Chicago Reader print issue of November 16, 2023 (Vol. 53, No. 3)

F R E E A N D F R E A KY S I N C E 1 9 7 1 | N OV E M B E R 1 6, 2 02 3

What happens when your loved one goes missing?

A history of neglect, botched investigations, and flawed data reveal systemic issues with the way police treat missing person cases.

By TRINA REYNOLDS-TYLER, INVISIBLE INSTITUTE, AND SARAH CONWAY, CITY BUREAU P. 14

THIS WEEK

C H I C AG O R E A D E R | N OV E M B E R 1 6 , 2 02 3 | VO LU M E 5 3 , N U M B E R 3

IN THIS ISSUE

LETTERS

THEATER

04 Readers Respond Rats now and forever 04 Editor’s Note Forty seconds of silence

26 Reid | Stages of Survival Definition Theatre sets its own terms for success.

28 Plays of Note So many recommended shows, including Commedia Divina: It’s Worse Than That, The Lion in Winter, and Wise Guys: The First Christmas Story

NEWS & POLITICS 14 Cover story |

Police accountability A two-year

CITY LIFE

06 The To-Do Finding peace and going out 08 Brown | Workplaces Life Is Work serves west side communities.

FOOD & DRINK

10 Sula | Feature Sangtae and Kate Park open the first dedicated all-beef omakase in the U.S.

TO CONTACT ANY READER EMPLOYEE, EMAIL: (FIRST INITIAL)(LAST NAME) @CHICAGOREADER.COM

FILM

30 Film Feature Chicago Filmmakers celebrates its 50th anniversary.

investigation finds systemic issues with the way police treat missing persons cases.

42 Chicagoans of Note R. Brent Decker, Racetraitor bassist and anti-violence worker 46 Shows of Note Previews of concerts including Noname, Harm’s Way, Lapgan, and Sen Morimoto 50 Early Warnings Upcoming shows to have on your radar 51 Gossip Wolf A fast-and-loose acoustic EP from Soft and Dumb and a meticulous, intimate album from Course

OPINION

52 Savage Love Dan Savage has a lot of advice to give in short form.

18 Nonprofits NFP, NPO, and more

33 Movies of Note Common Ground asks us to Save Our Soil; The Marvels chooses worldbuilding over character; and more.

ARTS & CULTURE

MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE

22 Comic A living outdoor sculpture at the University of Chicago 24 Story workshop Crafting a space for Chicago’s storytelling community

CLASSIFIEDS 54 Jobs 54 Auditions 54 Matches 54 Adult Services

34 Galil | Elastic Arts A Logan Square creative space takes its mission to the south and west sides.

38 Galil | Clean Air Club Helping concertgoers breathe easier

ON THE COVER: PHOTO BY SEBASTIÁN HIDALGO FOR CITY BUREAU AND INVISIBLE INSTITUTE. FOR MORE OF HIDALGO’S WORK, GO TO SEBASTIANHIDALGOPHOTO. COM.

Comprehensive arts and culture news and reviews, deeply researched coverage of civic affairs, and unique voices from every part of Chicago.

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CEO AND PUBLISHER SOLOMON LIEBERMAN ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER AMBER NETTLES EDITOR IN CHIEF SALEM COLLO-JULIN MANAGING EDITOR SHEBA WHITE ASSISTANT MANAGING EDITOR SAVANNAH HUGUELEY ART DIRECTOR JAMES HOSKING PRODUCTION MANAGER KIRK WILLIAMSON SENIOR GRAPHIC DESIGNER AMBER HUFF THEATER AND DANCE EDITOR KERRY REID MUSIC EDITOR PHILIP MONTORO CULTURE EDITOR: FILM, MEDIA, FOOD & DRINK TARYN ALLEN CULTURE EDITOR: ART, ARCHITECTURE, BOOKS, LITERARY ARTS KERRY CARDOZA NEWS EDITOR SHAWN MULCAHY ASSOCIATE EDITOR AND BRANDED CONTENT SPECIALIST JAMIE LUDWIG DIGITAL EDITOR TYRA NICOLE TRICHE SENIOR WRITERS LEOR GALIL, DEANNA ISAACS, BEN JORAVSKY, MIKE SULA FEATURES WRITER KATIE PROUT SOCIAL JUSTICE REPORTER DEBBIE-MARIE BROWN STAFF WRITER MICCO CAPORALE SOCIAL MEDIA ENGAGEMENT ASSOCIATE CHARLI RENKEN ---------------------------------------------------------------VICE PRESIDENT OF OPERATIONS ANN SCHOLHAMER CHIEF DEVELOPMENT OFFICER DIANE PASCAL VICE PRESIDENT OF PEOPLE AND CULTURE ALIA GRAHAM DIRECTOR OF MARKETING AND STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS CHASITY COOPER MULTIMEDIA CONTENT PRODUCER SHAWNEE DAY MARKETING ASSOCIATE MAJA STACHNIK MEMBERSHIP MANAGER MICHAEL THOMPSON TECHNOLOGY MANAGER ARTURO ALVAREZ OFFICE MANAGER AND CIRCULATION DIRECTOR SANDRA KLEIN VICE PRESIDENT OF SALES AMY MATHENY SALES TEAM VANESSA FLEMING, WILL ROGERS DIGITAL SALES ASSOCIATE AYANA ROLLING MEDIA SALES ASSOCIATE JILLIAN MUELLER ADVERTISING ADS@CHICAGOREADER.COM CLASSIFIEDS: CLASSIFIEDS.CHICAGOREADER.COM NATIONAL ADVERTISING VOICE MEDIA GROUP 1-888-278-9866 VMGADVERTISING.COM JOE LARKIN AND SUE BELAIR ---------------------------------------------------------------DISTRIBUTION CONCERNS distributionissues@chicagoreader.com 312-392-2970 READER INSTITUTE FOR COMMUNITY JOURNALISM, INC. PRESIDENT AND CHAIRPERSON EILEEN RHODES TREASURER REESE MARCUSSON SECRETARY KIM L. HUNT DIRECTORS ALISON CUDDY, DANIEL DEVER, MATT DOUBLEDAY, VANESSA FERNANDEZ, TORRENCE GARDNER, ROBERT REITER, CHRISTINA CRAWFORD STEED ----------------------------------------------------------------

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Community m Letters Re: “Rats have empathy for strangers, but do we?”

by Jenny Kendler for the October 19, 2023 issue (Volume 53, Number 1) I, like most descendants of plague survivors, find rats revolting. So one day when—to my horror and revulsion—I saw a rat in my backyard, I was halted in my tracks to see that it was not alone. It was with a robin.

And they were . . . FROLICKING. There’s no other word for what they were doing. It was as friendly and joyful as a game of tag. It occurred to me that had the rat been any other species, I would have found this behavior absolutely adorable, but because it was a rat, I wanted to scream and puke and lash out all at once.

It was a VERY confusing combination of emotions that momentarily paralyzed me. And then I gasped audibly and they both stopped and whipped their heads around to see me, and immediately parted ways. The bird flew up into a fence post and faced the opposite direction as if to say “nothing to see here!” And the rat ran away. It was like they somehow KNEW their relationship was not sanctioned by humans and so they had to deny it. I still don’t know what to make of it, but it’s a 100 percent true story. —Heather Lindahl (heather.lindahl), via Instagram Generally, yeah, sure. Specifically, though—until you’ve had a rat superhighway underneath your apartment building as a result of 100-plus-year-old pipes that weren’t sealed or removed, thus affecting every apartment—you don’t know rats. Honestly, the building has been fixed and all that but it was a real traumatic time for all of us living here, for a number of years —Andrea Hangst (fball_andrea), via Instagram [In response to Lindahl’s note above] The Dodo [website] has a YouTube playlist called “Odd Couples.”

Plenty of rat plus other animal unlikely best friends.

Perhaps rat videos in general (on The Dodo) would be good for you? Your fear and distaste is valid. It’s understandable. And feeling opposing things at once is normal in this life. People think it’s some kind of dilemma but it’s natural. We don’t always have to pick a side with these things. You can simply shudder and say “Awww” when you see a rat playing. That’s real shit. But, it is true that what happened in the plague is not rats’ fault. —Angel Marcloid (fire_toolz), via Instagram

EDITOR’S NOTE Rats are so disease-laden and triggering in real life (musophobia, in extreme cases) but make for such enjoyable illustrations, like this. It’s one of their mysteries, I guess. Looking forward to reading this issue. —Steve Berlin (@EthicsSteve), via X Re: “Chicago rats” by Ben Joravsky for the October 19, 2023 issue (Volume 53, Number 1) Good article. Rahm then left office to “spend more time with his family.” This was after he left the Obama administration stating he had “a desire to spend more time with his family.” Rahm was a good guy but apparently he didn’t spend enough time with his family.

—Gary Eckstein, via Facebook Re: “Surviving rat poisoning, as a rat” by S. Nicole Lane for the October 19, 2023 issue (Volume 53, Number 1) How about people stop trying to poison wildlife since owls, foxes, coyotes, raccoons, and other predators eat these poisoned mice and pigeons, and die also?

Learn to coexist and humanely trap and release.

—Anya Vladimirovna, via Facebook CORRECTION A previously published version of the article “Arbitrating police terminations could result in a ‘decade of police impunity’” (in the November 2, 2023 print issue, Volume 3, Number 2), misstated City of Chicago Inspector General Deborah Witzburg’s position on police misconduct arbitration, based on publicly available documents.

After publication, Witzburg clarified to the Reader that she believes that if cases are no longer adjudicated by the police board, the city should take steps to make arbitration more transparent. The Reader regrets the errors and has updated the online version of this story to include this additional clarification.

Find us on socials: facebook.com/chicagoreader x.com/Chicago_Reader instagram.com/chicago_reader linkedin.com search chicago-reader

I’ve had nearly ten of them as pets over the past 30 years. They’re intelligent, clean, energetic, and loving.

—Michael R. Butz, via Facebook

The Chicago Reader accepts comments and letters to the editor of less than 400 words for publication consideration.

Re: The Ratter cover art by illustrator Mike Centeno for the October 19, 2023 issue (Volume 53, Number 1)

m letters@chicagoreader.com

4 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 16, 2023

I

was privileged to attend the Chicago Journalists Association’s 84th Anniversary Awards Ceremony this month, along with the Reader’s Social Justice Reporter DMB (Debbie-Marie Brown) as well as Chasity Cooper, RICJ’s Director of Marketing and Strategic Communications. While we didn’t bring more awards home (kudos to DMB and Reader contributor Kathleen Hinkel for their noms!) we did take in an entirely emotional and relevant awards evening. Everybody had me crying: Dorothy Storck Award fi nalist Sylvia Snowden with her sweet reminder to herself of how far she has come; CJA’s Breakout Journalist of the Year Tonia Hill with a moving tribute to her colleagues at The TRiiBE, her parents, and a shout out to that evening’s Lifetime Achievement Award winner, retired broadcaster (and apparently man-most-soaked-withChampagne-at-Chicago-sports-championships) Jim Rose. Even Rose’s plea for younger and emerging journalists to take the adventure and stay the course had me sniffl ing a little. Earlier in the evening, ProPublica’s Duaa Eldeib merely explaining her heartwrenching and award-winning series on stillbirths and Block Club Chicago’s Shamus Toomey extolling the virtues of local (nah, let’s spell it LOCAL) media were making me sad, wistful, hopeful, everything that results in ruining the punk rock eyeliner. I believe not only in the power of local press and in the power of collaboration, and seeing so much joy and good work made me even more proud that we decided to partner with City Bureau and Invisible Institute this week to bring you incredible reporting about missing persons by Trina Reynolds-Tyler and Sarah Conway.

But back to the awards ceremony: the most profound moment of the evening came when Maya Dukmasova, who I miss as a daily office mate but who I still revere as her work at Injustice Watch is stellar, chose to give her Storck Award fi nalist speech time to silence. As in, asking all those gathered to sit in silence for 40 seconds, in honor of the 40 journalists who had been killed during the fi rst month of the Israel-Hamas War. As I write this, Reporters Without Borders is saying that there are 41 killed. In the audience at the Newberry Library, we sat for those 40 seconds and stayed still, waiting for answers or prayers. Dukmasova and two colleagues from Injustice Watch (Kelly Garcia, who we also miss in this office!) and Carlos Ballesteros, along with Cicero Independiente cofounder Irene Romulo, read statistics and facts at the end of the mini vigil, coaxing us back into our seats. It’s a privilege to have the life I have, a bonus to be able to write freely, and a balm to be able to congregate with others who are as passionate as me to protect the ability of journalists to do their jobs. v —Salem Collo-Julin, editor in chief m scollojulin@chicagoreader.com

Tonia Hill from The TRiiBE at the podium after receiving the Chicago Journalists Association’s Breakout Journalist of the Year award.

SALEM COLLO-JULIN

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MUSIC@ LOGAN CENTER:

YOU WANT TO BE HERE

Enjoy Jazz & Blues from Logan Center and its partners; jazz, classical, early, world, and contemporary from UChicago Presents; special guest soloists, multi-arts collaborations, world premieres, masterworks, and unusual repertoire treasures from UChicago’s Department of Music; world premiere and recently composed works by leading and emerging composers from the Chicago Center for Contemporary Composition; and much more.

Alarm Will Sound with Medeski Martin & Wood at Brooklyn Steel for New York’s Winter Jazzfest 2019.

Photo: Angelys Ocana / Good People Bad Habits

Logan Center for the Arts 915 E 60th St • Chicago @loganUChicago

logancenter.uchicago.edu/music NOVEMBER 16, 2023 - CHICAGO READER 5

CITY LIFE calendar

The To-Do Upcoming events and ongoing activities you should know about

By MICCO CAPORALE

C

hicago has always been a midwestern hub for reflection and innovation aimed at making the world a more just, hospitable place. Perhaps it’s both my personal and institutional stake in the idea that a better world is possible, but the need for change feels especially pressing right now.

As I continue witnessing the economic, social, and political ripple effects of the pandemic, I watch my social media feeds devolve into nothing but GoFundMes for emergencies and real-time updates on everything from local labor conflicts to the war in Gaza. Every day, there’s a David Byrne voice in my head: “Well, how did I get here?”

Coming up on the holiday season, I think that question is especially potent. Capitalism and forced rituals of gratitude and community collide with that big-picture accounting (literal and figurative) that happens at the close of a year. All of these things can remind us of what’s not working in our lives and, by extension, the world we live in. Or we feel overwhelmed by feigned optimism as much as all the ways we could be more kind, generous, supportive, and present.

When I feel overwhelmed by these thoughts, as I often have been lately, I think of the wisdom shared in recovery spaces, like: “One day at a time.” Change happens both fast and slow.

Every day is an opportunity to make choices that influence the people we want to be, the communities we want to nurture, and the world we want to share. Most outcomes aren’t the result of any one decision; rather, they’re the sum of many, including ones that weren’t ours. But we can contribute to outcomes in active ways, like volunteering or protesting. We can also consciously embrace passivity, like resting or reevaluating. Both active and passive work are necessary to sustain ourselves and our relationships with each other and the lands we inhabit.

I offer these bits as some perspective for the events I share and continue offering, especially as we approach the end of the year. What are we to do about this world of ours? The older I get, the more I realize: I simply do not

6 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 16, 2023

know! What I do know is, it is good to be generous with our resources, including time and curiosity, and it’s good to know our limits and make room for play, frivolity, and relaxation, too. Here are some suggestions for both.

On Friday, November 17, the Hamilton Park Cultural Center (513 W. 72nd) will screen two short fi lms: 376 Days (Nick Cave: Keep It Movin’) and Chronicle of a Summer Day. The former focuses on multimedia couturier Nick Cave’s life and work and how they culminated in his retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago last year. The latter is about a Bronzeville flower installation

by John Caleb Pendleton that celebrated Juneteenth in 2021. Both works use elements of collage-style narrative and poetic imagery to explore self-defi nition, community storytelling, and south-side beauty. The screening starts at 6:30 PM, and it’s free and open to everyone. chicagofilmfestival.com The next day, Saturday, November 18, Music Box (3733 N. Southport) hosts a screening of Common Ground , a documentary about the regenerative agriculture movement, which offers sustainable and climate-conscious solutions to restoring soil health and producing nutritionally dense food in abundance. The screening is at 8 PM and is followed by a panel discussion with fi lmmakers Josh and Rebecca Tickell. Tickets are $12 ($9 for Music Box members). musicboxtheatre.com Through April 14, 2024, the Illinois Ho-

A still from Chronicle of a Summer Day COURTESY CINEMA/CHICAGO

Forts set up for a 2020 mounting of FORTS at Filament Theatre COURTESY FILAMENT THEATRE

locaust Museum and Education Center

(9603 Woods, Skokie) hosts an exhibition on the history and significance of Jewish delis called “I’ll Have What She’s Having: The Jewish Deli.” Delicatessens were not only a cultural lifeline for Holocaust survivors in the U.S., but they also presented a means of fusing Central and Eastern European food with American cuisine to create economic opportunity. Tickets to the museum start at $18. Admission is free on the last Friday of November and December. ilholocaustmuseum.org

I wasn’t kidding when I told you to make time to goof off. Writers Theatre in Glencoe presents FORTS! Build Your Own Adventure until November 26. It’s an interactive theater experience that Reader contributor Marissa Oberlander described as “an hour-long experiment in professionally designed creative play.” To participate, both an adult and child ticket must be purchased ($20 each), but there will be a special night for those 21 and older on Friday, November 17 at 7:30 PM.

writerstheatre.org Dear reader, can you do me a favor? Ahead of Thanksgiving, I’d love to hear about an event you attended in our city recently that you were really grateful for or excited about.

Got something you think others might be interested in doing with you? I welcome hearing about that, too. Connect with me via email. v

m mcaporale@chicagoreader.com

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WRIGHTWOOD

CHICAGO

ONE OWNS YOU, THE OTHER CLONES YOU...

IS BIOTECH RISKIER THAN WALL STREET? 17 ARTISTS EXPLORE THE PROMISE & DANGER OF OUR DIGITAL WORLD IN THIS AWARD-WINNING EXHIBITION

THIS EXHIBITION IS PRESENTED BY ALPHAWOOD EXHIBITIONS AT WRIGHTWOOD 659.

DIFFERENCE MACHINES: TECHNOLOGY AND IDENTITY IN CONTEMPORARY ART IS ORGANIZED

BY THE BUFFALO AKG ART MUSEUM.

THROUGH DEC/16 | wrightwood659.org NOVEMBER 16, 2023 - CHICAGO READER 7

LIFE IS WORK

CITY LIFE

Trans Day of Remembrance New Era Together 2.0, Sun 11/19, 11 AM-4 PM, Venue West Chicago, 221 N. Paulina, lifeiswork.org

workplaces

Life Is Work supports Black trans people in their communities West-side native Zahara Bassett created an organization that she once needed.

By DMB (DEBBIE-MARIE BROWN) The Solidarity Closet COURTESY LIFE IS WORK

This article has been abridged for print; to read the entire story, go to chicagoreader.com.

Z

ahara Bassett fell on the floor of her best friend’s house exhausted from a long day of making $9 an hour and barely getting by. She was working as a housing monitor for TransLife Care at Chicago House, a transitional housing program for transgender people who have nowhere to stay or are reentering society. All the while, her friend’s crib was her temporary housing while she worked the job, and the two were joking amidst their stress.

“I was like, ‘Girl, life is work. Ugh, I can’t catch a break.’” As she told the story to the Reader, Bassett recalled, “I was just tired.”

Bassett, a Black trans woman, grew up on the west side of Chicago, struggling with housing and job security. She came out as trans at 13, and was kicked out of her home by 16 for having the audacity to do so.

Unbeknownst to Bassett, that night at her friend’s house she had coined the moniker for her future nonprofit where, 16 years later, she’d celebrate three years as its executive director. Life Is Work is a Black and trans-led nonprofit headquartered on the west side that has so far this year supported over 600 Chicagoans with access to free housing, clothing, job interviews with multiple employers, and STD testing services. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Being a high schooler at Crane Tech Prep was no reprieve from being expelled from Bassett’s home. The school attempted to make special accommodations for her to abate the likelihood of harassment and make her feel

8 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 16, 2023

included, to no avail. She could use the faculty bathroom, for instance, but that meant she had to take two flights of stairs down to get to that restroom even if her classes were on the third floor. She also had to get dressed for gym 15 minutes before the rest of the students. Nonetheless, she was chased home and assaulted by male classmates who lived in nearby housing projects. “[The school] did try to work around me,” Bassett said. “But it was so uncomfortable and I felt so ostracized, it made me drop out at the time.”

Left without housing or school support as a young teenager in the 90s, Bassett hustled to find a job. She was hired for a gig at McDonald’s, but was dismissed the first day she walked in. “Right on Randolph and Dearborn, I’ll never forget that,” Bassett said. “That woman said, ‘We don’t hire people like you.’”

The same thing happened a month into her next job at H&R Block. Her peers told her job the tea, as they would call it. Someone let Bassett’s employer know she was a trans person, and Bassett was fired on the spot.

Feeling broken and unsure of what to do, she went up north one night to hang out with her friends on Belmont. “This guy pulled up and offered me $200 and I jumped in [his car].

And the rest was history. I’ll be honest with you,” she said. The 39-year-old remembers this entry into sex work and escorting like it was yesterday. “I was like, ‘OK, this is my new job.’ And I made it my job for ten years.”

Bassett found chosen family amongst a group of other transfeminine teens in sex work, who jokingly called their cohort “the Mattels,” after the American toy company that

manufactures Barbie dolls.

Bassett received her GED from Malcolm X College’s West Side Learning Center in 2003.

By 2007, she left sex work and landed her first full-time, on-the-books job at Chicago House, where she stayed until 2013.

