No one would ever call David Ives and Paul Blake’s 2009 musical version of the 1954 movie musical White Christmas groundbreaking. Even by 1954 standards the story—a pair of hoofers (played by Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye in the original) put on a show to help out an old army buddy—is pretty formulaic. The womanizer settles down, the misanthrope who never dates finds his girl, the quickly thrown-together show is a hit. And the score is packed with old, familiar Irving Berlin tunes, culminating in yet another rendition of the well-worn title song.
White Christmas Through 12/29: Wed 1 and 7:30 PM, Thu 7:30 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 4 and 8 PM, Sun 1 and 5 PM; also Thu 12/12–12/26 1 PM; no show Thu 11/28 or Wed 12/25; Marriott Theatre, 10 Marriott Dr., Lincolnshire, 847-634-0200, marriotttheatre.com, $55-$81
But the folks at Marriott probably knew this going in. They may have even chosen it because it is truly comfort food for the holiday soul. And they do it proud. As both choreographer and director, Linda Fortunato keeps things lively. The tunes are rendered well by her topflight cast of triple threats, led by a pair of high-energy originals, Ben Mayne and Tyler Johnson-Campion, who inhabit their roles so fully you would never have known they were not written for them. And Fortunato’s eye-pleasing choreography captures the spirit of these midcentury chestnuts without lapsing into cliches.
This revival succeeds on all levels, delivering a show that puts the sparkle back in Irving Berlin’s tunes and works as an acceptable alternative to that much revived Charles Dickens Christmas tale.
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Your window to eat an 18-inch Polish French bread pizza in a Cook Country Forest Preserve is closing.
Late last month, when I wrote about Justyna Haluch, the zapiekanka queen of Schiller Woods, I didn’t know that beginning next Friday, November 22, she and her cousin Damien are decamping from the parking lot and relocating to the Christkindlmarket . . . in Aurora.*
“Co ma piernik do wiatraka?” you might ask. Indeed. What does gingerbread have to do with a windmill?
She gave me this news when I asked her if she wanted to pull the truck up in front of a certain Avondale dive bar and sell her iconic open-faced cheesy, XXL Polish street food for an evening crowd that may not get out to the Woods during normal zapiekanka hours.
“Zapiekanka? Nie,” she said. But, “Kuchnia Polska? Tak.”
Make it so, I said.
So this November 18, Haluch is rolling her other I Love Grill & Lemonade food truck up to Monday Night Foodball, the Reader’s weekly chef pop-up at Frank and Mary’s Tavern in Avondale.
I’ve learned over the last month that, apart from zapiekanka, there isn’t much Haluch can’t do with her two-truck fleet: festival lemonade stands, ad hoc beer gardens, Christmas cookie grazes, stół wiejski (aka the Highlander “meat hut”), and an array of traditional Polish home cooking.
I Love Grill & Lemonade sausage platter
And that’s what she’ll be serving, hot off her white step van bedecked with brilliant floral wycinanki folk art.
She’s bringing a combo platter with pierogi, sausage, kraut, and pickle, all gilded with bacon bits.
She has a meat and potato and cheese pierogi combo, with bacon, green onion, pickle, and sour cream.
She’s throwing down a kiełbasa quartet with regular smoked Polish sausage, parówka (the Polish hot dog), kiszka (aka blood sausage), and biała kiełbasa (a white sausage, like a weisswurst).
And for dessert, sweet cheese blintzes with fresh fruit, whipped cream, and chocolate syrup.
Put that cold war nostalgia behind you. Put the cold night behind you. This is a Foodball of abundance, beginning at 5 PM, Monday, November 18, at 2905 N. Elston in Avondale.
Meantime, check out the full winter 2024 Foodball schedule below.
*The zapiekanka truck might show up at the Woods on Tuesdays during this period. Check the ILG&L Facebook for updates.
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Mike Sula (he/him) is a senior writer, food reporter, and restaurant critic at the Chicago Reader. He’s been a staffer since 1995.
His story about outlaw charcuterie appeared in Best Food Writing 2010. His story “Chicken of the Trees,” about eating city squirrels, won the James Beard Foundation’s 2013 M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing Award. “The Whole Hog Project,” and “What happens when all-star chefs get in bed with Big Food?” were nominated for JBF Awards.
He’s the author of the anthology An Invasion of Gastronomic Proportions: My Adventures with Chicago Animals, Human and Otherwise, and the editor of the cookbook Reader Recipes: Chicago Cooks and Drinks at Home.
His work has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times, NPR’s The Salt, Dill, Harper’s, Plate Magazine, Rolling Stone, and Eater. He’s the former editor in chief of Kitchen Toke.
