Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Monday, September 11, 2017.
- Report: Emanuel’s relying on campaign donors who get City Hall benefits
Mayor Rahm Emanuel hasn’t made a final decision about running for a third term in 2019, but “he continues to rely on donors who have received City Hall benefits, ranging from contracts and zoning approvals to appointments and personal endorsements from the mayor,” according to the Tribune. Nearly 70 percent of the $3.1 million in large donations for the campaign have “come from 83 donors who have benefited from actions at City Hall,” including “law firms seeking approval for their clients’ projects or lucrative bond business for themselves, developers needing City Hall permission to build here, an events promoter negotiating the financial details of a major music festival and restaurateurs wanting coveted space at Chicago’s airports,” the Tribune reported Friday. [Tribune]
- Rauner travels to Japan and China for his first international trade mission
Governor Bruce Rauner left Chicago Saturday for his first international trade mission to Japan and China. Rauner brought several business leaders with him, and is scheduled to return September 17. [NBC Chicago]
- Chicago DACA student: ‘It’s been a roller coaster’
Northeastern Illinois University student Azalia Martinez has lived in Chicago since her family left Mexico when she was three years old. Martinez, who’s undocumented, has been able to attend college thanks to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which President Donald Trump is planning to end. Now she’s trying to come to terms with the news. “It’s been a roller coaster,” she said. “I was in my psychology class when my phone started going. I got like five calls and 13 texts, and put them off, until it was my mom. Then I stepped out of the classroom, because I knew she was worried. I knew I had to be strong for her. I said, ‘I’m OK.'” [Sun-Times]
- A Chicago teenager was found dead in a Rosemont hotel freezer
A Chicago teenager was discovered dead in a freezer at the Crowne Plaza Chicago O’Hare Hotel in Rosemont early Sunday morning. Kenneka Jenkins, 19, left her west-side home Friday night to attend a party at the suburban hotel, and her friends could not locate her early Saturday morning. Authorities believe that Jenkins was drunk and let herself inside the freezer, her mother Tereasa Martin told the Tribune. But Martin questions whether her daughter would have been able to open the steel freezer doors on her own. “Those were double steel doors, she didn’t just pop them open,” Martin said. [Tribune]
- Chicago Architecture Foundation plans move from Michigan Avenue to Wacker Drive
The Chicago Architecture Foundation is opening a new center in the Illinois Center, at Michigan Avenue and Wacker Drive, in 2018. The CAF has been in its current Michigan Avenue location for more than 25 years. “We are all looking forward to providing Chicagoans and visitors with a forum to debate the future of urban areas and learn more about the city that invented the skyscraper,” the foundation’s president and chief executive officer, Lynn Osmond, said in a statement. [DNAinfo Chicago]
- The Art Institute’s Snowman sculpture won’t melt till October
A snowman in a refrigerated display case that has been on top of the Art Institute of Chicago since May will remain there until October 15, according to DNAinfo Chicago. Snowman, the work of Swiss artists Peter Fischli and the late David Weiss, is actually a copper sculpture covered in frost, which minimizes the water used. [DNAinfo Chicago]