One of her main takeaways from working for Chicago House was realizing that more community services were needed, and those resources didn’t always need to be placed on the north side, where Chicago House was situated. For example, when Bassett began medically transitioning as a teenager, she often would have to take two-hour rides on public transit to the north side to access hormone therapy.

“If you notice, many leading organizations [that serve trans people] in Chicago are on the north side or are in neighborhoods that are considered ‘safe.’ None of them are in the hood,” Bassett said. “So we want people to come from out of their lived areas, where they need services, somewhere else to get services?

That sounds so redundant and ridiculous to me.”

From 2013 to 2015, she was working as a receptionist at Broadway Youth Center (BYC) when she noticed the community’s need for education about pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), a medicine that reduces the chance of getting HIV from sex or injection drug use.

PrEP was new at the time. The numbers of newly-diagnosed, HIV-positive youth was starting to rise at BYC, and the idea of an antiretroviral medication taken as a preventative measure intrigued her to educate herself.

“Oh, my God, I love Broadway Youth Center.

That was one of my favorite jobs. We started in a basement. It was real grassroots work,” Bassett said.

That experience pushed her into a role at Howard Brown Health recruiting patients for a research study, which monitored people taking PrEP and kept track of whether they continued to take their medication as prescribed.

All the while, Bassett worked behind the scenes to raise money from friends and on Facebook each holiday season to cook and distribute meals for unhoused people on Christmas Day. She’d usually raise between $1,000 and $2,000 each year to “make it happen.”

“People used to think I raised all this money.

I didn’t really raise a lot. I used to stretch it, because I knew how to stretch money. I come from a Black grandmother [who is] from Mississippi; we can make anything out of anything,” Bassett said.

Bassett was so ruthlessly fundraising for Christmas meals on Facebook that Brave Space Alliance hired her in 2019, initially on contract, to spearhead fundraising and external relations. She eventually became director of development for the then-young nonprofit.

When COVID-19 hit, Bassett and her team opened up a food pantry overnight and were able to persuade Barack Obama to endorse it.

Bassett’s team ultimately fundraised $1.2 million for the food pantry in its first year.

Life Is Work was formally born in 2020, when Bassett had trouble withdrawing funds raised from a Christmas GoFundMe fundraiser. The website compelled her to incorporate as a nonprofit to get the money. Bassett and her team originally planned to keep the nonprofit focused on Christmas meals, but her friend had vacant apartment units to fill. Since Bassett has always been passionate about helping people acquire housing, she took that opportunity to launch the housing-focused leg of Life Is Work, getting seven people into living quarters during the organization’s first year.

Bassett wasn’t new to launching ambitious endeavors, and she knew she wouldn’t escalate her vision without funding. Using her preexisting strong ties with Howard Brown Health, Bassett submitted a proposal for her vision and Life Is Work was awarded its first grant, worth $15,000, for supportive housing.

The Chicago Foundation for Women also supplied a rapid response grant for $7,900, and Bassett secured other seed money from private funders. v

m dmbrown@chicagoreader.com

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COME HERE,

GO PLACES.

HERE, future nonprofit leaders develop the skills and connections they need to turn vision into reality.

– Masters in Nonprofit Management – Graduate Certificate in Strategic Writing and Advancement for Nonprofits (SWAN)

and then went to swim there

By Imani Elizabeth Jackson

i did this,

i could not be made

to see

the line

to fathom

the line

dropped

without

dropping

and drowned

consistent marking

gave me

and then

and thus

such pleasure

i went

went the line

i went

and dredged

probing

and dredged

it up, inching

the dark stretch

up the thing

up its

below

counting

weighted end

a strait

where it had gone

by hand, my hands

unclear

to the bottom

working properly,

leagues below

– BA in Nonprofit Management (Adult Learners)

making use of

surveyance

– Undergraduate Minor in Nonprofit Organizations

the strength

helps one know

of noise,

Discover your true potential at DePaul and join us in shaping a better world in everything WE DO.

of my back,

what is possible

my back,

for inquiry’s

to be

an extension or

purpose

known, eh?

of my hand

the weather set

conditions for all

sounds

conditions for all

sounds

the weather set

sounds

the weather set

conditions for all

Imani Elizabeth Jackson is the author of two chapbooks, saltsitting (g l o s s, 2020) and Context for arboreal exchanges (Belladonna*, 2023) and her first book, Flag, is forthcoming from Futurepoem.

Under the name mouthfeel, she co-authored the poetry-cookbook Consider the Tongue (2019) with S*an D. Henry-Smith; she also contributed to Francesca Capone’s Weaving Language I: Lexicon (Essay Press, 2022).

Poem curated by Cortney Lamar Charleston. Cortney Lamar Charleston, originally from the Chicago suburbs, is a Cave Canem fellow and the author of Telepathologies (Saturnalia Books, 2017) and Doppelgangbanger (Haymarket Books, 2021). He serves as a poetry editor at The Rumpus and on the editorial board at Alice James Books.

A biweekly series curated by the Chicago Reader and sponsored by the Poetry Foundation.

Hours

Wednesday & Friday: 11:00 AM–5:00 PM Thursday: 11:00 AM–7:00 PM Saturday: 10:00 AM–5:00 PM

Harriet Monroe & The Open Door

Visit our latest exhibition to learn about Chicago icon and Poetry magazine founder, Harriet Monroe.

Open through January 13, 2024.

Visit go.depaul.edu/nonprofit to learn more.

Learn more at PoetryFoundation.org NOVEMBER 16, 2023 - CHICAGO READER 9

FOOD & DRINK

Find more one-of-a-kind Chicago food and drink content at chicagoreader.com/food.

Sangtae Park grills prime Black Angus short rib SANDY NOTO FOR CHICAGO READER

RESTAURANT PREVIEW

At the upcoming Bonyeon, chef Sangtae Park will have a hundred tastes in his head The couple behind the West Loop’s Omakase Yume and TenGoku Aburiya are opening the first dedicated allbeef tasting menu in the U.S.

By MIKE SULA

T

hirty-one years ago, the Leo Burnett Company, on behalf of Michigan Avenue’s erstwhile National Live Stock and Meat Board, branded cattle flesh onto the American brain with the slogan, “Beef. It’s what’s for dinner.”

That’s not a bad run by advertising standards, but it’s nothing compared to “One head with a hundred tastes,” or “일두백미,” a much more alluring, centuries-old Korean expres-

10 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 16, 2023

sion of unknown authorship, celebrating the myriad ways to cut up and eat a cow.

It also acts as the guiding principle behind Bonyeon, an upcoming 12-seat restaurant from chef Sangtae Park. Serving a 12-course, all-beef omakase that combines a particularly Korean snout-to-tail aesthetic with Japanese technique, it’s the first of its kind in the U.S. “‘Bonyeon’ means original, or root, or natural state,” says Kate Park, the chef’s wife and

partner. “Maybe more close to ‘aboriginal.’”

This isn’t the couple’s first original restaurant. In 2018, they opened Omakase Yume in the West Loop, the city’s first dedicated sushi tasting menu, which distinguished the chef from those who followed him for his confidence and restraint in allowing the excellence of the fish he served to stand out.

He’ll take a similar approach at Bonyeon, says Kate: “Every fish has their own flavor.

Chef always keeps the original flavor. When he picks some garnish, he’s always thinking [about] how to enhance the best fish flavor. With beef: same thing. Each cut has its own flavor.”

Nomads first introduced beef to Korea thousands of years ago, but when the Buddhists ascended, it became taboo. Mongols invaded and reintroduced it, but during the Joseon dynasty, only royals were allowed to eat it (though plenty of farmers illegally sold their working animals for meat). Japanese colonialists modernized beef production in Korea to feed the Imperial army and to export it back home, and the genetics of the native breed known as Hanwoo, once only raised for labor, at least partially seeded what we know today as Japanese Wagyu. Those are only the origins of the Korean cultural obsession with beef, a food that in modern decades has become inseparable from the national identity.

Like Wagyu, Hanwoo beef today is extraordinarily rich, buttery, and marbled, and it’s so extraordinarily expensive and rare that very little of it is exported. But in the 80s, livestock imports surged, and by the early 2000s, Korea had become the third largest importer of U.S. beef, a ranking only briefly interrupted by the mad cow disease scare and subsequent five-year ban. A once precious luxury became widely available to most people, and while the concept of Korean barbecue evolved into a worldwide export of its own, high-end Hanwoo dining experiences like those found at Seoul’s 45-year-old Michelin-starred Born and Bred are uncommon outside Korea.

But the Parks have a Michelin star too, and the chef says he’s been plotting to open a beef omakase almost as long as he’d been dreaming of Omakase Yume.

When all beef was uncommon and expensive in Korea, butchers made use of every last bit of the animal, and they developed a lexicon of more than 100 different cuts, from obscure isolated muscles to bits of offal to skin and bones. Though the Parks can’t source Hanwoo from their purveyors, they do plan to showcase the widely varied expanse of flavors and textures available from American Wagyu, Japanese Kobe, and prime-grade Black Angus beef.

It’ll begin with primal cuts that the chef will

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BONYEON R 651 W. Washington bonyeonchicago.com

FOOD & DRINK

EXPERIENCE THE GLOW OF THE NEW NOSTALGIA

Starting November 17

Kate and Sangtae Park SANDY NOTO FOR CHICAGO READER

age for up to 45 days in the dry-aging case set in the back of the dining room. Diners will sit across from Park and his cooks at a quartz bar inset with gas-powered grills blazing beneath Mount Fuji lava stones.

Currently, he’s fine-tuning his first menu which will begin with a handful of appetizers, such as a portion of yukhoe, Korean tartare minced from ribeye, topped with Osetra caviar and served alongside a morsel of yukpo, jerky made from pressed, fermented, and dried top round.

From there, the cooks will sear thin slices of beef from various breeds and season them minimally, giving guests a taste of the differences between, say, American Wagyu short rib, A5 Wagyu sirloin from Hokkaido, and A5 Wagyu ribeye cap from Kagoshima (aka the “shrimp cut” if you’re a Korean butcher).

One can only comfortably digest so much of this rich, buttery beef straight off the grill.

Park will bring balance with his riff on tteokgalbi, a formerly royals-only dish of ground short rib re-formed around the bone, and grilled like a kind of exclusive Palace burger; and a penultimate palate cleanser of clarified gomtang, the ordinarily milky-colored, long-simmered bone stock here hydrating thin somyeon wheat noodles.

“I leave it up to you,” is the Japanese meaning of omakase, and through Park’s Korean perspective, he’s sketched out dozens of ideas for future courses. As time goes on, he’ll introduce more obscure cuts and off bits that might be more challenging or unfamiliar to

American diners, like the omasum, the cow’s third compartment forestomach, prized for its mild flavor and soft texture; or neuggansal, aka rib finger, a sliver of rib meat sliced directly off the bone; or pyeonyuk, a sort of headcheese, pressed from thinly sliced top round, shank, knee cartilage, and tendon.

He’s particularly looking forward to introducing the complementary pleasures of sous vide beef tongue with abalone.

Not unlike the protocol at Omakase Yume, the couple hope their guests pop these rare morsels into their mouths the moment they land before them. But there’ll be plenty of time to linger on beverage pairings, which will span sparkling, white, and red wines, along with sake, Japanese whiskey, and Hana Makgeolli, an extraordinary rice “wine” naturally fermented in Brooklyn.

The Parks recognize that with beef prices continuing to rise, it’s an odd time to open Bonyeon. But when the space freed up with favorable terms from the landlord, right around the corner from Omakase Yume and their izakaya, TenGoku Aburiya, they decided the time was right for this long-simmering plan. It’ll cost you around $255 for the tasting and about $155 for the pairing.

They’ll temporarily close Omakase Yume for three weeks starting November 20 to prepare for friends and family seatings and then the official opening on December 7. Reservations open Thursday, November 15. v

Admission: $7-$10 Free Admission on Mondays Members receive free or discounted parking!

Visit lpzoo.org/zoolights for attraction and programming info.

m msula@chicagoreader.com NOVEMBER 16, 2023 - CHICAGO READER 11

Paid Sponsored Content

Support Illinois Veterans with your purchase of the Winter Riches Instant Ticket from the Illinois Lottery to work its strategic mission out into organizations that were hitting these segments of the population.”

Prince says that a benefit of working with such a vast network of organizations is that it allows IDVA to better serve historically overlooked and underserved Veterans, including Veterans of color, LGBTQ+ Veterans, and Veterans who are incarcerated or experiencing homelessness.

It also helps them reach those who don’t wish to seek support through formal settings.

“We often call the perfect Veteran, the one who will walk in the door and say, ‘I need help,’” Prince says. “But most Veterans aren’t like that. We’re very proud about our ser-

Illinois is home to nearly 500,000 Veterans—the tenth-largest population of Veterans in the United States today. While they share the experience of having served their country as a diverse group comprising every gender, ethnicity, and walk of life and spanning generations from Zoomers through nonagenarians, their needs are individual and unique.

The Illinois Lottery knows this, which is why they’ve collaborated with the Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs (IDVA) to fund the Veterans’ Cash program, where medical centers and grassroots organizations specializing in Veterans service can apply for grants each year. “There are nearly 2,000 organizations helping Veterans in our state at any given time,” says IDVA director and 31-year Navy Veteran Terry Prince. “And so the Lottery grants program was established to allow IDVA the opportunity 12 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 16, 2023

This sponsored content is paid for by Illinois Lottery

vice; we’re very proud about not wanting to ask for help.

And so the Lottery grant program is a way to get money into different programs across the state that are helping Veterans, sometimes in an indirect way where they don’t necessarily have to go to an office to get assistance. It could be something as simple as a grant program for a VFW [Veterans of Foreign Wars] Post, or a horse situation, where we do equine therapy in certain parts of the state.”

One Veterans’ Cash grant recipient that is bettering lives one Veteran at a time is Freedom Paws Service Dogs.

The Chillicothe, Illinois organization was founded by Air Force Veteran Corey James, and his then-wife Tessa

Illinois Veterans, Courtesy U.S. Department of Veteran’s Affairs, National Center for Veterans Analysis and Statistics

In 2006, the Illinois Lottery launched the first Instant Lottery ticket in the country that designated 100 percent of its profits toward organizations that support Veterans in Illinois. Working with the Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs (IDVA), the Illinois Lottery has raised over $21 million to fund the Veterans’ Cash program, which has awarded grants to more than 400 Veteran support organizations to date. These groups provide various essential services, including housing assistance, long-term care, disability benefits, employment services, food and clothing pantries, and treatment for post-traumatic stress to the more than half a million Veterans who live in the state of Illinois. This year’s tickets honoring our Veterans is called Winter Riches. It was released at the beginning of November to coincide with National Veterans and Military Families Month and Veterans Day on November 11.

The ticket costs $2 and is available at more than 7,000 Illinois Lottery retailers statewide. With the fun and frosty snowflake design, the Winter Riches Instant Ticket makes a great Thanksgiving treat or stocking stuffer for friends, loved ones, and colleagues 18 and over. Visit the Illinois Lottery website for more information about Winter Riches and other specialty tickets. Read on to learn more about Illinois Veterans and Veterans Cash grantee Freedom Paws Service Dogs Foundation.

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Courtesy Freedom Paws Service Dogs

James in 2018 to train service dogs for Veterans living with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Corey had been diagnosed with PTSD and had been working with a foundation to get a service dog. When that organization closed, he used his experience to train a service dog for himself and realized he could also use those skills to help other Veterans.

“Corey thought, ‘What a great way to give back to some of my fellow people, and to be able to help give back in a way that fills a need,’” says Freedom Paws vice president Brenda Olson. To date, the organization has paired 44 trained service dogs with Veterans and first responders, working with a volunteer network of breeders, puppy raisers, and others along the way. While there’s no charge for the Veterans, it costs approximately $15,000 to house, train, and cover medical expenses for each dog from the time they are born through completing their certification, so the funds from the Lottery grant go a long way in supporting their work.

From the time they enter, puppies spend one and a half to two years in the 300-hour training program, during which they’re paired with a Veteran (Freedom Paws also works with Veterans who are training their own dogs). “We do start the training process at a very young age, between 12 and 16 weeks. And so our puppy raisers are very valuable.

They take the dog home, teach it potty training and basic obedience—the house manners, if you will. And they come to training once a week to learn all of the additional skills that are needed.”

PTSD can entail a complex web of symptoms that can interfere with daily life, including hypervigilance, flashbacks of traumatic events, nightmares, anxiety, depression, and intrusive thoughts. While presentation and severity can vary greatly from person to person, according to Olson, the Veterans who work with Freedom Paws often expe-

rience similar challenges. “The biggest symptom is agoraphobia, the fear of them going into crowds and leaving their home. We notice that almost with every case, not all cases, but the majority. We also notice a fear of driving in bad weather or just other people coming up behind them very quickly.”

For a Veteran coping with PTSD, adopting a service dog can be a game-changer. Olson knows that firsthand: She and her husband have raised four Freedom Paws service dogs, and they’ve kept in touch with their owners over the years. “From start to finish, seeing the changes in those people’s lives—they are smiling more, they’re going out in public, they’re telling me they’re doing things that they never did before—is amazing to me. It’s therapy for them, and it’s also therapy for me, quite honestly, because it’s wonderful to be able to be part of something where we feel that we were able to contribute into somebody’s life.”

erans to use November to take care of their health, get appointments scheduled and go see their physician,” he says. There are plenty of ways for the public to get involved with Veterans support too. “We’re doing a letter-writing campaign for our Veterans in our nursing homes called Operation Rising Spirit. Anybody can navigate to our website and fill out a card, and that will be sent to a Veteran for a little holiday cheer. We’re also pushing for an increased level of volunteerism at any of our Veterans homes.”

And in the meantime, people can purchase a Veterans specialty ticket at any Illinois Lottery retail location, and know that win or lose, they are supporting Veterans in their community. “Believe it or not, that little grant program is an engine that really helps and so people purchasing those tickets are playing a huge part in changing the life of a Veteran,” Prince says.

Prince says the demand for Veterans services has skyrocketed in recent years, and that providing support is all the more vital in an era where U.S. military Veterans are experiencing a higher suicide rate than the general public. “The number from the VA [Veterans Affairs] officially is about 22 [suicides] a day, some say 17, I think it’s actually higher,” Prince says. “So Veterans Services programs are putting people into houses, they’re putting food on the table, they’re connecting them with services, or more importantly, their tribe, so they’re not sitting in their apartment somewhere—they’ve got a fire team, a platoon, a squad. I think people are much less likely to die by suicide when they have people around them who really understand and care.”

To that end, Prince encourages Veterans to engage in self-care throughout November. “I really push for VetThis sponsored content is paid for by Illinois Lottery

NOVEMBER 16, 2023 - CHICAGO READER 13

NEWS & POLITICS Photos of Shantieya Smith, who disappeared in 2018, are displayed in her mother’s living room.

Though Smith’s body was found two weeks later in an abandoned garage, her case joins the 99.8 percent of missing person cases classified by Chicago police as “not criminal in nature.”

SEBASTIÁN HIDALGO FOR CITY BUREAU & INVISIBLE INSTITUTE CREDIT

abandoned garage. Her case joined the 99.8 percent of missing person cases from 2000 to 2021 that Chicago police have categorized as “not criminal in nature.”

“I am still getting the runaround to this day,” Moore says, years after Smith’s body was found. A killer has still not been charged.

If police had taken her case seriously, things might be different, she says. “When it comes to justice, I get angry. I get to the point of, why me?”

Systemic issues

INVESTIGATION

What happens when your loved one goes missing?

A history of neglect, botched investigations, and flawed data reveal systemic issues with the way police treat missing person cases.

By TRINA REYNOLDS-TYLER, INVISIBLE INSTITUTE, AND SARAH CONWAY, CITY BUREAU This story is part of the Chicago Missing Persons project by City Bureau and Invisible Institute, two nonprofit journalism organizations based in Chicago. Read the full investigation and see resources for families of the missing at chicagomissingpersons.com.

S

hantieya Smith was a protector in her North Lawndale home, where three generations lived under one roof—the cousin you’d call when there was trouble, who’d walk

14 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 16, 2023

her young daughter to school every day, and whose cherry-red or bottle-blonde weaves mirrored her bright energy. So when the 26-year-old walked out her front door on a warm May afternoon in 2018 to run a quick errand, her mother, Latonya Moore, didn’t think much of it.

“It was a trip that was supposed to be so fast she didn’t even bring her cell phone,” Moore remembers of the last moment she saw her daughter alive.

In fact, it was the beginning of a twoweek odyssey where Moore would confront Chicago police about their response to the case, hold press conferences to accuse police of inaction, and even call out then police superintendent Eddie Johnson himself. She would collect evidence on her own and scrape together as many community resources as possible to search for her missing daughter.

Two weeks later, Smith’s body, disposed and desecrated, was found in a nearby

Chicago’s missing persons crisis is a Black issue.

Black people have made up about two-thirds of all missing person cases in Chicago over the past two decades, and the vast majority of these cases are for Black children under the age of 21.

In particular, Black girls and women between the ages of ten and 20 make up nearly one-third of all missing person cases in the city, according to police data, despite comprising only two percent of the city population as of 2020.

Already distrustful of police due to decades of racial profi ling and abuse—including a legacy of police torture and a federal investigation that led to a still-active court-mandated reform plan—Black Chicagoans say that police do not act urgently or sufficiently to fi nd their missing loved ones.

While police officials have publicly claimed that services for families are equal and fair across race and zip codes, massive gaps in missing persons data make it impossible to prove, according to a two-year investigation

by City Bureau and the Invisible Institute.

Instead, interviews with current and former police officers, national experts, and researchers, along with dozens of anecdotes from impacted family members, reveal systemic problems with the way police treat missing person cases: • Police officers routinely deny or delay people who try to report their loved ones missing, against Illinois state law and police policy.