He lives in Chicago and is the curator of Monday Night Foodball, a weekly chef pop-up hosting Chicago’s most exciting underground and up-and-coming chefs.
Bylines labeled “Chicago Reader Staff” are used for features that contain nonwritten, nonreported information like listings, for event and organization announcements by noneditorial personnel, and for advertiser content. Additionally, when multiple authors collaborate on an article, the byline “Chicago Reader Staff” is displayed, while individual contributions are credited throughout the feature.
Bylines labeled “Chicago Reader Staff” are used for features that contain nonwritten, nonreported information like listings, for event and organization announcements by noneditorial personnel, and for advertiser content. Additionally, when multiple authors collaborate on an article, the byline “Chicago Reader Staff” is displayed, while individual contributions are credited throughout the feature.
Creative facilitator, astrologer, hypnotist, and interdisciplinary artist Katia Pérez Fuentes, 29, is originally from New Mexico via Chihuahua, Mexico. They moved to Chicago ten years ago to get a BFA in studio arts at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and have since worked as an arts worker for citywide museums and art spaces. Five years ago, they became a full-time traditional astrologer and certified hypnotist, having studied with Mychal A. Bryan at the Oraculos School of Astrology, Los Angeles–based curandera Erika Buenaflor, and the Divine Feminine School of Hypnosis’s Shauna Cummins. They continue to facilitate art activities and especially enjoy working with public artworks in and around Pilsen, encouraging their community to “just pause everything else and exist and make and experience some kind of curiosity, play, joy, celebration.”
I grew up in a very immigrant neighborhood, a very low-income neighborhood in New Mexico. Up until this point, I’m the first of anyone in my family to enter the arts world, and to do the work that I do is such a privilege and such an honor. To be working with visual artists, literary artists, and also now like this magical-mystical—the mystical arts part of it—on a professional level is such a gift.
I’m a first-generation migrant, first-generation college student. I hold the highest level of education in my family. I am the first everything, basically.
I came to Chicago just because someone said I couldn’t, and I set out to prove them wrong. It’s a very challenging story. And maybe I’m like, “It doesn’t really matter to share that! I don’t resonate with that narrative anymore.” But I had such audacity when I was younger. And I had a lot of anger. I also was in a lot of pain consistently—chronic pain.
And this is where the trauma narrative of, like, “Oh, I don’t have to keep repeating or convincing people that what I experienced wasn’t good or healthy”—this is where I’m cautious with my words. But, there was a lot of trauma in my family. There was a lot of disconnection, a lot of repair.
So that’s one of the things that I’m ultimately always out to heal—the familial holes, the generational traumas, the disconnection from my family and our more cultural practices, the imposter syndrome with claiming any kind of more folk healing. Because I know that’s there, but it’s very different when you don’t have someone who’s a direct mentor in your family who is teaching you things, when you’re kind of on your own and you’re just like, “I know this!”
Self-development ended up looking like these other things that have always interested me, which was astrology, hypnosis. It was the thing that I was doing on the side to keep myself kind of sane. Because when you work in the arts and you make cultural projects for a living—you make murals, you teach classes, you make art for different projects—what does your hobby become? What do you do when you’re like, “I need to do something different”?
Hypnosis was a tool I constantly used, but it was imperfect. It didn’t have everything that I necessarily wanted it to have. To be totally candid with you, I’d spend my day doing DEIA [diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility] and anti-racism advocacy, and I couldn’t at the time find any hypnotists that also aligned with my values that are always trying to go the route that supports Black and Brown and queer creatives.
Credit: Kirk Williamson
I waited; I searched for the right teacher and eventually found them. Actually, my first astrology teacher [was Mychal A. Bryan]. I met him at the Queer Astrology Conference and would later have more than 500 hours of live instruction with him. I ended up going with him because he was also a trained hypnotherapist. I was like, “Oh cool, then I can get a feel for the hypnosis and also the astrology and also the tarot, the I Ching [Chinese book on divination]”—this person did it all.
And then eventually from there, I was able to find two other mentors: one [Erika Buenaflor] that does more traditional curanderismo—healing rites from a Mesoamerican perspective—[and] specializes in folk healing and soul retrieval, although she refers to the practice as shamanic journeying; and then a certified hypnotist [Shauna Cummins] who practices in New York. She teaches from a divinely feminine approach while integrating principles from the lineage of Melissa Tiers’s neuroscience-driven hypnosis. And so I had these varying perspectives—one from my exact cultural background, a reconnecting Indigenous Brown person, Chicana, you know. And then I have a white lady in New York working from a science-based perspective.
