There’s one show for Go & Show this week, but also a couple updates on the master list.
The Wisconsin Ice Fishing Expo opens today, Dec. 13, and runs through Sunday, Dec. 15, at the EAA Grounds in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Obviously it’s about ice fishing, including stuff for the kids. Among the battery of speakers are our own Ken “Husker” O’Malley, plus such notables as Capt. Eric Haataja and Capt. Larry Smith. Details are at icefishexpo.com
There’s a couple updates on the master list of outdoors shows, classes, swap meets and major ice fishing events, which is at Salmon Unlimited announced that the Salmon Unlimited Swap Meet will return to the River Park Moose Lodge in River Grove on Feb. 15. Also the Spring Lake Izaak Walton Outdoor Show is set for Jan. 25-26 in Hobart, Indiana.
Data centers — sprawling facilities that help power the tech behind everything from online shopping to scheduling dentist appointments — are popping up across the country, and Chicago has been recognized as one of the leaders.
Industry experts say Chicago and nearby suburbs will continue to be an industry powerhouse, with 30 data center projects planned over the next five years.
Utility infrastructure will also expand as companies look toward the suburbs to fit their land needs. But if large companies like Microsoft, Meta or Oracle secure agreements for new data centers, it could eat up the region’s extra power capabilities.
The number of data centers in Greater Chicago shot up nearly 20% between 2020 and 2022, according to research firm Mangum Economics. It said over $4 billion has been invested in data centers since 2020 with an additional $4 billion in investments announced.
This means additional property tax revenue, thousands of construction jobs and a new life for vacant buildings. The train isn’t predicted to slow down as AI and other advanced technologies require colossal amounts of data, which needs to be stored.
Pete Marin, CEO and president of T5 Data Centers, said a big selling point is the reliability of the Chicago area’s power. He cited its central location and lack of extreme heat, which can impact data centers.
T5 Data Centers president and CEO Pete Marin during the company’s groundbreaking ceremony for its future Northlake data center.
Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times
“All these things contribute to that success,” Marin said, of the industry’s growth in the region.
Georgia-based T5 broke ground in September on a 250,000-square-foot data center in Northlake. It continues to explore more opportunities for data centers in Chicago’s suburbs.
“The data center industry is the backbone of our modern economy,” said Brad Tietz, vice president of government relations and strategy at the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce. The chamber has been a key player in promoting the growth of data centers and a growing sector of its members are in the digital infrastructure space.
Chicago hit record levels of data center growth in the first half of 2024 with 346 megawatts absorbed. In 2023, more than 204 megawatts total were absorbed in the Chicago market, said a report from commercial real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield.
The 1,279 megawatts in operation in the Chicago area is “basically like a nuclear power plant,” Alex Smith, executive vice chair at Cushman & Wakefield, said. “It’s a massive amount of power.”
Cushman & Wakefield named Chicago as one of the top 10 U.S. markets for data centers this year, with vacancy at 2% in June.
Tietz attributes the growth to city and state incentives and Illinois’s business-friendly environment.
The state’s data center investment program, enacted in 2019, helped kickstart much of the region’s explosive growth. It provides owners and operators of qualifying data centers with exemptions from a variety of state and local taxes, according to the Illinois Department of Commerce.
Construction equipment signals that development has started on T5 Data Center’s Northlake facility.
Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times
Powering the demand
Melissa Washington, ComEd’s senior vice president of customer operations and strategic initiatives, said ComEd improved its reliability by more than 70% since 2012, a figure that is “extremely attractive” to data center companies, which can’t withstand long lower outages because they need to continually store and manage a high volume of information.
ComEd has two main investment focuses: reducing the frequency of outages and improving power restoration time. It has invested in technology that makes it easier to isolate where power outages are and restore power, Washington said. It’s also replaced and refurbished infrastructure that reduces outage frequency.
But the growth of data centers also means a growing demand for power and infrastructure, costs that could impact a consumer’s utility bill.
ComEd declined to comment on potential price hikes, and said in an emailed statement, “ComEd has an obligation to serve the load requests of our customers, regardless of industry. We remain engaged with policy makers and other stakeholders to monitor load growth and development of renewable energy resources, in accordance with the goals of CEJA.”
Illinois has excess utility capacity — the ability to generate more electricity — that can be distributed to the grid, Smith, of Cushman & Wakefield, said. But if more land acquisitions and commitments for data centers are made in the next 12 to 14 months, that capacity will likely diminish, he said.
Washington said the issue isn’t power constraints: It’s evaluating if more infrastructure is needed in areas where data centers are proposed then building it.
“When you take a look at the grid, there may be upgrades that we need to implement in order to deliver the power,” she said. “The timing in which we’re able to deliver the power depends on how big the ask is, and whether or not there’s already infrastructure in that location. … If you’re asking for something huge, it may take a little longer.”