• Families of the missing say officers are dismissive of their cases, neglect their in-

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NEWS & POLITICS vestigations, and stigmatize their loved ones—including multiple cases where police declined to investigate key leads or lost evidence, leaving families to conduct their own searches.

• Analyzing police data on missing person cases from 2000 to 2021, reporters found discrepancies that call into question the department’s data-keeping practices— making it difficult to see how many cases are related to crimes, how long it takes for police to respond to a missing person report, or even to confirm how many missing people returned home safely.

• In four cases, detectives explicitly noted the missing person had returned home, despite family members saying their loved ones never returned home alive.

Not only does this erode the community’s already thin trust in Chicago police, but even sources within the department say bad management and inefficient systems leave detectives burned-out and unable to help families in need. It also means a recently formed state task force examining the issue of missing women and girls in Chicago will face a near-impossible hurdle in linking missing person cases to crimes like murder and human trafficking.

In a moment when missing person cases are garnering more attention, both nationally and locally, public officials and community members agree that tackling the missing persons issue will require holistic solutions: from changing state laws, to retraining police officers and allocating resources to missing persons investigations, to funding community programs like safe houses, mental health services, and neighborhood searches. But filing a police report is many people’s first step when their loved one goes missing—and community members want to know what they could, and should, expect from police.

A sp okesp e r son i n M ayor B r a ndon Johnson’s office recognized inequities in how police handle missing person cases in Chicago. “The historical disparities that exist in our city when it comes to solving missing person cases among Black and Brown Chicagoans—and Black women, in particular—is an example of the lack of visibility for marginalized communities,” says spokesperson Ronnie Reese. “We need to see people in order to care for them, and ultimately protect them from wicked systems that have been a threat to these communities for generations.”

The bedroom of Shantieya Smith’s only daughter, who lives with her grandmother, Latonya Moore, 150 miles from Chicago SEBASTIÁN HIDALGO FOR CITY BUREAU & INVISIBLE INSTITUTE

“The police failed me”

Official police case data is limited, but interviews with over a dozen families whose loved ones have gone missing, as well as an analysis of police complaint data, tell a clear story: Community residents, especially Black Chicagoans, say police are disrespectful, negligent, and dismissive when it comes to their cases.

City Bureau and the Invisible Institute spoke with multiple people who say police told them—contrary to state law and department policy—they could not file a missing person report or that they needed to wait 24 hours before fi ling.

An analysis of police complaint records from 2011 to 2015 found 17 complaints against officers for allegedly refusing to fi le missing persons reports. None of the officers named in these complaints were disciplined.

“They were saying you have to wait 48 hours before you can actually report the person missing,” says Reverend Robin Hood, who remembers hearing this from police officers starting in the 1990s. The west-side activist and preacher has raised awareness and led community searches for missing Black girls and women for decades.

In response, Chicago police spokesperson Thomas Ahern wrote in an emailed statement: “The Chicago Police Department takes

each missing person report seriously and investigates every one consistently. Under state law, CPD is required to take every missing person report regardless of how long the person has been absent or who is submitting the report.”

Some families believe that if police had acted more urgently, their loved ones might still be alive. On July 24, 2016, Shante Bohanan called her sister and said she was being held against her will. Bohanan’s boyfriend had recently died in a shooting, and the 20-year-old had gone to her boyfriend’s family’s house to grieve, family members tell City Bureau and the Invisible Institute. A police document stated that during the phone call, Bohanan told her sister she had a “gun held to her head.”

Worried for her safety, Bohanan’s mother, Tammy Pittman, says she attempted to report her daughter missing that evening, but officers urged her to wait another 24 hours.

It wasn’t until the next evening that officers searched the home where Pittman suspected her daughter was being held; they found nothing. A day later, Bohanan’s body was found naked inside a black plastic garbage bag in a nearby garage.

“The police failed me. Even though she’s dead, she’s gone, I don’t have no answers and that’s what hurts most of all,” Pittman says,

adding that she hasn’t heard from detectives in five years.

Shirley Enoch-Hill believes she will never find out what happened to her daughter, Sonya Rouse, who dreamed of being a news anchor. When Rouse went missing in 2016 at age 50, she immediately suspected Rouse’s boyfriend, who she claims physically abused her daughter throughout their relationship.

But according to police documents, detective Brian Yaverski did not interview the boyfriend even though he was in custody at Stateville Correctional Center for several months. Eventually, he was released, and almost one year later died of a suspected fentanyl overdose. Yaverski never interviewed him.

Enoch-Hill remembers crying when she heard Rouse’s boyfriend died because she felt the truth of what happened to her daughter was gone forever. “There is no closure. . . . It was like she disappeared off the face of the earth,” she says. “If you’re Black and you come up missing, nobody cares.”

Over a dozen families interviewed for this story say they felt neglected and disappointed in CPD’s handling of their loved ones’ cases—services a majority believed were bad because their relatives were Black and Latino.

Even after Moore, Smith’s mother, con-

NOVEMBER 16, 2023 - CHICAGO READER 15

NEWS & POLITICS continued from p. 15

vinced officers to accept a missing person report for her daughter on May 29, 2018, she was afraid police were not taking her case seriously. Smith had uncharacteristically left her cell phone at home—but police never collected it.

“Police weren’t doing what they were supposed to do, so I had to do it on my own,” Moore says. She even ended up calling and texting a man that Smith had last been seen with—a man she believed to be her daughter’s murderer.

Like several families who spoke to reporters about their missing loved ones, she organized her own search with the help of a local community organization, even hosting a press conference to call out the police’s lack of response.

Downplaying the case, police superintendent Eddie Johnson hosted his own press conference. “The two young ladies we are speaking about were involved in narcotics sales, prostitution, using narcotics together—we do know that,” Johnson said, referring to Smith and another missing woman, Sadaria Davis, who was found dead earlier that spring. However, Moore says her daughter did not use drugs. City Bureau and the Invisible Institute could not independently verify a connection between Smith and Davis outside of the person with whom they were last seen. The medical examiner later said Smith had no illegal drugs in her body.

Black families and advocates for missing person cases say police officers often use dismissive language, sometimes citing personal details about the missing person in a way that places the family and the potential victim at fault.

“The whole narrative is that she’s not deserving to be looked for or deserving to be protected,” says La’Keisha Gray-Sewell, founder and executive director of the Girls Like Me Project, which empowers Black girls in Chicago. “Instead police will say she was on drugs or she was a, quote, unquote, prostitute.”

But even Johnson himself has come to understand the terrible consequences of that attitude, eventually apologizing to Moore for what he said at that 2018 press conference.

“Just [because of] who they are or where they come from or their lifestyle, that doesn’t mean the police shouldn’t take it as serious, because we should,” the former top cop told City Bureau and the Invisible Institute in a January interview. “Somebody loved that person.”

16 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 16, 2023

Hidden in police data

Between 2000 and 2021, the Chicago Police Department claims that just over 343,000 (99.8 percent) of all missing person cases were closed and not criminal in nature, indicating the person was “likely found.” In fact, police data from this time period identifies fewer than 300 missing person cases that were reclassified as a crime and only ten as homicides.

This does not include Smith’s case, because police labeled her case “non-criminal,” then opened a separate police investigation into her death not linked to her original case in CPD’s missing persons data.

“If it’s true that police are not linking missing person cases with criminal investigations, well, that’s obviously bad recordkeeping,” says Thomas Hargrove, a researcher and retired investigative journalist with the Murder Accountability Project. Inaccurate data makes it difficult for police or public officials to fully understand and effectively tackle the missing persons problem in Chicago, according to Hargrove, Matthew Wolfe, and Tracy Siska, all researchers who specialize in police data.

City Bureau and the Invisible Institute identified 11 cases (including Smith’s) that were miscategorized as “closed noncriminal” in the missing persons data despite being likely homicides—more than doubling the number of official homicides in missing persons police data. This fi gure includes the cases of two Black teenage girls who were sexually assaulted and then murdered—14year-old Takaylah Tribitt, who ran away from a north-side shelter and was later found shot to death in a Gary, Indiana, alley, and 12-yearold Jahmeshia Conner, who was found strangled to death in a West Englewood alley.

“If you’re trying to understand how many of the missing person cases within your city are homicides, obviously you should keep accurate records about that,” says Wolfe, a journalist and doctoral candidate in sociology at New York University, where he studies police missing persons data across the country.

“The mistakes that humans make with the data [are] the primary driver of this real problem everywhere. . . . You want those records to be linked [or] you can’t come up with meaningful analysis,” adds Hargrove.

Reporters found these cases by searching for murder charges and news stories and cross-referencing the names of the missing; it’s unclear how many missing person cases that never resulted in murder charges or media coverage were miscategorized in this

“Police weren’t doing what they were supposed to do, so I had to do it on my own.” manner. In Chicago, police arrest somebody in just under a quarter of all homicide cases (though the agency is under fi re for claiming to “clear” nearly half of homicide cases in 2021, according to a CBS Chicago report).

While in some cases this may be due to clerical error, City Bureau and the Invisible Institute also identified four cases where police actually wrote, in their own words, that the missing person was returned home safely, even though they were not.

In the case of 61-year-old Linzene Franklin, who was reported missing in 2011, a detective claimed in a 2014 Chicago police report that she had returned home without incident. In reality, Franklin died of a heart attack at a north-side bus stop in 2013 and was buried as an unidentified person. Her body remained in a south-side Roman Catholic cemetery for nine years before Cook County police connected the two cases and alerted Franklin’s family. Franklin’s daughter told Cook County police she hadn’t seen her mother since 2011.

The Cook County Sheriff ’s Office’s Missing Persons Project closed Linzene Franklin’s case in 2022 after successfully matching Franklin’s DNA with a family member’s. Commander Jason Moran, who leads the team, confirmed in an interview with City Bureau and the Invisible Institute that the CPD had prematurely closed the case.

After 16-year-old Desiree Robinson ran away from her grandparents’s home in late November 2016, detectives reported in a police investigative document several weeks later, “The missing has been located. No in-

dication the missing was a victim/offender.”

However, her grandfather Dennis Treadwell says Robinson never returned to his home nor was he contacted by police about her whereabouts prior to her murder. On Christmas Eve that same year, a man murdered Robinson, who had been the victim of sex trafficking on Backpage.com, after she refused to perform a sexual act for free in a garage in Markham, Illinois, while her sex trafficker slept outside in a parked car, according to a Chicago SunTimes report.

A police spokesperson says, “The Chicago Police Department takes these cases seriously in hopes that the missing individuals are able to return home to their loved ones safely.

Each missing persons case is thoroughly investigated based on the evidence available.

We will continue to investigate all open missing person cases as we work to locate those who are missing.”

Siska, founder of the Chicago Justice Project, adds that errors in CPD data collection are common. He found similar issues with data on how police officers respond to 911 calls. “It is an institutionalized problem,” he says. In 2022, a Chicago Sun-Times investigation revealed how half of murders considered “solved” by CPD did not result in an arrest, despite police officials publicly touting the high “clearance” number.

The issue of missing persons, including how police handle these cases and whether bias plays into the quality of police services and its connection to violence, is both complex and understudied due to the poor quality of police data nationwide, experts say.

Chicago police records also show that, in the last five years, 45 percent of cases are missing a key data point about the time and date police arrive to investigate these cases.

And police sources told City Bureau and the Invisible Institute the missing persons case report is one of the few remaining incident reports done on paper, likely resulting in poor data collection.

These cases lead to important and unanswered questions: How many people in the city of Chicago remain missing despite officers concluding that the person had “returned home?” How many are victims of violent crimes, with their bodies never found or identified by the very department tasked with protecting and serving them? And while this investigation focuses on missing persons who were killed, how many more cases included terrible crimes that left the victim alive and traumatized?

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NEWS & POLITICS Solutions should center survivors

Current and former law enforcement officials tell reporters they think the department can improve the way it handles missing person cases. These changes range from improving data collection to providing more resources for investigations and retraining officers for cultural sensitivity.

Detectives are already operating with a high caseload, and missing person cases are not a political priority within the department, sources say. “The most important thing for politicians is the safety of the city, and that means shootings. Everything else gets prioritized less than that,” says a current police officer who asked to remain anonymous due to fear of reprisal.

One former missing persons detective, who also asked to remain anonymous, says detectives are strapped for time and often have to rely on phone calls, not in-person detective work, to parse through what’s happened in a case.

Retired commander Patricia Casey, who oversaw juvenile missing person cases from 2019 to 2021, says CPD should invest in a specialized missing persons unit where police “would investigate [missing persons] a lot deeper than we do now.” While on the force, she advocated within the department to collect more information on crimes related to missing persons, including sex trafficking. She says the reform failed due to a lack of political will inside of CPD headquarters, a sentiment echoed by other police sources who chose to remain anonymous.

Casey was among several CPD sources who say the department needs to digitize its missing person incident form. A digitized system (common at other large police departments, like Washington, D.C.’s and Miami’s) would ensure data is collected and cases could reach detectives more quickly, sources say.

Moran, of the Cook County Sheriff ’s Office’s Missing Persons Project, says officers should be more vigilant when closing cases and should take them seriously. For instance, he requires an in-person verification from his own officers when they confi rm a missing person is located. “Look at it from the standpoint of this missing person that’s been reported to you [who is] one of those bodies laying on a table down at the morgue,” he says.

Six years ago, Hargrove identified 51 murdered women in Chicago as potential victims of a single serial killer. His theory led to a cascade of headlines and evening news stories, bringing the issue of missing persons

Hundreds of residents join Kenwood Oakland Community Organization organizers for the sixth annual We Walk For Her march on June 7, 2023 to raise awareness for missing Black women and girls in Chicago. SEBASTIÁN HIDALGO FOR CITY BUREAU & INVISIBLE INSTITUTE

to broader public attention and stepping up anxiety in Black neighborhoods where these cases were well-known. Since then, police investigations have reexamined DNA evidence and determined it was unlikely all 51 women were murdered by the same person.

Local advocates close to the issue still believe there are multiple serial killers targeting Black women and girls. The victims identified by Hargrove were almost all Black women, often strangled or asphyxiated, their bodies discarded in south- or west-side abandoned buildings, alleys, trash cans, lots, and parks. Many had histories of substance use and sex work.

While some solutions are possible at the department level, both police sources and community members are quick to point out that other community resources are necessary to fully address the root causes of why people go missing.

“Redlining, racism—we literally create the landscape for murdering Black women and girls in Chicago,” says Beverly Reed-Scott, an advocate for the 51 murdered women identified by Hargrove, who underpins the serial killer theory.

Advocates like Reed-Scott say the problem extends beyond violent individuals who need to be brought to justice. Local grants could support community- and family-led missing persons searches, safe houses for people at risk for exploitation and trafficking, as well as mental health services.

As for the new state task force on the subject, “We’re just looking for information and patterns and see if we can put together a profi le and save lives,” says state senator Mattie Hunter, who cochairs the group. The task force does not have its own budget, but both Hunter and her cochair, state representative Kam Buckner, hope new legislation will bring in more resources after the group presents its fi ndings to the governor and legislature at the end of 2024.

It’s not unprecedented. This year, based on its own task force’s recommendations, Minnesota created an Office of Missing and Murdered African American Women with a $1.24 million budget to assist with cold cases and support domestic violence and human trafficking prevention. Montana, which had a task force focused on missing Native women, used a $25,000 Montana Department of Justice grant to create

a state portal for missing person cases to co llect better data and share resources with families.

In Chicago, Mayor Brandon Johnson pledged to establish a missing persons initiative that would train civilians in traumainformed crisis response. “Our administration is committed to seeing these individuals and their families, investing in them, and providing the resources needed to solve these cases and bring justice and closure to loved ones and communities,” says Reese, the mayor’s spokesperson. Johnson’s office did not respond to an interview request for more details on this plan.

Advocates like former CPD homicide detective Gerald Hamilton, who in his retirement has supported searches for missing Black women and girls, say the city could directly fund community- and family-led missing persons searches in Chicago to bridge the gap in police services.

Regardless of what form future resources and initiatives take in Chicago, “Victims and victims’ families need to be centered to bring recommendations,” says Shannon Bennett, executive director of Kenwood Oakland Community Organization, which hosts the annual We Walk for Her march to raise awareness about the issue. “That’s why I’m leery of any recommendations coming in from people who haven’t had the lived experiences.”

But that participation will be a challenge to garner when so many families feel the system has let them down.

Five years after her daughter’s death, Moore was asked if she would be willing to sit on the task force. She declined to join. Moore says the task force won’t bring Smith back, even though she recognizes the solutions need to center survivors such as herself.

Mostly, she wants the state elected officials and CPD top brass to explain why they blamed Smith herself, rather than searching for her killer.

“They need to stop thinking that everyone is into prostitution and drugs,” she says. “I’m grieving but I’m looking for closure. . . . If it don’t ever rest, then I’ll take it to my grave.”

This story is part of the Chicago Missing Persons project by City Bureau and Invisible Institute, two nonprofit journalism organizations based in Chicago. Read the full investigation and see resources for families of the missing at chicagomissingpersons.com. v

m letters @chicagoreader.com NOVEMBER 16, 2023 - CHICAGO READER 17

NONPROFITS

A

AMBER HUFF

round this time of the year you’ll begin to hear the phrase “the giving season.” It’s the moment when donation-dependent organizations ramp up their campaigns in the hopes of being included in the gifting air that comes in on a wind of mailers, calls, and fundraisers. For the Nonprofit Issue, we thought it would be valuable to talk about nonprofits, not-for-profits, community groups, and mutual aid organizations that Reader staff members

donate their money, time, or goods to on a regular basis. These are the organizations that fill in the gaps. They foster community and meet people’s needs where existing institutions and governments don’t. The Reader Institute for Community Journalism is both proud to be a 501(c)(3) enterprise and proud to increase awareness of our fellow nonprofit organizations. v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

Assata’s Daughters

Chi Youth Nations

A queer Black woman-led and youth-focused organization that organizes young Black people in Chicago by providing them with political education, leadership development, and revolutionary services.

I’ve donated to them for several years. assatasdaughters.org —KERRY CARDOZA

Chi Youth Nations seeks to connect Indigenous people across the Chicagoland area for cultural enrichment, social action, and wellbeing. I occasionally volunteer and show up to their events. chinations.org —CHARLI RENKEN

Chicago Childcare Collective

Youth

18 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 16, 2023

I have organized with ChiChiCo for over two years. We’re a group of volunteers who support the participation of caregivers in racial and economic justice work.

The collective matches volunteers with community organizations across the city to have fun with kids while their caregivers participate in and lead organizing efforts around the city. ChiChiCo is grounded in the belief that play has an important role in radical politics. chichico.org —SAVANNAH HUGUELEY

Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network Chicago

This LGBTQ+ youth advocacy organization focused on ending discrimination and bullying through education. glsen.org —AMY MATHENY

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30 S. Wacker Drive, Suite 1260, Chicago, IL 60606 NOVEMBER 16, 2023 - CHICAGO READER 19

NONPROFITS

continued from 18

American Indian Health Services of Chicago

AIHSC is a healthcare and cultural wellbeing provider for the Chicagoland Indigenous community. I attend their events and sewing workshop. aihschgo.org —CHARLI RENKEN Black People Outside

Health

A nonprofit organization that curates and hosts accessible and attainable outdoor activities. Launched in 2020, the founders have hosted a number of hikes, camping, and adventure experiences that show off Chicago’s amazing nature scene. instagram.com/blk.people.outside —CHASITY COOPER Chicago Abortion Fund

I have volunteered with CAF, an organization that seeks to advance reproductive autonomy and justice. They help people seeking abortions with travel, lodging, and other needs. chicagoabortionfund.org —SAVANNAH HUGUELEY Chicago Recovery Alliance

This harm reduction organization offers free and confidential drug testing, safe sex supplies, safer drug use supplies, and more. I’ve dropped in their volunteer hours on and off since 2019. anypositivechange.org —KATIE PROUT Coffee, Hip-hop, and Mental Health

Not only is this an active coffee shop in Lakeview, but they also offer free therapy resources for people who are looking to improve their mental health and wellness.

A safe space indeed. chhamh.org —CHASITY COOPER

20 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 16, 2023

Healthy Hood Chicago

From exercise classes to social events, HHC provides affordable programming and resources that elevate the mind, body, and conscience to underserved communities. healthyhoodchi.com —CHASITY COOPER Midwest Access Coalition

This nonprofit helps people seeking abortions with travel, food, lodging, and other needs. Illinois is one of only a few midwestern states that protects the right to an abortion, which has caused a huge spike in the number of people coming here for care. Donations to abortion funds have declined since the fall of Roe—other crises have preoccupied those of us who might care—so do what I’ve done and schedule a recurring monthly gift, however modest, that you can’t forget to make. midwestaccesscoalition.org —PHILIP MONTORO Season of Concern

For the past several decades, Season of Concern has been there for theater artists facing health-related financial difficulties.

They started in the darkest days of the AIDS crisis and have continued to meet the emergency financial needs of the people who light up Chicago theater onstage and off. seasonofconcern.org —KERRY REID

Legal Chicago Community Jail Support

Illinois has eliminated cash bail, so nonprofits no longer have to rescue people from life-wrecking pretrial imprisonment. But folks getting out of jail still need help, whether it’s access to a phone, a ride home, or even a place to stay. To help break the carceral state’s cycle of violence, I make a small monthly donation to this mutual aid group. opencollective.com/ chicago-community-jail-support —PHILIP MONTORO Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights

This nonprofit promotes the rights of immigrants and refugees by helping them access benefits, education, and other resources. Lately ICIRR has been busy advocating for asylum seekers, and growing backlash against their presence in Chicago will increase our need for humane, practical voices in the public square. I’ve donated to ICIRR, and I will again.