At the same time that I was learning both of these, I was like, “There’s a lot of similarities, we’re just using different words.” And one is leaning more on the folk traditions and just that kind of trust, that communal trust. And the other one is maybe leaning a little bit less on the folky stuff. They’re both very science-based. I don’t want to say that [one] is more science-y, because they’re both equally wonderful teachers. It was just different words that they were using. My curandera teacher has never used hypnosis. But in that class, I was like, “Oh, I’m doing the same kind of energetic and neural pathway rewiring in both of these courses.” What I’m inherently doing is this energy work.
I found that my saving grace was understanding that leisure was the ultimate use of our time . . . Anything that is celebratory, anything that advances your learning, anything that is playful.
They’re a really wonderful pairing. It’s really helped me, which is why I offer the combination of both of those practices in my sessions with people. Because I don’t think I would have gotten to this point if I had just stuck to one or the other. I think it was doing it in tandem that really helped me.
I can tailor my facilitation with hypnosis to your chart, specifically. The astrology aspect of it is like an access point that helps me—helps us—go deeper, farther, faster together than if we were just doing hypnosis and had to build that trust from like, I don’t know you; you definitely don’t know me. But when I see that, oftentimes two things happen in these sessions: one is I get to see the person and understand them and see how these patterns play out just before they even walk in the room. I already kind of know where some of the difficulties are or where some of the blessings and the strengths lie that we can lean on, right? And then the other thing that happens is when I can prove to them that I can see them or understand them, there’s more trust that’s immediately built between the client and the facilitator.
I have seen people that are also kind of skeptical, and I’m like, “That’s totally fine!” I’m just going to read you just as I’m gonna read every single other person. If you have any questions, we’ll address them along the way. We usually do, after a while. I just think it’s really nice to have undivided attention and support from someone for one to two hours at a time. That’s such a gift. Think about where else we get that kind of undivided time and attention. So people really open up during those sessions.
Pérez Fuentes performs an herbal smoke cleanse with a white fire limpia and dried lavender. Credit: Kirk Williamson
This is one thing that’s part of a larger ecosystem that enhances the quality of our life. And that for me has been the biggest thing. I see everything that I do as interconnected because when I was struggling to go through college and make it, I found that it was very difficult to just make art and create things because I was so exhausted. I felt that I had to fight my way through certain things, and if it wasn’t me fighting through things, then it was other people in my community that I cared about fighting for their rights or their certain issues. It was this constant kind of advocacy. There are so many unspoken privileges between who makes it in the art world—who has time, energy, resources to just make art and be like, “Oh yes, I’m just gonna explore this theory or this practice or this lifestyle.”
I found that my saving grace was understanding that leisure was the ultimate use of our time. And “leisure” as defined by things that enrich the quality of your life, and that was defined as anything that was celebratory. Doing this because we want to do this. Anything that is celebratory, anything that advances your learning, anything that is playful.
And there’s also worship, which, I omitted that word because at the time it didn’t resonate with me. So I focus more on the celebratory, but anything that got you close to God, essentially. That was what was considered leisure. A waste of your time is idle time. And then time that you sold to other people, that was work time: “I’m only doing this because I’m trading my energy and time for money.” And that was this concept that shifted in my mind: my entire time every day has been given to someone else. I don’t actually own any of my time.
I see that in my family. They don’t own any of their time. And this is so sad to me. So from my earlier framework, I really tried to find and do things that would give me time autonomy and bring a sense of pleasure and maybe ease, that really enhanced the quality of my life.
Looking back on it, I would see these major, very specific transits or forecasts in the sky. And I’m like, wow, that’s exactly what this would have panned out to be. I don’t know if I’m making sense, but basically, I can tell you why I’m in Chicago astrologically, and it makes so much sense—that I was going to be pulled to somewhere along this region. And that wasn’t running through my mind when I was 18. It just happened. So now, looking back and seeing how everything lined up, and learning to look forward, and trying to anticipate major moves, major changes, I’ve started working with other people. And it just keeps lining up, so it’s a system that I really prescribe to. I really believe in it, and I’m very honored to be able to share this with other people.
This was originally published in the 2024 edition of our People Issue, the Reader’s annual special of first-person stories, as told by your neighbors, classmates, and the weirdo at the end of the bar.
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Sometime the summer before last, the Reader team gathered in person for an all-staff event organized to review our guiding policies and mission statement, take staff photos, and welcome new team members. Among longtime staffers who hadn’t seen each other since the start of the pandemic, there was a palpable mix of awkward excitement about reconnecting face-to-face, along with the equally awkward giddiness of finally meeting new colleagues we’d only known through their work or brief Zoom appearances.