Sarah Moskowitz, executive director of the nonprofit Citizen’s Utility Board, said the growth of data centers is a piece of a larger issue, which is the growing demand for electricity and what that means for consumers.
“We need to take steps to ensure that electric customers aren’t left unfairly shouldering the costs of [data centers],” Moskowitz said.
CUB, which advocates for utility consumers, is calling on regulators and grid operators to put structures in place that separate speculative projects from those that have been confirmed so utility customers don’t subsidize unnecessary distribution and system build-outs.
“The concern arises when you have the electric utilities and the grid operators setting policies assuming that they’re all going to get built and those policies can come back in and end up costing consumers of electricity unnecessarily,” Moskowitz said. “There’s a big difference between a data center that is knocking on the door of the utility and says it’s interested in being there versus a data center that has entered into a contract and put down money. One of those is reasonable to include in a load forecast and another isn’t.”
Future for data centers
Several data center projects announced or underway have the potential to bring new life to old sites in Chicago and its suburbs. CME Group and Google announced in July that they would build a colocation data center in Aurora, about 35 miles from CME’s downtown Chicago headquarters.
In Hoffman Estates, Compass Datacenters kicked off work to transform the former Sears headquarters into one of the largest data center campuses in the state. Demolition is underway on the 197-acre site, and it’s expected to take about 18 months.
“Everything is going according to plan,” a Compass spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “Demolition efforts continue with the recycling and reuse of asphalt and concrete.”
Prime Group and Capri Investment Group — the developers overhauling the James R. Thompson Center — purchased the former Cboe Global Markets headquarters, 400 S. La Salle St., with plans to turn it into a data center.
The former Cboe Global Markets headquarters at 400 S. La Salle St., which will become a data center.
Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere/Sun-Times
“We are still in the preliminary stages of project concept and design, but there is a fair amount of interest even at this early stage,” Quintin Primo, founder and executive chairman of Capri Investment Group, said in a statement.
Smith said conversion projects like Prime and Capri’s will likely be rare. Data centers are “specialized buildings,” and re-working an existing building can be difficult. But as office space remains in limbo, it’s a way to re-energize those buildings.
ComEd expects data centers to continue their takeoff in Chicago. Data centers make for long partnerships, Washington said, and many are repeat ComEd customers who want to expand.
“I think Illinois has shown that it embraces data centers, and I expect that that’s also a very attractive thing,” Washington said. “The things that they seek — whether it’s competitive rates, reliability, the fiber optics and also great partners — that’s going to stay and remain.”
On a frigid Sunday at a gym in Naperville, a group of teenage girls doing basketball drills practices dribbling.
“Lower, lower,” Aminah Chaudhary shouts over the bouncing balls, showing them how to sink into a squat.
After a water break, most of the girls put on their hoodies, form a line at the center of the court, get down on their knees and begin to pray. Chaudhary joins them.
It’s a sign of a major shift among Muslim girls in the Chicago area. Muslim community leaders say participation in youth sports like basketball is on the rise and that these girls are playing while celebrating their Muslim identity, not hiding it.
In 2021, an Illinois law took effect allowing students to wear hijabs, leggings and long sleeves without having to request a waiver from their school district. Muslim Civic Coalition president Dilara Sayeed, whose group helped draft the law, says it’s given them the chance “to play in uniforms that meet their faith traditions and not have to constantly be seeking approval to do it.”
Around that time, a number of basketball leagues in the suburbs aimed at Muslim girls sprang up.
Chaudhary started iDrive Faith + Athletics in Woodridge in 2021 to teach basetball to young Muslim girls, recruiting players from her mosque.
Before the new law, Chaudhary says, Muslim girls often were scrutinized for the clothing they chose to wear to uphold the traditions of their Islamic faith.
She says that, when she was coaching girls basketball at a suburban Islamic high school a decade ago, the referees occasionally inspected the hijabs some of her players wore.
“I think because it’s something that’s different to people, sometimes they don’t know how to respond to it,” Chaudhary says. “If you do that to a young girl in high school, that can quickly turn them away from ever feeling comfortable enough to even show up.”
Players and parents pray with their coach Aminah Chaudhary during a break in practice.
Chaudhary fell in love with basketball early, watching Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen and Dennis Rodman lead the Bulls to championships in the 1990s. She dreamed about wanting to become the first girl to play alongside her idols in the NBA.
As a teenager, Chaudhary wore the same uniform as her basketball teammates in Lombard.
“The generation where I grew up in … a lot of Muslim girls just went [uncovered] … or they avoided the confrontation of trying to look different,” she says. “I never even saw anyone on other teams that was covered.”