Icirr.org —PHILIP MONTORO

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NONPROFITS Midwest Immigration Bond Fund

Urban Growers Collective

A coalition formed in 2020 that pays immigration bonds in Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Kentucky. mibfc.org —SHAWN MULCAHY

For a few summers I volunteered at City Farm Chicago, an urban farm formerly located on Division that was created to help support the not-for-profit Resource Center. It grew a variety of fruits and vegetables, and even housed chickens at one point, but its main goal was educating groups of kids and adults about sustainable agriculture. The experience changed my relationship to the city in that I began to think of the way space is so often underused and so much of it could be used for the betterment of others with the right tools and the right resources, including knowledgeable people. An organization like Urban Growers Collective continues with that mission of using the tools and the wisdom of the community to fill in those gaps. urbangrowerscollective.org —SHEBA WHITE

Palestine Legal

In a recent n+1 editorial, Palestine Legal staff attorney Dylan Saba wrote about the rise of suppression—which includes blacklists, doxxing, and harassment—facing Americans advocating for Palestinian rights. This organization provides legal advice, litigation support, and advocacy for people expressing their first amendment rights in solidarity with Palestinians. palestinelegal.org —LEOR GALIL Creative Chicago Reuse Exchange

CCRx takes excess materials from people & companies (fabric, computer equipment, etc.) and redistributes to teachers, community organizations, and nonprofits. I try to introduce all the teachers in my life to them and bring people to their Auburn Gresham warehouse. creativechirx.org —SALEM COLLO-JULIN

Environment Felines & Canines

Four of my cats have come from this shelter, but I also support them because they do a great job of caring for cats and dogs with special needs—including groundbreaking work with FIV+ cats—and bringing in animals from high-kill areas in Alabama to place them in Chicago. felinescanines.org —KERRY REID

The Reader’s weekly chef pop-up series,

The Wetlands Initiative designs, restores, and creates wetlands and prairies in Illinois, preserving wild spaces and improving water quality. I am a volunteer and a donor. wetlands-initiative.org —DIANE PASCAL v

Dec. 11: Fungal ferments with Sauce and Bread Kitchen @sauceandbread

Nov. 27: The return of Nemanja and Marko Dec. 18: It’s all Greek Milunovic with Meze Table @nemanja_milunovic_ @meze.table

at Ludlow Liquors.

Follow the chefs, @chicago_reader, and @mikesula on Instagram for weekly menu drops, ordering info, updates, and the stories behind Chicago’s most exciting foodlums.

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The Wetlands Initiative

Nov. 20: Grandma’s recipe with Pierogi Papi @pierogipapichi

Monday Night Foodball

FARMLAND AUCTION

Dec. 4: Portuguese pastry from Cadinho @cadinhobakery

For weekly menus and ordering info, head to

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56.4913 acres

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ARTS & CULTURE

For more info on Untidy Projects, visit graycenter.uchicago.edu/fellowships/untidy-objects. COCO PICARD

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A COMEDIC SHOWDOWN BETWEEN TRUTH AND FACT

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615 W. Wellington Avenue (at Broadway), Chicago

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NOVEMBER 16, 2023 - CHICAGO READER 23

R storystudiochicago.org

ARTS & CULTURE StoryStudio’s artistic director Rebecca Makkai gives a lecture. STORYSTUDIO CHICAGO

NONPROFITS

StoryStudio turns 20 The nonprofit offers a key community space for storytellers.

By YUE LI

F

rom a few folding chairs and four students at its very first class to today’s 1,600-square-foot space in Ravenswood—plus online everywhere—and more than 1,400 students, StoryStudio Chicago aims to be a positive, encouraging, and craft-centered storytelling community in the city. That’s the motivation behind founder Jill

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24 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 16, 2023

Pollack creating the local literary nonprofit, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year.

With warmly painted walls, comfy couches, and a pleasant coffee aroma, StoryStudio, located in a loft space on North Ravenswood Avenue, “always has a welcoming family room vibe,” Pollack says. “We teach that there’s no competition,” she explains. “Everybody is going to be lifted up together. Once you become a StoryStudio person, you are for life.”

As part of its 20th anniversary celebrations, StoryStudio has launched “20 Stories,” a project showcasing the diverse experiences of how individual members have grown and achieved together with the organization. “It’s basically all incredible gratitude for a place like StoryStudio,” says Rebecca Makkai, the artistic director of StoryStudio and a writer whose 2018 novel The Great Believers was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.

“It ranges from gratitude for community, finding other writers, feeling like a writer, and finding lifelong friends.”

Other celebrations include StoryBall, an annual fundraiser party this past April, where all donations go to support StoryStudio’s parent organization, the Stories Matter Foundation, and the foundation’s community engagement arm, the Chicago Stories Project, which

seeks to initiate 20 new partnerships with local schools, libraries, nonprofits, and other agencies.

Over the years, StoryStudio has grown from a writers’ hangout to a citywide writing school offering storytelling classes, programs, intensives, workshops, festivals, and more on a wide variety of topics, genres, levels, and lengths. “Frankly, just hitting 20 years, I think that’s a pretty major milestone,” says Pollack, who is also the chair of the board of directors of Stories Matter Foundation. “I tend to look at the smaller things. We have someone on staff who started as a student at least 15 years ago.

We do have people who hang around for a long time. That is another major accomplishment.”

A graduate of George Washington University with a degree in theater, Pollack has always been passionate about “being around vibrant stories and creative people.” After moving to Chicago, taking several content-related jobs, and starting an internet company out of college, Pollack decided to focus on fiction writing. She wanted the company of other writers, but realized the city didn’t have a great literary community to tap into. So in 2003, the entrepreneurial veteran founded StoryStudio and taught general creative writing and novel classes as the sole instructor until 2005.

When StoryStudio moved into its current space in 2007, it expanded from only a few students to nearly 100. “That’s when I realized there was a huge interest in storytelling and a huge need,” Pollack says. “It was really exciting. As StoryStudio was growing, so was the literary community here in Chicago. A bunch of storytelling shows started back then.”

In 2012, as StoryStudio continued to grow, Pollack really started to build a faculty and hired Makkai to teach. “Back then, I just had one novel out, and I was not terribly well-known,” Makkai says. “But I was so grateful that they just took a chance on me as an instructor, and I grew along with the studio in my own career. I wish I had known about it sooner as a way to find my writing community.”

Being “incredible partners,” Pollack says, she and Makkai soon decided to create a yearlong course in novel writing, with Makkai designing the program structure and serving as the first instructor. Now StoryStudio runs

nine yearlong programs for writers of different levels and genres, and “Novel in a Year” has become the studio’s signature program.

According to Pollack, almost all “Novel in a Year” cohorts continue to meet. “It’s sort of like a club,” she says. “You’ve sort of gone through this intense program together. And you want to keep that support and emotional exuberance going.”

StoryStudio officially transitioned into a nonprofit and became part of the Stories Matter Foundation in 2019. Pollack explains that transformation would open doors for her to “raise enough money in other ways” and “work on the outreach programs” she wanted.

“It’s important to us that StoryStudio is not an elite school just for rich people. So to that end, we’re raising money for three things: to pay our faculty what they’re worth, to pay our staff what they’re worth, and to make it possible for anybody who wants to come to have some scholarships. We’re just not willing to let money drive our decisions and our access.

Having said that, all of that takes money,” Pollack says.

In 2020, StoryStudio quickly pivoted to offering online classes and producing new content due to the pandemic restrictions. Within a week of the initial lockdown, they launched a series called “Pajama Seminars,” inviting writers whose book tours had been canceled to give two-hour master classes online. Makkai emphasizes that the seminars were so successful that they continue to run them today, with more than 100 held so far.

“That really exploded because then not only did we have students from around the world, but we could hire teachers from around the world,” Pollack says. “So that did expand our footprint and our vision of what we could accomplish.”

Pollack’s vision centers on making StoryStudio more diverse in all aspects, whether through hosting events in more city neighborhoods, launching more personalized programs, or balancing online on-demand content with in-person class offerings.

“We’re looking to see more relationships with other arts institutions and many more public events,” Pollack says. “We’re also looking at doing more stuff online, as much as we want people to be back. We’ve recognized that when we put something online, it’s open to the whole world. We have stories to do with people around the world and you just want that wider reach.” v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

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CHICAGO’S HOLIDAY TRADITION

“EXTRAORDINARILY MOVING” Chicago Tribune

NOVEMBER 18 - DECEMBER 31

A MANUAL CINEMA PRODUCTION ADAPTED FROM THE NOVEL BY CHARLES DICKENS DEVISED BY MANUAL CINEMA ADDITIONAL WRITING BY NATE MARSHALL

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THEATER

Neel McNeill (left) and Tyrone Phillips of Definition Theatre JOE MAZZA/BRAVE LUX

Fairview, presented by Definition Theatre at the Revival in Hyde Park in spring 2023 JOE MAZZA/BRAVE LUX

STAGES OF SURVIVAL

Definition Theatre sets their own terms for success A planned new arts center in Woodlawn is just one component of their commitment to community.

By KERRY REID

Stages of Survival is an occasional series focusing on Chicago theater companies, highlighting their histories and how they’re surviving—and even thriving—in a landscape that’s become decidedly more challenging since the 2020 COVID-19 shutdown. ast month’s report from the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) and SMU DataArts, “Navigating Recovery: Arts and Culture Financial and Operating Trends in Chicago,” contained some fairly grim numbers for Chicago theater. As Reader columnist Deanna Isaacs wrote, “In 2022, in-person attendance at performing arts events was down a stunning 59 percent from the 2019 level, while the number of programs presented declined ‘nearly two-thirds.’”

But there was also an interesting fact noted within the report: BIPOC organizations bucked

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26 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 16, 2023

the trend of shrinking individual donations “with a 46% increase in individual contributions that supported 5% more of their total expenses over time.” BIPOC organizations also increased their staffing and “stood out in their commitment to hiring artists, increasing their artistic fold by more than 80% from 2019 to 2022.”

For Definition Theatre, bucking the trend as a BIPOC-focused organization also means moving forward with plans to open their own built-from-the-ground-up arts center in Woodlawn. But Definition isn’t just interested in serving theater artists and audiences.

Founded as a non-Equity company over ten years ago by Tyrone Phillips and Julian Parker, graduates of the theater program at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, they’ve been working to grow deeper roots within their

south-side community by partnering with everyone from local entrepreneurs to high school students. Their mission statement reads: “We celebrate stories created with, inspired by, and intended for people and communities of color.

Through the act of making, Definition expands perspectives, stewards resources, and bridges the possibility found at the intersection of art, innovation, and education.”

Their production history includes, most recently, the Chicago premiere of Jackie Sibblies Drury’s 2019 Pulitzer Prize-winning Fairview, as well as highly praised productions of White by James Ijames (winner of the 2022 Pulitzer for Fat Ham and a Definition ensemble member); a 2016 coproduction of Evan Linder’s Byhalia, Mississippi with New Colony (later renamed New Coordinates, that company is no longer operating); and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s An Octoroon, presented in association with the Goodman in 2017.

Definition first announced plans to open their own space in May 2019, when they received $1.6 million in seed money from the city’s Neighborhood Opportunity Fund. The original plan was to take over an old church in Woodlawn and convert it into a theater and community center.

That plan has since morphed into building a brand-new space. Executive director Neel McNeill explains, “We ran into a bunch of problems that you come up with when trying to rent and rehab. And so we went back to the city, because very much our initiative was

sprouted from the Year in Chicago Theater [2019] and really understanding the inequities in theater that existed at that time and still do exist now. And for us, it was, ‘OK, this is a city initiative. City, you should be helping us sort of create this project.’ You know, this is something that we all need in a community that is becoming really an exciting hot spot.” (The theater will be about a mile and a half from the Barack Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park.)

McNeill notes that she and Phillips selected a plot of land at 6400 S. Cottage Grove in part for its proximity to public transportation, but then made an exciting discovery. “We found out that Lorraine Hansberry’s family actually owned the land. So it’s like literally building up from the ancestors.” They hope to have construction completed by the end of 2025; meantime, they will be announcing their 2024 season and temporary venues soon.

Phillips, who serves as Definition’s artistic director and is also a busy freelance director in town (his stellar production of Twelfth Night is currently onstage at Chicago Shakespeare Theater), notes that the pandemic shutdown and shift in building plans was beneficial for the company’s larger vision.

“Just because of how we were positioned, it allowed us to actually grow and kind of start new programming that is really at the foundation of what the organization’s mission is. I talk about it all the time. It took the pandemic to really bring us here to say, ‘OK, how does

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THEATER the community realize that theater can be a part of how they literally thrive and flourish and grow, and that we should be in community, [that] we should be in conversation with each other as a community?”

One of the initiatives Definition undertook is the Innovator Small Business Cohort, created in partnership with community development lab 37 Oaks and investment firm Promise Holdings LLC. Participants receive space, resources, and coaching in a free threemonth program designed for Black and Brown product-based entrepreneurs to learn “how to conduct sustainable and scalable community business.”

Phillips notes that the inspiration for the Innovator program came in part from a friend who was excited by Definition’s work and had artistic inclinations of their own that hadn’t been fully realized. “The thing that connects us all is the thing I work with with playwrights all the time: bring big ideas to fruition—something that’s living on paper,” says Phillips.

“But making it an actual living entity that people need and want more of is a different thing. I think artists and entrepreneurs share

big ideas becoming reality. We’ve found artists want to hang out with business people and business people want to hang out with artists.” Some previous participants in the cohort include fashion creators Lotus Noir Company, and Sista Dolls, which creates handcrafted dolls and items celebrating Black women and girls. (Many of the participants, as both McNeill and Phillips note, are Black women.)

McNeill notes that supporting local entrepreneurs also builds audiences for Definition.

“I feel like we’re doing a lot less talking and a lot more listening. We understand what’s happening in the community based on the type of businesses that are coming in and approaching us. We have really candid conversations, like, ‘Hey, outside of just your business, what else is going on? What else are you excited about?’ And many of them oftentimes are like, ‘I had aspirations to be in the arts, but I felt like it wasn’t something that I could actually take on.’ And so they’re excited to not only feed into the Innovator but also feed into the work. We offer them free tickets to every single production that we do. Once you’re done with the program, you’re not gone forever.”

NOW PLAYING

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Like many companies, Definition also offers a robust lineup of theater classes. One innovative element they’re particularly proud of is the By Design Fellowship, a year-long program for local high school students that allows a student to shadow a Definition designer throughout the process for a production, from the ideas stage to completion. The goal is that they will be ready to step into professional-level work early on. “We want to make sure we have a strong commitment to the next generation of artists,” says Phillips.

That includes fostering new work by BIPOC writers. Their digital Amplify series, which started during the pandemic, presents scenes from new works online in an annual festival.

The winners receive $3,000 and a further two-year development program with Definition. Some of the writers involved in Amplify include rising local playwrights Omer Abbas Salem, Tina Fakhrid-Deen, and India Nicole Burton.

Phillips points out that one reason Definition came through the pandemic relatively well is that “We just weren’t at a capacity where we had a big staff or we had to lay peo-

POTUS

OR, BEHIND EVERY GREAT DUMBASS ARE SEVEN WOMEN TRYING TO KEEP HIM ALIVE

ple off. We were always really operating within our means. We were just responsible. And so that’s a whole different conversation and article we can have about institutions of color and the support they receive.”

But McNeill, in line with the DCASE report, notes that there also seems to be a shift in funder priorities after the pandemic shutdown and the protests for racial and social justice of 2020. “Prior to the pandemic, we were small, we were figuring it out. We had an opportunity to grow. And I feel like what we’re seeing is almost like what I’ve heard described as like a restructuring or resizing. You see less of those dollars going to those larger organizations and you’re seeing people really hone in and focus on those organizations that have been there serving a very specific community—leaders of color or artists of color who have really found success. I wouldn’t even say ‘found success,’ because I don’t believe that they were not successful before, but I think their work is all really starting to garner the attention that it deserves.” v

m kreid@chicagoreader.com

By SELINA FILLINGER Directed by Artistic Director AUDREY FRANCIS

“Chock-full of witty zingers, this satirical romp through the sewer of sexism in the White House is good, filthy fun.”

- Chicago Sun-Times

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NOVEMBER 16, 2023 - CHICAGO READER 27

THEATER OPENING

R Holiday demons

Beetlejuice unleashes manic energy at the Auditorium.

Thirty-five years after its film debut, the classic Tim Burton Halloween comedy Beetlejuice has been reimagined, first set loose like a demon as a 2019 Broadway musical (score by Eddie Perfect, book by Scott Brown and Anthony King, and directed by Alex Timbers), and now playing at Chicago’s Auditorium Theatre. My inner goth jumped at the chance to see how it would hold up to audiences today. Not surprisingly, the cult favorite brought out the cosplay fans. Children, drag queens, and would-be demons arrived in their signature blackand-white garb with matching green hair. One child seated next to us proudly displayed her Handbook for the Recently Deceased bag. Yet the play isn’t entirely child-friendly, so think twice before bringing anyone under tween age.

It starts with death, like any self-respecting play around this time of year, but quickly dissolves into themes of loneliness and belonging wrapped in hearty sing-alongs. True to the original film in many ways, Beetlejuice features tap dancing, a few bracing jump scares, and ubiquitous cigarette smoke. It also adds some acrobatics in just for fun and, best of all, puppets (designed

by Michael Curry). The crass demon Beetlejuice is ever present with the precise vocal fry of Michael Keaton, a tonal ploy not meant for musical crooning, but Justin Collette pulls it off somehow, adding his own signature comedy improv here and there. (Perhaps even more so in this era, we can readily recognize his bluster as akin to that of patriarchal man-babies we have known.) But the scene-stealer in this production is Lydia (played by Isabella Esler) whose Winona Ryder resemblance is uncanny and whose earthy voice anchors the whole show.

By unapologetically crossing the line with objectionable character behavior for 2023 (even for a demon), physical jokes around nonconsensual sexual advances land nasty. In the end, like any good fairy tale, Beetle-

28 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 16, 2023

juice gets his comeuppance and is vanquished to hell, and the audience shakes it off to rejoice in the neat, happy reunion between the living and the dead. — KIMZYN CAMPBELL BEETLEJUICE Through 11/19: Wed

2 and 7:30 PM, Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 2 and 8 PM, Sun 2 PM; Auditorium Theatre, 50 E. Ida B. Wells, broadwayinchicago.com, $48-$136

R This is hell

Commedia Divina: It’s Worse Than That offers a contemporary twist on Dante.

Feel like you’ve been living in hell the past several years?

The Conspirators understand. In their latest offering, Commedia Divina: It’s Worse Than That, writer Sid Feldman concocts a Dante-esque excursion through recent history. The conceit is that we’re actually witnessing a compassionate minister and a MAGA-in-training in 2016 as the latter shares her eight “visions” from the future, which just happen to include an economy-destroying pandemic, transphobia, and insurrection. Arguably, each takes away exactly the wrong lesson from these visions: the minister believes that understanding and communication are always possible, while the MAGA dame pushes for even more extreme actions against immigrants and other marginalized folks.

The company draws on the heightened broad-as-abarn-door political commedia dell’arte style popularized over 30 years ago here by John Cusack’s New Crime Productions (Feldman was a producer for the company). Thirteen actors and one musician, under Wm. Bullion’s nimble direction, assume a variety of roles in the short scenes making up this dystopic inferno, their faces covered with grotesque black-and-white makeup.

Perhaps predictably, some of the over-the-top antics feel strained from time to time. (I found myself grateful for the stylistic palette cleanser of a video depicting stretches of closed storefronts in Wicker Park, set to “Ghost Town” by the Specials, as a change of pace from the live freneticism.) But overall, the Conspirators have a firm handle on this style, and the show ends with an appropriately chilling warning of how recent history

may well repeat itself if we don’t pay attention. —KERRY REID COMMEDIA DIVINA: IT’S WORSE THAN THAT

Through 11/19: Thu-Sun 8 PM, Otherworld Theatre, 3914 N. Clark, conspirewithus.org, $25

interpretation Sat 12/2 2 PM (touch tour 1:30 PM), open captions Sunday 12/3 2 PM; no shows Wed-Thu 11/22-11/23; Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis, 773-7534472, courttheatre.org, $56-$88

R Royal holiday headaches

R We three amigos

A top-notch cast elevates Court’s The Lion in Winter.

Wise Guys: The First Christmas Story is a biblical buddy adventure.

The arch dialogue in James Goldman’s 1966 drama The Lion in Winter (turned into a 1968 film starring Katharine Hepburn and Peter O’Toole) about the eventful Christmas of 1183 at the English court hasn’t aged well—it calls too much attention to its own cleverness while often failing to advance either the plot or our understanding of the characters. Fortunately, director Ron OJ Parson slices right through that surface to reveal the universal components of the battle between Henry II and his imprisoned wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, over who will inherit the throne. As they and their sons plot and spar, we see every family with something to fight over and lose, from Medea to King Lear to Succession.

And if the result is actually more The Lioness in Winter, that’s because Rebecca Spence infuses Eleanor with wisdom that continues to elude John Hoogenakker’s Henry. She sees that efforts to shape the world after their deaths are futile, and moreover, that those efforts have cost them the love of their lives—each other. This Eleanor has figured out that their sons are disappointments, their lovers mere distractions, and even their prized land just dirt, and she spends the play trying to convey that to Henry, who’s too busy scheming to notice that his life is slipping away. These two well-matched performers receive able support from Shane Kenyon, Brandon Miller, and Kenneth La’Ron Hamilton as the rival princes, Anthony Baldasare as the king of France, and the tender Netta Walker as his sister (who is also Henry’s winter passion). Linda Buchanan’s castle set makes clear that Eleanor may be the only one in custody, but they’re all trapped. —KELLY KLEIMAN THE LION IN

Leave it to Factory Theater to come up with a twist on the story of the Magi that’s smart-assed and sincere at the same time. In Chase Wheaton-Werle’s Wise Guys: The First Christmas Story, now in its world premiere under Becca Holloway’s direction, Melchior (Josh Razavi), Balthazar (Michael Jones), and Gaspar (Shail Modi) have to overcome their differences and band together in order to survive their journey to Bethlehem. Along the way, they’re abandoned by their camel ride-share operator, Ubar (Amber Washington), captured by bandits, face near-death from lack of water and food, and keep encountering a mysterious being named Gabriel (Ashley Yates).

