Good morning, Chicago.
Mayor Brandon Johnson will push forward this spring an ordinance designed to reform land-use policies that environmentalists say for decades led to pollution in Black and Latino communities.
Some advocates for heavy industry are worried. None deny minority neighborhoods on the South and West sides suffer more from the dirty air, water and soil that historically came from steel mills, smokestacks and truck traffic. But they say if Johnson’s proposal puts more obstacles in the way of new industrial businesses getting started, it could squelch much-needed job creation.
“We need to make sure we’re not disincentivizing industry, because these jobs are needed throughout the city,” said Jonathan Snyder, executive director of North Branch Works, a nonprofit advocate for economic development along the North Branch of the Chicago River. “If we send a signal that coming here is an expensive, complicated process, we will not be successful in attracting business.”
Read the full story from the Tribune’s Brian J. Rogal.
Here are the top stories you need to know to start your day, including: how some Chicagoans commemorated Memorial Day, why Hoosiers are anxious about the impact of state and federal Medicaid cuts and a look at whether the Bears can turn things around on defense.
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After years on the front lines of violence prevention, Englewood group faces layoffs as DOJ shifts priorities
For a city with hundreds of shootings each year, the work that Pha’Tal Perkins does with kids in Chicago is quiet but significant. His team of workers does round-the-clock work to tackle the root causes of community violence, leading peer-to-peer support and group therapy sessions. They help kids apply for college and jobs, and host programming for kids. They are often the first to crime scenes, even before police.
In late April, due to the end of a federal grant that supported many of those efforts, Perkins had to lay off five of the outreach staff at his violence intervention nonprofit, Think Outside Da Block.
‘For the fallen’: Veterans and community members march in McKinley Park Memorial Day parade
David Vojvodich served two tours in Vietnam, and on Memorial Day, he remembers those who didn’t come back.
Vojvodich, a 76-year-old lifelong resident of the Canaryville neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side, prefers not to talk about his service during the two-decade-long conflict. But the holiday is sacred for him, and a time to reflect.
Illinois lawmakers’ latest perk — continuing education credits for going to work
State legislators who are also lawyers in Illinois are getting a new perk, courtesy of the state Supreme Court.
They just need to show up for work in the Illinois General Assembly and they’ll be able to collect credit toward satisfying continuing education classes required to keep their law licenses in good standing.
As state and federal Medicaid cuts loom, Hoosiers are anxious about the impact
Jordan Musenbrock, 35, said Medicaid helped pay for her manual wheelchair and its repairs, shower chair, catheters and several medications.
Musenbrock, who has used a wheelchair since she was 17 following a car accident, said without Medicaid she will have to choose between a drastic decline in health, even death, or financial hardship.
The world’s best-preserved fossils can be found right outside Chicago. But there are no dinosaur bones at Mazon Creek.
Sixty-five miles southwest of Chicago, a small hill that looks like a prop from an Indiana Jones movie breaks up the flat, monotone landscape. Consisting of shale, sandstone and rocks from an old coal mine, the waste pile — located on a massive river delta from another era — is an unremarkable remnant from the region’s once-thriving coal industry.
Except it contains many of the world’s best-preserved, most diverse fossils.
Egyptian archaeologists discover three tombs in Luxor
Egypt unveiled three new tombs of prominent statesmen in the Dra’ Abu al-Naga’ necropolis in Luxor, officials said.
Egyptian archaeologists have discovered tombs dating back to the New Kingdom period (1550–1070 B.C.) and identified the names and titles of their owners through inscriptions found within, according to a statement by the tourism and antiquities ministry.
After years of ‘losing culture,’ can the new-look Chicago Bears turn things around on defense?
Chicago Bears safety Kevin Byard didn’t bother mincing words.
“Just to be honest, this organization over the last 10 years or whatever, it’s been a losing culture,” Byard said. “We haven’t really won a lot, so you have to drastically come in and try to rearrange everything.”
Column: Chicago Cubs beat the hapless Colorado Rockies 3-1 to kick off a must-win series at Wrigley Field
The Chicago Cubs met the newest “worst team in baseball history” yesterday at Wrigley Field, writes Paul Sullivan. And not surprisingly, it turned out to be a good day to play the Colorado Rockies.
Despite managing only four hits, the Cubs beat the Rockies 3-1 before a Memorial Day crowd of 40,171, riding the arm of starter Jameson Taillon and the bullpen on an unseasonably cool but sunny afternoon.
Column: Jazz singer Elaine Dame takes a new road with ‘Reminiscing’
The singer Elaine Dame has had an interesting life, so far.
She told Rick Kogan about the latest chapter earlier this month. It was a few days before her performance at Winter’s Jazz Club and she said, “There will be songs that I have performed for years, but also a great deal of material from my new CD. It’s called ‘Reminiscing’ and, well, it’s something different.”
Review: In ‘Endgame’ at Facility Theatre, reality and dystopia wash together
If Ebenezer Scrooge found himself isolated in a post-apocalyptic setting, with no one but his elderly parents and his long-suffering servant to haunt his monotonous days, he would probably behave like Hamm, the petty tyrant of a sad little domain in Samuel Beckett’s 1957 play, “Endgame.”
In Facility Theatre’s new revival of the Irish playwright’s absurdist tragicomedy, the blind and paralyzed character (played by artistic director Kirk Anderson) looks like a slightly steampunk Scrooge, writes Emily McClanathan. He wears a silk dressing gown, old-fashioned nightcap and round, black sunglasses as he holds court from a shabby upholstered armchair.