In college, Chaudhary met several Muslim women who were into basketball. Unlike her, some of them didn’t feel comfortable playing with men. So the women started playing together. As Chaudhary got to know them, she learned that many of them had never had a coach.
“I saw just glimpses of how good they could be if they would have been coached,” Chaudhary says. “And, when I would play with some of my friends, I would train them.”
That’s where Chaudhary’s coaching career began. And that’s why she was in the gym in Naperville, pushing players to run sprints and trying to teach them the skills and give them the experience that her college friends missed out on.
Jannat Bhatti and other girls practice their dribbling.
Shamsa Jafri, who was sitting in the bleachers, watching her two daughters train with Chaudhary., says that, wen she was their age, “It wasn’t even heard of in sports to be able to wear clothing that would align with our religion.”
When Nooreen Makda, 14, started playing basketball in a northwest suburban park district league three years ago, she faced awkward questions about her modest clothing choices and the traditions she followed to practice her faith. Teammates asked why she wore leggings and whether she felt hot playing in an undershirt. When she fasted, they said things like, “I commend you because I would totally cheat.”
Junaid Makda, her father, says he heard similar stories from the parents of other young Muslim girls who played basketball in the northwest suburbs.
“Our daughters were being discriminated against,” Makda says. “They were being made fun of because of the clothes that they were wearing. They didn’t feel comfortable in their own skin.”
Some of their girls lost interest in sports altogether, including his oldest daughter. So Makda gathered a few parents and asked, “Why don’t we start a league for our girls in our mosque and give them a safe space where they can continue to play basketball without dealing with the struggles?”
That’s how their league, Muslimah Ballerz, was born in Morton Grove in 2022. That year, more than 70 girls signed up. They practiced on Sundays at the mosque’s gym. Makda and some of the other dads volunteered to coach.
With all three of his daughters playing in the league, Makda often coached one of them playing against another.
“I remember the first weekend of the league, the parking lot was completely full,” he says. “The gym was standing-room only. The amount of hype and energy and excitement that was there was amazing.”
The enthusiasm Makda saw for Muslimah Ballerz has spread, with parents and coaches starting similar leagues through their mosques in other suburbs. The people behind these efforts say these leagues are paving the way for a generation of Muslim girls to play sports, encouraging them to try out for school teams despite the prejudice they might have faced.
Sanaa Makda, Nooreen’s mother, is proud of the surge of interest in sports in her community and the role her family has played in that. Of the girls who started in the Muslimah Ballerz league, she says at least a dozen now play on their high school teams, a marked difference from when she was young.
She says she attended a private Islamic school, where she was allowed to cover up for gym, but that, when she moved to a public high school, none of the girls dressed like her.
“I asked the coach, ‘Can I wear sweatpants?’ ” she says. “I didn’t know about compression leggings or anything at that time. He said, ‘No, you have to wear shorts.’ I didn’t even ask twice.”
Sanaa Makda says she tears up sometimes when she sees how confidently Nooreen carries herself as a freshman starting for her high school’s junior varsity team “because you don’t see girls go that far.”
Nooreen says that some of her high school teammates at first asked about her clothing or religious practices but that, after playing with Muslimah Ballerz, she felt confident explaining that she chooses to cover up to practice modesty and that they supported her.
She looks up to Bilqis Abdul-Qaadir — a Muslim American basketball player who couldn’t pursue her dream of playing professionally because of a rule prohibiting hijab on the court. Abdul-Qaadir challenged the rule, and the International Basketball Federation, ultimately overturned it.
“She really promotes playing with hijab,” Nooreen says of Abdul-Qaadir. “I’m not ready for that yet, but it’s something I aspire to be able to do.”
Aisha Shahid, Aisha Siddiqui, Rania Shahid and Rawd Aboubakr do some warm up running as basketball practice begins at Woodridge Athletic Recreation Center. Their training center, iDrive Faith + Athletics, is part of a surge in participation in youth sports by Muslim girls in the Chicago area.Marc C. Monaghan for WBEZ
Aisha Shahid (from left), Aisha Siddiqui, Rania Shahid and Rawd Aboubakr warm up for basketball practice at Woodridge Athletic Recreation Center as part of the iDrive Faith + Athletics program.
In the early hours of New Year’s Day 2021 in Canton, Georgia, Morgan Metzer was awakened to a terrifying sight. A man wearing a mask and all black clothing was standing at her bedroom doorway. The man ran and jumped on top of her. “That’s when he started pistol-whipping me,” Morgan said. The assailant used zip ties to constrain her wrists before strangling her nearly unconscious twice.
An evidence photo of Morgan Metzer following the attack at her home. She was found with her wrists zip-tied, and bruising on her face.
Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office
“‘You’re gonna regret this, you’ve done really wrong now,'” Morgan recalled the man told her in a deep and gravelly voice that he seemed to be trying to disguise. She said it sounded like Batman. Morgan Metzer’s harrowing attack is the focus of this week’s all-new “48 Hours” reported by contributor Nikki Battiste. “The ‘Batman’ Intruder” airs Saturday, Dec. 14 at 10/9c on CBS and Paramount+.
Afterward, the attacker placed a pillowcase over her head and picked Morgan up and left her on the back porch, which was connected to the bedroom. He told her not to move until she heard two car honks or he’d kill her. Then all went quiet except the sound of the stream near her secluded home.
Forty minutes passed, but then terror struck again. Morgan heard someone walking towards her and up the porch steps. Initially terrified her attacker had returned, she was surprised to hear a familiar voice.
“‘Oh honey, what happened?'” Morgan remembered her ex-husband, Rod Metzer, said when he found her.
Rod called 911 and law enforcement showed up to the scene. Rod’s rescue of his ex-wife appeared to be an act of heroism.
Morgan and Rod Metzer
Morgan Metzer
Rod said he had been looking out for Morgan despite their divorce, which came after a nearly 20-year history together. They started dating when Morgan was 14 and Rod was 17 before marrying in their early 20s. The couple had twins, who were spending a few days with Morgan’s sister in Florida when the attack occurred.
Morgan said her decision to file for divorce came after years of what she described as mental and physical abuse from Rod. Rod moved out of Morgan’s home into his own apartment and Morgan was ready to move on. Their divorce was finalized just weeks before the attack.
However, this new start for Morgan was cut short. Earlier in the week, Morgan said Rod called her with shocking news that he had pancreatic cancer.
“And so I rushed to go see him,” Morgan told Battiste. “He showed me doctors’ notes and whatnot.” She allowed Rod to stay at her home to help him cope with his diagnosis. “I needed to be supportive still because it’s the father of my children.”
During this time, Morgan said Rod was constantly trying to get back together with her. But she had no interest and on the morning of New Year’s Eve, she told Rod he needed to share his health news with his parents.
“He said, ‘No, absolutely not. I’m not telling anybody.’ And that’s when I was like, ‘OK, get out,'” Morgan recalled. Morgan said Rod left, but still spent the day texting her about reconciling. Fed up, Morgan lied and told Rod she was going to sleep at her parents’ home that New Year’s Eve night.
How Rod knew Morgan was at her home, along with the coincidental timing of his arrival after her attack, raised questions with investigators who spoke to Rod at the scene. Rod said he was planning on spending the night at his apartment. However, he told them he heard someone knock on his ground floor apartment window and say Morgan’s name. After Rod tried calling Morgan with no answer, he decided to drive to her house to check on her. He told investigators that going to her house instead of her parents’ was just out of habit.
After interviewing both Morgan and Rod at the scene, investigators became suspicious of Rod’s story. They ordered search warrants on Rod’s apartment, car and electronic devices, uncovering his internet search history. The searches included, “How to get sympathy from your ex” and “How to change the sound of your voice.” One search also stood out to investigators: “cancer letter from hospital.”
Investigators also discovered a fake email account created by Rod, posing as a doctor, to send the cancer diagnosis letter that he showed Morgan. But there was even more.
“He had created a bill for a doctor’s office to show that he was being treated for pancreatic cancer,” said Rachel Ashe, the deputy chief assistant district attorney for Cherokee County. She said Rod “did all of this in order to convince Morgan that he had pancreatic cancer.” He never did.
Rod Metzer eventually pleaded guilty to 14 counts relating to the attack on Morgan Metzer. He was sentenced to 70 years – 25 in prison followed by an additional 45 years of probation.
A bystander was wounded when a shootout erupted between a burglar and a concealed carry holder whose car was being broken into Thursday night in Chatham on the South Side.
Around 10:20 p.m., someone was trying to break into a vehicle in the 8700 block of South Dauphin Avenue when a 40-year-old concealed carry holder went outside to confront him, Chicago police said.
The attempted burglar fled but their accomplice left a nearby vehicle and shot at the CCL holder, who returned fire, police said.
Meanwhile, a 23-year-old man who was nearby was shot in the thigh and was taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center where he was in serious condition, officials said.
After a frantic search for votes that came up short, Mayor Brandon Johnson has called off Friday’s vote on his 2025 budget — a vote he was destined to lose.
Even some members of the mayor’s Progressive Caucus, including Ald. Rossana Rodriguez Sanchez (33rd), Jessie Fuentes (26th) and Ald. Nancy Clay (46th) were refusing to play along by passing a budget balanced with the help of a $68.5 million property tax and a slew of other taxes,
They may well have been afraid to go down with the ship. Johnson already was short of votes, and no one wanted to be on the losing side.
