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Motorist ditches 4-year-old after leading cops on chase from Indiana to Back of the Yards

An Illinois man was tased and arrested Tuesday evening after triggering a police chase that started in Indiana and ended in Chicago’s Back of the Yards neighborhood when he fled, leaving a toddler in his car.

No injuries were reported.

Just after 5 p.m., Highland, Indiana police tried to stop a black BMW in Hammond, Ind. when the driver sped off, prompting a pursuit, the Lake County Sheriff’s Department said.

Officers with the sheriff’s department and Lake County’s Aviation Unit helicopter assisted as the BMW headed onto Torrence Avenue, then entered I-94 into Illinois, the sheriff’s department said.

The BMW was safely stopped by officers near 53rd and Morgan streets and the driver — a 26-year-old Illinois man — fled the vehicle and left a 4-year-old child inside, officials said.

The child was checked out by paramedics at the scene and was placed in the custody of relatives.

The Illinois suspect was tased and placed into custody where he awaits extradition back to Indiana, authorities said.

He faces charges including felony fleeing, reckless endangerment of a child and marijuana possession.



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Imagining a world without landlords

Last winter, during a polar vortex that swept in windchills of -30 degrees, the property manager for my apartment building directed the building maintenance worker to drill a hole into my window instead of fixing a leak from the ceiling. While I watched, metal shavings from the window frame rained onto the floor of the tiny, uninsulated room I use as an office. 

For years, a hole in the ceiling where a drain pipe used to be—at some point, this room had been a three-season porch—periodically poured brown fluid onto my desk. It soaked my rug, splashed onto the leaves of my plants, and left everything it touched—papers, notebooks, desk, chair—with a fine, sweetly rotten stink. Also for years, I’d requested the leak to be fixed, only to have requests ignored, or for management to throw up their hands and say the tenants above me were leaving their windows open and letting in rain that ran into an unplugged old drain hole in their floor: We can’t force them to shut their windows. But the leaks were just as likely to happen when it was sunny, and when I knocked on my upstairs neighbors’ doors, I learned that, far from leaving their windows open during rainstorms, they too were living with this wet. Now, management’s “fix,” instead of finding and stopping the source of the leak, was to let the brown water run out of my window. 

I’ve rented for almost two decades, and I’ve always known that every landlord I’ve had—whether a small “mom and pop” outfit or a nameless coastal void hiding behind numerous LLCs—didn’t see me as a full human person. But it wasn’t until I watched the maintenance worker put a PVC pipe through perfectly good metal and glass, letting in subarctic air and making it certain that these previously perfectly sound windows would need to be replaced sooner rather than later, that I realized they also don’t value the property they charge me so much to live in. They don’t treat me with dignity or safety, but they don’t treat the place that I make beautiful—that I make a home—with dignity either. Why should this landlord worry about buying new windows? With my inevitable yearly rent increase, they wouldn’t be paying for them—I would. 

Abolish Rent: How Tenants Can End the Housing Crisis by Tracy Rosenthal and Leonardo Vilchis
Haymarket Books, paperback, 224 pp., $10.77, haymarketbooks.org/books/2443-abolish-rent

“The housing market doesn’t produce homes, it produces opportunities for investment,” LA Tenant Union cofounders Tracy Rosenthal and Leonardo Vilchis write in Abolish Rent: How Tenants Can End the Housing Crisis. Rent is the fine we pay for having a human need, they write, enforced on the behalf of landlords by the state via violent evictions and even more violent police: “We pay rent at the peril of our need and at the barrel of a gun.” Thanks, in part, to the racism built into real estate, the defunding and bulldozing of public housing by both Republicans and Democrats, and the whitewashing of landlords as “housing providers,” rent “steals the common labor of tenants, who create the communities where they live.” 

In Chicago, evidence of this theft abounds: Black and Brown, poor and working-class, and artists and queer tenants of Wicker and Humboldt Park, Pilsen, South Shore, and beyond create the art, community gardens, music scene, food culture, and more that draws outsiders to visit their neighborhoods. They create their neighborhood’s value, which landlords profit off by raising their rents until they can’t afford to live in their homes anymore—but those outsiders can. It’s bleak out here, but, as Rosenthal and Vilchis write, “Every first of the month is another opportunity for organizing, collective action, and collective refusal.” 

Leonardo Vilchis wears a blue button up shirt with a black and white kaffiyeh over his shoulders. He stands in an outdoor parking lot and wears dark glasses. He has gray hair and a beard.
Leonardo Vilchis
Rosenthal stands outdoors, the background is blurred. Rosenthal wears a white tank top and has clear glasses. The author has their hands on their hips and looks at the camera. Their hair is dyed blond and they have tattoos on their shoulder and arm.
Author Tracy Rosenthal
Images courtesy Haymarket Books

The first third of the book is a brisk history of U.S. tenant agitation and organizing. It functions as a call to the downtrodden tenant to rise from fear and acceptance of our circumstances and instead cultivate our own power. “Tenants . . . must be political agents, taking action in the context of our everyday lives.” By withholding rent in coordination with our neighbors, tenants can harness the power of collective action for lasting material change. “Underneath political agency is communal life,” they write. We can reclaim our strength by building relationships with and trusting each other: “Rent strikes stop the flow of cash to our landlords and reveal their dependence on us.” 

Rosenthal and Vilchis acknowledge that the battle is uphill, and, historically, has largely been one-sided. But by focusing on the successful, nearly yearlong strike by tenant members of los Mariachis de la Unión de Vecinos of Boyle Heights in LA, the authors provide a recent example of a rent strike that had some serious wins. The stakes were steep—possible eviction, contact with police, homelessness, and more, especially for undocumented strikers. But when steep rent increases will likely lead to your moving or homelessness anyway, what more is there to lose? 

In the case of Los Mariachis de la Unión de Vecinos, strikers won lowered rent, guaranteed repairs, and the right to renegotiate their leases. And, as Rosenthal and Vilchis stress, the benefits of rent strikes go beyond a single win. The organizing and relationship building required to maintain a successful strike creates structures for poor and working-class people to fight back against rent exploitation in the long-term. Rent strikes teach new skills, from “collective decision-making, to escalation tactics, to negotiation techniques.” And beautifully, getting to know and trust your neighbors leads to the creation of relationships built on the “experience of collective struggle.” Tenant organizing develops our political power, and each strike both “tests and builds our capacity.” Every relationship, every action, every communal decision is a step towards a world without landlords, a world without rent.

