Video producer Linda Beckstrom didn’t take her camera to last year’s antiwar demonstration on Lake Shore Drive, and she left the march just as the standoff between police and protesters started to get ugly–she was with her ten-year-old son and had no interest in getting arrested. But as a member of Peace Pledge-Chicago, one of […]
Author Archives: Sergio Barreto
Torture: Saddam’s Weapon of Mass Destruction
An Iraqi Prisoner Who Lived to Tell the Tale
Art Underfoot
A painter does her best work in nightclubs, but her audience would rather dance.
Preemptive Strike?
A handful of activists planning to disrupt Boeing’s shareholder meeting at the Renaissance Hotel had barely made it out of their room when they were shown the door by a battalion of cops.
The Boys of Cell Block E
How a lawyer, a waiter, a teacher,a minister, and a tourist who stepped out of the Cheesecake Factory at the wrong time found themselves sharing a steel toilet.
Aldermania!
We’re Just . . . Visiting The fastest way to get an appointment with 25th Ward alderman Danny Solis may be to hang up one of his opponent’s campaign signs. Margarita Perez (not her real name) put a sign for Ambrosio Medrano in the window of her home and was promptly visited by two Solis […]
Rockeros on the Rise
The area is crawling with arena-ready Latin rock stars. Now all they need is to get booked into the arenas.
War of Words
Faced with anti-yuppie grafitti and a stinging satirical attack, Alderman Eugene Schulter fights back with a lawsuit.
Hanging By A String
Operating on the margins of a marginalized art form, Ralph Kimpniss somehow keeps his puppets swinging and his hopes alive.
Where the Auction Is: the Shriners empty out the temple
Twenty feet above the Medinah Temple’s main stage, a worker on a scaffold removes the tacks holding up Gustav Brand’s 80-foot rendering of a pilgrimage to Mecca. A Chicago landmark is about to be gutted to house a Bloomingdale’s Home Store, and while the atmosphere is akin to that of a fire sale, the crew […]
Self Help
Banker Amrish Mahajan insists that his position on the city Plan Commission had nothing to do with a recent business deal, but the competition isn’t so sure.
Snakes in the Grass
The threatened eastern massasauga rattlesnake is finding out the hard way who its friends are.
Real Horror Show
George Romero’s experience with the film industry has been as much a bloodletting as any of his infamous features.
The Welcome Wagon’s on Blocks
The Old Town School puts on a friendly face as its new neighbors grumble.