A deep dive into how this city’s alt-weekly made it through five decades
Category: Feature
Posted inNews & Politics
A revolutionary act
BIPOC growers on what it’s like to urban farm on the south and west sides
Posted inNews & Politics
Medicaid has been good to my body, but it has abandoned my brain
I want choice, not a fistful of deeply unhelpful options wrestled, after months, from the banal, cruel system we make poor people navigate to access health care.
Posted inNews & Politics
First came the sewage, then the hunger strike
After a plumbing flood at the aging Logan Correctional Center, three women organized one of the first successful hunger strikes in an Illinois women’s prison in years.
Posted inFood & Drink
The city’s first food equity council works to feed everyone
The group is reexamining food distribution through a racial equity lens while fighting for long-term systemic change.
Posted inNews & Politics
‘I’ll be the first to die’
As Illinois prisons accelerated releases during the pandemic, many were forced into crowded, unmonitored residential reentry centers across Cook County.
Posted inNews & Politics
Queer to the Left came to raise hell
The group rejected the mainstream gay rights movement and kept alive the spirit of radical LGBTQ+ activism.
Posted inNews & Politics
Weiss Memorial Hospital wants to sell a parking lot. Activists say that’s a bad sign.
Uptown residents say plans to sell the lot hint that the operator of Weiss Memorial, which houses an important center for transgender care, could shutter the hospital.
Posted inNews & Politics
PPP aid flooded fast food outlets facing labor complaints
One McDonald’s chain in Chicago received half a million dollars in forgivable federal loans. Then came complaints of COVID-19 safety failures and a deadly outbreak.
Posted inNews & Politics
Undercounted and underserved
A report by the state’s auditor general criticized the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services for failing to address the needs of LGBTQ+ youth in its care.
Posted inNews & Politics
A DIY music space transforms into a home for asylum seekers
At Casa Al-Fatiha in Logan Square, two local musicians built a sanctuary for LGBTQ asylum seekers.
Posted inNews & Politics
Breaking the cycle
For three decades, the city has failed to cope with the loss of mental health clinics. The pandemic revealed the wounds of this disinvestment.
Posted inNews & Politics
Here’s what you need to know about participatory budgeting
“It sounded like the way I thought democracy was supposed to work.”
Posted inNews & Politics
Who gets a slice?
Where people want the money to go and where the money actually goes
Posted inNews & Politics
‘What difference would that make?’
A pilot program for participatory budgeting in Chicago Public Schools led to gender-neutral bathrooms, shower curtains in locker rooms, and students feeling empowered to influence change.