Earlier this year, Chicagoans voted on Mayor Brandon Johnson’s central campaign promise to “Bring Chicago Home.” By raising the one-time real estate transfer tax on properties sold for over $1 million in the city, Bring Chicago Home would have created the city’s first dedicated revenue stream for homelessness services and prevention—while lowering the same tax for the 95 percent of city properties that sell under that $1 million threshold. After local and national real estate and property owner associations spent millions of dollars in opposition campaigns, Bring Chicago Home failed at the ballot box. 

“Across the country, a $100 increase in median rent means a 9 percent increase in homelessness,” write Rosenthal and Vilchis. While decrying that failure and warning it would harm the poor and unhoused, the city—under Johnson’s leadership—began a campaign of tent encampment closures throughout the city, evicting dozens of unhoused Chicagoans from their tents and their communities. While some have been connected to apartments, others landed in the city’s temporary shelters (if a bed was open for them), on the couches of others, or simply somewhere else outside. Most recently, the city, along with the Department of Family and Support Services and Alderperson Jessie Fuentes, destroyed a large encampment in Humboldt Park on an 18-degree December day. “People keep saying we’re homeless, but I don’t understand what they mean. I have a home. I live here,” said Mike-Mike, one of the camp residents I spoke to that day. The inside of his tent was winterized for survival—a fire pit, blankets, electric lights, and heat. Music played in the background. “I’m just dancing to keep my spirits up,” he said. An hour later, I watched the claws of a crane crush his home and drop it into a dumpster. I didn’t see Mike-Mike again.

Once again, it’s winter in my apartment, and the property manager is dragging his heels on fixing a tub that hasn’t drained properly in weeks. Periodically over the last couple years, my neighbors and I have talked about starting a building association; last winter, when the heat in our apartments wouldn’t rise above 58 degrees, a few of us even coordinated to force management to fix it. They could ignore us individually, but they couldn’t ignore us all. While doing so, we cracked jokes and shared holiday desserts. A year later, we continue to check in and have each other’s backs. 

“Unburdened by the fear of making rent, what could we do with life’s most precious resource, our time on this earth?” Rosenthal and Vilchis ask. “What could our cities be like, not as monuments to capital and the lucky rich few, but as testaments to the many, and the many lives we could leave?” A tight 148 pages (excluding a careful list of cited sources), Abolish Rent is an accessible mix of tenant organizing history, instruction, agitation, and hope. It’s the perfect size to pass across the hall to your neighbor, along with a cup of sugar.


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Banking on data centers – Chicago Reader

A brown dirt lot with a large brick building in the background. in the foreground is a chain-link fence. dead trees and grasses line the left side of the frame.
Steelworkers Park, previously part of the U.S. Steel complex known as South Works Credit: Layla Brown-Clark

Right now, somewhere out there, a data center is working just for you. 

Anything that flows through your laptop, tablet, or smartphone is driven in part by one of these massive computing and storage facilities. Data centers—on average 100,000 square feet in size—house, process, and distribute digital information 24 hours a day.

Chicagoland’s ample land, water, and money make the area a mecca for the booming data center industry. According to a June report from real estate and investment firm CBRE, Chicago ranks third among cities for data center inventory. The city has four state-backed data centers and the northwestern suburb of Elk Grove Village has another nine. On October 2, Governor J.B. Pritzker unveiled plans for a new facility in Aurora—that city’s second.

But data centers aren’t risk-free. They require a substantial amount of electricity to operate around the clock, every day of the year. “To meet the demand on existing power grids, states will have to grapple with adding more capacity while also attempting to meet state renewable energy targets,” says Helena Volzer, senior agriculture policy manager at the Alliance for the Great Lakes. 

An October analysis from the U.S. Energy Information Administration found that data centers are increasingly turning to nuclear power. For example, Microsoft plans to reactivate one of the reactors at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island, home to the country’s worst nuclear incident, to power its data centers in the mid-Atlantic. Three Mile Island closed in 1979 following a partial meltdown of one of its reactors, but the deal with Microsoft will reopen the plant in 2028. 

The Palisades nuclear power plant in Michigan is likewise slated to reopen in October 2025. It was once called one of the worst-performing nuclear reactors in the country by the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission and, in 2013, leaked 80 gallons of radioactive waste into Lake Michigan. The plant opened in 1971 and closed in 2022 after a control rod failure. Power plants typically have a lifespan of 30 years, although some operate longer; Palisades was open for 51. 

Kevin Kamps, a radioactive waste watchdog at the advocacy group Beyond Nuclear, worries that data centers are an excuse to throw caution to the wind. He says it’s “unwise, shameful, and unacceptable” to restart closed nuclear power plants, generate more nuclear waste, and gut environmental protection laws. 

Turning to nuclear, Kamps says, leaves officials to play “radioactive Russian roulette in terms of extremely high risks to safety, security, health, and the environment—as well as agriculture.” The use of both Palisades and Three Mile Island represents “direct threats to agriculture and fresh water for drinking and irrigation.”

Pronuclear advocates suggest that while such power plants are expensive to build, they generate power at low costs. Nuclear power is advertised as cleaner than coal and fossil fuels because it doesn’t directly emit carbon dioxide. It also uses less land and is less reliant on weather than wind and solar, making it appealing for environmentalists and populations that find wind farms an eyesore. Data centers also require the same amount of energy at all times, and since nuclear operates similarly, it isn’t difficult to remain consistent. 


Data centers do more than just increase increase the demand on power grids. They also put pressure on the water supply. “Data centers do require large amounts of electricity, and generating that electricity via coal, natural gas, or nuclear-fired power plants also requires water for cooling,” Volzer says. As it stands, almost three-quarters of water drawn from the Great Lakes is used for electrical power generation, according to a 2023 fact sheet from the Great Lakes Commission. The region is home to the world’s largest supply of fresh water—but it’s not an infinite resource, Volzer adds.

Luckily, protections for our water exist under the Great Lakes–Saint Lawrence River Basin Compact. The agreement prohibits the diversion of Great Lakes water (with limited exceptions), requires the states to manage water use, sets water conservation and efficiency goals, and establishes common water use reporting protocols. 

“The compact’s prohibition on diversions is designed to generally ensure that Great Lakes water and groundwater stays in the Great Lakes Basin,” says Volzer. “This means that proposals to pipe Great Lakes water for any use, including data centers, to a location outside the Great Lakes region are legally and logistically not in the cards—the compact’s existence and operation prohibits it.”

Andrew Chien, the William Eckhardt distinguished service professor of computer science at the University of Chicago, says it’s possible for data centers to run on less water. “While all data centers will recirculate water internally for cooling, and a small amount of water is consumed by that, by far the largest part of data-center water consumption is for evaporative cooling.” Evaporative cooling uses water evaporation to lower the temperature of the air. Data centers that use this cooling method consume about 25.5 million liters of water per day, Chien says. “We already know how to eliminate this by using other cooling techniques.”