It was a warm, lovely day, and I was grateful for the chance to connect one-on-one with the editorial team for the first time as a new managing editor. Yet, admittedly, what stayed with me most—and became a recurring topic in side conversations—was my trip to the event, spent in the backseat of a rideshare driven by a candidate for the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District commissioner.
“You’re just the person I wanted to see!” they exclaimed after our polite introductions revealed who we were to each other. The feeling was mutual. I’d always wanted to meet a political candidate in a casual setting, hoping it might reveal a less media-attentive side of their personality.
We discussed their unconventional background, thoughts about the upcoming race, and reasons for running. And for one brief moment, we connected over our shared concerns about serving those we hoped to lead. In that small window of time, I felt connected and engaged with all of Chicago—not just focused on my role in it. I saw myself as a thread in its wonderfully shaggy fabric and, perhaps naively, became convinced these heart-to-heart conversations could help us understand a little more about one another—and perhaps even about what our city is made of.
This is the ninth People Issue, and like last year and every year before it, it’s truly a labor of love for us. Each year, the team debates how many people to feature and how best to represent their stories. Choosing just 15 profiles this year was not easy, but I hope we’ve captured some of the many threads weaving our city together. You’ll find familiar Reader features on art and culture makers, like cartoonist Seitu Hayden and filmmaker Jack McCoy, as well as scientists, like Bin Chen, and community organizers, like Ron Camacho. Maybe you’ll encounter someone unexpected who will inspire you to engage more deeply with Chicagoans and feel a stronger connection to the city’s enduring tapestry.
Credit: Photo by James Hosking
I’d be remiss not to mention what I love most about our People Issues: the wonderful snapshots they give us of Chicagoans who generously share a moment of their lives with our writers and photographers. Last year, our print edition of the People Issue opened with a photo (by then newly arrived Reader art director James Hosking) of photographer, filmmaker, disability activist, and podcast producer/host Justin Cooper, whose radiant smile lit up our pages against a familiar Chicago fall backdrop.
Cooper’s story left a lasting impression on many of us. Tragically, he died July 9. I encourage you to revisit that profile (Vol. 53, No. 6, p. 6), which ends with a quote that seems fitting to repeat here. It captures the essence of what makes Chicagoans so extraordinary and what inspires us to create the People Issue year after year. Cooper said, “I love my city. Through the good and the bad, I love being here, and I would never leave it. I’ll defend it the moment somebody talks bad about it. I love having a camera in my hand and exploring areas I might not have otherwise. From my chair, I can capture just how gorgeous this city is.”
This was originally published in the 2024 edition of our People Issue, the Reader’s annual special of first-person stories, as told by your neighbors, classmates, and the weirdo at the end of the bar.
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Jana Kinsman has a life all her own as a beekeeper, illustrator, and more. After falling in love with beekeeping, she began Bike a Bee, a project that places beehives all over Chicago. She does her honey extraction and equipment building out of the Plant in the Back of the Yards, and she sells her honey online and at the 61st Street Farmers Market in Woodlawn. She also runs Doodlebooth, a hand-drawn portrait service for weddings, markets, and events. Through 13 years of self-employment, Kinsman has built a life that ebbs and flows with the seasons.
I started off as a graphic designer, and I was totally living the corporate life. I had this wonderful community of creative people around me who were starting businesses. And there was kind of just this attitude of “you can do anything”; everything you see is created by another person, and there’s no rules—just go for it. So I was kind of getting more curious about creating work that was my own—like I did work and made a product with my own hands.
I’ve also always been really interested in nature since I was extremely young, and the guy I was dating at the time wanted to do an urban homestead sort of lifestyle. I’d grown vegetables in the past and hated it: I find it so tedious, and it just wasn’t inspiring. So I was like, well, what can you do with livestock in the city? I thought bees would be something fun, and I took a winter beekeeping class with the Chicago Honey Co-op, a really great beekeeping organization here in the city, and I was just totally enthralled. Things definitely didn’t work out with the guy, but beekeeping has been a lifelong love.
So I did a beekeeping apprenticeship in Portland, Oregon. The guy [who ran it] had multiple hives throughout Eugene, Oregon. I feel like I got 5 percent of the knowledge taking the class and 95 percent just working with the bees. You take a class, but you have no idea what the whole universe of bees is like until you’re actually hands-on, working with the colonies.
[In Oregon,] we would visit the hives in his truck to check up on them. At the time, I only had a bike, so I was like, I want to do this in Chicago, but I want to do it on a bike. It’s so contrived, but bikes are really a window to the world, and if you can learn how to fix it, then you have transportation for life. I had a roommate at the time, Brent, and we just did everything by bike. We would buy new mattresses or sofas on Craigslist, and we would transport them on bike with a complicated trailer setup. And I just wanted to prove that you could really do anything by bicycle. I look crazy with this trailer full of stuff, and so you know, more people notice me, and I get to wave at people and get them interested in the hives.
