calls "this amazing place filled with contradictions."
The 43-year-old investigative journalist and