So, will one data center put a strain on the Great Lakes? Volzer says, “In a vacuum, the simple answer is probably not—but nothing happens in a vacuum. In the real world, the important and complicated questions to be answered regarding any large use of water are whether and how the compact will apply, how that singular use stacks up cumulatively in the landscape of other water use and climate change, and how states are utilizing their conservation programs to sustainably and responsibly manage all large uses of water.”

In addition to sucking up thousands of gallons of water and overloading the grid, there are a host of other environmental concerns that come with building more data centers. According to recent research, data centers have roughly the same carbon footprint as the aviation industry, another significant source of global pollution. The Guardian in September found that Google, Microsoft, and Apple’s greenhouse gas emissions were seven times higher than what the companies reported. Other environmental concerns include the batteries used in data centers, which require mining metals, and noise pollution from cooling systems and servers, which is comparable to heavy traffic. 


CyrusOne, which owns the facility in Aurora, will receive a tax incentive package as part of the state Data Center Investment Program. According to the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity’s 2023 annual report, tax breaks for all data centers in Illinois have totaled $6.5 billion in investments and 469 total jobs since 2019. 

As the city faces a $1 billion shortfall heading into the 2025 fiscal year, data centers may be the ticket to balancing the budget without increasing city taxes. In September, Alderperson Gilbert Villegas from the 36th Ward successfully pushed an ordinance that will bring more data centers to Chicago. Villegas, who chairs the City Council’s Economic, Capital and Technology Development Committee, wrote the ordinance because he wants more city data stored in the city instead of paying millions for others to store it elsewhere. 

Neighborhoods on Chicago’s south side are most at risk of being the future home to data centers, as they have large vacant areas of industrial land. In July, Pritzker announced that the first quantum computing campus in the country would be built on the former U.S. Steel site on the southeast side of the city. The plot of land, abandoned since 1992, has been renamed the Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park and will be anchored by PsiQuantum, a California-based startup. The campus would also include a defense-funded lab by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Quantum campuses and data centers are different. Data centers house and store data, while quantum centers house quantum computers. Nevertheless, both require immense water cooling and have environmental implications. Residents and community groups requested government officials slow down campus construction due to concerns over environmental and health safety. The neighborhood has long been ignored and used as a dumping ground for toxic waste. In September, the Alliance of the Southeast and 80 local residents wrote a letter to companies and lawmakers that demanded “a public transparent environmental impact study and environmental impact plan that includes topics such as effects on water, noise, emissions, chemical use, and a clear transparent assessment of site contamination as well as remediation plans and risk mitigations.”

The letter continues, “Too often, neighbors in this area and other parts of Chicago are not invited and are left in the dark in the planning stages of planned developments impacting our communities, or a sham of public engagement is made after all the decisions have been made behind closed doors.”

On November 21, the Chicago Plan Commission granted preliminary approval to zoning changes needed for construction. ​​The park will be located right on Lake Michigan, which could heat water used for cooling systems, impacting an already stressed body of water.

While local alderpeople and politicians see data centers as a means for economic growth and jobs, staying alert about the environmental impacts is crucial for a changing digital landscape, especially since data centers in Chicago aren’t going away anytime soon. 

Volzer says the Great Lakes region will probably be home to many more data centers in the future. “Policymakers will need to address increasing demand for water and ask tough questions about who will benefit from that water use and how.”


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U.K. court says police can seize millions in unpaid taxes from misogynist influencer Andrew Tate

London — A court in the United Kingdom ruled Wednesday that police could seize the equivalent of $3.3 million in frozen financial assets from misogynist social media influencer Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan to cover years of unpaid taxes.

The money has been held in seven bank accounts, frozen by British authorities, belonging to Tate, who previously lived in the U.K., his brother Tristan and a woman identified by the British authorities only as J.

Chief Magistrate Paul Goldspring at the Westminster Magistrates’ Court said in his Wednesday ruling that transactions made by the brothers, including transfers amounting to almost $12 million to J, had been a “straightforward cheat” to evade tax authorities.

Lawyers for the Devon and Cornwall Police force had argued that Tate and his brother were serial tax evaders who paid no taxes on around $26.5 million in revenue from their online businesses.

Andrew And Tristan Tate Appear At Bucharest Court Of Appeal
Andrew Tate (center) talks to his brother Tristan Tate (left) and to one of his lawyers in the Court of Appeal in Bucharest, Romania, in an Oct. 15, 2024 file photo.

Getty


According to the French news agency AFP, lawyer Sarah Clarke, who represented the police force, quoted during the proceedings from a video posted online by Tate, in which he said: “When I lived in England I refused to pay tax.”

Tate railed against the ruling, accusing the government of “outright theft.”

“This is not justice; it’s a coordinated attack on anyone who dares to challenge the system,” he said in a statement, claiming the seizure of his assets raised “serious questions about the lengths authorities will go to silence dissent.”

The Associated Press quoted a lawyer for the men, Martin Evans, as defending the bank transfers in question as “entirely orthodox” for the owners of online businesses. 

Tate gained millions of followers online before being banned by TikTok, Facebook and YouTube when the platforms accused him of posting misogynistic hate speech.

Tate and his brother are currently under house arrest in Romania, where they face criminal human trafficking charges. When that case is concluded, the brothers are set to be extradited to the U.K., where they face additional allegations of human trafficking and rape.

The Tate brothers have denied all the charges of sexual violence and human trafficking.

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Explosion kills 2 Mexican soldiers in suspected booby trap by drug cartel after troops found dismembered bodies

An improvised land mine apparently planted by a drug cartel killed two Mexican soldiers and wounded five others, Mexico’s defense secretary said Tuesday. Before the blast, the soldiers had discovered the dismembered bodies of three people, officials said.

Gen. Ricardo Trevilla acknowledged that the army had already suffered six deaths from such improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, between 2018 and 2024. But he didn’t specify whether those six had been killed by bombs dropped from drones, or by buried roadside bombs, both of which have been used by gangs in Mexico.

Trevilla said that devices like the one that exploded Monday were “very rustic,” and officials in the past have described them as similar to buried pipe bombs. There was no immediate information on the condition of the five wounded in the attack, which included at least one officer.

Trevilla’s description of the location where the two soldiers died Monday in the western state of Michoacan suggested that it may have been a sort of grisly drug cartel booby trap.

