Illinois news

• Fighting Words: Ted Cruz Tells Obama To ‘Come Insult Me To My Face’

  19-11-2015 11:53 via chicagodefender.com
  
  Source: Getty / Getty
  You wanna rumble with the B, huh?
  President Barack Obama, that is.
  GOP presidential hopeful Senator Ted Cruz (Texas), had a few choice words for President Obama when speaking to reporters on Wednesday after a meeting with Republican policy makers at the Capitol Hill Club.
  Grandpa Munster Cruz was deep in his feelings after Obama, speaking in the Philippines on Tuesday, called out Republicans candidates for being scared of “widows and orphans” flee
  
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• NASCAR STEAM Fest Engages 550 CPS Students in Motorsports Careers

  04-05-2024 16:00 via chicagodefender.com
  
  The 2nd Annual STEAM FEST took place at the Field Museum (Photo courtesy of NASCAR).
  Students from nearly 50 Chicago Public Schools gathered for the Second Annual STEAM Fest at The Field Museum. 
  The event, which aims to engage and inspire students while highlighting career opportunities in motorsports, was hosted by NASCAR IMPACT, The Chicago Street Race and CPS. In all, about 550 students from 46 STEM and STEAM CPS schools took part. 
  “The goal of STEAM Fest is to engage and in
  
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• Single Mom Who Was Formerly Incarcerated Goes Viral After Passing Bar Exam

  04-05-2024 15:00 via chicagodefender.com
  
  Photo: Facebook
  A single mom who was formerly incarcerated is going viral after she passed the bar exam.
  In a now-viral TikTok, Afrika Owes, 30, shared her reaction to finding out she passed the bar after her first attempt. Video shows Owes, a third-year Fordham University School of Law student, shouting “I passed, passed!”
  Owes broke down in tears and jumped around after finding out the exciting news. She thanked her mother, grandmother, and son, Kairos, holding up pictures of each
  
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• Black Teen Dies After Being Chased By White Friends Who Made Racist Remark

  04-05-2024 14:00 via chicagodefender.com
  
  Photo: Getty Images
  A family is seeking answers after a Black teenager died in Pennsylvania following an alleged game of tag with his white friends, per the Atlanta Black Star.
  Justin Johnson, 16, died on April 26 after telling his father that he was going outside to “play tag” with his friends near his home in Lower Paxton Township, Pennsylvania.
  Home surveillance footage shows Johnson heading outside after a white teenager rang his doorbell. Another white teen joined the group from
  
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• Mayor Brandon Johnson Re-Launches Guaranteed Income Advisory Group, Joins Mayors For A Guaranteed Income Coalition

  04-05-2024 13:30 via chicagodefender.com
  
  Mayor Brandon Johnson recently announced the launch of an advisory group of City of Chicago officials, Chicago City Council members, and community advocates to advise on his Chicago Empowerment Fund, a guaranteed income pilot using federal dollars through the American Recovery Plan Act. The advisory group will be tasked with providing guidance on the eligibility and outreach strategies for the guaranteed income pilot.
  The release highlights the work of the Mayor’s Office policy team and is
  
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• Publisher’s note: why the Reader is returning to weekly publishing

  04-05-2024 12:30 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Soon, late in the evening on the fifth of June, a delivery driver will drop a fresh bundle of our beautiful newspapers at one of 1,100 locations across the city. This will mark our return, after a long four years, to publishing the Chicago Reader on a weekly basis. Hell, yes.  We are returning to […]
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• Settler’s Prayer to La Linda Nasca

  03-05-2024 19:29 via chicagoreader.com
  
  By Amina Kayani
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• Review: Wildcat

  03-05-2024 18:43 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Flannery O’Connor wrote some of the most honest stories about Americans and their many flaws that anyone has ever put to paper. A woman of the south, crippled by lupus as well as the region’s prejudices, O’Connor created characters as funny and cursed as she was, by all accounts.  Ethan Hawke and his daughter, Maya, […]
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• Review: Unfrosted

  03-05-2024 18:43 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Jerry Seinfeld’s directorial debut is not about nothing. It purports to chronicle the 1960s cereal wars between Battle Creek, Michigan–based rivals Kellogg’s and Post and the desperate scramble to be the first to create a toastable breakfast pastry. In historical fidelity, it is about as factual as Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, which more successfully […]
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• Review: The Fall Guy

  03-05-2024 18:43 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Watching the trailer, one would be forgiven for assuming that The Fall Guy is a vehicle for two of the most popular, attractive actors of our time—Emily Blunt (Oppenheimer) and Ryan Gosling (Barbie)—to score an easy win with an action-romance film coming off their stellar Barbenheimer successes. However, what makes this film great is not […]
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• Review: Chicken for Linda!

