Illinois news

• Honoring the vanishing musical culture of Wicker Park

  13-12-2018 21:45 via chicagoreader.com
  In some ways, Dorian’s is just one more boutiquey bar and restaurant. But its record store and music bookings connect it to Wicker Park’s 1990s arts community. Last month, Block Club Chicago broke the news that Texas cooler company Yeti would open its second brick-and-mortar store in the 4,796-square-foot Wicker Park space occupied till February 2017 by long-running music venue the Double Door.…
  
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• Overlooked mayoral hopefuls share bold visions for Chicago

  13-12-2018 21:30 via chicagoreader.com
  They may have little name recognition and no campaign funds, but the regular people running for mayor are committed to making the city thrive. With 21 candidates vying to be the next mayor of Chicago, hearings on challenges to their nominating petition signatures and other paperwork began this week at the Chicago Board of Elections.…
  
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• Busted! Cop Caught On Video Sucker Punching Unarmed Black Man Lied On Police Report

  13-12-2018 21:17 via chicagodefender.com
  A video showing an apparently unprovoked Florida cop sucker-punching an unarmed Black man earlier this month was more than just shocking; it also served as proof that the on-duty officer lied about the violent confrontation.
  The fictional version told by Officer Adriel Dominguez began to unravel when a fellow officer breached the blue wall of silence by giving the Miami Herald footage of the encounter on Dec. 3. Dominguez was relieved of patrol duties while the police department was conduct
  
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• Print issue of December 13, 2018

  13-12-2018 20:15 via chicagoreader.com
  Volume 48, Number 11
  
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• Closing the Education Gap With More Black Male Teachers

  13-12-2018 18:24 via chicagodefender.com
   
  Two recent programs in Chicago are aimed at increasing the number of Black male teachers in the classroom.
  Men of Color in Education (MOCE) is an initiative from Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and City Colleges of Chicago to support men of color in pursuing careers in the education field.
  “Those of us who have walked through the door of opportunity have the responsibility to not slam it behind us, but to reach back, grab someone else’s hand, and pull them through too,” Emanu
  
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• Melania ‘I Really Don’t Care’ Trump Claims ‘Opportunists’ Are Ruining Her Family’s Good Name

  13-12-2018 16:02 via chicagodefender.com
  Every time Melania Trump opens her mouth, she rambles hypocrisies and delusions that she either truly believes or that prove she is willfully ignorant. Now she is blaming her family’s trash reputation on “opportunists.”
  See Also: President Donald Trump’s Voter Fraud Claims Could Lead To More Voter Suppression
  In an interview with Trump’s BFF, Sean Hannity, he asked her the hardest thing about being the First Lady of the United States. She answered, “I wou
  
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• Obama Honored With Human Rights Award While Trump Is Dismantling Human Rights

  13-12-2018 15:21 via chicagodefender.com
  Barack Obama is being honored for his stellar record on human rights, which is a sharp contrast to our current President who has helped to tear the country apart with his anti-Black, anti-labor and anti-immigrant policies.
  See Also: The Disturbing, Growing Trend of Police Fatally Shooting Suspects In The Back Without Consequence
  On Wednesday, Obama was honored with the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Ripple of Hope Award in New York. The award celebrates “leaders of the international b
  
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• Minority Business Development Agency Awards Nearly $2 Million to Historically Black Colleges and Universities

  13-12-2018 14:41 via chicagodefender.com
  Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA), announced grant awards of nearly $2 million to four Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) — including $499,497 for Clark Atlanta University to develop a STEM entrepreneurship curriculum that increases student interest in the innovation economy at three Atlanta University Center Consortium campuses.
  In June this year, MBDA invited HBCUs to propose projects that will
  
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• This year’s Animation Show of Shows amuses more than astonishes

  13-12-2018 13:00 via chicagoreader.com
  The 15 international selections use a variety of forms, from pencil to clay animation.The selections in this year's Animation Show of Shows (curated, as always, by Ron Diamond) tend to be more amusing than inspired; my favorite works in the program provided me with momentary delight rather than lasting astonishment. The most representative piece may be Business Meeting, a pencil-drawn short from Brazil that delivers an absurdist send-up of corporate conferences.…
  