Trevilla said the army sent out a patrol to check on reports that there was an encampment of armed men in a rural area. The armed forces detected an area protected by stockades that appeared to be an encampment, but when soldiers approached in vehicles, they found the trail blocked by logs, so they descended and had to approach on foot.

While approaching, they spotted three dismembered bodies near the encampment, which appeared to be abandoned. But as they drew closer, a buried device exploded and struck the soldiers.

Trevilla blamed the blast on the United Cartels, an umbrella group that includes the local Viagras gang, which has been fighting bloody turf battles against the Jalisco cartel in Michoacan for years.

In August, the Mexican army acknowledged that some of its soldiers have been killed by bomb-dropping drones operated by drug cartels.

Previously, officials have said the army encounters far more roadside bombs than drone-dropped ones.

The Jalisco drug cartel has been fighting local gangs for control of Michoacan for years, and the situation has become so militarized that the warring cartels use roadside bombs or IEDs, trenches, pillbox fortifications, homemade armored vehicles and sniper rifles.

Nemesio Oseguera-Cervantes, also known as “El Mencho,” the leader of the Jalisco cartel, which the officials described as “one of the world’s most violent and prolific drug trafficking organizations.” The United States and the State Department has offered a $10 million reward for his capture.

In the only previous detailed report on cartel bomb attacks in August 2023, the defense department said at that time that a total of 42 soldiers, police and suspects were wounded by IEDs in the first seven and a half months of 2023, up from 16 in all of 2022.

Overall, 556 improvised explosive devices of all types – roadside, drone-carried and car bombs – were found in 2023, the army said in a news release last year.

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Why is the Tom and Jerry cocktail a Midwest holiday tradition?

Entering Miller’s Pub, it’s easy to see why it’s a holiday gathering spot. The restaurant is warmly lit with vintage stained glass fixtures, and dark woods combine with classic Christmas decor for a cozy ambiance.

Among those who gather is special education teacher Jason Munchoff, who has met his friends here for an annual holiday celebration since 2007. Essential to their festivities is drinking a Tom and Jerry.

“I’m really into traditions, especially around the holidays,” he said. “I really like doing things over and over again. It just gives that good feeling.”

A “T&J” is akin to a warm eggnog, but what really makes it stand out is its viscosity. That’s because at the base of any Tom and Jerry is a batter, similar to what you might use for pancakes. It’s made from sugar, eggs, autumnal spices and vanilla.

Andy Gallios is co-owner of Miller’s Pub, which features a holiday cocktail known as the Tom and Jerry cocktail during the holidays. The business is passed down from his father and uncle. |  Susie An/WBEZ

Andy Gallios is the current co-owner of the iconic Miller’s Pub, which features a holiday cocktail known as the Tom and Jerry cocktail during the holidays. The business was passed down from his father and uncle.

Standing behind the bar, next to a large silver bowl full of fluffy batter, is Miller’s Pub co-owner Andy Gallios.

To make a T&J, he scoops a small ladle of batter into a mug, adds rum and brandy, then fills it to the brim with warm water or milk.

Gallios isn’t sure exactly why Miller’s started making the Tom and Jerry, but he does know the bar has been serving it since the 1950s, when his father and uncle first purchased the bar and restaurant. “It’s the same recipe, same method, same guy in the basement making the batter,” Gallios said.

Munchoff has always wondered where this decadent drink came from and why it’s been such a mainstay in Chicago and the Midwest. It turns out the history of the T&J is really a story of how cocktails came to America.

The history

While Miller’s Pub is synonymous with the Tom and Jerry in Chicago, its popularity in the city and in neighboring Wisconsin goes as far back as the mid-19th century. Newspaper articles from the time feature recipes and interviews with hotel barkeeps. One even documented a raging debate about whether hot cocktails are good for one’s health. But the drink’s actual origins are a bit of a mystery, with numerous figures claiming the title of inventor.

One prominent contender is Jerry Thomas, considered by some to be the father of American mixology. His 1862 book “Bar Keepers Guide” played an important role in popularizing many mainstay cocktails in the U.S. The mixologist claimed to have invented the cocktail in 1847, according to historian David Wondrich.

Other experts question Thomas’ narrative, pointing to newspaper articles as far back as 1827 that discuss a near-identical beverage with a different name. Thomas was born in 1830.

And consider this: Egg- and sugar–based cocktails such as the egg posset, egg flip and rum flip — all possible T&J precursors — were already popular in the United Kingdom at least a decade before that.

Historian Anistasia Miller believes the famous French chef Alexis Benoît Soyer, who moved to London in 1830, could be the father of the T&J. He was known as a prolific cocktail inventor and is credited with making an ice cream Champagne drink for Queen Victoria, the first ever blue cocktail and even the Jell-O shot.

Her evidence: Young Jerry Thomas visited Soyer in London in a bid to work at a new restaurant Soyer was opening. Thomas did not get the job, but he likely brought back inspiration, introducing Americans to many British drinks and Soyer’s creations as his own.

“You wouldn’t even realize [these drinks] were British, except you’d have to read the type, which is a really tiny, like almost two millimeter tall type that says ‘after Soyer,’ ” Miller said.

Historic illustration of Tom and Jerry shop

An illustration in Pierce Egan’s Life in London show men drinking and smoking in the Fleet Prison. After the book and play’s success, the phrase “Tom and Jerry” became shorthand for drunken mischief.

Courtesy of The Trustees of the British Museum

But there’s another possible origin of the Tom and Jerry, or at least the drink’s moniker. In 1821, writer Pierce Egan published the novel “Life in London,” a satire following the inebriated misadventures of two posh aristocrats, Tom and Jerry.

The stage play based on the novel became a hit on Broadway in New York City. Suddenly, the phrase “Tom and Jerry” was everywhere, as a shorthand for drunken mischief.

The names also became associated with illicit drinking houses, sometimes called Tom and Jerry shops, where patrons could find warm pick-me-ups on winter nights.

“The Tom and Jerry shops could have had egg flips and egg posits and rum posits and things like that,” Miller said. “People just ended up saying, ‘Oh, I’m going to go over to the Tom and Jerry shop and have a Tom and Jerry.’ ”

Topping off tradition

While the exact birthplace of the Tom and Jerry is likely lost to history, its tradition is alive and well. In fact, it’s seen a resurgence in the Midwest, along with interest in other traditional cocktails, like eggnog, old-fashioneds and martinis. Gallios says at the height of the season, Miller’s Pub goes through 12 gallons of Tom and Jerry batter a day.

While Miller’s offers a classic take, those looking for an elevated experience can visit The Duck Inn in Bridgeport or Sparrow in the Gold Coast.