I was 23, 24, and I started Bike a Bee. I created a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for getting ten hives started; I cold-called community gardens and asked them if they wanted to host beehives. Pretty much all of them said yes. So then I started that spring in 2012 with ten hives, and I’ve just been growing ever since.
Credit: Kirk Williamson
Now, most of the hives are in community gardens around the south side, so people get to live and work around them, walk by them when they’re going to their house. They can see them here, and it just enriches their lives, I think. And then they get to try honey that’s made in their neighborhood. Everybody who hosts the hive gets a share of honey from the hives, and they’re in smaller jars so that they can hopefully hand out multiples to people in their neighborhood.
Apiaries in different neighborhoods end up producing different flavors because the bees are visiting plants in different quantities. In a neighborhood like Englewood, where there’s a lot more vacant land, you get a lot more clover influence, because a lot of clover grows on the ground; at high locations near parks, they visit a lot of trees like linden trees, chestnuts, buckeyes, black locust. It’s like a taste representation of the neighborhood.
Being the type of person I am, where I learn best by just doing, starting my own apprenticeship was a total no-brainer for me. I started it right away—I thought I can just easily offer this to people, so they can start beekeeping, even if they have no idea how to start or how to manage a hive. And I’ve got to watch so many people see the magic of it, and it just changes their life, and it makes them think about the world differently.
Simultaneously, I started a second business called Doodlebooth, where people hire me for events to draw quick portraits of them. I get hired at weddings, I do the Renegade Craft Fair every year, and I get to go to a lot of fun places around the country. I think my style has gotten more refined through the years. I can draw more people faster, like 22 people per hour. They’re kind of just nice, cute pictures of people.
And for a long time, that would subsidize all the beekeeping work, because I didn’t make much money from doing bees and honey. But now, it’s pretty neck and neck, because I have about 96 hives now and produce a lot of honey. Beyond that, I did construction part time at the Renaissance Society, which is a contemporary art museum in Hyde Park.
It’s an interesting life dynamic—to live within the rhythms of nature. Especially with those becoming more and more unpredictable.
I’ve always been really eager to say yes to something that excites me: a really fun opportunity comes along, and I’m really into chasing novel things. Which gets me in a lot of trouble, because then I’m like, oh, well, I’m not doing the work that I should have been doing for this or that, and I’m doing something else. But I think I finally figured it out this year—13 years into self-employment, I’m like, OK, I’m not stretching myself thin anymore.
I grew up out in Wheaton, Illinois, and then I moved here when I was 19, so I spent an equal amount of time living there and in Chicago, because I’m 38. I was living in Logan Square when I started Bike a Bee and Doodlebooth, and then I’ve slowly been moving south, to Pilsen, then McKinley Park, and then I bought my house in West Englewood, I think in December 2018.
I’ve always wanted a house. I grew up in an old house, and I watched my dad and grandpa do so much rehab on it. I always was curious about doing that myself. It’s like a beautiful red brick two-flat, and I bought the vacant lot next door to it, so I’ve got this big garden with hives, and it’s magical. I got a really wonderful block with great neighbors, and the house was just cared for enough: a lot of the original features were in place, like the hardwood floors and the trim.
It’s been a real adventure, rehabbing it, redoing all the electrical and plumbing, and then learning all of that stuff myself as I went with the help of smart friends and family. It’s almost done; I only recommend it if you’re crazy and don’t mind living in a construction zone.
When the bee stuff slows down in October, November, then I either work on the house, or like last year, I was able to travel. I visited my sister in California. I did some really big hikes. Wedding season is in the fall, and doing Doodlebooth means I’m only working weekends for events and stuff. [When I worked at the Ren], they only have four shows a year and take a summer off, so it [was] a nice rhythm.
Credit: Kirk Williamson
It’s an interesting life dynamic—to live within the rhythms of nature. Especially with those becoming more and more unpredictable.
With beekeeping, every year I learn more and more, and everything happens in a year cycle. So I try one thing one year, and I’m like, OK, well, that didn’t work, and I guess I’ll try it a different way next year. There’s no quick iteration on trying things, you kind of just see how the season plays out, and then each season is different. So there’s not even a baseline, it’s very unpredictable.
I got really intimate, too, with the rhythms of nature by being on a bike. In the beginning, when I was still learning the rhythms of all of the nectar plants and foliage, stuff that the bees eat, being on the ground, I got to see which trees were blooming, when and who was gonna bloom next. And I can change what I’m doing with the bees in order to make time for that upcoming bloom.
