When the Russian-Ukrainian War broke out, my mom and I knew that there are going to be rallies and protests in support of Ukraine and against the war - and we wanted to be a part of it. But my usual sources within the Russian-speaking communities, and the general activist chatter on Twitter, kept failing me. I kept finding out that event after ( Read more... )

The day after the jury found Kyle Rittenhouse not guilty of all charges related to him killing two people and wounding a third, I took the 12:51 PM train to Kenosha, not sure what to expect.

I wasn’t expecting the kind of rioting and looting that rocked Kenosha in the wake of the shooting of Jacob Blake, which inspired Rittenhouse to drive to the ( Read more... )

Last week, over at her WordPress blog, hettie_lz wrote about the seeming contradiction she’s seen with her Russian friends, who’ve seen even peaceful protests as somehow innately bad, while not minding violating laws on the sly.

I definitely get where she’s coming from. Growing up in Russia, I’ve often seen grown-ups express the attitude that it’s almost ( Read more... )

As I’ve often written on this blog and on social media, situation on the ground is often more complicated than what any activist may say. There is always more than one perspective, and nuances within any given perspective. The controversy over the Chicago Public Safety Training Center was the perfect illustration of this - supporters and opponents ( Read more... )

Last week, I saw a Facebook event listing advertised across my news feed. Anthony Delmedico, head of a Scotsdale, Arizona based company that;s apparently a big deal in the apparently lucrative niche of insurance restoration roofing, decided to produce a a documentary about how COVID-19 lockdowns are unconstitutional. And he decided to organize a ( Read more... )

Growing up in post-Soviet Russia, there is this narrative that got repeated a lot. That Americans meant well, but they don't understand our reality. They have the luxury of being in America, instead of living in Russia. They don't have to deal with the consequences of their actions ( Read more... )

On March 13, Chicago City Council approved a contract with a controversial Los Angeles based company to build a controversial fire and police training center in West Humboldt Park neighborhood on the city’s West Side. The very idea has been controversial for many reasons, but the two biggest arguments against it boil down to (a) the new training ( Read more... )

As I've written before, the way Amtrak's Pere Marquette route is currently set up is kind of limiting. A train travels from Grand Rapids, Michigan to Chicago in the morning (stopping at several cities in western Michigan along the way) and heads back toward Grand Rapids in the evening. Which is great if you're in Michigan, but if you are in Chicago ( Read more... )

I don't really have time to do as detailed of a post as I want - especially with another protest coming up tomorrow morning. So, instead, I have to settle for copy-pasting a description I put on Flickr and add some of the more interesting photos from the set. You can see the entire photo set hereThis protest has been in the works more or less since ( Read more... )

At around 4:00 PM or so, I heard helicopters flying pretty close to my building. Which was unusual, but not completely unheard of. I was in the midst of writing something, so I kind of ignored it. Then, about half an hour later, I heard some shouts coming from somewhere east, closer to the lake.

Now that I had to check out ( Read more... )