Illinois news

• White Man Arrested After Going On Racist Rampage Over A Smoothie

  25-01-2022 14:45 via chicagodefender.com
  Photo: Fairfield Police Department
  Lawyers for a white man in Connecticut maintain he’s not “a racist individual” but that he threw a drink and questioned the immigration status of employees at a smoothie shop “out of anger.”
  On Saturday (January 22) around 1 p.m., Fairfield police say James Iannazzo, 48, purchased a smoothie at a local Robeks. About 30 minutes later, his home phone was used to call 911 when he reported his child having an allergic reaction. The chi
  
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• Jump bridges painful family memories

  24-04-2024 18:07 via chicagoreader.com
  
  There have been several intriguing plays about siblings dealing with loss onstage this year, including Leah Nanako Winkler’s The Brightest Thing in the World at About Face Theatre and the current production of John Patrick Shanley’s Brooklyn Laundry at Northlight. Charly Evon Simpson’s Jump, now in a midwest premiere with Shattered Globe Theatre under AmBer […]
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• Dane in the mirror

  24-04-2024 17:46 via chicagoreader.com
  
  A one-person take on Hamlet starring a famous comedian sounds like a recipe for self-indulgence. (Or the opening premise for a deliberately off-kilter affair, as in the ridiculous and sublime Gary Busey’s One-Man Hamlet, performed by David Carl at Chicago Shakespeare as part of the theater’s Shakespeare 400 festival in 2016.) HamletThrough 5/4: Tue and […]
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• This Week In Black History April 24-30, 2024

  24-04-2024 17:45 via chicagodefender.com
  
  APRIL 24
  1867—The first national meeting of the Ku Klux Klan is held at the Maxwell House in Nashville, Tenn. The White supremacist organization and its various offshoots would go on to launch a wave of terror, which would result in death and injury to thousands of African Americans over the years. The Klan would remain the nation’s most powerful anti-Black terrorist organization for the next 70 years. The first chapter, however, was actually formed a year earlier in Pulaski, Tenn. M
  
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• Guys and Dolls kills at Drury Lane

  24-04-2024 17:21 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Some shows age well, some don’t. You’d think a silly 74-year-old musical comedy like Guys and Dolls, with its cartoonish characters and sitcom plotlines (like, gambler makes a bet he can’t get a female preacher to come with him to Havana), would age out first. After all, the stories the musical is based on, written […]
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• Brooklyn Laundry mixes the lights and the darks

  24-04-2024 17:02 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Brooklyn Laundry is a deceptive show: It begins with a meet-cute and briefly lulls you into the sense that it will unspool as something of a rom-com. But playwright John Patrick Shanley isn’t one for gauzy love stories. His dialogue is spiked with knives, his humor darker than the grave. Budding romance is fragile under […]
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• Simple Simon

  24-04-2024 16:43 via chicagoreader.com
  
  It’s tempting to say that Neil Simon’s 1963 romantic comedy Barefoot in the Park hasn’t aged well. But even when it premiered on Broadway with Robert Redford and Elizabeth Ashley as newlyweds Paul and Corie Bratter (Redford went on to star in the 1967 film version, with Jane Fonda stepping into Ashley’s role), critics noted […]
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• Baby shows its age at Citadel

  24-04-2024 16:40 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Under the best of circumstances, it would be hard to make this 1983 musical soar. The story by playwright Sybille Pearson about three prosperous white, middle-class couples coping with pregnancy (or trying to become pregnant) feels creaky and dated. In different hands, these three couples—ranging in age from early 20s to early 40s—might have been […]
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• Sensing wood, sculpting ecology

  24-04-2024 16:08 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Last summer, Galen Odell-Smedley opened a solo show, “Peach Peach,” at Humboldt’s Ignition Project Space. The exhibition hinted at a meticulously arranged artist’s wood shop: What we normally consider raw material, waste material, and tools came to the foreground in intricate attire and partied with other elaborate kinetic sculptures.  It was hard to define what […]
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• This House Currently Holds the Title for Priciest Property on the South Side

  24-04-2024 16:00 via chicagodefender.com
  
  Neighborhood: Kenwood
  Price:$1,99 million
  Bedrooms/Bathrooms: 6 Beds, 4.5 baths
  Home is a haven where cleanliness, inspiration, and comfort tailored to your preferences abound, filled with laughter and love. It’s a refuge from the chaos of the outside world. 
  With that spirit, The Chicago Defender is spotlighting the most luxurious and captivating homes in the Chicagoland area.
  For this story, we spotlight one of the most expensive homes for sale on the South Side.
  Did you know that 4
  
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• South Suburban College Foundation Hosts ‘Hollywood Awards’ Gala for Deserving Students

