Illinois news

• Exclusive: Lil Rel Howery On Why ‘We Grown Now’ Is A Chicago Love Letter

  11-05-2024 15:30 via chicagodefender.com
  
  Lil Rel Howery plays Jason in We Grown Now (Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures).
  In case you haven’t heard, Netflix recently released an animated reboot of “Good Times” that is rife with racist, vile and cringe-inducing depictions of Black life. It makes it seem as if the people responsible for it had no connection to the spirit of Chicago, the original show or its Cabrini-Green setting. For shows in the “Straight Huff” category, it is about as tone-deaf, facile and pu
  
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• Critics Choice Association celebrates LGBTQ+ film and TV artists

  05-06-2024 20:13 via chicagoreader.com
  
  When the Critics Choice Association (CCA) hosts its very first celebration of LGBTQ+ artists in movies and television on June 7, it will mark the culmination of a passion project years in the making for longtime pop culture/arts reporter and Chicagoan Jerry Nunn. A constellation of queer stars will be at the Fairmont Century Plaza […]
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• The Pearl Handle Band debut 40 years after breaking up

  05-06-2024 19:45 via chicagoreader.com
  
  I’d never say the Windy City shouldn’t be famous for blues, soul, and house, because it definitely should. But after nearly 20 years of writing the Secret History of Chicago Music, I’m confident our town can produce top-shelf tunes in practically any genre—gospel, power metal, psychedelic soundscapes, you name it. Most folks don’t associate outlaw […]
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• ‘Her voice could cut through air’

  05-06-2024 18:38 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Dinah Washington was one of the premier vocal stylists in American popular music from the 1940s through the early ’60s. She came of age as the music industry was beginning to loosen its arbitrary assumptions about genre and audience (in 1949, Billboard started calling its “race records” chart its R&B chart), and her wide stylistic […]
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• Chicago Reader Volume 53, No. 18

  05-06-2024 18:35 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Chicago Reader Volume 53, No. 18. June 6, 2024
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• Edifice complex

  05-06-2024 18:12 via chicagoreader.com
  
  In the early 1970s, Imelda Marcos, the wife of Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos, was infatuated with constructing grandiose structures using funds borrowed from foreign governments, despite the country’s relatively poor economic state. The condition, if you will, became known as the edifice complex. Since then, it’s been used to describe a host of public officials—in […]
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• Transforming young lives through theater and journalism

  05-06-2024 18:10 via chicagoreader.com
  
  It’s no secret that in recent years, journalism has been in a state of crisis. According to Northwestern Medill’s State of Local News Project, in 2023 “there were more than 130 confirmed newspaper closings or mergers” and “since 2005, the U.S. has lost nearly 2,900 newspapers.” Disconcerting as that is, I feel a sense of […]
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• Stokely: The Unfinished Revolution gives a complicated activist his due

  05-06-2024 16:53 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Kwame Ture (formerly Stokely Carmichael) has seemingly existed in popular culture mostly as a footnote to other, better-known civil rights figures. In George C. Wolfe’s Rustin and Ava DuVernay’s Selma, Carmichael doesn’t appear at all, despite being one of the first Freedom Riders and the chair of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)—and the man […]
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• We didn’t start the fire

  05-06-2024 16:51 via chicagoreader.com
  
  The Moviegoer is the diary of a local film buff, collecting the best of what Chicago’s independent and underground film scene has to offer. In 1948, the Eastman Kodak Company introduced a 35 mm triacetate safety base film to replace the highly flammable cellulose nitrate base that had dominated film production until then; Kodak ceased […]
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• Yellow Line at the Smoothie Joint

  05-06-2024 16:50 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Reader Bites celebrates dishes, drinks, and atmospheres from the Chicagoland food scene. Have you had a recent food or drink experience that you can’t stop thinking about? Share it with us at [email protected]. After three years of wishing for a smoothie spot in my beloved Wrigleyville, fate finally intervened. I discovered the Smoothie Joint and […]
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• Thai Festival Chicago returns to North Center this weekend

  05-06-2024 16:50 via chicagoreader.com
  
  For three years before the pandemic Dew Suriyawan, owner of Uptown’s great Immm Rice & Beyond, kicked off summer festival season with one of the best food-focused pavement parties of the year. Under various names, it featured contemporary and traditional music and dance performances soundtracking a leisurely crawl among booths staffed by some of the […]
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• Meet Farley “Jackmaster” Funk: 2024 Chicago Defender Men of Excellence Honoree