Johnson will now spend the next few days making additional changes in hopes of attracting the 26 votes needed to pass the budget at a meeting next Wednesday.
What’s most surprising about Friday’s embarrassing cancellation is that the vote had been scheduled at all. A central rule of politics is to never call for a vote you’re destined to lose. Johnson never apparently had the votes, but set Friday’s meeting in hopes of persuading those on the fence. He never had more than 19 rock-solid votes.
Fearful of a reduction in the city’s bond rating that could cost the city’s ability to borrow money, Johnson has steadfastly refused to reduce a big chunk of his budget: a $272 million pension advance payment, above the amount actuarially required.
But Wall Street is watching, and the marathon budget stalemate will likely cause that drop anyway. Shrinking the pension advance therefore becomes more likely.
He also will need to consider deeper cuts in City Hall bureaucracy, even the layoffs he previously has ruled out.
Johnson has struggled to get the 26 votes he needed to pass the budget and revenue package, even after rewriting both several times.
The mayor originally proposed a $300 million property tax increase that broke his campaign promise to hold the line on property taxes, then agreed to cut it in half after the City Council took the extraordinary step of rejecting it by a unanimous vote.
Only then, did he land on the $68.5 million increase, which matches the increase in the cost of living over the last two years.
He proposed a 34% increase in the liquor tax, then agreed to scrap altogether after an outcry from the hospitality industry and border ward alderpersons whose bars, restaurants and liquor stores could lose business to surrounding suburbs.
The mayor agreed to restore 162 Chicago Police jobs tied to implementing a consent decree outlining the terms of federal court oversight over the Chicago Police Department after Il. Attorney General Kwame Raoul threatened to ask a judge to hold the city in contempt.
And he cut $90 million worth of spending from federal pandemic relief funds, in part, by scrapping a second round of guaranteed basic income.
Johnson steadfastly refused to avoid layoffs of furlough days that would impact the unions that put him in office. Nor would he risk eliminating hundreds of police vacancies.
He also resisted calls to roll back city spending to pre-pandemic levels and cancel $50 million in new investment in youth jobs and his unified “One Shelter” program.
Instead, he cobbled together $256 million in taxes, fines and fees that beleaguered Chicago taxpayers will feel at multiple levels.
The $68.5 million property tax increase is expected to cost the owner of a home valued at $500,000 roughly $111.
The $1.878 billion property tax levy that includes the increase was lumped into the overall tax package for fear that Johnson would lose a vote on a stand-alone $68.5 million property tax increase.
In the past, the property tax levy has been a separate vote. Failing to do so could raise legal questions. And it may not comply with a state law that requires the city to notify property owners of the levy for the coming year at least 20 days before Dec. 31.
The budget also includes increased taxes on everything from cloud computing, streaming services and parking to downtown congestion and take-out bags.
The increase in the personal property lease tax — from 9% to 11% — on cars, business equipment, software and cloud computing is expected to generate $128 million. But, Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce President Jack Lavin has condemned the increase as a “job-crushing head tax.”
He has accused Johnson of relying on a “nickel-and-dime approach” that will be felt by “every Chicago resident” already squeezed by rising cost of groceries, housing, health care and child care.
Bears rookie quarterback Caleb Williams is about to begin his NFC North rematches, and first up is another shot at the Vikings and renounced defensive coordinator Brian Flores. Williams managed his arsenal of blitzes well in the first meeting three weeks ago and completed 32 of 47 passes for 340 yards, two touchdowns and a 103.1 passer rating.
Flores is arguably the best defensive coordinator in the NFL and should be one of the top head-coaching candidates in the upcoming hiring cycle. He’s a former Boston College teammate of general manager Ryan Poles, and the Bears very likely will interview him. They interviewed him in 2022, before Poles came aboard, but he was not one of their three finalists. The job eventually went to Colts defensive coordinator Matt Eberflus, who was fired last month with a 14-32 record in three seasons.
Flores, 43, has had the Vikings in the top half of the league in scoring defense both of his seasons under coach Kevin O’Connell. They are sixth this season, allowing 18.5 points game.
In addition to his success in Minnesota, Flores spent 2022 with the Steelers and was head coach of the Dolphins from 2019 through ’21. After a 5-11 start, the Dolphins went 19-14 under Flores in his next two seasons.
DEAR ABBY: My husband is miserable. Five years ago, he was fired from his job of more than 25 years, and the small issues he had with depression, alcohol and smoking have multiplied exponentially. He sleeps until 10 or 11 a.m., showers only two or three times a week, rarely eats and has a drink in his hand by 4 or 5 p.m. every day. He now suffers from COPD but has no plans to quit smoking. He would never consider therapy.