  03-05-2024 18:43 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Astounding, vivid, and lively, this animated film directed by Chiara Malta and Sébastien Laudenbach follows a relatively simple story to deep effect. Linda (Mélinée Leclerc) is a little girl wrongfully accused of selling her mother’s ring. After the ring is found, her mother (Clotilde Hesme) asks what she can do to make up for the […]
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• Kim Foxx’s DNC preparations, Uptown SRO hotel, guaranteed income

  03-05-2024 17:00 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Foxx prepares for DNC showdown Kim Foxx has a message for people planning to take to the streets when the Democratic National Convention comes to town in August: don’t. The outgoing Cook County state’s attorney told the pearl-clutching Chicago Tribune editorial board she’s scrapping her office’s policy of declining to prosecute peaceful protestors for the […]
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• Film logs, benshi, and Pedro Costa

  03-05-2024 16:00 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. For the past several years, my moviegoing log has been a Google Sheet; only somewhat more recently have I again taken to Letterboxd to log titles (having joined and then abandoned […]
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• CSU’s 371st Commencement Features AG Raoul as Keynote Speaker, Honors Montes and Rhymefest

  03-05-2024 14:30 via chicagodefender.com
  
  Chicago State University will host its 371st commencement ceremony on May 9 at the Emil & Patricia A. Jones Convocation Center.
  As a beacon of academic excellence and community empowerment, CSU continues to honor distinguished individuals who have made significant contributions in their respective fields. This year, CSU will host Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul as its keynote speaker and will award Peggy A. Montes and Che “Rhymefest” Smith with the Honorary Degrees of Docto
  
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• Caregivers Honored at Inaugural ‘Dear Me Care Circle’

  03-05-2024 14:00 via chicagodefender.com
  
  L-R Dear Me Care Circle founder Wynona Redmond with Leader of Heart Award recipient Bobbie Steele, former Cook County Board President (Photo courtesy of Wyn-Win Communications).
  The launch of a new group for caregivers was held on April 27 at the Hyatt Chicago Medical/University District. 
  A full room of caregivers and the family and friends who love them attended the Dear Me Care Circle Pre-Mother’s Day Brunch. 
  Themed “Love Bears All Things,” the event honored famil
  
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• Black TikToker Claims Restaurant Retaliated Against Her After Poor Review

  03-05-2024 13:30 via chicagodefender.com
  
  Photo: GoFundMe
  A TikTok user claims a Pennslyvania restaurant owner is retaliating against her after she left a poor review, per the Atlanta Black Star.
  Melissa, known as @kissedbymel on TikTok, said she initially left a poor Google review about Gordo’s Tacos & Tequila on Jan. 12. When she complained about the lack of corn in her meal, Melissa said workers had an attitude with her on the phone and hung up on her multiple times.
  Following the incident, Melissa alleges the restaurant sh
  
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• Gỏi vịt (duck salad) at Nhà Hàng Vietnam Restaurant

  02-05-2024 23:43 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]. “The duck is better,” a server might tell you if you’re caught dithering between the gỏi gà and gỏi vịt at this […]
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• Closing time

  02-05-2024 17:00 via chicagoreader.com
  On Friday, November 17, members of the Berlin Union and the lawyer for the beloved Lakeview queer club met for what workers didn’t know would be their last bargaining session. Staff, party hosts, DJs, and patrons were riding the high from a successful four-week boycott. For months, the club’s owners, Jim Schuman and Jo Webster, […]
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• ‘Black Love Reigns Supreme’ at U of C’s Logan Center, Friday and Saturday

  02-05-2024 16:00 via chicagodefender.com
  
  A scene from the theatrical production, “Black Love Reigns Supreme” (All Photos courtesy of Praize Productions, Inc.)
  “Quote:” We want the audience to take away from this experience a profound sense of truthfulness and love within our culture, a genuine presentation of our stories. – Enneréssa LaNette Davis, CEO and Founder of PPI
  “Black Love” is a cultural movement and a concept within the Black community that is exhibited in romantic r
  
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• Bears Promote Tanesha Wade to Executive VP of DEI & Chief Impact Officer