The framing device here is similar to that of Jessica Dickey’s Galileo’s Daughter (presented last spring by Remy Bumppo), with a religious studies PhD candidate, Rhys (Lizzy Mosher), visiting dusty Vatican archives to read an obscure account of the three kings, aided by the ancient wisecracking librarian Adriano (Harrison Lampert, who does delicious double duty as toxic narcissist King Herod). And though there are some bits that are stretched a little longer than necessary, the overall message—miracles occur amid the mundane, and simple kindnesses are the greatest miracles of all—couldn’t be more seasonally appropriate. The actors dig into the story with gusto and heart. I wouldn’t mind this show becoming a recurring holiday event. —KERRY REID WISE GUYS: THE FIRST CHRISTMAS STORY

WINTER Through 12/3: Wed-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat-Sun 2 and 7:30 PM; touch tour, audio description, and ASL

Through 12/16: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM; accessibility performance Sun 11/19, understudy performance Sun 12/3; no shows Thu-Sun 11/23-11/26; Factory Theater, 1623 W. Howard, 312-275-5757, thefactorytheater.com, $25 v

ll

ll

THE

LION WINTER

The Family Drama Begins November 3

IN BY

JAMES GOLDMAN DIRECTED BY

RESIDENT ARTIST RON OJ PARSON Sponsored by

AR T B Y D ANIEL MINTER .

R on O J Parson’ s residency is made possible by

5535 S Ellis Ave | Free Garage Parking (773) 753-4472 | CourtTheatre.org

TONY

AWARD

WINNING

NOVEMBER 16, 2023 - CHICAGO READER 29

FILM

CHICAGO FILMMAKERS

1326 W. Hollywood 773-293-1447 chicagofilmmakers.org

This poster from 1982 highlights the $2.50 screenings and promotes the building’s “modern air-conditioning!” CHICAGO FILMMAKERS

HISTORY

Chicago Filmmakers celebrates its 50th anniversary The nonprofit’s special anniversary programming continues into 2024.

By KAT SACHS

“A

s I’ve been thinking about our history, people know a lot about what we do, but what they don’t know are the things that we tried to do or did early on,” Chicago Filmmakers executive director Brenda Webb tells me from across a table at the organization’s recently revamped firehouse building in Edgewater.

This year, Chicago Filmmakers celebrates its 50th anniversary, a landmark achievement in the history of any nonprofit, let alone one focused on the cinematic arts. That’s 50 years of providing the city with alternatives to the more mainstream options readily available elsewhere—alternative programming as well as alternative educational opportunities for aspiring filmmakers.

In 1973, it wasn’t yet Chicago Filmmakers, but rather Film Group at N.A.M.E. Gallery, the latter of which was established the same year and cofounded by art critic Jerry Saltz. Mul-

30 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 16, 2023

tidisciplinary artist and film preservationist Bill Brand was among the small cohort that established the group.

“This is the early 70s, which is really still the 60s,” he says. “Countercultural ideas and [our beliefs that] we were creating an oppositional alternative that was somehow separate from main culture were very much in the wind. So I had this idea that I would start something like that, and I had the idea that to create the kind of experimental film culture that I was interested in, in an institution like this, it needed to have exhibitions that supported local arts. It needed to bring in the best of outside artists. It needed to foster critical writing and newspapers—thinking of Jonas Mekas and such, with his [Movie] Journal [column in the Village Voice]. And it needed to foster production. It needed equipment and stuff like that. . . . This was the conceptual structure of what I was doing, but I was very naive. I ran into a couple of fellow [School of the] Art Institute students

who were doing a similar thing for galleries . . . they were starting N.A.M.E.” The very first program featured films by Brand, Stan Brakhage (then a professor at the School of the Art Institute, flown in on a regular basis from his home in Boulder, Colorado), Shirley Erbacher, and Yvonne Rainer. Brand and Erbacher were in attendance.

Dan Ochiva, Brand’s classmate and one of Film Group’s cofounders (the others were Warner Wada and Brand’s then wife, filmmaker JoAnn Elam), says he was particularly galvanized by a desire to take action rather than “sitting back and letting school happen around me.” Despite this resourceful mindset, the screenings and events themselves were rather unstructured. “Maybe it was just due to the 60s and the 70s,” he says, “but we didn’t really make a big deal out of presenting things to people in a very structured or didactic way, but trying to find a flow, trying to find what people were interested in and how to elicit that from the filmmaker.”

When Brand left, Ochiva took over, with help from Elam (a local hero of sorts whose films, housed by the Chicago Film Archives, include: Rape [1975], described by critic and early Chicago Filmmakers board member B. Ruby Rich as an “an early classic of feminist avant-garde agitprop”; Lie Back and Enjoy It [1982]; and Everyday People [1979-1990]) and Susan Goldberg, who also stayed on when Ochiva departed and Elam was in charge. In 1976, the group broke off from N.A.M.E. and officially incorporated as Chicago Filmmakers.

“At some point . . . we did decide to become more independent and a separate entity from N.A.M.E. Gallery,” Goldberg says, “because it just felt like the way we were growing and evolving.”

Goldberg remembers that they had an advocate in a renowned local film critic. “God bless him—Roger Ebert, he was a big supporter, and he would try to give us reviews when he could,” she says.

She recalls when he reviewed The Police Tapes (1977) by Alan and Susan Raymond.

“We were mobbed. Mobbed. We had to open the second room; I think we had to put up two screens. It was crazy. There were lots of policemen there. I remember putting on Roxy Music, ‘Love is the Drug,’ and it got booed.

That was just one experience that we had.”

Webb began working at Chicago Filmmakers in 1978 on a recommendation from Goldberg, her friend and then roommate. She was

one of the organization’s first paid employees as part of the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act, an extension of the Works Progress Administration that was utilized especially by arts organizations to employ artists and arts workers. She has been involved ever since, a staggering 45 years of dedication.

“When I was hired at Chicago Filmmakers, I was hired to start an educational program,” Webb says, referring to the ongoing program that now involves adult classes, youth classes and camps, and workforce development (specifically, the organization facilitates a Production Assistant Training Program). “That was what my job description was supposed to be.

I was not brought on to be the film curator.

But when I started, basically, the board disbanded . . . I take this job and suddenly there’s no equipment. I’m supposed to start this film program, but there’s no equipment to teach filmmaking on or anything like that.

“I had to suddenly run the film screening program, which was a preexisting program that had to continue. It took a little while, a year or so, before I was able to really focus attention on the educational program. And even so, we really pretty much had a borrowed Bolex [camera].”

In terms of film programming, Webb went up against the screening committee to show David Lynch’s Eraserhead (1977)—her “first act of defiance” against them, she says, an indicator of tensions often prevalent in nonprofit organizations, especially those centered on the arts—which resulted in lines around the block and some people waiting up to four hours to see it. “That made me realize you can show weird, experimental films, and it doesn’t have to be that nobody shows up or that very few people show up.”

This extended beyond film. “There’s a lot of things about our history that people don’t know. . . . We were one of the first places, if not the first place, where punk bands played in Chicago, because the bars wouldn’t let them in, because they were too rowdy,” says Webb.

“And we did until they ruined our screen by somebody throwing beer at it.”

“We did a feminist film series, where we were schlepping a projector around to various women’s facilities, trying to turn them into radicals. Stuff like that. We did a Super 8 mm class at Robert Taylor Homes, for young kids, to teach them to make oral histories for their families. We did some screenings at Cabrini-Green, at the commu-

FILM

Illustrated posters advertise the programming at Chicago Filmmakers CHICAGO FILMMAKERS

nity center there, and showed some Black Panther films.”

There are too many to list here, but standout screenings have included, in no particular order, films by Mekas, Kenneth Anger, Bruce Baillie, Chicago documentarian Tom Palazzolo, Chick Strand, George Kuchar, Jon Jost, and Vincent Grenier (who just recently passed away); a smoky screening of Anthony McCall’s Line Describing a Cone (1973); The Forgotten Half: Restoring Women to History, a several-part series of programs dedicated to female filmmakers, such as Agnès Varda, Alice GuyBlaché, Lotte Reiniger, Suzan Pitts, and Maya Deren; a “dada soiree,” featuring a collection of French and German dada films made between 1922 and 1931; a five-part retrospective of films

by Yoko Ono; and even a documentary about Allen Ross, a cofounder of Chicago Filmmakers along with Elam, Goldberg, Amy Carter, and John Van Wagner. Ross had also served as the organization’s first program director; the aforementioned documentary, per filmmaker

and critic Fred Camper’s Reader review of the film, detailed how Ross “vanished mysteriously in 1995, two years after he surprised friends by marrying alleged cult leader Linda Greene and leaving Chicago.” His remains were found in a Wyoming basement in 2000.

In general among the group, “aesthetic and ideological differences were often handled by shifting emphasis to different kinds of work on a show-by-show basis,” writes Van Wagner in an email. “We knew our general parameters, toward ‘independence’ and ‘experimentation,’ toward the idiosyncratic and unclassifiable, and away from the mainstream. Many of us were strongly allied with and sympathetic to the experimental orientation of work seen around the country in what would now be called ‘microcinemas,’ but we were open to work that was uniquely local and cut across genres, such as works of visual anthropology made for audiences that were mainly academic.”

(Because it’s too good not to mention,

Van Wagner recounts one particularly starstudded event: “On the occasion of a screening with a personal appearance by Kenneth Anger, a man showed up in a very large fur coat with an entourage, taking up the center of the front row. The volume of this coat made viewing Anger’s films difficult for anyone in the central seating section. It was revealed, many of us found out later, that this was Tennessee Williams, in town for the opening of one of his late plays.”)

In addition to punk shows, Chicago Filmmakers was one of the few places where members of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians played improvisational jazz on the north side, a connection made by filmmaker and programmer Floyd Webb (no relation to Brenda), a longtime board member still heavily involved with the organization.

David Hauptschein hosted a spoken word cafe series that attracted the likes of David Sedaris.

Another series, PerforMedia, was a salon of sorts that involved other mediums in addition to film. “The idea was to introduce experimental film to people interested in poetry or people interested in avant-garde music or things like that,” says Brenda Webb.

“One of those things that we tried was the Reeling Film Festival, which is just one thing that sort of took on a life of its own. It came out of that spirit of like, how can we get more

people to see experimental film?”

Its 41st edition having just concluded in early October, Reeling, the Chicago LGBTQ+ international film festival (the secondlongest-running of such festivals) remains a cornerstone of the vision of Chicago Filmmakers. Originally called the Chicago Lesbian & Gay International Film Festival, it’s Webb’s proudest accomplishment in her 45-year tenure.

“I guess in some ways I’m most proud of Reeling just because, at the time I started the festival, I didn’t even know if such a thing existed,” she says, “so I feel like that was something that married filmmakers and a community, and that’s what I think Chicago Filmmakers is all about. It’s not just the art, but connecting the art with the community.”

Chicago Filmmakers also facilitates the Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival, which is going into its 34th edition.

Established by the Experimental Film Coalition in 1987, Chicago Filmmakers took it over in 2001, after which it was led by program manager Patrick Friel until 2015. “It had been dormant for a couple of years,” Friel tells me, though it’s been running steadily under the auspices of Chicago Filmmakers and a handful of festival programmers since then.

Over the years, Chicago Filmmakers has been in various spots around the city’s north side, from Clark and Hubbard to Belmont,

NOVEMBER 16, 2023 - CHICAGO READER 31

FILM continued from p. 31

A schedule from December 1983, including the Chicago Filmmakers tenth anniversary party CHICAGO FILMMAKERS

where Theater Wit is now housed, to Clark again, in Andersonville, and then, most recently, the firehouse on 1326 W. Hollywood.

Webb credits Alderperson Harry Osterman with Chicago Filmmakers getting that space.

As it had once been a fire station, “he was really committed to seeing this facility go back into the public function,” Webb says. Community members help with the landscaping, and they still host voting as it did when it was a fire station.

In addition to such community involvement, Chicago Filmmakers is supported by funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Illinois Arts Council Agency, the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, and the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events; Voqal and the Gaylord & Dorothy Donnelley Foundation; and corporate entities such as Disney Entertainment Television and NBCUniversal.

Personal contributions are also accepted.

Education has remained a focus, and for many years they provided equipment rental, a

function that was pivotal during a time when it was prohibitively expensive for filmmakers working outside the mainstream.

“The average filmmaker did not own their own Steenbeck editing flatbed, or even their own Bolex,” Webb says. “When they would go to the rental house, [they were] paying the same thing that the TV commercial producers are paying to the film rental houses. The equipment was very expensive, and usually you had to put down a credit card and a deposit, and a struggling filmmaker didn’t have that.

Equipment access was a really important part of what we did at that time, that really empowered people to make their films.”

Chicago Filmmakers is celebrating its 50th anniversary with a series of monthly programs extending into 2024. The first took place on November 11 as part of the Black Harvest Film Festival at the Gene Siskel Film Center.

Programmed by Floyd Webb and honoring the Blacklight Film Festival, which began at Chicago Filmmakers, the event featured a screening of Oscar Micheaux’s 1920 silent film Symbol of the Unconquered with live accompaniment

performed by Edward Wilkerson Jr., Jim Baker, and Jonathan Woods. Program managers and curators previously associated with Chicago Filmmakers will also be involved, and there will be tributes to Women in the Director’s Chair (another festival that started there), and the aforementioned spoken word cafe series and PerforMedia.

In this day and age, it’s hard to believe that any arts organization could last this long, as funding dries up and audiences become more consumed with mainstream offerings. It’s truly a spark sustained by tenacity and a singular dedication.

“It’s sort of like, if you’re making a fire in the woods, you want the tinder that catches fire quickly,” Ochiva says. “And that’s sort of what happened with Chicago Filmmakers. Here’s something you can do at the beginning—it doesn’t matter if you have technology or a steady place to meet or anything like that—it’s ‘Start this group first and make it happen,’ and that was it. That was the fire.” v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

SISKELFILMCENTER.ORG/HERON Opens Dec. 8 • Member Tickets Available Now • General Public Tickets On Sale Nov. 17 32 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 16, 2023

R READER RECOMMENDED

FILM

Get showtimes and see reviews of everything playing this week at chicagoreader.com/movies.

Reporting for Christmas NICELY ENTERTAINMENT

but never devotes the proper screen time to exploring their ramifications.

Performances from Parris and Vellani go a long way to help find ethos in such a harried script, but the plot is so disjointed and fast-paced that the beats never truly land, a fatal flaw that undercuts the attempted thematic core of the film. While The Marvels may deliver more originality than most MCU flicks, an unwillingness to put character over world-building renders it frustratingly ineffective. —LAUREN COATES PG-13, 105 min. Wide

release in theaters

Reporting for Christmas

NOW PLAYING

R

Common Ground

Winner at the Tribeca Film Festival, Common Ground—Josh Tickell and Rebecca Harrell Tickell’s sequel to their award-winning 2020 documentary, Kiss the Ground—uses the “spread the message” approach to advocate for regenerative agriculture. The message is simple: SOS, as in Save Our Soil.

“The one thing keeping us alive,” Woody Harrelson, one of several big names who serve as narrators, folksily states, “is the soil we’re standing on.” Regenerative agriculture is proffered as the great green hope. This stewardship of the land has roots in Indigenous practices. It eliminates tilling, halts chemicals, and initiates planned grazing and the planting of different cover crop species. What does this look like? Farmer Gabe Brown, the film’s rooting hero, takes viewers to the edge of his lush thriving acreage to view his neighbor’s land, which looks like something out of The Grapes of Wrath. Like the Oscar-winning An Inconvenient Truth, Common Ground has urgency, but in its use of plain-speaking farmers and Indigenous practitioners to methodically present its argument, it’s—wait for it—more down to earth. They make the case that traditional farming methods turn soil to dust, “destroying the very thing that feeds us, regulates rain, and balances the climate.”

Jason Momoa sounds a low-growled cautionary note: “Nature is the mother of us all,” he states, “and if mama ain’t happy, we’re fucked.”

But Common Ground is not all doom and apocalyptic gloom. The film includes success stories where crops (and profits) grow. Rebecca Harrell Tickell is the former child star of the underseen Christmas gem, Prancer. This film might make you just as much a true believer. Yes, Virginia, there is regenerative agriculture. —DONALD LIEBENSON 105 min. Screening 11/18 at 8 PM at the

Music Box Theatre, with Joshua Tickell and Rebecca Harrell Tickell in attendance for a ticketed VIP reception and a postfilm panel discussion

The Marvels With Avengers: Endgame squarely in the rearview mirror and an expansive, ever-growing world of heroes to choose from, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is slowly but surely inching toward its next Avengers-esque hero roster. The box office juggernaut’s latest entry, The Marvels, seeks to combine familiar franchise faces with more recently introduced TV characters—a mixture resulting in the unlikely (but not unwelcome) core trio at the film’s center. But while the titular Marvels make for an endearing, women-centric found family, the film’s hyperawareness of its role in a larger universe is its downfall; it rushes through emotional beats in favor of flashy action set pieces and world-building for future installments.

Starring Brie Larson, Iman Vellani, and Teyonah Parris, The Marvels (which technically functions as a sequel to 2019’s Captain Marvel) follows Carol Danvers (Larson) as she leads a solitary life in space, defending the universe from interplanetary threats. When a mysterious force brings them together, Carol begrudgingly joins forces with her estranged niece Monica (Parris) and blossoming teen hero Kamala (Vellani) to put a stop to a dangerous figure from Carol’s past.

The Marvels’s premise is a clever one that makes for plenty of creative, fast-paced fight scenes: all three superheroes draw their powers from the same source and inadvertently swap places with each other whenever they’re used. The first interchanging fight, especially, makes for one of the MCU’s more memorable combats—one that’s subsequently followed up by a number of ambitious, orthodox skirmishes, including a musical number and an escape sequence set to “Memory” from Cats.

Unfortunately, though, the story that surrounds these fights is far less cohesive. While director Nia DaCosta strikes the perfect balance with the trio in combat, all the characters’ arcs feel frustratingly underdeveloped. With a runtime of an hour and 45 minutes, The Marvels introduces plenty of heavy emotional moments (especially with Carol and Monica’s complicated history)

Reporting for Christmas follows intrepid reporter Mary Romero (Tamara Feldman) as she travels Heart of Darkness-style to a sleepy Iowa town for a story on the Mistletoads, a popular Christmas toy produced by the local Johnson Toys company.

Unfortunately for Romero, hunky Johnson Toys heir, Blake Johnson (Matt Trudeau)—with his salt and pepper hair, endless supply of vests, and eyes like two collapsing stars—is here to thwart her attempts to dismantle the Mistletoads industrial complex. Aerosmith’s “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” may as well be playing full blast in the background when the two first lock eyes 15ish minutes in. It isn’t long before Johnson’s down-to-earth,

“you city folk have never had to choose between two nice vests” gumption erodes Romero’s tough exterior enough for her to commit multiple journalism ethics violations. Christmas ensues.

Shot in Chicago, Long Grove, and Woodstock— seemingly on an iPad—Reporting keeps its Christmas rom-com-story-beats bingo card close. It’s got a militant soundtrack with a vendetta against any time not filled

by Christmas music, dialogue scenes included. There are multiple confusing moments, including a running joke (?) where a scene will end by holding on characters just eating food in silence for a few seconds until one of them makes a comment about said food, which feels almost Lynchian.

Easy targets for cheap shots are plentiful, but honestly, this is fine. It’s inoffensive Christmas movie shenanigans, and it’s breezy at 80 minutes. The cast does a solid job, and a handful of jokes are so gosh-darn close to landing, you just root for ’em. There’s a running theme of “integrity over profit” that’s hard to argue with (Northwestern film studies students should submit their Marxist reading of Reporting for Christmas by the end of tomorrow’s lecture), and the film would be right at home in a marathon of fast food Christmas flicks. Still, there are much better Christmas stories to cover. —JONAH NINK 86 min. Hulu v

UPCOMING AT

THE LOGAN WHEN HARRY MET SALLY

NOV 17-20 AT 11 PM

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MUSIC The staff at Elastic Arts: executive director Adam Zanolini, development coordinator and Dark Matter residency coordinator Paige Brown, director of outreach Sam Lewis, outreach coordinator Camila Vick, and assistant director Ben Billington CAROLINA SANCHEZ FOR CHICAGO READER

PROGRESSIVE ARTS AND CULTURE

Small space, big mission

Elastic Arts exports the daring, community-focused programming at its Logan Square venue to the south and west sides.

By LEOR GALIL

C

hicago arts organization Theatre Y launched in 2006 in Lincoln Square, then moved in February 2023 to 3611 W. Cermak in North Lawndale. “It became really clear,” says artistic director Melissa Lorraine, “as we were starting to open our doors and really trying to communicate that we were here for the community, that music was a gateway drug towards theater.”

Lorraine wants Theatre Y to be a resource for neighborhood residents, with free programming and paid youth apprenticeships.

Job one, though, is getting people into the building. To build its music programming, Theatre Y leaned on its connection with long-running Logan Square nonprofit Elastic Arts. And because Elastic is always looking for outreach opportunities beyond its neighbor-

34 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 16, 2023

hood, it was happy to help.