  05-06-2024 16:30 via chicagodefender.com
  
  Farley “Jackmaster” Funk is an influential pioneer in the history of house music in Chicago. He was a prominent DJ and producer during the 1980s. Born Farley Keith Williams, he adopted the stage name Farley “Jackmaster” Funk as he rose to fame.
  Farley gained recognition for his DJ skills and his productions, which often featured a raw and energetic style that became characteristic of the Chicago house sound. One of his most famous tracks is “Love Can’t Turn Ar
  
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• AFS-USA exchange programs allow Chicago area host families and high-school exchange students to “explore the world” together

  05-06-2024 16:10 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Even in an era where technology has made the world feel increasingly small, nothing can replace in-person connection when it comes to genuine intercultural exchange. AFS-USA fosters that sort of opportunity for thousands each year by matching high-school exchange students with host families around the globe. The story of AFS-USA starts in 1915, when American […]
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• Stevie Wonder’s Ghanaian citizenship reflects long-standing links between African Americans and the continent

  05-06-2024 15:45 via chicagodefender.com
  
  Stevie Wonder. Getty Imagesby Nemata Blyden, University of Virginia
  There’s a long history of African Americans settling in Ghana or keeping in close contact with the first African country to gain independence. This relationship has most recently been exemplified by musician Stevie Wonder taking up Ghanaian citizenship.
  Ghana, which gained independence in 1957, became a beacon for African Americans disenchanted with their country’s racial problems. Ghana’s first prime mini
  
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• MR. SONNY KNOWS for June 5, 2024

  05-06-2024 14:00 via chicagodefender.com
  
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• Viral Man Who Drove During Hearing For Suspended License Claims Innocence

  04-06-2024 21:29 via chicagodefender.com
  
  Photo: X
  The man who went viral for driving during a virtual court hearing for his suspended license case says he should’ve never been charged, per ABC 7 News.
  Last month, a video of Corey Harris’ court virtual court hearing before Ann Arbor, Michigan judge Cedric Simpson went viral as the defendant appeared on Zoom from behind the wheel.
  “Mr. Harris, are you driving?” Simpson asked.
  “Actually, I’m pulling into my doctor’s office,” Harris responded
  
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• Romance and regret, Sondheim style

  04-06-2024 20:48 via chicagoreader.com
  
  The sexual round-robin that swirls through the heart of composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim’s lilting masterpiece A Little Night Music is set in motion by regrets over paths both taken and not. With a dazzling book by Hugh Wheeler (inspired by Ingmar Bergman’s 1955 film Smiles of a Summer Night), the musical’s ravishing, comedic whirl of affairs […]
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• Breaking the code

  04-06-2024 20:30 via chicagoreader.com
  
  The Enigmatist run time is officially 95 minutes, but you’ll want to get there a solid half hour early so you can crack the codes in the “puzzle garden” that greets audiences on the sixth-floor lobby of Chicago Shakespeare Theater. There are four ciphers in the garden, and their solutions figure in the “meta” puzzle […]
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• Daniel Villarreal and Vivian McConnell finally drop an album as Valebol

  04-06-2024 20:19 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Singer-songwriter Vivian McConnell developed a curious problem with Valebol, the effervescent pop duo that she and percussionist Daniel Villarreal founded around seven years ago. Valebol has performed live sporadically since 2019, landing gigs in part on the strength of the members’ pedigrees: McConnell makes gentle indie rock as V.V. Lightbody, and Villarreal is not only one […]
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• Father, Scholar, Peacemaker: A CPS Student’s Astonishing Transformation

  04-06-2024 16:30 via chicagodefender.com
  
  More than any other group, the high school graduates of 2024 faced unforeseen challenges that no other students in recent memory have had to face.
  They had to contend with the specter of the pandemic, the unfathomable loss of friends and relatives, either from Covid or other causes, and George Floyd’s murder and the subsequent fallout. They had to adjust to virtual learning while facing the threat of learning loss. 
  Amid numerous and nefarious challenges, many of these 2024 high schoo
  
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• Wrightwood 659 highlights the late Greek American art luminary Chryssa

  04-06-2024 14:00 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Taken as she was by New York’s in-your-face advertisements and breakneck pace during her first visit there in 1955, Chryssa wouldn’t be satisfied until she left her mark on the city. In the expansive career that followed her initial sojourn—the subject of a retrospective at Wrightwood 659—the mononymous artist made that mark by imbuing the […]
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• J. Pharoah Doss: Misusing MLK moral authority