  02-05-2024 15:00 via chicagodefender.com
  
  Following a transformative NFL Draft weekend, the Chicago Bears have taken another significant step to fortify their organization. The team has announced the promotion of Tanesha Wade to the role of executive vice president of diversity, equity, and inclusion and chief impact officer, underscoring their commitment to these values.
  She will be promoted from her previous job as the Bears’ senior vice president of the DEI department. Tanesha Wade has been promoted to executive vice presi
  
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• ‘Minstrel Show Black’: Makeup Brand Slammed Over New Foundation Shade

  02-05-2024 14:00 via chicagodefender.com
  
  Photo: Getty Images
  A makeup company is facing backlash for releasing a “minstrel show black” shade of foundation amid criticism that its initial shade range wasn’t inclusive for people with darker complexions.
  The backlash against makeup brand Youthforia began after Golloria George, a Black beauty creator on TikTok, reviewed the company’s Date Night Skin Tint Serum last year. Of the 15 shades Youthforia released, George said none of them matched her skin, and she accuse
  
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• ‘Chicago is in my DNA’

  02-05-2024 14:00 via chicagoreader.com
  
  The phrase “love letter” is often overused in reviews, but when author Arionne Nettles calls her new book “a love letter to the city that raised me,” it’s entirely fitting. In We Are the Culture: Black Chicago’s Influence on Everything, Nettles weaves her personal memories of growing up in Chicago with reporting and historical research […]
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• This Week In Black History May 1-7. 2024

  02-05-2024 05:00 via chicagodefender.com
  
  MAY 1
  1866—The two-day Memphis, Tenn., race riots, one of the most savage events immediately fol­lowing the civil war, begins. When it was over, former Confederate soldiers, angered by the loss of the Civil War and the new status for Blacks, had killed 46 Blacks and two of their White supporters, as well as raped five Black women and torched over 90 homes, schools and churches. In support of the rebel soldiers, local police arrest­ed hundreds of Blacks and not the Whites who were r
  
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• Review: The Hills

  01-05-2024 22:22 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Steel promised many immigrants the American dream, but it ultimately left them high and dry, stuck cleaning up the messes made by the mills that prospered and faded away.  “If there’s soot on the windows, there’s food on the table.” This popular saying signified the success of opportunity in the southeast side of Chicago. However, […]
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• Review: I Saw the TV Glow

  01-05-2024 22:22 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Writer-director Jane Schoenbrun’s highly anticipated sophomore feature I Saw the TV Glow is both a tribute to millennium kid culture and a genre-defying trans coming-of-age thriller. On election night 2000, seventh-grader Owen (Justice Smith) connects with ninth-grader Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine) after seeing her reading an episode guide for The Pink Opaque. It’s a show about […]
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• Review: Flipside

  01-05-2024 22:22 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Flipside is a cluttered, largely forgotten New Jersey record store that’s drawn the focus of director Christopher Wilcha in this documentary—sort of. Wilcha worked at Flipside as a teenager in the late 1980s. In middle age, he returns to the place that shaped his iconoclastic values out of a desire to reexamine his own life. […]
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• Review: Challengers

  01-05-2024 22:22 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Few young stars have had a rise as meteoric and seemingly inevitable as Zendaya. From an Emmy-winning turn as a drug-addicted teen in HBO’s gritty high school drama Euphoria to playing the woman lead in a pair of sci-fi blockbuster epics (and finding time to be a style icon in the meantime), the 27-year-old has […]
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• Ritual and realism

  01-05-2024 22:06 via chicagoreader.com
  
  MPAACT resident writer Shepsu Aakhu does something remarkable in this gentle, metaphysical play. He creates a world that successfully blends ritual and realism without succumbing to the weaknesses of either ungrounded otherworldliness or mind-numbing mundanity. Instead, Aakhu gives us a play that reveals the spiritual power in everyday life. Based in part on the Burr […]
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• Goofs, glorious goofs

  01-05-2024 21:49 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Could you call Chris Dritsas’s and Zach Hacker’s musical comedy a parody? They probably wouldn’t fight you on it, but I might—the gags, send-ups, and compositions here (music by John Love) are just too original and clever to be confused with rote, overt spoofs like Forbidden Broadway. Rather, Little Orphan Boy is a parody in […]
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• A gripping Hamlet

  01-05-2024 21:33 via chicagoreader.com
  
  A tormented young man is visited by the ghost of his recently slain father, who asks the son to avenge his death at the hands of his own brother—who, to add insult to injury, has taken his job and married his wife (the young man’s mother). The son has friends and enemies but mostly battles […]
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