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• The Winter Wolf is so delightful, with its infinite capacity for wonder

  13-12-2018 13:00 via chicagoreader.com
  Otherworld Theatre presents a cozy, nourishing holiday story.With his original 70-minute Christmas "fairytale play," Joseph Zettelmaier takes a stab at creating a new family-friendly holiday classic, and director Lauren Nicole Fields makes a concerted effort to up the Hallmark coziness of the surroundings. Audience members can sit on big, comfy sofas, ensconced amid a half dozen tastefully decorated artificial Christmas trees, and listen to Grandfather tell young Cora the legend of the Winter Wo
  
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• In Stomp, power comes not from being the loudest but from sharing what you have

  13-12-2018 13:00 via chicagoreader.com
  And just about anything can be an instrument—even the kitchen sink.To be mortal is to sense that time passes and is finite. To make rhythm is to know that time subdivides infinitely—the more you make, the more you have.…
  
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• Hellcab's appeal remains just as mystifying now as it was in 1992

  13-12-2018 13:00 via chicagoreader.com
  Despite the update to a female cabdriver, the script's fundamental flaws remain unaddressed.The reason for the popularity of Hellcab, Will Kern's evening-length one-act set in a Chicago taxicab right before Christmas, has long eluded me. Famous Door's original 1992 production, initially slated for 12 performances, ran for ten years, a nearly unheard-of feat for an off-Loop show. In the middle of that streak, Chicago's New Crime Productions turned it into a movie, featuring Gillian Anderson, John
  
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• Sickle Cell Treatment Act of 2018 Passed in Congress, Now Awaits President’s Signature

  13-12-2018 12:38 via chicagodefender.com
  On December 10, 2018, S.2465 – The Sickle Cell Disease and Other Heritable Blood Disorders Research, Surveillance, Prevention, and Treatment Act of 2018  – was passed by the Congress and now moves forward for the President to sign into law.
  The bill represents a commitment by the government to continue much-needed research geared towards increasing the understanding of prevalence, distribution, outcomes, and therapies associated with sickle cell disease (SCD). It also reau
  
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• Bennett College Faces the Loss of its Accreditation

  13-12-2018 12:02 via chicagodefender.com
  Bennett College has been on probation for the past two years. It won’t get a third.
  The private women’s college on East Washington Street faces the loss of its accreditation after years of financial and enrollment struggles and an announcement Tuesday by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges.
  Bennett President Phyllis Worthy Dawkins said Tuesday that the college has appealed the decision by its accrediting agency. She plans to appear at a hearing Feb
  
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• Gwinnett School Board Gets Its First Member Of Color

  13-12-2018 12:00 via chicagodefender.com
  The Gwinnett County school district is the state’s largest school system. It is also one of the most diverse — 76 percent of Gwinnett’s 176,000 students are people of color. However, voters had never elected a person of color to the school board until Tuesday.
  Everton Blair, a 26-year-old African-American  who works in the nonprofit sector, won an open seat in District 4. Blair graduated from Gwinnett’s Shiloh High School, which is also in District 4. He went to
  
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• With Container, Ren Schofield continues to walk the line between techno and harsh noise

  13-12-2018 11:00 via chicagoreader.com
  Musician Ren Schofield has been making deranged sounds for years in projects such as noise-rock outfit Gang Wizard and challenging electronic collective Form a Log. With his solo project, Container, the Providence musician is able to fuse all of his past artistic identities into one.…
  
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• Soraya Lutangu creates otherworldly dance music with global inspirations

  13-12-2018 11:00 via chicagoreader.com
  Swiss-Congolese producer Soraya Lutangu, who records and performs as Bonaventure, makes music that sounds like a late-night Internet-surfing session fueled by sugar and adrenaline. “I really don’t have any agenda or strategy when it comes to composing music.…
  
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• Shemekia Copeland takes on a wealth of social issues on the hard-driving America’s Child

