The Blasian March, cofounded in New York by onetime Chicago dancer and performer Rohan Zhou-Lee in the wake of the George Floyd Black Lives Matter protests, has grown to encompass other cities, including New Haven and Los Angeles. Now, thanks in part to Columbia College Chicago’s Asian Student Organization, it’s come to Chicago. As Zhou-Lee […]
Tag: Black Lives Matter
Posted inArts & Culture
The Blasian March comes to Chicago
On plantations in the 1800s, plantation owners used diversity as a means of division. “We lay great stress on the necessity of having our labor mixed. By employing different nationalities, there is less danger of collusion among laborers,” reports an 1883 Planters Monthly article. Sowing division was essential to maintaining the oppression of the working […]
Posted inNews
Deaths of Black trans women rock Chicago’s LGBTQ+ community
The deaths once again bring an epidemic of violence against the community close to home.
Posted inCity Life
#SadBoyEnergy (The Prelude)
A collection of photos celebrates Black Men’s vulnerability.
Posted inFilm
Theater is a place for all of us, and so is Sundance.
Changing culture requires shifts in thinking as radical as adapting to virtual reality.
Posted inOn Politics
Pushing back
It took a while, but at last something reassuring emerged in the aftermath of the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse for murder by a mostly white jury in Kenosha, Wisconsin. That would be Dahleen Glanton’s insightful column in Sunday’s Sun-Times—one of the few sympathetic appraisals in the mainstream press of Joseph Rosenbaum, Anthony Huber, and Gaige […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Brutal and beautiful summer
Three stories from the front lines of the 2020 protests, when the bridges went up and the statues came down
Posted inMusic
Guitarist Sunny War boils life down to its essence on Simple Syrup
The Nashville-born, Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter Sunny War is known for her clawhammer fingerstyle guitar playing, vivid autobiographical lyrics, and distinctive sound that starts at the crossroads of blues, country, folk, and punk, and only expands from there. She left home as a teenager to busk on Venice Beach and in San Francisco with friends she […]
Posted inFilm
Documenting the front lines of social change
Capturing social justice movements and amplifying voices of change are at the core of Soft Cage Films.
Posted inBest of Chicago
Chicago indie musicians rally for jail support with the Warm Violet compilation
Warm Violet has raised more than $10,000 so far, mostly from Chicagoans, which speaks to grassroots support for its cause and for local music.
Posted inNews & Politics
Inside the fight for racial equity at SAIC
Current and former students, staff, and faculty at the top-ranked art school describe microaggressions, discrimination, and a failed anti-racism campaign.
Posted inArts & Culture
The anti-capitalist face of design
ChiByDesign founder Chris Rudd works to create equity and dismantle racism in the design industry.
Posted inMusic
Chicago’s independent musicians stepped up their activism in 2020
With concerts and tours on hold for most of the year, Chicago’s music scene doubled down on mutual aid and fundraising for community groups.
Posted inMusic
Dezron Douglas and Brandee Younger address cultural issues from lockdown on Force Majeure
For the past few months, bassist Dezron Douglas and harpist Brandee Younger have dealt with the necessity of social distancing with their own kind of intimate gigs: a series of quietly uplifting performances streamed live through a shared microphone from their Manhattan apartment. Force Majeure collects a dozen of these songs along with brief, perceptive […]
Posted inNews & Politics
‘We’re not asking for any more than what we are already deserved’
Boystown, the enclave billed as a place where LGBTQ+ people of all stripes are safe to be themselves, faces a racial reckoning decades in the making.