Within Theatre Y’s first couple months in North Lawndale, it launched a music-heavy weekly salon-style arts series called Monday Night Buzz in its storefront space. From the outset, Monday Night Buzz has been cocurated by multidisciplinary poet and performer Marvin Tate, a North Lawndale native who’s been a Theatre Y artist in residence for a year or so. Tate has been part of the Elastic Arts community for much longer.

Tate has performed around Chicago for four decades. The four-LP retrospective box set by his old band D-Settlement that American Dreams released last year accounts for only a small percentage of his output, especially considering how much he’s done in art forms other than music. Tate has established lots of

relationships in Chicago’s arts communities, including the community that’s coalesced around Elastic Arts’ north-side performance and exhibition space. Since the 2000s, Tate has been a regular performer there, and Elastic’s cofounder and outreach programs coordinator, puppeteer Sam Lewis, is a close friend.

(He also sang backup in Tate’s band Kitchen Sink in the 2010s.) These connections couldn’t help but influence what Tate did with Monday Night Buzz.

“Slowly, Marvin started bringing in artists from Elastic, because of his long-standing relationships with them,” Lorraine says. “It gradually became clear that we needed a mentor. [Elastic] wanted to branch out of Logan Square. It was a match made in heaven.”

“We were very interested in what they were

doing and their whole big move,” Lewis says.

“They’ve always had a real big social justice mission to what they were doing, and they’ve been working in the community for a long time. Having them move there was a natural progression of that work, so we appreciated that and wanted to partner with them.”

Elastic’s outreach work with Theatre Y meant connecting its fledgling North Lawndale operation with musicians who play at Elastic. This year, Elastic has placed resident artists from its Dark Matter series with four partner arts organizations: Theatre Y, Front Porch Arts Center in Austin, Fourtunehouse Art Center in Bronzeville, and Stone Temple Community Garden in North Lawndale. Two residents helped Elastic kick off its eighth Afrofuturist Weekend at Fourtunehouse last month: keyboardist-vocalist Sharon Udoh and sound artist Carissa Lee Pinckney.

Lewis cofounded the Dark Matter series, which showcases local artists of color, in 2015.

It began as a reimagined version of Elastic’s hip-hop series that emphasized its experimental leanings, focusing on “new directions launching from and beyond hip-hop.” A few years ago, Elastic expanded Dark Matter by adding the residency component. Udoh has also worked with Theatre Y and Stone Temple Community Garden.

Elastic began in 1998 as the for-profit Elastic Revolution Productions, launched by a collective of musicians and artists that included Lewis. It became the nonprofit Elastic Arts Foundation in the early 2000s, moved to Logan Square in 2006, and settled into its current headquarters on the second floor of 3429 W. Diversey in 2015. By that time Lewis was the organization’s director, but in 2017 he turned that role over to ethnomusicologist and multi-instrumentalist Adam Zanolini, who’s held it ever since.

“He really fully immersed himself in Elastic’s culture before he had any role with the organization officially,” Lewis says of Zanolini.

“So when he was applying, I was like, ‘Yes, this guy’s been everywhere!’ It’s totally panned out to be true. He’s been such an amazing force for us, and one of the big things that really kind of solidified, in my mind, that this can be a sustainable thing.”

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MUSIC Elastic’s nonprofit status helped it out during the first years of the pandemic, because the organization has so many sources of revenue that don’t depend on live events or ticket sales: donation drives, government grants, foundation money. “We’ve come back to a level where it’s comparable to what it was before everything went kind of south,” Zanolini says. “We were really excited that most of our audiences came back.”

For the same reasons, Elastic isn’t under the same pressure as a commercial venue to book something every night. That makes it easier for the organization to be sensitive to the needs of artists who are overextending themselves. “Everybody is sort of on this unfortunate experience of burning out after the pandemic,” Zanolini says. “Everybody is feeling overwhelmed, and we’re trying to recognize that.”

Two important Elastic regulars stepped back from their roles in 2023. Saxophonist Nick Mazzarella, who launched the Mondaynight jazz series Anagram in 2015, put it on indefinite pause at the end of June. Saxophonist Dave Rempis, who’d been curating the Thursday-night Improvised Music Series since 2002 and serving as the Elastic Arts Foundation’s board president since 2015, left both roles this summer.

Rempis’s last booking was August 31, but the Improvised Music Series has continued in an ad hoc way. Zanolini says Elastic is working toward a permanent plan for it, after which he expects Anagram to return in some form.

One idea for the Improvised Music Series is a team of bookers. “It offers an opportunity for us to have a plurality of perspectives on the programming and what improvised music is,” Zanolini says. “Dave’s been involved with the organization for a very, very long time, and the Improvised Music Series is definitely the longest-running series that we have. His leaving is a really, really big change. We’re trying to make sure that we come to recognize the opportunity that it represents, not only the loss. And we’re trying to take this opportunity to evaluate and make sure that the next step is the right step in the right direction.”

D

uring the pandemic, Elastic Arts launched the Power of the Word, an outreach program that presents outdoor events focusing on poetry, spoken word, hiphop, and music. This year’s four events were in Avondale, Bronzeville, North Lawndale, and Austin, beginning on June 17 with the AfroFuture Juneteenth Jubilee at Solidarity Tri-

Dark Matter resident Sharon Udoh opens for the Aggregation (featuring Justin Dillard) at Stone Temple Community Garden in North Lawndale in July 2023. CAMILA ISABEL

Elastic staffers Sam Lewis and Adam Zanolini perform with a gospel group at the Afro-Future Juneteenth Jubilee at Solidarity Triangle.

MARCEY ABRAMOVITZ

angle. This tiny wedge of park, formed by the intersection of Milwaukee and Kimball, hosted a bill that included Tate, Lewis’s puppetry, and Angel Bat Dawid directing the eight-piece Cosmic Space Mass Choir.

Elastic has accessibility issues, both geographically and with respect to disability, and this sort of outreach provides a partial solution. Elastic’s headquarters is near three bus routes and the Logan Square Blue Line stop, but if you live in Bronzeville, North Lawndale, or Austin, it can be a daunting trip. Even if you make it to Elastic, you still have to reach the second floor without an elevator. “Elastic is . . . well, it’s not as accessible as we’d like it to be,” Lewis says. “Because there’s stairs.”

Outreach work also helps introduce a broader range of people to Elastic’s adventurous, wide-ranging arts programming, whose emphasis on public engagement and participation can only benefit from such exposure.

“When you take it to the street, people who weren’t expecting to be encountered with the arts, or people who feel like it’s much easier for them to just come to Solidarity Triangle during the day or afternoon than it is to come to Elastic at night for a performance . . . it’s just opening up the amount of people we can reach,” Lewis says. “At the same time, it’s hopefully creating awareness from artists who maybe did not know that we have a platform that they can come and engage with at Elastic,

in a residency, in doing an event, in volunteering with us or working with us.”

One of Elastic’s longest-running outreach initiatives is the Culture Coach, a mobile stage that each year hosts 30 to 40 performances throughout the city, mostly during the warmer months. It’s a collaboration with Kuumba Renaissance, a creative-arts nonprofit based in Madison, Wisconsin, founded by saxophonist Hanah Jon Taylor and his friend Susan Fox. The Culture Coach is a regular presence at the Argyle Night Market, which ran every Thursday night in July and August this year, and the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events brings the stage to the Maxwell Street Market on summer Sundays.

NOVEMBER 16, 2023 - CHICAGO READER 35

MUSIC continued from p. 35

For the past decade, Kuumba Renaissance has run the stage while Elastic provided programming oversight, but that balance is changing. “This last year, Susan Fox has had to kind of retire, and so Elastic has taken over more of the administrative stuff and programming on the Coach,” Zanolini says. “So it’s sort of a continuation, but it feels kind of like a new initiative.”

Outreach also benefits operations at Elastic HQ. Lewis has met people at Power of the Word events who are eager to get involved with venue programming. Elastic’s outreach on the south and west sides proceeds from the premise that the folks who come to the nonprofit’s Logan Square space represent just a fraction of the audience for its work.

says. “We still had some success, but I think once they get settled it’s gonna be even more fruitful.”

For Lorraine, Elastic has been a crucial collaborator in helping establish the character of Theatre Y’s new home. “Because Elastic is such an artistic home for so many people, it’s hard to even properly credit them,” Lorraine says. “We’re now working with artists from France that I’m pretty sure we have Elastic to blame for.”

Lorraine recalls a springtime Monday Night Buzz improvisation led by Marvin Tate and Ono front man Travis. Broken instruments were scattered around, and Tate played the best he could on a busted double bass and a trumpet missing its mouthpiece. At one point, Tate invited an audience member onstage,

“THERE’S THIS MYTH THAT PEOPLE IN THE NEIGHBORHOODS WON’T APPRECIATE GREAT ART, AND THIS EFFORT HAS PROVEN THE EXACT OPPOSITE.” —Elastic Arts executive director Adam Zanolini

It’s committed to bringing jazz, experimental, contemporary classical, and other forms of boundary-pushing music to neighborhoods far and wide.

“We had Justin Dillard, who is from the west side, playing in North Lawndale, and his relationship with the crowd was just magnetic. It was perfect,” Zanolini says. “He said, ‘This is really wonderful to actually get paid to play a show in the neighborhood.’ Because [musicians] always have to go downtown, they go abroad, they go all over the world to get people who appreciate them. There’s this myth that people in the neighborhoods won’t appreciate great art, and this effort has proven the exact opposite.”

Lewis sees growing potential for the connections Elastic has fostered through outreach programs this year. He hopes that its partnership with Theatre Y, for example, will expand once the organization puts down roots in its new location. “Probably for them, it wasn’t the best time to try to partner, because they’re still trying to figure things out,” Lewis

36 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 16, 2023

who turned out to be a trumpet player visiting from France—and he had a mouthpiece on him. The trumpet was missing another crucial piece, Lorraine says (she thinks it might’ve been a tuning or valve slide), and a different audience member had that. The French visitor got the horn working, then played with Tate and Travis.

“It was really one of the most astonishing improvisations I’ve ever seen,” Lorraine says.

“That’s really the culture that Marvin and Elastic have helped us wield.”

“That’s really something that Elastic has inspired me to move toward, is the invitation to the public to be an artist, together and beside these really extraordinary talents, with no distinction between the two,” she continues.

“And to tell everybody in the audience to trust their own instincts and partner with them.

That hasn’t happened very often, but I really feel like that’s where I would like it to go. And that’s because of Elastic’s example.” v

m lgalil@chicagoreader.com

NOTICE OF PROPOSED PROPERTY TAX INCREASE FOR THE WEST TOWN-HUMBOLDT PARK EXPANDED MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES PROGRAM A public hearing to approve a property tax levy increase for the West TownHumboldt Park Expanded Mental Health Services Program for 2023 will be held on November 29th at 6:30pm at San Lucas United Church of Christ 2914 W. North Ave., Chicago, IL 60647.

Any Person desiring to appear at the public hearing and present testimony to the taxing district may contact Anna Wildeman, Secretary, at wthpcommissionerwildeman@gmail.com and San Lucas United Church of Christ 2914 W. North Ave., Chicago, IL 60647.

The corporate and special purpose property taxes extended or abated for 2022 were $0. The proposed corporate and special purpose property taxes to be levied for 2023 are $1,100,000. This represents a 100% increase over the previous year.

The property taxes extended for debt service and public building commission leases for 2022 were $0. The estimated property taxes to be levied for debt service and public building commission leases for 2023 are $0. This represents a 0% increase over the previous year.

The total property taxes extended or abated for 2022 were $0. The estimated total property taxes levied for 2023 are $1,100,000. This represents a 100% increase over the previous year.

AVISO DE AUMENTO PROPUESTO DEL IMPUESTO A LA PROPIEDAD PARA PROGRAMA DE SERVICIOS DE SALUD MENTAL AMPLIADOS DE WEST TOWN-HUMBOLDT PARK El 29 de noviembre a las 6:30 p.m. en San Lucas United Church of Christ 2914 W. North Ave., Chicago, se llevará a cabo una audiencia pública para aprobar un aumento en el impuesto a la propiedad para el Programa Ampliado de Servicios de Salud Mental de West Town-Humboldt Park para 2023. Illinois 60647.

Cualquier persona que desee comparecer en la audiencia pública y presentar testimonio ante El distrito fiscal puede comunicarse con Anna Wildeman, Secretaria, al wthpcommissionerwildeman@gmail.com y la Iglesia Unida de San Lucas de Cristo 2914 W. North Ave., Chicago, IL 60647.

Los impuestos a la propiedad corporativa y de propósito especial extendidos o reducidos para 2022 fueron de $0. Los impuestos corporativos y a la propiedad para fines especiales propuestos que se aplicarán para 2023 son de $1,100,000. Esto representa un aumento del 100% respecto al año anterior.

Los impuestos a la propiedad extendidos para el servicio de la deuda y los arrendamientos de la comisión de construcción pública para 2022 fueron de $0. Los impuestos a la propiedad estimados que se aplicarán por el servicio de la deuda y los arrendamientos de la comisión de edificios públicos para 2023 son $0. Esto representa un aumento del 0% respecto al año anterior.

El total de impuestos a la propiedad extendidos o reducidos para 2022 fue de $0. El total estimado de impuestos a la propiedad recaudados para 2023 es de $1,100,000. Esto representa un aumento del 100% respecto al año anterior.

PAID FOR BY TRUTH IN TAXATION

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NOVEMBER 16, 2023 - CHICAGO READER 37

MUSIC When Deerhoof performed at Lincoln Hall in July, they had two Clean Air Club purifiers onstage and a third backstage.

COURTESY OF EMILY DUPREE

LIVE MUSIC AND PUBLIC HEALTH

Helping concertgoers breathe easy

Clean Air Club provides free use of air purifiers and far-UVC lamps to make the music scene safer for people who can’t ignore COVID.

By LEOR GALIL

S

ince Ella Williams moved to Chicago in March 2020, she’s become one of the most celebrated indie rockers on the local scene. That year, she released her breakout album as Squirrel Flower through stalwart downstate indie label Polyvinyl. Williams’s arrival came just as COVID-19 brought live music—including Squirrel Flower’s spring 2020 tour—to a halt.

COVID has exacerbated many of the hardships that all but the most established independent artists face on the road, but emerging musicians are perhaps the least able to forgo touring—they’re still trying to build their fan bases and make playing out worth the trouble.

Williams’s latest album, Tomorrow’s Fire, came out October 13, and she still has to balance her anxieties about COVID with her

38 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 16, 2023

desire to tour to support her releases. Since this spring, she’s been a partner artist of a new Chicago-based organization called Clean Air Club, which allows musicians to borrow air purifiers to take on the road for free.

Williams undertook six tours between September 2021 and July 2023. Only for the sixth did she have Clean Air Club’s support. She credits mask wearing with the fact that she and her touring crew didn’t fall sick on the earlier trips, which would’ve forced them to cancel dates and lose money. But at shows she’s seeing fewer and fewer people who remain as cautious about potential COVID transmission as she is.

“The past year has been more challenging, in my mind, because people have stopped caring about it,” Williams says. “It’s become

more of a big deal to request masking and to even request venue workers to mask around us when we’re sound checking. It’s become this very polarizing thing, which is very bizarre—because, in my mind, as a touring musician, I think all touring musicians deserve to be safe on the road and to be comfortable on the road.”

The U.S. declared an end to the COVID-19 national public health emergency on May 11, 2023. If you’re still COVID cautious, like Williams or Jess Shoman, who fronts indie-rock group Tenci, playing for in-person crowds is difficult. “The shift in general of people really caring about COVID and then all of a sudden not, I felt like I was blasted into a different dimension,” Shoman says. “I don’t know how else to explain it.”

The virus hasn’t disappeared, of course, and Chicago experienced what appeared to be a small wave of reported COVID infections and hospitalizations at the end of the summer.

The actual size of the wave is difficult to know, given the abandonment of case tracking at all levels of government. But Williams has loved ones who are managing long-term illnesses caused by COVID, so she’s unwilling to assume she can forget about the virus and all will be well.

“Touring is already a thing that’s so grueling on the body—aside from COVID,” she says.

“It’s such a challenging thing, and I want to be able to do it for as long as I can and not get this horrible illness over and over again.”

This past spring, Williams heard about Clean Air Club, a one-person volunteer operation that provides musicians and event producers with air purifiers free of charge to reduce the risk from airborne pathogens at shows. Founder Emily Dupree soft launched the organization in February 2023 with a series of enigmatic Instagram posts of a cloud painting. In the ensuing months, Dupree has reached out to musicians who share her concerns about COVID safety, including Shoman.

Williams and Shoman were already friends— Tenci had opened for part of a Squirrel Flower tour in early 2022—and Shoman told Williams about Clean Air Club.

In April, Tenci and Squirrel Flower became Clean Air Club partners, which means they both get access to the organization’s air purifiers (which use high efficiency particulate air filters, better known as HEPA filters). Squirrel Flower has since embarked on two tours—a July trek opening for Hurray for the Riff Raff and a string of dates supporting Tomorrow’s Fire that began October 19 in Detroit. Williams brought Clean Air Club purifiers with her on both tours.

“Obviously, masking is important,” Williams says. “But I think with the Clean Air Club filters, it just feels so much safer—and it is so much safer, when audience members don’t mask. I play shows to rooms of people who are entirely unmasked, and I feel safe with the Clean Air Club filter. It’s just an amazing

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MUSIC Squirrel Flower perform at Shuga Records on October 14. A far-UVC lamp is visible in the upper left corner of the image, mounted on a tall black tripod. COURTESY OF EMILY DUPREE

thing what they’re doing, and they’re putting so much effort and time into advocacy and education. I feel like it’s been incredible to see how far their reach has spread over the past few months.”

Clean Air Club’s footprint is small, but it has an outsize influence due in part to the partnerships Dupree has established, which read like a who’s who of young independent Chicago acts. That list includes Squirrel Flower and Tenci, of course, as well as singer-songwriter Kara Jackson, whose disarming debut album, April’s Why Does the Earth Gives Us People to Love?, launched her to international acclaim.

When Jackson toured Europe in September, she had a Clean Air Club purifier with her backstage. Over the past seven months or so, other partners have included Ester, Zeetus Lapetus, Rich Jones, Hard Femme, and defprez.

Clean Air Club’s focus is in Chicago, but Dupree has made connections with artists outside the city too. When veteran art-rockers Deerhoof headlined Lincoln Hall in July, they required attendees to wear masks and played with two Clean Air Club purifiers onstage (and a third in the green room).

“That was a great example of a really successful show with Clean Air Club and an artist that actually prioritizes their safety and their fans’ safety,” Dupree says. “The result was it was accessible—it was extremely fun. Nothing about the experience was compromised at all by these safety features, and in fact it was enhanced for so many people like me, who were actually able to attend.”

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hen America dropped COVID safety measures seemingly overnight, Dupree found herself disillusioned with the local music community. “The Chicago music scene, when it’s at its best, is able to really embody progressive principles that I identify with,” she says. “But when it falls short, it can fall short in ways that are very disappointing. I think one of those ways has been on the question of disability justice and safety for all members of the community, rather than just a portion.”

When Dupree’s partner caught COVID, it

crystallized her desire to find tangible ways to make live shows safer from airborne illnesses.

(Full disclosure: Dupree’s partner, Dustin Currier, who performs and records as Lightleak, is a friend of mine, but I didn’t learn about Clean Air Club from him.) “I decided to focus on air purification as just one pillar among a wider set of COVID strategies,” she says. “The science is just so clear that air purification in indoor spaces dramatically reduces the chances of COVID transmission in that space.”

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency notes that air filtration systems are a key part of a multipronged approach to COVID safety that can “reduce the potential for airborne transmission of COVID-19 indoors.” A 2022 study titled “Effectiveness of HEPA Filters at Removing Infectious SARS-CoV-2 From the Air,” one of many on the topic, attached numbers to that statement: “The air cleaner with the HEPA filter continuously removed the infectious SARS-CoV-2 from the air in a running-time-dependent manner, and the virus capture ratios were 85.38%, 96.03%, and >99.97% at 1, 2, and 7.1 ventilation volumes, respectively.”

On March 7, Dupree launched a GoFundMe to raise money for Clean Air Club’s first purchase of equipment. The fundraiser exceeded its initial goal of $2,000 within the month, and she bought four Smart Air Blast Mini Mk II air purifiers (which typically sell for $500 to $600) as well as a smaller purifier suitable for a touring van or a modest green room. According to its manufacturer, the Blast Mini Mk II can handle 820 cubic feet of air per minute (a volume about nine feet on a side) and clean 3,075 square feet every half hour. (Of course, two spaces of the same square footage can have different cubic footage depending on their ceiling height.) Shuga Records, where Squirrel Flower played on October 14, is 2,800 square feet. Lincoln Hall is 8,400 square feet.

Dupree has kept the Clean Air Club GoFundMe open, which has helped her continue to purchase purifiers for artists and event producers who want to book them. As of September, she’d raised more than $5,200, mostly through the GoFundMe but also with

the occasional benefit show. “That has allowed us to purchase ten air purifiers that are almost always fully booked,” she says. Thanks in part to discounts, Clean Air Club has been able to acquire a total of seven Blast Mini Mk IIs and three smaller purifiers.

Clean Air Club’s equipment is suited for smaller venues, and Dupree has worked with many producers and artists who operate in DIY spaces. Even in a relatively cozy club, though, a single Blast Mini onstage won’t necessarily clean the air all the way to the back of the room. But open windows and fans can help, and any air purification is an improvement in safety over no COVID mitigation at all, which is unfortunately the standard in the U.S. In the early days of Clean Air Club, Currier gave Dupree a list of artists whose COVID concerns aligned with the club’s mission, providing her with a place to start when it came time to pitch partnerships. Tenci front person Jess Shoman had already seen a few Instagram posts about Clean Air Club when Dupree emailed Shoman and piqued their interest.