Duck Inn Tom and Jerry cocktail Brandon Phillips

Duck Inn owner Brandon Phillips grew up drinking virgin versions of the Tom and Jerry around the holidays. Although he still goes to Miller’s Pub each year, his restaurant offers a more sophisticated version: For one, he uses duck eggs for added richness and mixes tapioca power in the batter. He also brews a specially made milk tea, featuring hand-harvested spruce tree tips. Finally and most deliciously, Phillips sprinkles sugar over the foamy top and torches it for a creme brulee–like finish.

Phillips’ unique take on the historic drink doesn’t stand alone. On the other side of the city, you can get your drink in a collection of vintage Tom and Jerry mugs at Sparrow, a cocktail bar designed to feel like a 1920s expat bar in Havana. The batter there packs an additional punch with allspice. Owner Peter Vestinos imagines a barkeep serving up Tom and Jerry to homesick patrons.

Peter Vestinos Sparrow Tom and Jerry

Sparrow owner Peter Vestinos whips up the base of any Tom and Jerry, a batter similar to what you might use for pancakes.

For Phillips, a Tom and Jerry at Miller’s Pub offered a warm welcome when he first moved to Chicago from Wisconsin. He hopes he can do the same for his customers during the holidays. “It felt like such a piece of home to me,” he said, “to be able to go to Miller’s and have a Tom and Jerry.”

For those interested in mixing the beverage for themselves, we’ve included a few classic recipe, as well as Phillips’ luxurious take, below.

Illustration and visualization: Mary Hall/WBEZ

Illustration and visualization: Mary Hall/WBEZ



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Required reading – Chicago Reader

’Tis the season when my TBR list is as out of control as ever, but the number of books I can feasibly finish before the end of December is finite. So, I decided to prioritize a small stack of nonfiction books written by or about Illinoisans and published in 2024. For local history buffs and nonfiction fans of many stripes, I offer up a smorgasbord of end-of-year reads: two accounts of Chicago activists, a medical true-crime story, a pharmaceutical hoax, a breast cancer memoir, and the biography of a fierce woman journalist. 

When Friends Come From Afar: The Remarkable Story of Bernie Wong and Chicago’s Chinese American Service League by Susan Blumberg-Kason (University of Illinois Press)

If your New Year’s resolutions include giving back to your community, I suggest looking for inspiration in the story of Bernie Wong and the Chinese American Service League, a nonprofit organization she founded with nine friends in the late 1970s. This group of young social workers and graduate students, most of whom immigrated from Hong Kong and met at the University of Chicago, observed specific needs among the immigrants living in Chicago’s Chinatown and pitched in to help. Their grassroots efforts have since blossomed into the midwest’s largest social service agency serving Asian Americans, with programs for children, youth, and seniors; culinary training; affordable housing; mental health care; legal services, and more. Susan Blumberg-Kason’s book is not only a touching tribute to Wong, who died in 2021, but also a testament to the positive impacts of community service. 

The Krebiozen Hoax: How a Mysterious Cancer Drug Shook Organized Medicine by Matthew C. Ehrlich (University of Illinois Press)

In light of the medical misinformation and public health conflicts that have marked the first half of this decade, it’s illuminating to look back at a period in the 1950s and ’60s when a purported miracle treatment for cancer sparked a swirl of conspiracy theories, public protests, government hearings, and legal cases. Much of the furor centered on the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where revered physiologist and university vice president Andrew Ivy championed the cause of Krebiozen, a drug peddled by Yugoslavian doctor Stevan Durovic and embraced by a range of cancer patients, politicians, and journalists. Matthew C. Ehrlich, professor emeritus of journalism at U. of I., deftly traces the dramatic twists and turns of what he calls a “quintessential example of quackery.” 

Prescription for Pain: How a Once-Promising Doctor Became the “Pill Mill Killer” by Philip Eil (Steerforth)

This book came onto my radar at the 2024 American Writers Festival, where author Philip Eil participated in a true-crime panel. It tells the story of Paul Volkman, a physician who trained at the University of Chicago and lived in the city throughout his adult life, until he received four consecutive life sentences in federal prison for his “pill mill” operation in southern Ohio. Much of the deeply researched book follows Volkman’s career, but Eil also devotes significant attention to the 13 people whose overdose deaths were linked to the doctor’s criminally unscrupulous methods (this number is likely an undercount). The result is not only an intriguing true-crime story but also a moving look at a community that has suffered greatly during the opioid epidemic. 

The Dragon From Chicago: The Untold Story of an American Reporter in Nazi Germany by Pamela D. Toler (Beacon Press)

It’s hard to think of a higher compliment for a journalist in Nazi Germany than to be nicknamed “that dragon from Chicago” by Hitler’s second-in-command, Hermann Göring. This badass moniker refers to the subject of a new biography: Sigrid Schultz, the trailblazing woman who led the Chicago Tribune’s Berlin bureau during the Nazis’ rise to power and the early years of World War II. Spending her early childhood on Chicago’s north side and an itinerant adolescence in Europe, Schultz was seemingly born for this role, with her talent for languages, keen interest in politics and history, dogged work ethic, and savvy networking skills. Historian Pamela D. Toler frames her remarkable career within the broader history of American journalism, tracing the field’s gender dynamics, the expansion of international news coverage, the birth of radio newscasts, and the risks of reporting from countries with strict censorship laws.

No Games Chicago: How a Small Group of Citizens Derailed the City’s 2016 Olympic Bid by Tom Tresser (Routledge)

You don’t hear much these days about Chicago’s failed bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympics. As a lifelong Illinoisan, I was only vaguely aware of this consequential chapter in our recent history until I read a firsthand account by Tom Tresser, one of the leaders of No Games Chicago, a grassroots group that successfully opposed the bid in 2009. Among the activists’ many concerns were the Olympics’ history of ballooning costs, privatization of public land, and restrictions of civil liberties. Many of their warnings turned out to be justified: the 2016 host city, Rio de Janeiro, ultimately spent an estimated $23.6 billion on the Games, overrunning its budget by 352 percent. “I was a major participant in this story, and I have waited for years for someone to tell it. No one has stepped forward, so I decided to give an account,” writes Tresser, a civic educator and public defender. 

The Adventures of Cancer Bitch by S.L. Wisenberg (Tortoise Books)

Local author, editor, and writing coach S.L. Wisenberg survived breast cancer 17 years ago and wrote a memoir about the experience in her trademark style—a blend of wry, self-deprecating humor and sharp social commentary. Along with frank observations about the painful process and physical indignities of a mastectomy and chemotherapy, she analyzes the U.S. health-care system’s shortcomings, the cancer research fundraising complex, and the gendered dynamics of breast reconstruction surgery. She also recounts the farewell party she threw for her left breast and the “U.S. out of Iraq” henna tattoo she sported on her bald head. For the 15th anniversary edition released this year, Wisenberg has revised and expanded her book with a new postscript and endnotes.