  24-04-2024 14:30 via chicagodefender.com
  
  The South Suburban College Foundation hosts its annual “Hollywood Awards: A Black & White Affair, A Night of Dreams, Success, and Scholarships,” on Saturday, April 27 at 5 p.m. at the Odyssey Country Club in Tinley Park.
  After a hiatus due to the pandemic, this highly anticipated event is back to support scholarship programs and deserving students.
  This spring scholarship gala will feature dinner, dancing and an electrifying silent auction. 
  Distinguished guests at the event
  
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• The Carr Report: Understanding how to complete Form W-4 Employee Withholding Certificate

  24-04-2024 14:00 via chicagodefender.com
  
  A W-4 form, or “Employee’s Withhold­ing Certificate,” is an IRS tax document that employees fill out and submit to their employers. Employers use the information on a W-4 to calculate how much tax to withhold from an employ­ee’s paycheck.
  When you complete Form W-4, you’re instructing the employer on how much taxes to withhold from each paycheck. The W-4 Form takes into account vari­ous things including: filing status, mul­tiple jobs adjustments, amo
  
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• MR. SONNY KNOWS for April 24, 2024

  24-04-2024 14:00 via chicagodefender.com
  
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• Chicago Reader presents Fashion Forward!

  23-04-2024 23:18 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Come mingle and listen to an insider’s conversation on fashion and journalism. We have an esteemed group of panelists, from SAIC, the Chicago Fashion Coalition, and our very own editor-in-chief. You’ll also get to view the designs of emerging fashion designers. This event is free for our Reader members and $15 for the general public. All proceeds […]
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• Biden To Deliver Commencement Speech At Morehouse College

  23-04-2024 21:30 via chicagodefender.com
  
  Photo: Getty Images
  President Joe Biden is set to deliver a commencement address at Morehouse College next month.
  On Monday (April 22), the White House confirmed that Biden will speak at Morehouse College’s commencement, which is scheduled for May 19 at 9 a.m., per 11Alive News.
  The decision to make Biden Morehouse’s commencement speaker has sparked faculty concern, NBC News reports.
  In an email reportedly sent by Kendrick Brown, Morehouse’s provost and senior vice president fo
  
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• Miranda Winters and her band of women roar and sing on the debut Mandy album

  23-04-2024 20:43 via chicagoreader.com
  
  For years before Chicago singer-guitarist Miranda Winters cofounded beloved noise-rock group Melkbelly in 2013, she was already making music as a solo artist. In 2018 she released a cassette called Xobeci, What Grows Here? via Sooper Records where she performed all the parts herself; it emphasizes her nimble guitar playing and subtly emotional singing, which […]
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• Plastics Hi-Fi aimed for the radio and missed

  23-04-2024 17:15 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Younger folks don’t often believe me, but in the 1990s, the term “psychedelia” was usually a liability for an artist. It meant stuff like the Grateful Dead, who were extremely unhip at the time because everybody associated them with frat boys and hippies. When I moved to Chicago at the end of 1995, music you […]
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• United Negro College Fund and FM Omni-Channel Radio Station Partner To Hold First Radio-Thon, April 25

  23-04-2024 14:00 via chicagodefender.com
  
  The United Negro College Fund was founded on April 25, 1944. 
  In celebration of the 80th anniversary this year, the First UNCF Omni-Channel Radio-Thon, a 24-hour event to raise money for college scholarships, will be held Thursday, April 25, at 5 a.m. CDT, through Friday, April 26, at 5 a.m. CDT, on the FM Omni-Channel Radio Station ™.
  The digital station is available for download via the Apple or Google store. Donations can be made via the link on the App. Also, donate at www.OmniCha
  
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• J. Pharoah Doss: Victim response to UN’s 30th commemoration of Rwanda genocide

  23-04-2024 14:00 via chicagodefender.com
  Day of Remembrance of Rwandan Genocide Victims (Adobe Stock Illustration)
   
  The Rwandan genocide stunned the entire world in 1994. The Hutu majority systematically exterminated around 800,000 of the minority Tutsis in 100 days.
  Noam Schimmel, a Global Studies instructor at UC Berkeley, published an essay in 2022 titled What Caused the Rwandan Genocide Against the Tutsi?  Schimmel stated that the Belgian colonialists pursued a strategy of divide and conquer that sowed the seeds of hatre
  
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• City Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin Launches New Comprehensive Financial Education Program

  23-04-2024 13:30 via chicagodefender.com
  
  City Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin recently announced that the City Treasurer’s Office has teamed up with Chase Bank, the Chicago Urban League, and TransUnion to create the Money Matters Institute (MMI), a new comprehensive financial education program kicking off on April 23. 
  MMI will offer Chicagoans of all ages and incomes with the money management skills and knowledge that will put them on a path to a brighter, more prosperous future.
  According to a recent study by Primerica, I
  
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• Black and Unhoused in Chicago: How Housing Segregation Fueled a Homegrown Crisis

  23-04-2024 00:06 via chicagodefender.com
  
  Almost seven out of 10 homeless persons in the city of Chicago are Black. They are either living under someone else’s roof, temporarily staying at a shelter or living on the streets. 
  However, experts say that it is no coincidence that, despite comprising nearly 30% of the total population, Black people are overrepresented among the city’s unhoused population. 
  The “epidemic” of Black homelessness in Chicago echoes back to the discriminatory policies that were i
  