“I want to protect disabled and immunocompromised people—I want to make sure that I’m creating a safe and accessible space for people when they come to shows,” Shoman says. “It’s very important to me to make sure everyone has space to come and be a part of it all. I had got to this point in the pandemic where a lot of my peers stopped masking and [were] going out to shows and stuff more unmasked. I felt isolated for my choices and for promoting masking still at shows. So when Emily reached out, I felt very seen.” Clean Air

Club announced its partnership with Tenci on April 1.

Clean Air Club maintains a sign-up sheet for partner artists and organizations, which helps Dupree plan the distribution of air purifiers.

“We all coordinate with each other as far as, like, picking up the filters from one another,” Shoman says. “It feels very community oriented, and we’re all helping each other figure it out. Even just picking up a filter from someone, that acknowledgment that they were even using a filter to begin with feels really good.”

Dupree also uses Clean Air Club’s social media accounts as an advocacy tool for COVID safety. She doesn’t want the burden of being a singular point person for these resources—she’s more interested in ensuring that everyone is equipped to safely enjoy indoor concerts. To that end, Dupree says she’s reached out to local aboveground venues to discuss air-quality issues. “All of my partnerships continue to be through the artists themselves,” she says, but she’s still working on possible collaborations with clubs and concert halls.

Shoman has noticed that performing with a purifier onstage doubles as a form of air-safety advocacy. “It almost looks like a weird, futuristic amp,” they say. “When we put it on the stage, people are like, ‘What is that?’ They automatically have questions, and then we can talk about it in real life. It helps demystify things a little bit. It feels like if people in the audience know what a filter is, overall it helps give a peace of mind to people, knowing that

NOVEMBER 16, 2023 - CHICAGO READER 39

Let’s Play!

MUSIC

Make time to learn something new with music and dance classes at Old Town School! We offer flexible schedules for all skill levels both in-person and online.

A Clean Air Club purifier in use during summer 2023 at Friends of Friends Recording in Humboldt Park COURTESY OF EMILY DUPREE

continued from p. 39

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they are going to a show and there’s an extra layer of safety.”

On October 19, the day Squirrel Flower embarked on the Tomorrow’s Fire tour, Clean Air Club’s Instagram posted a photo of Williams picking up supplies for the road: air purifiers, COVID-19 tests, and some intimidatingly expensive far-UVC lamps recently donated to Clean Air Club by Missouri company Far UV Technologies.

Far UVC, a type of ultraviolet light with very short wavelengths, appears to have great potential for COVID control at concerts. Typical germicidal UVC, which has been in use for decades, is harmful to humans upon direct exposure, but mounting evidence suggests that far UVC can’t penetrate our skin or eyes.

According to a study conducted by scientists in the UK and at Columbia University and published in March 2022 in the journal Scientific Reports, far-UVC light from ceiling lamps took less than five minutes to reduce the level of airborne microbes in a large room by 98 percent.

For Shoman and Williams, bringing air pu-

rifiers or far-UVC lamps has lessened the anxiety of performing in a crowded venue. They also appreciate that Clean Air Club’s activity aligns with their values as artists. “It’s about community care,” Williams says. “It’s about self-care. It’s about helping musicians stay on the road. It’s about helping people go to concerts who are immunocompromised, who are disabled—who are disabled from getting previous COVID infections.”

For Dupree, working on Clean Air Club has reoriented her in the Chicago music scene she’s long loved.

“I’ve been able to go to so many more live shows since Clean Air Club started than I have during the entire preceding three and a half years of the pandemic,” she says. “I now know that these are shows where the chances of me getting COVID are much lower. And I’ve gotten, at this point, hundreds of messages from people who have reached out specifically to tell me that they finally can reconnect with an arts community that they felt alienated from.” v

m lgalil@chicagoreader.com

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UPCOMING SHOWS

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THE 9TH ANNUAL WAR ON XMAS

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NOV 22 & 24

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galantis

+ Model/Actriz + Kipp Stone

DEC 14–16 ZEDS DEAD . . . . . . . . . . . THE SHED DEC 22 DUKE DUMONT . . . . . . . . THE SHED

with The Joe Marcinek Band and Jesse De La Pena

FRI DEC 08 + SAT DEC 09

GINGER ROOT

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FRI NOV 17

THE ARMED

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MUSIC SHAWN DECKER

M CHICAGOANS OF NOTE

R. Brent Decker, Racetraitor bassist and anti-violence worker “You can dedicate your life to trying to make a difference. You don’t have to just get old, get a job, and watch the game.”

As told to JAMIE LUDWIG

R. Brent Decker plays bass in Racetraitor and works as chief program officer for Cure Violence Global, a Chicago-based nonprofit that takes a public health approach to reducing violence.

As a college student in the mid-90s, Decker cofounded Chicago hardcore band Racetraitor with childhood friends from the north suburbs.

The group quickly attracted a passionate following (and significant backlash) for their confrontational political stances. They used their music to indict institutional racism, classism, and white privilege before those subjects had been established in the popular consciousness—and they did it in a scene dominated by young white men.

42 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 16, 2023

Decker left the band shortly after their 1998 debut full-length, Burn the Idol of the White Messiah, and the group split up the following year. Several members of Racetraitor found ways to continue their activism outside the music scene, forging connections and making the world a better place. Vocalist Mani Mostofi is now a lawyer and human rights advocate, and guitarist Dan Binaei (who also plays in local thrash outfit Ready for Death) works as a psychologist with a holistic approach rooted in social justice. Decker has traveled the world to help Cure Violence partner organizations reduce violence on a community level in Baltimore, the West Bank, Honduras, and beyond.

Racetraitor reconvened in 2016, inspired by

the Black Lives Matter movement and frustrated by the shape of American politics, especially the election of a white nationalist to the presidency. Now a five-piece, with longtime drummer Andy Hurley (also of Fall Out Boy) and new guitarist Andrea Black, the band will release the album Creation and the Timeless Order of Things (Good Fight) on November 17.

The loosely biographical record, which features guest vocals by friends in like-minded groups (Refused, Terminal Nation, Neckbeard Deathcamp), uses the members’ histories and geographies as lenses to consider issues critical to the global struggle for liberation: colonialism, Indigenous rights, workers’ rights, and more.

y dad was a Vietnam vet. When he came back, he was like, “Oh wait, I’ve been lied to my entire life about everything.” The church, his parents, the army, all these things lied to him. He set a different course for himself and our family. He got really involved in the anti-war movement and then the solidarity movement in the 80s in Central America, when the U.S. was backing all sorts of dictators and genocidal policies.

We spent a lot of time in Guatemala during the civil war, in an area that was highly contested between guerrillas and the U.S.-backed dictatorships. [My dad] linked up with some liberation theology nuns who were doing all sorts of programming there. To a 13-year-old like myself, that really politicized me.

[We’d be in Guatemala] a couple of months at a time every year. It was always very interesting, after summer break, going from a genocidal civil war to [the Chicago suburbs].

In my senior or junior year, I wrote the only paper I ever wrote about U.S. interventionism in Nicaragua. My English teacher came in and sang the national anthem to me and then handed my paper back. Like, what are you even doing?

It all set the tone for when I heard, like, Public Enemy for the first time. I was like, “Fuck yeah. They’re 100 percent right.” There was no “Well, what about. . . . ” When you’re exposed to the nature of the system and how it manifests in all sorts of different ways against all sorts of “others,” either in the U.S. or abroad, you understand the world a little differently. So when I encountered hardcore and punk, my understanding of it was, “This is the political protest music of our era.”

I went to grade school with Mani, and we met Dan in junior high. Dan and I knew each other through skateboarding and music and stuff. There was this kid named Salim whose dad was very wealthy—he came from the Syrian monarchy—and had this nice house in Wilmette, and we used to have punk shows at his house, this place A Club Called Everlast.

Resurrection played there, Lifetime played there, Anger House played there all the time.

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MUSIC flag has a very similar history in terms of the amount of violence that’s behind it.” Sometimes in making that leap, we didn’t articulate it enough, and some folks got really pissed off about it.

Since we’ve been playing shows again, we’ve had lots of conversations with people who really were adamantly against us and talked shit about us and threatened us [back in the day]. They might not have agreed with how we said it, but now they’re like, “You know what, I agree with what you were saying.” And that’s cool. Of course, we were like 20. And obviously, there’s issues of class and gender and sexual identity that also figured into how we were perceiving stuff.

I think the reason that Dan, myself, Mani, and others who have been involved in Racetraitor stayed committed to the ideas or the politics around it is that we’re that first and a band second. The band was a way of articulating and expressing that in a more artistic way, but the whole time, anyone involved with Racetraitor was involved in different activist organizations. It always went hand in hand.

Racetraitor in the late 90s JUSTIN CORBETT

Then in college, when we wanted to start a new band, we really felt like you’ve got to be in the community that you’re part of. We were part of the punk and hardcore community, and a lot of what was going on was bullshit—really stupid white-man nonsense.

We thought about how we could start a band to shake up ourselves first and foremost—we all have a lot of work to do on ourselves about all kinds of things—but also [shake up] our friends and our scene.

We were very deliberate about making the band a bit more confrontational and challenging. Of course, other bands had done that before. But when you’re younger, you’re like, “Fuck it, let’s just be crazy.” Even to this day, we probably spend more time thinking about what we’re going to talk about [onstage] than the actual set list.

Dan’s dad is Persian from Iran, and his mom is from Hazard, Kentucky. He said he was watching Donahue once (that dates us!) and there were Nazis on there saying, “You’re a race traitor if you date someone of a different race.” He thought about how his family from Kentucky thought about his mom in the sense that she married someone that wasn’t a white, southern Christian. So that’s where the name

Racetraitor came from.

Mani, also being a child of immigrants from Iran, faced a ton of racism at our school, and I think that politicized him as well. And I had my experiences in Guatemala. So that was the context of putting together a band called Racetraitor. We really wanted to talk about issues like white supremacy, issues around the system in terms of police brutality, issues around class privileges.

It wasn’t always well received. Folks were either super with it or super against it. There wasn’t a lot of middle ground. Some of the feedback was, “It’s a bunch of rich kids preaching to the choir,” which, you know, describes [a lot of] hardcore and punk bands. But I think it also hit a nerve.

A lot of times, we like to think of ourselves— especially in the punk community—as being very progressive and anti-establishment. But when we start talking about “What’s my role in it all?” and “How do I benefit from a white supremacist system?,” it becomes a little different. Sometimes that’s hard to confront in a way that doesn’t just piss people off.

Some stuff that we’d talk about, people would be like, “Fuck the Nazis and burn the Nazi flag.” And we’d be like, “The American

W

hen I left the band, I started thinking, “What are some practical skills that can be helpful to the world in my limited time in it?” That’s when I thought about public health. I spent some time doing various public health projects in Latin America and learning about stuff, and then I did a master’s of public health and a master’s of clinical social work at Tulane University. Dan spent many years doing full-time activist work and working for nonprofits at the same time. Mani, same thing. We tried to land in fields that could be helpful and try to change things in a real way.

I thought a lot about this issue of violence and what can be done about it. The idea of violence as a public health issue goes back to the 1970s. It’s taking it out of this issue of law enforcement and thinking about it in terms of health issues around exposure, issues around systemic inequities or oppression, and how that affects one’s health outcomes.

The response [to community violence] has always been, like, the Crime Bill and more prisons. So what type of alternative infrastructure could potentially be built up to address the issues around violence that don’t include mass incarceration and all these things?

CeaseFire, which is now Cure Violence, started in Chicago at the University of Illinois School of Public Health. I started there in 2003. They had just started implementation

in 2001, but it had been around a little before that. What was really great about it is that the university figured out some of the fundraising, but it was implemented through communitybased partners on the west and the south sides of Chicago.

A big part of my role for the first couple years was working with the community-based partners and figuring out, “How do we report on some of this information in a way that’s going to be helpful?” If you’re working with folks who are likely to be involved in violence, a lot of times that’s associated with quote, unquote “illegal activities.” So the challenge was, “How do we document this in a way that doesn’t put people at further risk to have to engage with any of those systems?” The same way that, if you’re working with undocumented migrant workers on tuberculosis, you don’t want anything that would give up their immigration status ever. Because then there’s no trust.

The other real challenge is, as a country and as a world, we’ve misunderstood this issue of violence as “bad people that need to be punished.” So the amount of funding that at the time was available for more public health–based violence prevention was very small. There were some groups in Chicago and some groups out in California that were doing something, but there weren’t a lot. Recently, the White House announced a gun-violenceprevention office for the first time ever. So there’s been a lot of traction, but back then the idea of violence as a public health issue was not part of any kind of city or county policy.

Although the contexts might be different, a lot of how violence spreads—and I’m not talking about state-sanctioned violence or bombs, but community- or smaller-group violence—is by exposure. What you typically see are areas that can go a long time without any violence, like the case of Rwanda. But once a couple of events take place, it can spread very quickly. It really transmits from one person to another, through their brain, through being exposed to different traumas or experiencing or committing violence. That kind of rewires how you engage with the world.

That’s constant in most contexts, and our model is set up in three parts: the first is interrupting transmission, the second is preventing future spread, and the third is changing group and community norms.

For interrupting the transmission, we— the community-based partners from those areas—have workers from groups that are involved in violence. Their job isn’t to create

NOVEMBER 16, 2023 - CHICAGO READER 43

MUSIC continued from p. 43

peace among the different groups but to work with their own group to identify and detect when things are brewing and there might be conflict, to see if we can step in and calm the situation down. They use various techniques, but it’s very natural, because it’s not someone from the outside.

Sometimes they’re able to work with interrupters from different groups so we can mediate conflicts, having to do with “how someone looked at me” to international drugtrade stuff. If you have the right folks at the table, that are trusted, that are credible, they can use their relationships to get in front of things or—if something happens—prevent retaliation. That’s a universal, whether it’s in Baltimore or in southern Iraq, where I’ve spent time doing this work.

The second part, about supporting folks that are at highest risk to be involved in violence, is also a universal. There’s this idea that dudes are just down to be violent. But there’s a lot going on, there’s a lot of peer expectations, a lot of contextual stuff, and for a lot of folks, there aren’t a lot of options. If you work with someone over time and support them in ways that they find helpful, you can really change the trajectory of individuals, in terms of not having to use violence as much and maybe getting involved in more positive stuff.

The third component has to do with the public health ideas: public education campaigns, doing activities, doing different types of training and things that really shift some of the norms around the acceptability of using violence. Because a lot of times, especially young people don’t see a lot of other options.

As humans, we mostly do what our friends expect us to do or we think our friends are doing.

This has been known in public health for a long time, dating back to the 80s and 90s. With the AIDS epidemic, the number one thing that determined whether or not someone would use a condom wasn’t fear of death—it was if they thought their friends were doing it. So this idea of shifting peer expectations has been the same everywhere that we’ve worked with partners, whether it’s Baltimore, Chicago, Honduras, South Africa, or Iraq. The “how” is different, but those are the three things that we use in public health in addressing violence.

We never just show up somewhere. Because our approach and others have been evaluated extensively, there’s a case to be made that even if you don’t agree with it, it can be helpful. So we’ll be invited by someone from a mayor’s office or in criminal justice who’s real cool and

44 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 16, 2023

Latter-day Racetraitor onstage, with R. Brent Decker barely in frame at right JEFF LASICH

trying to do things differently, or someone from UNICEF, or a community partner who wants to put political pressure on a city to pay for programs like this as opposed to more police and tanks.

There’s a whole process of adapting our approach to the local contexts. And of course, we’re never the expert of the local context, so it’s a matter of finding folks who are doing something similar as part of a community- or faith-based organization that we link up with to figure out how to adapt our approach locally. It’s kind of cocreated every place we work, especially outside of the U.S. How does the community perceive folks who end up being workers for this type of program? A lot of community members understand that these are their children, their uncles. When we have this under a criminal justice lens, we get this idea of people as one thing: “You’re a criminal.” But life is way more complex than that. And I think the communities call for these type of programs for that reason. It’s often seen as a very positive thing that folks who were once involved with that stuff are trying to do something differently.

I think people recognize that those folks are

best positioned to do it, because they understand it, and they can serve as kind of a new role model for folks to look at.

You can think about health behavior change—the messenger is as important as the message. You might have all the information in the world, the statistics, the everything, but if you can’t speak to me in a way that I think I can trust, I’m never going to listen to you. The other thing I would say, especially in the U.S., this type of work has been able to provide employment to a lot of folks that perhaps because of quote, unquote “criminal backgrounds” are excluded from a lot of other jobs. In the interview process for these positions, when they’re asked about their background, it’s not to be judgmental. It’s to see, “Do you have the credibility to work in this area? Do you know the groups and the cliques?” lt’s almost flipped on its head, in terms of “these can be positive things that can be turned into strengths that can be built upon to better prevent violence in the future.”

[In 2018,] we made kind of a tough decision, when we were leaving the university, not to do direct work in Chicago anymore. It just wasn’t politically viable anymore. But a lot of

our partners who we’ve worked with for many years continue to do a lot of great work. Chicago CRED does a lot of really cool economic development stuff, the One City Basketball Tournament that some of our friends run. . . .

There’s groups like READI Chicago. There’s a lot of Metropolitan Family Services that do a public health approach.

I think the city and the state have probably now invested more money than ever in these types of approaches. And although it doesn’t seem that way, in many of the areas where this approach is being applied, you do not see the same levels of violence. It has been able to demonstrate over time that this approach can be helpful.

Racetraitor was a vehicle that we had, and it felt kind of stupid not to use it, with the understanding that we are definitely the old folks in the room, and that’s OK. We thought [when we first reunited] we’d do maybe one or two shows and some fundraisers and be done with it. But what happened, to the surprise of all of us, is that the scene—the metal, the hardcore and punk scene—was way more political than it was when we were around. It was way more representative of Chicago. And there was a big antifascist metal scene too. So we landed in a place where folks were very supportive of us. We’re not leading the culture now, but we definitely want to support it.

We’re able to use some of our notoriety, or the fact that Andy’s in Fall Out Boy, to be able to push some of the messages further. But it’s always with the understanding that we want to support the bands that are really active now. Like, when we played Black Flags Over Brooklyn, which Kim Kelly put together in 2019, that was a highlight for me personally.

It was cool to see so many bands from all over the place with different types of histories, and a lot of younger folks.

We don’t have a big plan. It’s very part-time.

We are graciously invited to do a lot of things, and we try to do things that we think can make sense and be helpful.

I think another thing that we can contribute to the conversation is, “How do you turn being 18, 19, 20 and being turned on to a lot of these ideas into a lifetime of trying to do something a little bit different?” That’s challenging, and none of us are perfect at all, but you can dedicate your life to trying to make a difference.

You don’t have to just get old, get a job, and watch the game. It doesn’t have to be like that. v

m jludwig@chicagoreader.com

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Recommended and notable shows with critics’ insights for the week of November 16

MUSIC

b ALL AGES F

PICK OF THE WEEK

THURSDAY16

Noname brings the intimate conversations of Sundial to the Vic

Fulcrum Point performs La Monte Young Chicago ensemble Fulcrum Point will be joined by Ben Neill to perform La Monte Young’s The Second Dream of the High-Tension Line Stepdown Transformer. 7:30 PM, Venue Six10, 610 S. Michigan, $40, $30 students and teachers, discounts for Chicago Humanities members. b

MAHANEELA

NONAME, STOUT

Fri 11/24, 7:30 PM, the Vic, 3145 N. Sheffield, $32-$48. b

THE SONGS OF Chicago rapper Noname feel like opening a door into a roomful of friends who are already hours into an all-consuming conversation. Throughout her self-released new third full-length, Sundial, she cracks jokes, asks questions about race and Blackness that you’ll need to sit with, thinks out loud about how her skills create demand for her hip-hop persona via capitalist forces she’d rather abolish, and reflects on her mistakes in order to hold herself accountable and give herself the grace to move forward. On “Namesake,” she manages this all in less than three minutes, speeding through a locomotive bass line and a skipping drum break. I’m not even sure she takes a breath between criticizing superstars (Rihanna, Beyoncé, Kendrick) for supporting the military-industrial complex with their Super Bowl performances and poking fun at herself for playing Coachella after publicly saying she never wanted to.

I don’t have room here to collect all my thoughts about Sundial, and I’m sure they’ll change anyhow. I’m willing to bet Noname prefers it that way. Her second verse on “Balloons” critiques white listeners who

46 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 16, 2023

come across as exploitative in their desire to witness Black performers describe their trauma onstage. It’s one of her best performances on Sundial, but it’s gotten lost in a flurry of complaints about alleged antiSemitism in the verse that Jay Electronica contributed to the song. I’m a white Jewish music journalist who’s spent much of his career writing about hip-hop, and I hate that the discussion of “Balloons” was almost instantly warped to be all about that guest verse. “We do need to have a conversation in the Black community about antisemitism and why it’s running rampant,” Noname told the TRiiBE in August. I don’t care to admonish Noname for lyrics she didn’t write—I prefer to hear her out, since so much of her work is about finding a meaningful path toward liberation and allowing people to make mistakes and grow from them.

Because Sundial was created as a conversation, the way we receive, perceive, and interact with it will evolve. That’s true of every album, of course, but I think this one is better suited for reinterpretation as time goes on. As with all Noname’s previous work, I look forward to continuing to listen to it. —LEOR GALIL

The influence that composer and musician La Monte Young has exerted far exceeds the size of his slender and erratically available discography.