In all my work, there’s so much critical thinking involved, and that really is what lights me up. I love the flexibility in my life, and I love the variability and the seasonality, even though it can be really challenging when I go from this beautiful lifestyle of beekeeping every day to working in my basement. I do a lot of hard mental work to become OK with that change, and then spring comes and I have to be a beekeeper all over again. But I love the changes, and every year is new with beekeeping, like every Doodlebooth gig is different, a different set of people. You know, they did these studies about how doing different things slows time down—it slows your perception of time down. I feel like that’s part of my underlying desire to keep doing different things, because that keeps life slow and spicy.
This was originally published in the 2024 edition of our People Issue, the Reader’s annual special of first-person stories, as told by your neighbors, classmates, and the weirdo at the end of the bar.
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Tanya Cabrera is the chairperson of the Illinois DREAM Fund (ILDF). Born in Chicago, Cabrera grew up on the city’s southwest side, where she discovered her passion for organizing at an early age. While working as a Chicago Public Schools (CPS) counselor, she found a kindred spirit in Rigoberto “Rigo” Padilla-Pérez, a Mexico-born, Chicago-raised student activist who helped found Immigrant Youth Justice League (IYJL) in 2009. The two continued to share resources and advocate for undocumented immigrant students together until 2023, when Padilla-Pérez passed away from brain cancer at the age of 35.
Under Cabrera’s leadership, ILDF has become a national leader in supporting undocumented immigrant students, and will have awarded more than $2.7 million in scholarships to applicants throughout the state by the end of 2024. For more information, visit ildreamfund.org.
I got to hear all these stories growing up: “You have your mother’s looks, but your father’s mouth.” I’m like, “Oh, what a compliment.” They’re like, “No, your father would curse up a storm—you’re your dad’s daughter.” I’ll take that.
My dad organized in Pilsen and Little Village, working with farmworkers. Driving back from Texas, he was in a car accident. I was the one who got the call—I was ten years old. I was so attached to him.
He was a director at Casa Aztlan. I remember passing out [literature] for the ESL (English as a second language) classes they had at night or him saying, “A family came in. Come play with the kids so I can do intake with the parents.”
When I was in high school, my cousin, who was in college, started doing work with farmworkers. That’s what sparked her activism at El Fuego del Pueblo, a student organization at Northern Illinois University (NIU). And that sparked my organizing work. But it wasn’t until I was a postsecondary coach with CPS—my school was Benito Juarez—that I got to go back to the neighborhood. When I went for my interview, some people were like, “Oh, you’re Martin’s daughter? I’ve got stories.” This is like ten years after he passed. Now, I’m an adult working with different community-based organizations, saying, “Hey, what’s the pipeline look like for Latino students in Pilsen, Little Village, and Back of the Yards?”
When CPS cut its budget, I got cut. I sent out an email and Jerry Doyle from IIT (Illinois Institute of Technology) immediately wrote back: “Can I call you?” I’d actually gone off on him when we first met. He was like, “I’ll take care of your kids. Don’t worry.” And I said, “No. Tell me [how] you’re gonna take care of these kids, because you haven’t admitted a Juarez student since 1987.” So, now he’s like, “I want you to come work at IIT.” I was about to have a baby, but he was like, “Take the summer off—come in the fall.” Who was this man?
I told him I wanted to recruit undocumented students because we were a private institution. He said, “Whatever you want—I just want to get CPS on board.” I don’t know how many CPS students were admitted at IIT at the time, but it was under 30. And they [IIT] were proud of that—it was just embarrassing. That first year we had a team, and we got to recruit undocumented students across Illinois, and our CPS numbers tripled or quadrupled.
I’d met Rigo when I was at Juarez—he was the first undocumented student to come out about his status in Illinois. With Josh Hoyt, who was in charge of ICIRR (Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights) at the time, he’d fought to stay in the U.S. Rigo won and said, “I can fight other cases.” That became his work: keeping families together, going to detention centers, and all this crazy shit.
“You don’t have to protect us. . . . We have our own voices.“
The movement had started with undocumented students under the Immigrant Youth Justice League. They weren’t organizers; they were high school kids going into college, really navigating those spaces on their own, and [working with] high school counselors or advocates at the institutions.
When Rigo came to Juarez, it was quiet. It was hot as hell in that room—the door was closed and it was foggy. Rigo was sitting perched on the table with his foot on the chair talking to these kids, and they were just zoned out on him. I was also zoned out on him. “You’re telling my kids to come out about their status? I have to protect them.” He’s like, “You don’t have to protect us. . . . We have our own voices.”