My husband has lost so much weight and muscle mass, he’s barely recognizable. He seems to miss sex, but even if he made an advance, his lack of physicality would make it miserable. Anyway, I’m no longer interested. He was never an affectionate person, but now he has poor personal hygiene, his breath smells of liquor and his hands smell of tobacco.
Beyond the quiet misery of home, it’s tough for him to go out. He has a hard time with stairs, walking very far and even ordering from a restaurant. I feel he is trying to hasten his own death. I honestly feel there is nothing I can do that I haven’t already done. I’m fine, but numb. Do you have any advice for me? — HOPELESS IN KANSAS
DEAR HOPELESS: Your husband seems to feel he has nothing to live for. You mentioned that he seems to miss sex but is now in such bad shape that you are no longer interested. Have you told him the reason you are no longer interested is that he’s no longer the person you fell in love with, and a giant step in the right direction would be for him to consult his doctor about his depression? If the answer is no, consider offering him that “carrot.” If he’s willing to try to get back on track, you might feel differently.
There are nicotine substitutes for the truly addicted, which help users inhale fewer damaging byproducts. People with COPD can get some exercise with the help of supplemental oxygen, a subject that should also be discussed with his doctor. That said, the bottom line is your husband has to WANT to help himself. If he doesn’t, it may be time for you to locate the nearest Al-Anon group (al-anon.org/info) and attend some meetings, which will help you to recognize that his self-destructive behavior is not your responsibility and only he can help himself.
DEAR ABBY: A longtime friend is now a widow and doesn’t have time to connect anymore. I have invited her for coffee and for dinner and sent notes of support. She waits days, even weeks to respond and has other social things to do. I understand loss and grief, but this feels like “NO. Go away,” with a stiff arm. I guess it’s time to go away. Right? — UNEXPECTED IN INDIANA
DEAR UNEXPECTED: You may have been overwhelming this woman in your attempt to comfort her. Depending on how long ago she lost her husband, it may be better for you to step back and allow her to regain her balance. The more you push her, the further she will distance herself.
Dear Abby is written by Abigail Van Buren, also known as Jeanne Phillips, and was founded by her mother, Pauline Phillips. Contact Dear Abby at www.DearAbby.com or P.O. Box 69440, Los Angeles, CA 90069.
For everything you need to know about wedding planning, order “How to Have a Lovely Wedding.” Send your name and mailing address, plus check or money order for $8 (U.S. funds), to: Dear Abby, Wedding Booklet, P.O. Box 447, Mount Morris, IL 61054-0447. (Shipping and handling are included in the price.)
Bolivia’s former anti-narcotics chief was extradited to the United States on Thursday to face federal drug trafficking charges in a New York court.
Authorities said that Maximiliano Dávila, who served as anti-narcotics chief in the final months of Evo Morales ‘ 2006-2019 administration, helped facilitate planeload shipments of cocaine to the United States. According to the U.S. Justice Department, Dávila exploited his position “to secure access to Bolivian airfields for cocaine transport and to arrange for members of Bolivian law enforcement under his command—including individuals armed with machineguns—to provide protection for those drug loads.”
Dávila — who authorities say is also known as “Macho” — boarded a private jet sent from the U.S. specifically for his extradition.
On Feb. 2, 2022, the U.S. State Department announced a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to Dávila’s conviction. He is charged with conspiring to provide top level protection for cocaine shipments to the U.S. as well as related weapons charges involving the possession of machine guns. According to the State Department, Dávila “allegedly used his position to safeguard aircraft used to transport cocaine to third countries, for subsequent distribution in the United States.”
Police escort former police colonel Maximiliano Davila, center, as he was presented to the media at a Bolivian Police Command office in La Paz, Bolivia, Jan. 23, 2022.
Juan Karita / AP
In late November, Bolivia’s Supreme Court approved Dávila’s immediate extradition to the U.S. He has denied any wrongdoing.
Morales expelled the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration from Bolivia in 2008, accusing it of plotting to overthrow his government at a time rising commodity prices and a wave of leftist politics throughout South America were challenging longstanding U.S. influence in the region. Meanwhile, the two countries haven’t exchanged ambassadors in more than 15 years.
The drug investigation that led to the charges against Dávila was started by the DEA’s Special Operations Division in 2017, according to court records.
As part of the probe, criminal informants working under the DEA’s direction recorded conversations in which a co-defendant of Dávila bragged of having access to an MD-11 military cargo plane to transport 60 tons of cocaine into the U.S.
The co-defendant, Percy Vasquez-Drew, said that “he and other traffickers had been able to operate with impunity in Bolivia because the DEA and the CIA had been kicked out” and remaining anti-drug officials in the country were easily bribed, prosecutors said in court filings.