  13-12-2018 11:00 via chicagoreader.com
  When 19-year-old Shemekia Copeland exploded onto the blues scene in 1998 with Turn the Heat Up (Alligator), the reaction was immediate: adjectives like "sizzling," "storming," and "incendiary" began following her around like starstruck groupies; some reviewers even dragged relics like the dreaded "red-hot blues mama" out of storage to describe her. Overheated as some of the encomiums may have been, most captured who she was as an artist pretty well, but some of them missed the mark: Within the i
  
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• Polymath Tatsu Aoki celebrates his kanreki with a night of bass and drums

  13-12-2018 11:00 via chicagoreader.com
  No matter where you’re from, turning 60 feels significant, but in Japan they have a name for it. Kanreki signifies the start of a new cycle of life with your troubles and responsibilities forgotten.…
  
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• Music sounds like it comes easy to Chicago rapper Solo Sam on Itis

  13-12-2018 11:00 via chicagoreader.com
  Solo Sam started his rap career while playing NCAA Division 1 football for Valparaiso University, and the arts have long been in his DNA. His father, Ghanaian painter Samuel Akainyah, moved to Chicago in 1975 to attend the School of the Art Institute, and Solo Sam followed in his footsteps and became a multidisciplinary artist.…
  
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• L.A. VanGogh proves he's one of the best rapper-singers in town on Everything is Subjective: Episode 2

  13-12-2018 11:00 via chicagoreader.com
  On “Goldmember’s Alchemy” Chicago rapper-singer L.A. VanGogh extols the value of labor, with lines arguing that the only way to attain riches yourself is to put in the work. And with his new Everything is Subjective: Episode 2 (Private Stock), he makes sure to show you how.…
  
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• Kurt Vile gets freaky again on Bottle It In

  13-12-2018 11:00 via chicagoreader.com
  I was certain that Philadelphia musician Kurt Vile had shed all his weirdness as he grew older and his public profile lept from underground phenom to indie success. On his breakthrough third album, 2009’s Childish Prodigy, Vile was a ramblin’ psychedelic storyteller, playing freaky fingerstyle folk through lush, hazy soundscapes.…
  
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• Josefina's pop strum has come a long way but sounds right at home

  13-12-2018 11:00 via chicagoreader.com
  Josefina Asconapé was born in Buenos Aires and began her career performing jazz standards and chansons in Paris. Now based in Chicago, her current style fits neatly into the local indie-pop scene, with touches of country and folk thrown into the mix.…
  
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• Get out your holiday angst with Macabre at the 21st Holiday of Horror

  13-12-2018 11:00 via chicagoreader.com
  As saccharine as holiday-themed foofoo can get, there’s always a dark current beneath the tinsel—consider the tradition of Christmas ghost stories, for example. Chicago murder metal institution Macabre are at the core of a distinctly local custom that reliably provides an opportunity to harmlessly vent aggressions in the mosh pit: Holiday of Horror.…
  
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• Celebrated percussion duo reconvenes for their 29th annual winter solstice sunrise concerts

  13-12-2018 11:00 via chicagoreader.com
  Hamid Drake and Michael Zerang played their first sunrise percussion concert in 1990. Timed to coincide with the winter solstice, the performance was an open invite, non-preachy spiritual gesture to welcome all their friends who felt out of place attending more conventional holiday-oriented festivities.…
  
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• Celebrated percussion duo reconvenes for their 28th annual winter solstice sunrise concerts

  13-12-2018 11:00 via chicagoreader.com
  Hamid Drake and Michael Zerang played their first sunrise percussion concert in 1990. Timed to coincide with the winter solstice, the performance was an open invite, non-preachy spiritual gesture to welcome all their friends who felt out of place attending more conventional holiday-oriented festivities.…
  
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• Inside SAIC’s Bio Art Lab, where art is life—literally

  13-12-2018 00:00 via chicagoreader.com
  In a basement below Michigan Avenue, poetry turns into viruses and yeast into music. David Hale doesn't know whether his poem will kill the culture.…
  
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