That’s when Rigo and I started connecting resources. We’d call each other “liaisons.” “That’s my colleague, my liaison, over at Dominican or NIU.” No official titles, but we were doing the work.
In 2006, the Tribune did an article for their Sunday magazine, and my [undocumented] students were on the cover. When the story came out, it was all over—this was the Tribune—and we started getting money. [With the new money,] we started up a scholarship at Juarez. We had a little reception and gave students money to go to school. But we realized $2,000 to go to UIC (University of Illinois Chicago)—which was $10,000—wasn’t enough. So we explored more options.
Then, in 2011, the Illinois DREAM Act passed under Governor Quinn. Nobody wanted to take on the chair [of the DREAM Fund Commission] because it was volunteer work. I didn’t think I’d get it because I’m a fucking high school counselor—well, now I was in higher ed, but all these big people could do it. Denise Martinez was at the Governor’s Office [for New Americans] at the time. I said, “Hey, girl. Do me a fucking favor.” I gave her all this stuff [we’d worked on together]. “Don’t let them fuck it up—this is the fucking plan.” [Soon,] they were like, “Hey, we need you.”
[After the bill passed,] they were like, “We have an event at Malcolm X [College]. We need you to be there. We’re gonna announce it.” Rigo, because he was undocumented, couldn’t serve as a commissioner. I said, “If Rigo’s not serving, I’ll step down and hold you accountable.”
Then, they said they’d select [an entirely new] commission, and I’m like, “Denise, make sure they stick to the plan.” So they said, “No. You guys are gonna stay.” I was a recruiter for a university, and they’re like, “Who does she think she is?”
Credit: Yijun Pan for Chicago Reader
When Trump came into power, that changed everything. [Our priority] immediately became about mental health. Our suicide hotline was getting more calls. “These students are saying they’re undocumented immigrants.” It was like, oh my god. We’ve gotta prepare.
We will never recover from the mental health damage that we’ve done to this population. When we talk amongst our colleagues, it’s, “Hey, so-and-so, my kid; their skin discoloration, their fatigue, their food insecurities.” A lot of these kids are running around on granola and a coffee. That’s all they had all day and they’re not going to eat again until they get home after an hour-and-a-half train ride back to Elgin. So, providing food is essential and access to food pantries and looking at our policies and procedures within our institutions: Where is access being denied to a student who’s paying cash into a community college or four-year institution in Illinois? Where’s the reinvestment?
So we worked on the RISE Act—Retention for Illinois Students in Education. It took lots of trips to Springfield, lots of talking to legislators. “Hey, here’s this constituent.” And they’re like, “How can you be undocumented if you’re Lithuanian or African American?” It’s not just a Latino thing. I made sure that when we went to Springfield, we diversified our pool. “Who have we got? Who’s willing to share the testimony?” And we had to respect students where they were, because it was so stressful. If they didn’t feel comfortable, I’d give testimony. “Look, our students are terrified to come down here because of the restrictions and the climate. I want you to hear my conversation with my student last night.” I’d play [recordings] for legislators. [The bill passed in 2019.]
Since 2006, I was asking [Democratic state representative] Lisa Hernandez, “Hey, get me on the Lottery bill—we need a revenue generator [for the DREAM Fund].” Lisa was trying to do a currency exchange program, like if you send money to Mexico, we’ll take $1.75 and put it towards the fund. I was like, “Unless it’s an investment where we partner with the Treasury, how are we going to generate enough funding?” I was thinking, financially, about long-term stability. All that’s to say, we finally got on [the Illinois Lottery bill, IL SB1508, sponsored by Democratic state senator Mattie Hunter and Hernandez in 2023].
I didn’t go to Springfield that day [of the vote] because I didn’t have childcare. But I was like, “It’s got to happen—it has to pass.” Rigo was in hospice at the time. And then I got the text from Lisa [Hernandez’s] chief of staff: “Hey, the bill’s on the floor—it’s moving forward. I think we’ve got it.” And she called me and said, “Where are you?” “Oh, I’m with Rigo.” She’s Facetiming with us, and she said, “The bill passed.” I said, “Did you hear that, Rigo?” And he was blinking at me.
The day before he passed, we actually signed [the Lottery bill] into law. I was going to wait till Monday to go see him but something in me said, “No, go today.” It was a Sunday, and I was tired. We signed it in Waukegan, so it was all day shit and I hadn’t been home. I told my kids’ father, “I have to go today. He’s in hospice, and something’s telling me to see him.” And he was like, “I totally understand. Go ahead.”