  04-06-2024 14:00 via chicagodefender.com
  
   Over the last decade, numerous riots have erupted in response to fatal encounters between unarmed Black individuals and police officers. Martin Luther King Jr. famously stated, “A riot is the language of the unheard,” but the activists who condoned the violence used this phrase to cloak themselves in MLK’s moral authority in order to silence others who denounced the riots.
  MLK’s comment described how, when the oppressed felt systemically neglected by the authorities
  
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• City of Chicago Unveils Microsite Highlighting 47 Transformative Creative Placemaking Grant Projects

  03-06-2024 23:00 via chicagodefender.com
  
  Together We Heal Creative Place promotes racial healing and community development in Chicago neighborhoods
  Mayor Brandon Johnson, The City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) and Office of Equity and Racial Justice (OERJ) proudly announce a new microsite (chicagocreativeplace.com) featuring 47 community-driven creative projects aimed at promoting racial healing and revitalizing neighborhoods. 
  The platform, part of the Together We Heal Creative Place (TWHCP)
  
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• From page to stage: Before It All Goes Dark

  03-06-2024 22:21 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Memorial Day weekend was a resonant fit for the two-performance local premiere of Before It All Goes Dark, composer Jake Heggie and lyricist Gene Scheer’s new one-act opera. Based on investigative reporting from 2002 by former Chicago Tribune music critic Howard Reich, it’s a Cinderella tale gone wrong. Gerald McDonald, a tough but troubled Vietnam […]
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• Weaving art and story

  03-06-2024 19:45 via chicagoreader.com
  
  From a young age, Ryuan Johnson was taught how to care for and nourish her coily natural Black hair. “I learned very early that my hair is fragile and that it always needs to be styled,” said the 24-year-old hair artist. Johnson transformed her daily hair care routine into rituals, leading her to develop it […]
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• Khy McGhee: Overcoming Adversity And Defining His Future

  03-06-2024 16:48 via chicagodefender.com
  
  As a young Black male navigating the complexities of life between school and neighborhood, how does one maintain a steadfast focus on personal goals during outside distractions? 
  Khy McGhee embarked on his educational journey at Avalon in kindergarten, temporarily transferred out in 6th grade, returned in his 8th-grade year, and still stands as one of Avalon Park’s distinguished graduates.
  What transpired in McGhee’s life during his transfer and subsequent return to Avalon Park
  
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• Eric Benét To Perform At The 2024 UNCF “A Mind Is….” Gala, June 15

  03-06-2024 16:23 via chicagodefender.com
  
  Four-time Grammy Award-nominated R&B/neo soul singer- songwriter and actor Eric Benét will take the stage, no doubt setting hearts aflutter in the process, to provide the evening’s entertainment at the 2024 UNCF (United Negro College Fund) “A Mind Is…” Gala on June 15, at 7 p.m. at the Hyatt Regency Chicago, 151 E. Wacker Dr. 
  The event is a part of UNCF’s 80th anniversary celebration.
  Renowned for his romantic music, Benét will croon tunes f
  
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• Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee Diagnosed With Pancreatic Cancer

  03-06-2024 15:55 via chicagodefender.com
  
  Photo: Getty Images
  Texas Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D) says she’s been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
  On Sunday (June 2), Lee announced her pancreatic cancer diagnosis and noted that she was currently undergoing treatment.
  “My doctors have confirmed my diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. I am currently undergoing treatment to battle this disease that impacts tens of thousands of Americans every year,” Lee said in a statement. “I am confident that my doctors have developed t
  
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• Why the ADHD Surge and Punishment of Black Students Could Be Linked

  03-06-2024 15:29 via chicagodefender.com
  
  This article was originally published on Word In Black.
  What some teachers see as disruptive behavior in Black children closely tracks broader symptoms of attention-deficit disorder 
  By Joseph Williams, Word In Black
  When a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report last week revealed that 1 in 9 children in the U.S. are diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, experts said the data reflects a surge in cases since 2016 — and a growing understanding of how th
  
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• Expand The Classroom makes reading a community practice

  03-06-2024 14:00 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Nestled along Milwaukee Avenue in Bucktown, Life on Marz Community Club hosted the April iteration of the monthly Expand The Classroom book swap. Bookish Chicagoans filled the space, seamlessly blending into the 70s decor of the brewery. Amidst the intimacy of a noon start time, attendees gathered around a table with pens and cardstock that […]
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