Reader Recommends: ARTS & CULTURE

What’s now and what’s next in visual arts, architecture, literature, and more.

Fabric becomes the body

Caleb Schroder’s soft sculptures illustrate how garments reflect or deflect identity.


Ready, player?

The American Writers Museum explores video games and game writing in “Level Up.”


‘Chicago has always been a Native place’

An exhibition at the Newberry offers a learning opportunity for non-Native Chicagoans.


What do we do with revolutionary histories? 

At Shanghai Seminary, two video installations offer up a cautionary perspective.


‘She couldn’t not make work’

Barbara Crane’s photography is on view at the Centre Pompidou and in a new monograph.


Liberate the flesh

Artists Sam Schwindt and Catie Burrill ruminate on Chicago’s countercultures.




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At the Sun-Times in 2024, a year of experimentation, collaboration — and impact

It’s been another big year for Chicago area news. The Democratic National Convention came to town for the first time since 1996, and Chicago voters elected 10 school board members for the first time ever after the entire Chicago Public Schools board resigned. Voters also elected a new slate of U.S., state and county officials and approved nonbinding measures recommending the state create civil penalties for election interference, raise taxes for those with incomes over $1 million and expand pregnancy benefits to include in-vitro fertilization and other reproductive health treatments.

The homicide rate remained low in 2024, while the state’s domestic violence hotline remains deluged with calls after a 110% spike in domestic-violence deaths last year. It was Illinois’ first full year without cash bail and with an assault weapons ban, which continues to face legal challenges. Chicago-style politics received judgment in the courts, with former Ald. Ed Burke, former state Sen. Annazette Collins and Tim Mapes, former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan’s ex-chief of staff, sentenced to prison, while Madigan’s trial continues. And the continuing wars in Gaza and Ukraine left an indelible mark on the year, with Chicagoans taking action, mourning losses of life and coping with acts of hate.

In a tough year for Chicago sports, White Sox manager Pedro Grifol, Chicago Sky coach Teresa Witherspoon, Bears head coach Matt Eberflus and Blackhawks coach Luke Richardson were fired after disappointing results for their teams. In the natural world, the region saw the emergence of two broods of periodic cicadas for the first time in 200 years; a total solar eclipse, which will next be seen here in 2044; and multiple opportunities to see the northern lights.

In the Sun-Times newsroom, it’s been a year of experimentation and collaboration. Experiments to engage new audiences — which included tests of new approaches for stories, social media, liveblogs and our home page, as well as the launch of our text-messaging chat — grew loyal readers ages 18-24 by 45% and social audiences in that group by 22%, among other results.

We also grew our partnerships with other news outlets and deepened our community connections with public news meetings, ongoing community listening sessions, our second Chicago’s Next Voices contest to find new community guest columnists and the launch of a student version (submissions are due Dec. 31). Overall, we’re featuring more community members on our pages: The editorial board published hundreds of opinion stories and letters written by community members this year.

In response to what we heard from our communities, we launched our Money desk in January to protect consumers and taxpayers, help Chicagoans make the most of their money and better understand how business and financial decisions affect their families and communities. We also reenvisioned our Sunday edition based on community feedback.

Our distinctive coverage aims to hold public officials accountable, protect consumers and taxpayers, examine inequities, share information about efforts to improve our communities, grow understanding of Chicagoans’ diverse lived experiences — and celebrate the shared experiences, fandom and “only in Chicago” moments that bring us together.

Over the last year, Sun-Times reporting — which won more than a dozen top national awards — directly led to more than $1 million in past-due payments to the city and protected Chicagoan Robert Christie from City Hall citations related to damage from trucks that kept backing into his home. It resulted in the return of campaign contributions that were banned, that violated ethics rules or were from donors who won big contracts after making them. Our coverage was cited in a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in favor of a decorated Army veteran who was denied college money under the GI Bill; prompted a $10,000 donation from “Breaking Bad” star Bryan Cranston to the Bears Care charity; and resulted in a public rebuke of Kane County Sheriff Ron Hain for decisions that led to a fatal police shooting in Aurora.

The Illinois Supreme Court Commission on Professionalism, whose study estimated that 25% of Illinois lawyers had experienced bullying in the past year, reported being flooded with calls and messages about bullying — and ideas and initiatives to help change the culture of the profession — after we wrote about it. After our coverage of especially large tax breaks on 15 Cook County properties, including an erroneous one, the Assessor’s Office began demanding proof that homeowners qualify for the tax breaks — and is revisiting them.

These are just a few examples of the impact of our reporting this year. But local news can’t be taken for granted: The number of journalists in Illinois has fallen 86% since 2005, more than any other state in the nation. As Medill’s report on “The State of Local News” notes, communities with reliable sources of news experience higher voter participation in local and state elections, lower levels of government and business corruption, and lower prices and taxes than they see when those sources disappear.

We need your help to continue providing the well-reported stories that help our region thrive. If you appreciate what we’re doing, please consider supporting us with a donation or a subscription. You can also send us tips, submit an op-ed or letter to the editor or share this article with others to help spread the word about what we’re doing.

Thank you so much for your partnership and for keeping yourselves informed!



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How Sun-Times photographers captured their favorite photos in 2024

You’ve seen the photograph on the front page of the Sun-Times, the top of our website or in our Instagram feed. That image that grabs your attention — that makes you pause and spend some time absorbing it, that makes you share it with others, that makes you want to learn more.

How’d we get that shot? Read as five Sun-Times photographers explain how they captured their favorite images in 2024.

Anthony Vazquez

Desiré Borges-09.JPG

Desiré Borges holds her daughter April 13 outside their home in an unsanctioned neighborhood outside Los Patios, Cucuta, Norte de Santander, Colombia.

Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times

On our last day reporting in Cúcuta, Colombia, WBEZ reporter Chip Mitchell and I felt we hadn’t yet found the right interview. So we took a nighttime risk and followed a source we weren’t sure we could trust into an area on the outskirts of this Colombia-Venezuela border town.

And I got my favorite photo of the year, this shot of Desiré Borges and her daughter.

Chip and I were covering the migrant crisis to understand how Colombia was managing it and what lessons could be applied in Chicago. We started in Cúcuta, where temperatures were in the high 90s. We worked from sunrise to sunset, speaking with people who had crossed from Venezuela in search of a better life.

Although we had spoken with families on the border, officials and residents, something still seemed to be missing.