So I got to tell Rigo all of that. “Guess what, motherfucker? We passed the bill. It’s being signed into law.” I shared some time with him and made his parents laugh and just told them everything that he’s done. And then members of the Immigrant Youth Justice League, who were in town from New York and Boston, came. They flew in. I said, “Oh man, the whole crew just walked in right now. I’m gonna let you go, bro. I love you.” And I told them, “Hey, I’m gonna let you guys chill with him. I’m gonna go home, feed the kids, and I’ll be back—I have parking passes you can use.”
We all have tattoos of him. We didn’t put the day he passed, but we put the time: 6:12. His sister called me around 6:20, and I’m like, “I’m sorry. I said I’d be back by 6:00—I’m on my way.” And she’s like, “No, it’s OK. They’re going to be coming for him. I don’t know if you’ll make it.” And I’m like, “Why? What are they doing? Are they showering him? They shouldn’t be moving him.” And she’s like, “No, Tanya. They’re gonna take him away. He passed.” I was in the parking lot, and I was like, “I’ll be right there.”
When I saw everybody, it just felt so final—and I was just there. But, you know, he put on a good fight.
This was originally published in the 2024 edition of our People Issue, the Reader’s annual special of first-person stories, as told by your neighbors, classmates, and the weirdo at the end of the bar.
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Blood Incantation’s fourth album, Absolute Elsewhere (Century Media), has been getting a ton of attention since it was released in October, and with good reason: it’s equally awe-inspiring and groundbreaking. The Denver-based band had already generated some crossover buzz with their second record, 2019’s Hidden History of the Human Race, which blended classic, pummeling, American-style death metal and far-out psychedelic rock with freaky arrangements and spaced-out sitar. In 2022 they threw their fans a curveball with their follow-up, Timewave Zero, which stepped away from metal into Krautrock and ambient synths.
Absolute Elsewhere takes all of Blood Incantation’s previous feats and blends them together. Mind-bending blastbeats and death-metal riffs take left turns into traditional Middle Eastern scales, space-organ drone a la Pink Floyd, epic chord progressions that could make Genesis proud, and genuine kosmische synth breaks provided by Thorsten Quaeschning of Tangerine Dream. On paper, it shouldn’t work: Why doesn’t a hard-stop transition from grindcore guitar into mellow, meditative vocals sound like one of Mr. Bungle’s goofiest moments?
I’ll admit, here and there the experimentation does startle me, coming across as clumsy genre smashing, but overall Blood Incantation have put this record together expertly—I can’t help but be impressed by the respect, care, and love they display for the roots of the styles they explore. Absolute Elsewhere more than lives up to the hype; it’s a work of brutal and beautiful grandeur by a band at the height of their powers. If you’ve been sleeping on it, you need to change that now—and head to this Metro show to witness the band pull it off live.
Blood Incantation Midwife open. Tue 12/3, 8 PM, Metro, 3730 N. Clark, $28, $25 in advance, 18+
Billy Woods and Kenny Segal Credit: Alexander Richter
Rapper Billy Woods and producer Kenny Segal are one of hip-hop’s best duos, and this year they’ve joined forces again to celebrate the fifth anniversary of their 2019 album Hiding Places. A modern classic by most hip-hop metrics, the collaboration received plenty of acclaim and appeared on many best-of-year lists upon its release. Five years later, the album’s musical beauty, unflinching lyrics, and growling beats feel even more apropos of the moment.
Segal grew up playing cello and got his start as a drum ’n’ bass producer before turning his focus to hip-hop. A stalwart of the Los Angeles beat scene, he developed a genre-bending production style that’s ductile, tasteful, and respectful of the almighty knock. He’s worked with the best of the left-of-center MCs, including Danny Brown, Quelle Chris, and Earl Sweatshirt, and Woods sounds right at home inside Segal’s beats, dropping powerful verses that are simultaneously amusing and alarming.
The production on Hiding Places shrinks and grows in equally interesting blips: “Checkpoints” ticks and blurps along until it’s hit with a lightning bolt of rock guitar, bass drum, and crash cymbal. The instrumental track is nimble enough to respond to Woods’s winding vocals, yet sturdy enough to hold together. Another personal favorite is “Speak Gently”—that guitar line is just nasty.When I contacted Segal via email about the duo’s upcoming show at Thalia Hall, he told me that a great number of songs on their set list “are not performed regularly, if at all.” They’ll also have new Hiding Places anniversary merch in tow, which is sure to be highly coveted, so you’ll want to buy a ticket now and get in line for the merch table early. Woods and Segal’s honest, timeless hip-hop is only getting better—and their legions of die-hard fans are here for it.
Billy Woods & Kenny Segal 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport, $25, 17+