Vasquez-Drew was later arrested in Panama on a U.S. warrant. He pleaded guilty in 2020 to a single count of conspiring to smuggle more than 450 kilograms of narcotics into the U.S. Earlier this year, his sentence was reduced to 100 months in federal prison.
Bolivia is the world’s third-largest producer of cocaine.
It’s unclear how close Dávila is to Morales, a former coca grower. But the two appeared together in an October 2019 photograph celebrating Morales’ birthday standing next to several cakes decorated with coca leaves. Also in the picture was the former head of Bolivia’s national police.
While the DEA has arrested numerous Bolivian drug traffickers over the years, including one of Dávila’s predecessors, Morales himself has never been accused of drug trafficking. He has vociferously denounced the U.S.-led drug war in Latin America and defended traditional uses of coca – the raw ingredient of cocaine.
For almost three years, Raed Mansour has been the city’s top official investigating two major health threats to Chicagoans: air pollution and extreme heat.
Moving ahead on a plan to install around 140 air pollution sensors across the city — at a cost of almost $1 million — Mansour invited more than a dozen community members from some of the most-polluted neighborhoods to see the devices and help assemble them at a North Side city warehouse in early November.
But on Nov. 7, just one day before the unpacking of the monitors, the group was told Mansour is no longer working for the city, a significant setback for the first large city-run, community-focused pollution monitoring effort. Mansour was forced out in a political move that is exposing a division over Mayor Brandon Johnson’s public health departments’ priorities, particularly related to the environment.
The air program was expected to get up and running early next year, a goal that is now indefinitely delayed, though Johnson’s top health official says it will get done. The sensors detect fine particle pollution and nitrogen dioxide, which is a common pollutant from car, trucks and factories.
Mansour’s ouster is the type of behind-the-scenes politics that would’ve been largely overlooked had it not been flagged by community advocates who knew how integral he was to an air-quality assessment that they deemed important. The devices are a step toward understanding how air pollution can significantly fluctuate in low-income communities of color.
“Those monitors could be utilized in our community rather than collecting dust,” says Cheryl Johnson, executive director of People for Community Recovery in Riverdale on the Far Southeast Side. “When the city makes the commitment to provide resources, make it happen. In our community, we’ve been waiting over 30 years for air monitors.”
Johnson said her team had an “excellent” relationship with Mansour and is sad to see him go.
Low-income communities in Chicago and across the United States have been hit the hardest by bad air quality, leading to respiratory illnesses and lower life expectancies than more affluent areas. While city health officials dismiss the concerns about the delay of the program, advocates say the monitors are critical to informing elected officials on a life-threatening problem.
Earlier this year, Raed Mansour of the Chicago Department of Public Health attended a White House summit on extreme heat. His recent ouster was a shock to advocates who worked with him on heat and air pollution research.
Chicago Department of Public Health
Trust is broken
For Alfredo Romo, executive director of McKinley Park group Neighbors for Environmental Justice, advocacy is seriously personal. A survivor of a rare cancer, his Southwest Side community is inundated with pollution from large diesel-fueled trucks that travel to and from dozens of warehouses and intermodal facilities. Air quality is bad, he says.
Romo has been hesitant to trust city officials, though he agreed to partner on the air project, he says.
That trust in the city was broken after Mansour was pushed out.
“We are community partners in this project,” Romo says. “I’m troubled.”
Mansour resigned, though emails and interviews reveal that the city’s public health department officials forced him out after a disagreement with Dr. Horace Smith, a political appointee, during a public health board meeting in October.
The friction began with a presentation to an advisory panel, the Chicago Board of Health, Oct. 30. Mansour presented an already-funded plan that involves participation from at least half a dozen community organizations representing Little Village, McKinley Park, multiple Southeast Side neighborhoods and other areas affected by air pollution.
Smith, a pediatrics specialist, Bronzeville pastor and longtime board member who Johnson nominated to lead the health panel, questioned Mansour on the program, asking why it was necessary and suggested money could be better spent elsewhere.
When Mansour said he disagreed with Smith, the staffer was admonished by Fikirkte Wagaw, first deputy commissioner of the health department.
From there, records show another high-ranking official, Deputy Commissioner Maribel Chavez-Torres, demanded a meeting with Mansour over “inappropriate” comments at the meeting. Assistant commissioner Dave Graham was copied on the message.
Chicago Public Health Commissioner Olusimbo Ige sent an email to the board apologizing for “harm that the interaction may have caused.” Ige also called Smith to apologize, according to Smith.
“It wasn’t that big of a deal,” Smith said in an interview, relaying what he told Ige. “She said, ‘He’s going to probably resign,’” Smith said, referring to Ige and Mansour.
Smith said his comments at the board meeting weren’t meant to diminish the need for air monitoring. He said he was expressing an opinion that he feels there are other important health issues, including access to fresh food and medical care, that the city could fund.
