I was coming back from an assignment on the West Side of Chicago. To make a long story short, I took a bit of a long way home, winding up at the intersection of North and Harlem avenues - where Chicago and the suburbs of Oak Park and Elmwood Park converge ( Read more... )

Back on January 9, Illinois State Representatives La Shawn Ford (D-8) and Mary Flowers (D-31) invited residents of Chicago West Side - and beyond - to attend a town hall event about a law that would allow Chicagoans to recall their mayors.

Well, to recall Rahm Emanuel specifically, but the law would apply to every mayor.

It was something that ( Read more... )

Last Wednesday, while my mom was watching an (actually pretty interesting) historical documentary, I was covering a community meeting in Chicago West Side’s Austin neighborhood. I figured the meeting would be about regular community stuff , but it would up being more interesting than I could’ve ever hoped.

When the temperatures plummet, the number ( Read more... )

Every year, usually somewhere in the middle of October, Chicago Architecture Foundation organizes an Open House Chicago event. Buildings all across the city open their doors, letting everybody inside and showing areas that are usually off-limits ( Read more... )

On Saturday, I was at North Lawndale neighborhood on the West Side of Chicago, seeing the sites as part of the Chicago Open House. I'll get a bit more into that in another post. For now, what's important is that I was walking past Mount Sinai hospital when a white guy around my age approached me ( Read more... )

On Tuesday, I spent five and a half hours at the Chicago City Council Budget Committee meeting as alderman after alderman complained about Chicago Police Department Superintendent Garry McCarthy. This came a day after most ofthe Chicago City Council Black Caucus said they wanted McCarthy Fired, for a whole bunch of reasons. He failed to stem the ( Read more... )

This year, Riot Fest, the popular punk/rock/rap festival, moved from its long-time home in Humboldt Park (of the eponymous neighborhood) to Douglas Park (of North Lawndale). This was a big deal, because the circumstances behind the move were controversial and because, while Humboldt Park is working class and partially gentrifying, North Lawndale is ( Read more... )

Back around at April of this year, Chicago Police Superintendent (a police chief, basically) Garry McCarthy announced a "Neighborhood Listening Tour." The idea was that he and some other high-ranking officials will visit each and every one of the city's police districts, talk to local residents and hear their concerns. It was billed as a way for ( Read more... )

In a recent piece for the Washington Post, University of Chicago grad student Daniel Hertz raised a provocative question - are the people who are opposing gentrification essentially arguing that neighborhoods should remain segregated?It's not that he's arguing that people who oppose gentrification are entirely in the wrong. He readily acknowledges ( Read more... )

When hettie_lz, annanov and vladiatorr visited my apartment last weekend, they wound up unearthing a 2014-2015 Chicago Public Schools High School Guide. It was one of the many things I picked up when I went to a Taft High School open house last year. The book contains detailed profile of every single high school in the Chicago Public Schools district - regular neighborhood ( Read more... )