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• Legacy of Inequitable Housing Access: How a Black Family’s Story Echoes Today’s Fight

  22-04-2024 20:00 via chicagodefender.com
  
  A Chicago Defender article from 1946 that chronicles the Hemmons family becoming unhoused.
  This is Part Three of the Chicago Defender’s series Black and Unhoused: How Segregation Fueled a Homegrown Crisis, which is part of the “Healing Illinois” initiative. 
  The story of the Hemmons family is where racist policy, poverty and a lack of affordable housing options converge. 
  Carey Hemmons, his wife and 11 children were evicted from their South Side apartment in Chicago&r
  
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• Minhal Baig explores the dichotomy of Cabrini-Green in We Grown Now

  22-04-2024 19:42 via chicagoreader.com
  
  It has been more than ten years since the last of the Cabrini-Green high-rises—housing complexes that were built in 1942 to be affordable and safe housing for low-income residents—were demolished. While those houses have been destroyed, the families remain, and director Minhal Baig’s We Grown Now documents the history and rhythms of the people who […]
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• Chicago’s Enduring Legacy of the Black and Unhoused

  22-04-2024 18:00 via chicagodefender.com
  
  This is Part Two of the Chicago Defender’s series Black and Unhoused: How Segregation Fueled a Homegrown Crisis, which is part of the “Healing Illinois” initiative. 
  Demetrius France, 55, is just 15 credits shy of earning his Associate’s degree. 
  “I started college in the early 1990s and studied electrical engineering and aviation at Florida Memorial University.” 
  When his heart led him to Chicago, he hoped to finish college, too. But life and a
  
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• Jonas Müller-Ahlheim’s art games

  22-04-2024 17:00 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Traces, residues, and obfuscation are the small but major themes of the playful Jonas Müller-Ahlheim exhibition, “peekaboo,” on view at Ukrainian Village’s Patient Info gallery. At first glance, “peekaboo” appears sparse. Taking up the whole of Patient Info’s unique dermatologists-office-meets-white-cube interior are a few small, white plaster, minimalist sculptural forms hung on the walls, colored […]
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• Black and Unhoused: How Black Chicago’s Fight for Affordable Housing Echoes Through Generations

  22-04-2024 16:00 via chicagodefender.com
  
  This collage details how Black segregation from the past has fueled the homegrown crises of Black homelessness and affordable housing scarcity (Credit: Christa Carter-Williams).
  This is Part One of the Chicago Defender’s series Black and Unhoused: How Segregation Fueled a Homegrown Crisis, which is part of the “Healing Illinois” initiative. 
  Two of the greatest works of literature have documented Black people’s struggle to attain stable, affordable housing in Chicago
  
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• ‘He Can’t Walk’: Cop Tries to Pull Paralyzed Black Man Out Of Car In Video

  22-04-2024 14:00 via chicagodefender.com
  
  Photo: Getty Images
  A viral TikTok shows a California police officer attempting to pull a Black man from his vehicle despite being told that “he can’t walk.”
  TikTok user Shante Butler accused the Stockton Police Department of mistreatment of her son. Butler shared a video in February of her son’s encounter with a Stockton officer.
  In the now-viral video, a man appears to be sitting in the driver’s seat of his vehicle as a cop grabs his hand and attempts to pull him
  
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• A love letter to punks of color

  22-04-2024 14:00 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Bianca Xunise’s graphic novel debut Punk Rock Karaoke is a love letter to the south side and punks of color everywhere. In 248 rapid-paced pages, Xunise tells a coming-of-age story centered on Ariel Grace Jones, an 18-year-old punk who spends the summer coming to terms with their ambition, changing friendships, and what it means to […]
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• Shark Tank’s Daymond John Visits Brunson School to Share Latest Book

  21-04-2024 16:00 via chicagodefender.com
  
  Excitement filled the air at Brunson Math & Science Specialty School as Daymond John, renowned entrepreneur, philanthropist, and Shark Tank’s very own, prepared to ignite students, faculty and staff’s entrepreneurial spirits. 
  The event opened with words of gratitude and acknowledgment as Chicago’s Mayor, Brandon Johnson, shared the students’ joy and eagerness to participate in the day’s activities, creating an atmosphere buzzing with anticipation.While Day
  
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• April 30 Student Loan Consolidation Deadline Could Relieve Thousands

  21-04-2024 15:30 via chicagodefender.com
  
  Photo Credit: DNY59 from Getty Images Signature
  Black students owe an average of 188% more student loan debt than white students — and consolidation could lead to total cancellation.
  By Renata Sago
  This article was originally published on Word In Black.
  After decades of what it calls “historical failures in administering student loans,” the U.S. Department of Education is providing relief to college graduates navigating the volatile economy. 
  Borrowers with
  
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