Chip reached out to local organizations, and we scoured social media for events or aid groups assisting migrants. We connected with a man running a small organization to help migrant families. He offered to introduce us to a family on the outskirts of town. We didn’t know him, but it was a promising lead. Until then, we had carefully vetted everyone we spoke with. While crime and extortion weren’t rampant in Cúcuta, they were still concerns.

Chip and I discussed whether to trust and follow this man. Nightfall was approaching. If we were going to meet another family, it had to be now, as we were leaving the next morning. Deciding we had little to lose, we took a taxi to an unsanctioned neighborhood outside Los Patios, Cúcuta.

As night fell, our taxi wove through side streets. The houses transformed from modest buildings to shacks built from scavenged materials. Eventually, the road became impassable, so we continued on foot. By this time, it was dark, and the rocky dirt road was faintly lit by makeshift lights illuminating some of the homes. These were unsanctioned settlements, not designated for housing.

Here, we found a family from Venezuela. Desiré lived with her parents and siblings in a sheet metal shack, with makeshift shelves, bedrooms divided by hanging blankets and water tanks filled from a rudimentary water line. Their living conditions were bleak but typical for migrant families in the area.

The family shared a story of hardship. Desiré had been the target of xenophobic bullying at school from students and teachers. She was just a young girl trying to adjust to life in a new country, but the mistreatment became so severe that she dropped out. She became pregnant and was trying to support her child while also contributing to her family’s income. Like many migrants, her family earned money by scouring for materials that could be sold at recycling facilities. Desiré often helped, carrying her baby as she collected recyclables.

This story illustrates the immense challenges migrants face when they leave their home countries — often not out of choice, but necessity. They deeply miss their homeland but are forced to leave in search of survival and a better future.

Stories like Desiré’s remind us why journalism is so important. Reporting is not just about delivering facts; it’s about shining a light on human experiences. This photo, and the story behind it, offer a window into the struggles of migrants searching for safety and opportunity. These stories need to be heard, not just to inform but to foster empathy and understanding. Journalism allows us to bridge that gap — between those living these realities and those who might otherwise never know about them.

Ashlee Rezin

Kylie Lefever, who performs in drag as Kylee Hunter, does her makeup and prepares for a performance at Roscoe’s Tavern in Northalsted, Thursday, June 13, 2024. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

Kylie Lefever, who performs in drag as Kylee Hunter, does her makeup and prepares for a performance at Roscoe’s Tavern in Northalsted in June.

Photojournalists are uniquely privileged to be invited into people’s personal lives and occasionally most-intimate moments.

During Pride Month, I pitched a story about Chicago’s formidable and booming drag scene. Not only do drag queens have important voices in 2024, but I also love the opportunity to take fun photos of beautiful artistry. And, maybe if I were lucky, I’d learn some makeup tips along the way.

I went to Midsommarfest, an annual festival in Andersonville, early in the month to speak with performers and ask if they were willing to chat with the Sun-Times.

“Did you move to Chicago from another city where it may be less safe to perform the art of drag?” I asked Kylee Hunter after she performed on an outdoor stage under the hot midday sun.

“Girl, that’s literally my exact story,” she said.

By the end of the month, Kylee, 32, had invited videographer Zubaer Khan and me to sit with her in her home as she prepared for a Roscoe’s Tavern performance.

Sitting in front of a dressing mirror in her bedroom applying blue glitter to her eyelids and hot pink lipstick, she opened up about her experiences as a drag queen in Florida and how she ended up in Chicago in 2022.

“It’s the first time I’ve really had a safe space or had a place where I could be myself and people weren’t judgmental, or people didn’t try to conform me into what they wanted me to be,” she said, tearing up. “Whatever I was bringing to the table was good enough. And I’ve never felt that in my life before. Like in anything I’ve ever done.”

I was struck by her vulnerability and the trust and faith she bestowed on my colleagues and me.

Then, we walked to Roscoe’s, where she performed during the “Duality Disco” show. The crowd ate it up as she lip synced, and, yes, I had a blast photographing her reveals and kicks and flips.

Despite the intensity of our conversation just a few hours earlier, the joy of Kylee’s performance — from both her and the audience — was contagious.

It is a privilege to witness the complexity of the human condition. And being trusted to share someone’s intimate story with Sun-Times readers is truly an honor.

This is why I do what I do.

Zubaer Khan

A family stands with one of their two new air conditioning units outside their home in Humboldt Park.

A family stands with one of their two new air-conditioning units outside their home in Humboldt Park.

This year I returned to Chicago after nearly 15 years in New York City and started working as a visual journalist at the Sun-Times. I couldn’t have asked for a better job to get myself reacquainted with this beautiful, complicated city.

I was tossed straight into the deep end. Very early on, I met with people who were experiencing some of the worst moments of their lives — migrants sleeping on buses in January; a family coping with the shooting death of a 14-year-old. As someone who spent most of his working career behind a computer screen, this jolt of reality was sometimes too much to bear.

And yet, I’ve loved every moment of it. I feel beyond privileged to experience these moments with people around the city. They put their trust in me (and, let’s be honest, that has more to do with the Sun-Times than myself), and I do my best to capture them with the empathy and care I’d hope to have if I were in their shoes.

But what’s been most surprising is seeing the impact regular citizens can have on their communities. Which brings me to the story of Robert Magiet. After seeing that a local community group had run out of air-conditioning units to give away during a heat wave, Robert went out and bought 20 AC units (and four more the next day) — with his own money. He then drove around the city for two days, hand-delivering those units to families who needed them most.

Until meeting Robert on that hot day in June, I didn’t even know a person could do that. And yet, here he was, a regular guy from the neighborhood, doing what neighbors are supposed to do.

And so, if there’s one thing that keeps me excited about this job, it’s knowing that there are people like Robert throughout this city, who sacrifice their time, spend their money and look after the people around them. And I get to help tell their stories and be inspired by them every day.

Pat Nabong

Ezra Solomon helps clear the road of debris near the intersection of West Huron and North Leavitt Street in West Town, Tuesday, July 16, 2024, after tornadoes passed through the Chicago area the night before.

Ezra Solomon helps clear the road of debris near Huron and Leavitt streets in West Town on July 16, after tornadoes passed through the Chicago area the night before.

As a photojournalist who grew up in the Philippines, located in the “Pacific Ring of Fire,” we had torrential rains and yearly floods that stranded people, some my friends, on roofs of their houses as they waited for rescue. But tornadoes were natural occurrences I saw only on television. When I moved to Chicago, I asked if the city experienced tornadoes. Rarely, people said, though some would touch down in suburban or rural areas.