“My point is if you ask Horace Smith how should money be utilized, air monitoring would not be my first priority,” he said.
Smith, 75, is the longest-serving member of the health board and the only person Johnson has nominated to continue. Near the end of Johnson’s campaign for mayor in early 2023, he appeared with Smith at his church, Apostolic Faith Church, 3823 S. Indiana Ave.
As a board member and potentially the panel’s next president, Smith gives advice to both the mayor and Ige on public health matters.
As a candidate for mayor, Brandon Johnson attended a service by Horace Smith, pastor at Apostolic Faith Church in Bronzeville in April 2023. Johnson has nominated Smith to lead the Chicago Board of Health.
Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times file
“For me, it sounded like a healthy exchange,” said board member Carmen Vergara, who was present for the exchange between Smith and Mansour. “We need to hear from the staff, and these are the kind of conversations we should be having.”
Mansour forced out
Emails, obtained through open records requests from Anthony Moser with Neighbors for Environmental Justice and shared with the Sun-Times, show Mansour was under pressure from his public health bosses before he resigned.
Forcing Mansour out, in turn, halted the air monitoring, Moser says.
“It’s just a real head-scratcher,” Moser says. “I don’t understand why they were so adamant about hitting the brakes” on the air sensors.
Ige, who was appointed by Johnson last year for her expertise on mental health, says the air monitoring will go forward, though she cannot say when.
“We are committed to a participatory process, but we have to map all the stakeholders that need to be a part of this process. We want to make sure that people understand what these data will be used for,” Ige says. “We’re not worried about the work continuing because one staff person transitioned.”
In an interview, Ige also referred to the monitoring as a “pilot” program with a short shelf life.
“We have one or two years to pilot this and say ‘well, is this a good way to get communities more involved in environmental issues?’”
The air monitors network is actually written into a settlement agreement between the city and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development over a civil rights complaint that accused Chicago of environmental racism.
Dr. Olusimbo Ige, commissioner of the Chicago Department of Public Health, says a plan to install more than 100 air pollution monitors across the city will continue even after the departure of the person leading the effort.
The air monitoring project has been underway for two years with the help of at least half a dozen community organizations.
The argument for air monitoring is to identify areas of the city that are overburdened with pollution and then to find solutions to help residents in those areas, often low-income communities of color on the West Side and across the South Side.
The air sensors will be the first across the city since Microsoft ended its 100-monitor network in March 2023. The tech giant gave no reason for ending what was deemed a pilot project.
Having learned from Microsoft’s experience, Mansour worked with community groups to get their input. For instance, the Microsoft network was limited in parts of the city covered and did not provide monitoring on the heavily industrial Southeast Side.
It was a unique collaboration, according to those involved.
Air monitors are necessary to address serious air quality issues in Chicago, says Dr. Howard Ehrman, a former assistant health commissioner under Mayor Harold Washington.
“That’s part of fixing the problem,” he says.
Ehrman, who watched a livestream of the October meeting during Mansour’s presentation, said he witnessed a “dialogue between the two that was strong but nothing inappropriate.”
He says he’s glad that Ige is committing to continuing the program and he urges community members to hold her accountable.
Air, heat and trees
Mansour’s role at the city extended beyond air quality.
He was the health department’s lead on studying extreme heat, which scientists have attributed to climate change, and he was instrumental in planting thousands of trees. Mansour worked with multiple city departments to plant more trees, especially in areas that had been barren for decades.
Mansour declined to comment for the article but provided a statement saying that he was proud of the work on air and other issues with community participation.
“This work, like the heat and tree planting initiatives I was asked to co-lead on behalf of the city, was a collaborative community-driven effort focused on addressing environmental disparities in our most vulnerable communities,” the statement said. “I was humbled and privileged to work on these projects that the community and the city entrusted me with and turn the voice of community concerns into action together.”
Daniel Horton, an associate professor at Northwestern University’s Climate Change Research Group, says Mansour’s work on air quality put Chicago in a position to be a leader among U.S. cities in tracking pollution in poor areas.
“The loss is a huge blow to better understanding and protecting the public health of the people of Chicago,” says Horton, who also worked closely with Mansour on understanding how intense summer heat affects parts of the city differently.
Johnson has been advocating for cleaner air for decades. She inherited her job as an environmental advocate from her mother Hazel Johnson, a legendary activist.
The air sensors, she says, are absolutely necessary toward fixing the environmental racism in Chicago’s Black and Brown neighborhoods.
“The goal was to make sure industry is in compliance,” Johnson says. “Anytime you interrupt my quality of life because I can’t breathe — that’s a problem.”
Cheryl Johnson, who leads People for Community Recovery, says the city must keep its promise to install air monitors in Chicago’s most polluted neighborhoods.