Since starting at the Sun-Times in 2020, I’ve photographed a few of them in the suburbs. But this year, it was closer: the Near West Side, about 30 minutes from where I lived.

The night before I took this photo, my family and I sheltered in the boiler room of our apartment, a space as small as a coat room. The windows shook, and an alarm blared for several minutes. The headline was: “Tornado record broken with 27 Chicago area twisters July 15 — spawned by ‘ring of fire’.”

I took this photo while documenting the aftermath of the tornado. Reporter Sophie Sherry and I found people tweeting about a block that had many downed trees, so we headed there. Some blocks were spared, while it was obvious that others had a rougher night. We walked down several blocks, all of which had at least one car that was damaged and neighbors cleaning up or gawking at the aftermath. Nearly all of them said this was the first time they’d witnessed a tornado in Chicago. Ezra Solomon and his family were among those cleaning up.

With a pair of gardening shears, Ezra was helping pick up tree branches with his mom and dad, whose house had not been hit by the tornado. This picture stays with me because of his gaze, which depending on how you perceive it, looks tired. Or maybe dejected, or pleading, or persevering amid the chaos?

There are many ways to interpret this photo, but when I look at it, I see a tree that fell on a car in the background and a child, his shoulders curved by the weight of the branch he is holding, his eyes blank as he stares directly at us. I see a child picking up the pieces of a world he is inheriting. It is a document of our current climate crisis, as much as it is a reminder of the future — and the people who will face it.

Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere

Lightning explodes over Chicago after a severe storm passes through on Aug. 27, 2024.

Lightning explodes over Chicago after a severe storm on Aug. 27.

Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere/Sun-Times

Unofficially, I’m referred to as the Sun-Times weather photographer. Given my shift times, I have opportunities to capture the city’s natural beauty at what photographers call the golden hour — right after sunrise or right before sunset. I’ve had a chance to shoot some recent nighttime celestial events, such as the northern lights or the Tsuchinshan-ATLAS comet in October.

Given surges in severe rainstorms in July, and unconsciously inspired by a previously well-received storm photo I captured in February, I was extra motivated to venture out. While I was curious what I’d capture, I mainly saw the storms as a chance to learn and improve my craft.

When I saw the storms weren’t slowing down even in late August, I rushed out to my ol’ faithful spot at Montrose Harbor. I had set up my equipment and pointed my camera toward the lake and all the lightning. I was on the phone with a friend to pass time between lightning occurrences. I had taken a fair amount of images in about 30 minutes. Then I noticed more lightning in the clouds over the city, so that’s where I aimed my camera.

I was not just magically at the right place at the right time, nor did I have a quick-as-lightning draw on the shutter of my camera. I had set up my camera to take pictures on its own over a short period of time. When I had it pointed toward the city, I was getting some of the inner cloud lightning action, but nothing spectacular.

While chatting with my friend, the call began to get distorted. At the same time, I was starting to feel a tingly sensation, and the hairs on my arms were starting to rise. I got the metallic taste of ozone. I recognized these as dangerous signs of potential lightning strikes. I was set up in an open area with no real cover, so I hit the deck.

As I lay on the ground, I turned to look at the city and saw a massive bolt hitting one of the buildings on the skyline. Once my sense of danger passed, I quickly packed up my equipment and cameras to rush to my vehicle. There, I eagerly looked at what my camera had captured, as I didn’t know whether I had struck gold.

To my amazement, my camera captured something I thought I could work with. I had to adjust the exposure to get this image — a brief moment when the brightness of this bolt alone made the nighttime sky turn into day.



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Covering Chicago Public Schools is not for the weak

It had been a long week in a chaotic year on the education beat.

Chicago Public Schools officials had released a new five-year strategic plan. And the Board of Education had voted to approve it. Sarah Karp, my WBEZ colleague covering education, and I had produced two in-depth stories on that plan that week.

By that Friday in mid-September, I was ready to relax and enjoy an afternoon at Wrigley Field with my brother. But my colleagues and I got a call that morning: A source said Mayor Brandon Johnson had met with CPS CEO Pedro Martinez earlier in the week and told the schools chief he wanted him out.

So, Sarah, Sun-Times City Hall reporter Fran Spielman and I spent the next several hours working sources to confirm the news while writing a story, publishing it and continuing to update. My call log says I made and received 40 work-related phone calls that day.

And yes, for most of this time, I was sitting in Wrigley Field, trying to listen to calls through crowd noise and writing on my phone. That wasn’t the most fun Cubs game my brother has attended — despite the win.

But that’s how it’s been covering the saga of the mayor’s office and CPS leadership — ever since we broke the news in August that Johnson’s administration was laying the groundwork to oust Martinez. We got the call for that tip at 8 p.m. on a Tuesday when I was at my pool league. I immediately stepped out to talk to Sarah (luckily I wasn’t playing a match at the time). She was getting ice cream with her two nieces, who overheard our call. The girls’ parents are Brandon and Jenn — the same names as the mayor and his deputy mayor for education at the time — and they worried their parents were firing someone named Pedro Martinez.

We reported the news the next day.

It’s been one twist after another for CPS. In the weeks after we reported on Johnson’s meeting with Martinez, we saw the entire school board resign, a new board appointed, the new board president step down, Chicago’s historic first-ever school board elections and much more.

And I have to admit: For weeks, we had thought there was little chance the mayor would try to fire Martinez this year. Even though Johnson’s close allies at the Chicago Teachers Union were increasing their public pressure and rhetoric against Martinez, we thought they’d try to settle their contract before making a move. After all, Martinez could be the union’s public foil in negotiations — much as mayors Lori Lightfoot and Rahm Emanuel were before him. Johnson, who used to work for the CTU, surely wouldn’t play that role.

I have way less time on the education beat than Sarah or former Sun-Times education reporter Lauren FitzPatrick, who’s now one of our watchdog reporters. But I have been around for several years at this point, through a CTU strike, tense pandemic reopening negotiations and other crises.

CPS hasn’t seen this type of leadership struggle before. The entire school board resigning and a protracted battle to oust the CEO is unprecedented.

But it’s also important to stay grounded. These developments are at the highest levels of the school system, not in neighborhoods or classrooms. So is this the craziest or most chaotic time at CPS?

The CTU and mayor argue the historic closing of 50 schools was more impactful and harmful, and that certainly has merit.

Teachers’ strikes, when it feels like the whole city shuts down and every single public school student and parent is affected, are also up there.

No matter the level of chaos, leadership instability, especially when it plays out publicly and in messy fashion, isn’t good for the system.

Nonetheless, as always, we’ll be here to document it and put it in context for you.



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