Born in 1935, he presented some of his early compositions at a concert series he programmed at Yoko Ono’s loft in 1960, and they helped shape minimalist composition and conceptual art. He accidentally introduced drones and alternate tunings to rock ’n’ roll when violist John Cale incorporated sounds he’d developed in Young’s Theatre of Eternal Music into the Velvet Underground. Young named his ensemble with complete earnestness: duration is part of the essence of his work. He doesn’t consider individual performances of The Second Dream of the High-Tension Line Stepdown Transformer, presented tonight by Chicago new-music ensemble Fulcrum Point, to have beginnings and endings.

They are rather parts of what he’s called an “eternal fabric of sound and silence,” which is itself part of a larger body of work, The Four Dreams of China (1962), whose pieces each comprise just four notes.

Each manifestation of The Second Dream ushers listeners into a state of timelessness. Seated in a space bathed in magenta light, they are surrounded by eight trumpet players, who alternate longheld, muted tones with moments of silence. Those who’ve visited the Dream House (the long-standing sound and light installation that Young and his partner, light artist Marian Zazeela, have operated in New York for decades) will find the environment the piece generates quite familiar, but this performance is the first time that The Second Dream has been presented in the midwest. Joining Fulcrum Point for this performance is Ben Neill, an enduring associate of Young and Zazeela who played on the sole recording of the piece, released by Gramavision in 1991. Audience members are encouraged to bring yoga mats in case they wish to listen while prone. —BILL MEYER

FRIDAY17 Palehound Alexalone and OK Cool open.

10 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $20. 21+ Anyone who’s ever told you to keep your eye on the ball has clearly never been hit by a bat. El Kempner, who makes music as Palehound, has learned the lesson instilled in me during a decade of midwestern softball: the importance of staying vigilant toward potential dangers and adversaries in your midst.

“Suckers will all tell you to keep / Watching for the ball / But we know better than that / Keep your eye on the bat,” they sing on the title track of their fourth album, Eye on the Bat. Kempner threads that metaphor throughout the album’s ten tracks, which chronicle the dissolution of their long-term relationship. As Kempner bids farewell to the white picket

MUSIC fence they once envisioned, they implore us to keep our eyes peeled for something that can crush our hearts as brutally as a home-run swing: our partners.

Eye on the Bat is abundant in oblique poetry, fantasy turned horror, and tarnished illusions. Its lush, generous instrumentation, bolstered by production from Sam Owens (Big Thief, Cass McCombs), leaves room for the minutiae of everyday life. Kempner recounts the deterioration of their relationship with painful precision, each detail backed by a sinewy guitar riff or a bludgeoning melody. Tiny vignettes— stale sandwiches made in the back seat of a tour van, a cat scurrying beneath a bed—humanize the love-gone-sour tropes that we’ve all heard and lived.

Opening track “Good Sex” is an agonizing line-byline account of Kempner chasing the lightning-in-abottle lust that electrifies budding romance. In the thrumming “Independence Day,” a breakup unfolds amid the din of professional-grade fireworks and backyard cookouts. The eight-bit bedroom-pop tune “U Want It U Got It” is a career standout, taut with Kempner’s regret at having given themself over so thoroughly to a relationship that died.

What makes heartbreak feel like a terminal illness are the small but unavoidable reminders that a past version of yourself is dead and gone—that person only existed in the eyes of a lover. With Eye on the Bat, Kempner has created the record that they needed in the wake of their breakup. It’s a eulo-

Pauli the PSM SARA REGAN / ELYTSSARA

gy for their former self that holds hope for future selves to come. —SHANNON NICO SHREIBAK

Pauli the PSM The Parrisian opens. 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, 2424 N. Lincoln, $25. b Pauli the PSM is saucy—and he knows it. He’s an influential figure in the British music industry and a professional hottie who’s consciously taken his sweet time building a solo career. He entered the field as Pauli Lovejoy after winning the UK’s Young Drummer of the Year award in 2005. He’s gone on to be a drummer for big names such as Gorillaz and Harry Styles, as well as a music director for pop and electronic artists, including FKA Twigs and Jamie xx. On top of his musical work, he models.

Despite these successes, he’s kept a relatively low public profile when it comes to his own music. He only began performing his solo material live in 2017, and though he’s released tracks intermittently since his debut in 2014, he’s prioritized multimedia collaborations and creative expression over merchandise, touring, or volume of output.

For his first solo track, Pauli teamed up with oil painter Amar Stewart to make a video for his 2014 R&B protest ballad, “Give Me a Sign (No Justice No Peace).” Since then, he’s collaborated with artists working in other mediums while shifting toward

Lapgan ATIF ATEEQ

themes of tenderness and introspection. He uses meticulously crafted rhythms and an eclectic array of styles, including grime and neosoul, to make songs that feel gentle and effortless even when they get heavy.

While Pauli has yet to release a full-length record, he’s put out a handful of EPs, most recently 2021’s OffAir: The Power of Your Subconscious Mind Vol 1: Space. It’s a free ambient album (though a vinyl version is available) where each track is inspired by a zodiac sign. Using a playful, Afrofuturist sensibility, Pauli creates soundscapes where thoughts can blossom and bounce through zero gravity. The exploratory EP is part of a series from deep-listening label Off Air that challenges artists to work outside their comfort zones. Pauli is better known for electronica-infused R&B and alternative hip-hop, but this ambient music retains the signature sense of meditative complexity he’s developed in those genres.

On Pauli’s latest single, the July release “Saucy,” he raps and repeats, “I’ve got the sauce / Yeah, I’m saucy,” against a bass-heavy beat layered with hand drums, occasional laughter, and something that sounds like droplets falling in liquid. The accompanying music video is just footage of ketchup and mustard spliced with moments of Pauli having fun.

As an avid practitioner of mindfulness, he’s driven by a need to push his imagination while making

room for softness, reflection, and pleasure. After selling out Soho House in April on his first major U.S. tour, Pauli returns to Chicago to perform at Lincoln Hall. The show promises to be surprising and intimate. —MICCO CAPORALE

SATURDAY18 Harm’s Way, Weekend Nachos Harm’s Way headline; Weekend Nachos, All Out War, Fleshwater, and Ingrown open. 7 PM, Metro, 3730 N. Clark, sold out. 18+ Whether playing straightedge powerviolence in their early days or making Godflesh-inspired death metal on 2018’s Rust, Harm’s Way have always been incredibly heavy, aggressive, and mean as hell. In September, the Chicago metalcore outfit released their fifth full-length, Common Suffering (their second for venerable extreme label Metal Blade), where they double down on groovy, industrialflavored metalcore and prove they’re still one of the most reliable acts in modern metal. Common Suffering revels in guttural vocals, layers of dissonant guitar, and monstrous, swinging rhythms. Its unexpected highlight is “Undertow,” a massive, eerie smasher that weaves in ethereal vocals from King Woman’s

Femdot LUIS QUINTANA

NOVEMBER 16, 2023 - CHICAGO READER 47

MUSIC

Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/musicreviews.

continued from p. 47

Suri from Das Racist.) To create his brilliantly variegated patchworks, Lapgan sourced samples from Bollywood, Lollywood, and Kollywood film scores, Bengali religious songs, Carnatic and Hindustani classical music, and more—and he doesn’t leave a single stray thread that he doesn’t intend. Like most beat-scene producers, Lapgan makes tracks that are explicit about their sample-based nature; part of the appeal of his work is recognizing that, say, the relaxed drum break on “The Illest Raja” doesn’t come from the same time or place as its occasional scuffed horn. All the elements he combines fit like they were always meant to be together, in loose, funky, and seemingly unpredictable patterns. Lapgan shows us a new way for records from the past to form an inviting road map to the present.

—LEOR GALIL

Kristina Esfandiari between alien verses and pummeling choruses.

Harm’s Way celebrate Common Suffering with a record-release show featuring the resurrection of their longtime homies Weekend Nachos— the hugely popular Chicago sludge-metal and powerviolence act that amicably called it a day in 2017 after a 13-year run. Nachos have a handful of festival dates planned over the next year (and some killer new T-shirt designs), and this show is their reintroduction to the world. Since Nachos broke up, their members have gone on to start (or involve themselves in) all sorts of heavy projects around town, including Ledge, Stomach, Like Rats, and Indian. Now they’ve decided to get their old band rolling again for the best reason in the world: playing shows with your friends is fun. —LUCA CIMARUSTI

Lapgan Khanvict headlines; Raaginder and Lapgan open. 9 PM, Schubas, 3159 N. Southport, $25, $20. 18+

Harm’s Way VANESSA VALDEZ

Chicago hip-hop producer Lapgan, real name Gaurav Nagpal, samples and blends music from the South Asian diaspora—which has helped him learn more about the breadth and depth of music from the Indian subcontinent. On his most recent trip to of Lapgan LTO BRIQ India to visitBest family, met9.75x4.8542.pdf a vital collaborator,1 voracious music collector Nishant Mittal, who runs

the Instagram account Digging in India. Lapgan had sent a cassette of his 2021 album, Duniya Kya Hai, to Sachin Bhatt, the Bangalore-based artist who’d designed its cover, and when Bhatt posted something on social media, Mittal got in touch with Lap11/13/23 AM gan looking10:08 for a copy.

As Lapgan told Passion of the Weiss contributor Pranav Trewn in August, Mit-

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FRIDAY24 tal turned out to live about ten minutes from Lapgan’s maternal grandmother’s house in New Delhi, which made meeting in person fairly easy. Mittal shared the vintage records and historical knowledge that shaped Lapgan’s newest album, History.

(It’s the debut release from Veena Sounds, a label founded by New York rapper Himanshu “Heems”

Femdot Opener to be announced. 7:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport, $25, $270 opera box (seats six). b Femi Adigun, aka Chicago rapper Femdot (styled as femdot.) delivers his quicksilver raps with a smooth confidence that draws me in like a giant horseshoe magnet in an old cartoon. Lately I’ve mostly thought about one particular track from his Sep-

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MUSIC 4544 N LINCOLN AVENUE, CHICAGO IL OLDTOWNSCHOOL.ORG • 773.728.6000

Sen Morimoto AJ INCAMMICIA

tember release Free Samples Vol. 2 (Delacreme Music Group): “Missy Elliott,” which reminds me less of Missy and more of Ice Spice. Atop a skipping New York drill beat and a tastefully placed smattering of dusty vocal samples, Femdot adapts the stop-start flow that Ice Spice has parlayed into pop stardom, fitting it to his own suave style by filling in some of the gaps she would’ve left in a line.

I like “Missy Elliott” not because it mirrors trends in hip-hop but because Femdot maintains his distinctiveness—he doesn’t lose his voice while trying out something new. Femdot has kept busy this year: he released the first Free Samples EP in June, and he’s recorded a raft of singles and guest spots too. The best of this material suggests he’s got more gas in the tank than anybody would’ve guessed it could hold. —LEOR GALIL

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17 8PM

Jerry Douglas with Daniel Kimbro In Maurer Hall SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 26 3PM & 7PM

Irish Christmas in America In Maurer Hall - 2nd Show Added!

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 2 8PM

Funkadesi 27th Anniversary

Noname See Pick of the Week, page 46. Stout opens. 7:30 PM, the Vic, 3145 N. Sheffield, $32$48. b

SATURDAY25 Sen Morimoto Angélica Garcia and Neptune’s Core open. 7 PM, Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport, $22, $90 opera box (seats two). b Last month at the ChiTown Movies drive-in, Chicago art-pop musician Sen Morimoto hosted a listening party for his new third album, Diagnosis (City Slang/Sooper), that included a screening of Brian De Palma’s 1974 florid horror-comedy rock opera, Phantom of the Paradise. De Palma’s sui generis skewering of the music industry—of how its financial imperatives corrode rock’s soul and flatten musicians into marketability—overlaps in its themes with Morimoto’s album. Morimoto and local music-video producers New Trash have drawn from Phantom of the Paradise to make videos for the title track of Diagnosis and for “Pressure on the Pulse,” both of which cast Chicago actor Alex Grelle (creator of The Grelley Duvall Show) as a pernicious industry executive. (Grelle also appeared as an angel in the 2020 video for Dehd’s “Loner,” opposite Sarah Squirm’s devil.)

The core emotions of De Palma’s movie—the joyful embrace of music, the aversion to the business that surrounds it—course throughout Diagnosis. The sorry state of the pop industry is one of many problems that Morimoto connects to capitalism’s rapacious pursuit of profit, which ignores the destruction of cultures, the immiseration of peoples and ecosystems, and the loss of hope for the future. He lists some of the calamities that capitalism either causes or permits—misinformation, political unrest, COVID-19, climate change—in a manifesto printed on the face of the CD of Diagnosis. (He also posted it in the comments of an Instagram photo of the disc.) It’s no wonder, he writes, that so many of us are bereft and scrambling for something to hold onto. Popular music is one of the languages we use to express to ourselves and to one another what there is to love in the world. How do we find equilibrium, let alone a path forward, when the most powerful human forces in the world have stripped it of any meaning beyond its ability to sell something? Its cynical diminishment impoverishes all of us.

NEW SHOWS ANNOUNCED • ON SALE NOW! 12/3 Wintertime Family Sing-Along 2/10 Sam Bush 3/7 Alan Doyle FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 3 8PM

Concert In Maurer Hall SATURDAY, DECEMBER 2 8PM

Seamus Egan Morimoto’s album suggests that the power to reverse these declines lives within us. He’s certainly found his own power: Diagnosis simmers with precisely controlled rage that sustains its heat without boiling over. Morimoto’s soft, inviting voice and easygoing charm smooth out his most nakedly aggressive moments without blunting their sting.

He corrals jazz, hip-hop, indie rock, and R&B into an ever-shifting style, and this kaleidoscopic approach works well thematically too: the friction among the elements he brings together suggests the discord of contemporary life, even as he directs them all toward euphonious coexistence. The restless drums on “Diagnosis” burn through a proggy thicket of simmering synths, delicate acoustic guitar, gusty saxophone blasts, and several different vocal modes—in one moment, Morimoto piles up his overdubbed voice in relaxed, honeyed harmonies, and in the next he busts out a frenzied rapped verse.

The music industry keeps providing us with bleak news. To pick just one depressing example, Spotify has found a new way to nickel-and-dime smaller artists to death: next year, songs on the platform will have to be streamed 1,000 times (about three dollars’ worth) before Spotify pays out a penny, yet another insult to the unsung people whose work fills most of the platform’s catalog. But I find relief and cause for optimism in the fact that Morimoto has stayed true to his vision and his star has continued to rise. —LEOR GALIL

Music for Mars A fundraiser for Mars Williams’s cancer treatment. Liquid Soul (featuring Mars Williams) headline; the Joe Marcinek Band and Jesse De La Peña open.

Special guests include Richard Butler, Zachary Alford, and Rich Good of the Psychedelic Furs; Jeff Coffin of the Dave Matthews Band; Richard Fortus of Guns N’ Roses; and Ike Reilly. 8 PM, Metro, 3730 N. Clark, $35, $30 in advance, $150 table for two. 18+ For more than four decades, saxophonist Mars Williams has been a cornerstone of the Chicago jazz

scene. In his youth, he studied with the Association for Advancement of Creative Musicians and joined Hal Russell’s NRG Ensemble, which he led after Russell’s death in 1992. Since then, he’s played with fellow jazz luminaries such as Ken Vandermark and Peter Brötzmann, and the long-running groups he’s helped maintain include Albert Ayler tribute outfit Witches & Devils, acid-jazz pioneers Liquid Soul, and ongoing free-improv collective Extraordinary Popular Delusions. That’s an impressive résumé even before you pile on his rock and new-wave work as a member of the Waitresses and the Psychedelic Furs. Williams’s prolificacy can be challenging to keep up with. On his latest release, June’s Critical Mass—his second full-length collaboration with Spanish percussionist Vasco Trilla—he plays sax and miscellaneous toy instruments, creating a playful, meditative sensibility that shows off the musicians’ impressive ranges and gives the listener space to wander freely.

As reported by Gossip Wolf in May, last December Williams was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. Surgery and medical treatments have kept him off the boards for the better part of a year, and like many hard-working musicians facing serious illnesses, he needs financial support to keep the wolves away from the door. Longtime collaborator Dave Rempis started a GoFundMe for Williams that has reached its initial $100,000 goal—but more help is of course still welcome as expenses mount.

This all-star event is a fundraiser and celebration of Williams’s work and accomplishments. Opening the night are jazz fusion and jam outfit the Joe Marcinek Band and Liquid Soul cofounder DJ Jesse De La Peña; for the headlining set, Williams takes the stage with Liquid Soul. The evening will feature guest appearances from Ike Reilly, Jeff Coffin of the Dave Matthews Band, Richard Fortus of Guns N’ Roses, and three members of Psychedelic Furs, including front man Richard Butler. It’s an eclectic lineup that spans eras and genres, and the fact that these players are all gathering in the same room to support their friend is a testament not just to Williams’s musical versatility but also to his beloved spirit. —MONICA KENDRICK v

(of Solas) In Szold Hall SUNDAY, DECEMBER 3 11AM

Wintertime Family Sing-Along In Szold Hall SUNDAY, DECEMBER 3 7PM

Over The Rhine An Acoustic Christmas In Maurer Hall THURSDAY, DECEMBER 7 7:30PM FRIDAY, DECEMBER 8 7:30PM SATURDAY, DECEMBER 9 3PM & 7:30PM SUNDAY, DECEMBER 10 4PM 25th Anniversary!

Holiday Caroling Party with Mary Schmich & Eric Zorn

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 9 8PM

The Claudettes In Szold Hall SUNDAY, DECEMBER 10 7PM

Jeffrey Foucault / Pietra Brown In Szold Hall FRIDAY, DECEMBER 22 7PM SATURDAY, DECEMBER 23 2PM, 5PM, 8PM

Mariachi Herencia de México: A Mariachi Christmas In Maurer Hall WORLD MUSIC WEDNESDAY SERIES FREE WEEKLY CONCERTS, LINCOLN SQUARE

11/22 11/29

Cosmic Ballet feat Fareed Haque & Wanees Zarour Patricia Ortega Ensemble

OLDTOWNSCHOOL.ORG NOVEMBER 16, 2023 - CHICAGO READER 49

Chicago Reader:

EARLY WARNINGS

’23/’24

WED 2/21/2024 Phora 8 PM, the Promontory b SAT 2/24/2024 Jon Batiste 8 PM, Riviera Theatre b

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Mar. 7, 2024 Mar. 21, 2024

Spring Theater & Arts

FRI 12/1 David Nail, Pryor Baird 8 PM, Joe’s SUN 12/3 The English Beat 8 PM, City Winery b MON 12/4 The English Beat 8 PM, City Winery b Sydney Richards, Abby Lyons, Nick Scarpinato 7:30 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ WED 12/6 Aterciopelados, Braided Janes 7 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ FRI 12/8 Miirrors, Nae, Bird x Butterfly, DJ Quin Kirchner, DJ MDJ 8 PM, Sleeping Village SAT 12/9 Beyond the Gate featuring Stephen O’Malley & François J. Bonnet, Michael Vallera 6:15 and 9:15 PM, Bohemian National Cemetery Cathedral, 18+ Brendan & Jake’s 21st Annual Holiday Show: A Benefit for the People’s Music School featuring Brendan Bayliss, Jake Cinninger, Andy Farag, Mike Racky, and Michelle Hallman 8 PM, Park West b THU 12/14 Anything Is Everything, Tommy Kessler, Superkick, Getting Started 8 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Bloodyminded, Nika, Palais Intrige, Lula Asplund, Mortido 9 PM, Empty Bottle

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UPCOMING CONCERTS TO HAVE ON YOUR RADAR

FRI 1/12/2024 Aaron Kamm & the One Drops 8:30 PM, FitzGerald’s, Berwyn SAT 1/13/2024 Oliver Tree, Fidlar 8 PM, Aragon Ballroom, 17+ SUN 1/14/2024 Corey Harris, Cedric Watson 7 PM, Szold Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b THU 1/18/2024 Reason 7 PM, Subterranean b FRI 1/19/2024 Rosanne Cash 8 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b SAT 1/20/2024 Rosanne Cash 8 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b

SAT 3/2/2024 Greensky Bluegrass 8 PM, Salt Shed (inside), 17+ SUN 3/10/2024 Babytron, Certified Trapper 8 PM, Patio Theater b THU 3/14/2024 Ministry, Gary Numan, Front Line Assembly 7 PM, Aragon Ballroom, 18+ TUE 3/19/2024 The Scratch 9 PM, Empty Bottle FRI 3/22/2024 J.J. Grey & Mofro, Judith Hill 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Little Stranger 8:30 PM, Park West, 18+

MON 1/22/2024 Darren Kiely 8 PM, Schubas, 18+

WED 5/1/2024 Judas Priest, Sabaton 7:30 PM, Rosemont Theatre, Rosemont b Sessanta featuring Puscifer, A Perfect Circle, Primus 7:30 PM, Wintrust Arena b

SAT 1/27/2024 Lucius, Jeff Taylor 7:30 PM, the Vic b

FRI 5/17/2024 Holly Humberstone 7:30 PM, the Vic b

SUN 1/28/2024 Ali Gatie 7 PM, House of Blues b

FRI 5/31/2024 Jeff Tweedy 7:30 PM, the Vic b

WED 1/31/2024 DJ Shadow 8 PM, Metro, 18+

SAT 6/1/2024 Jeff Tweedy 7:30 PM, the Vic b

BEYOND

SAT 6/29/2024 AJR 7:30 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont b

FRI 2/9/2024 Record Company, Jesse Ahern 8 PM, Park West, 18+

WED 7/3/2024 AJR 7:30 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont b

THU 2/15/2024 Widespread Panic 8 PM, Chicago Theatre b

FRI 7/12/2024 Chicago; Earth, Wind & Fire 7:30 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont b

FRI 2/16/2024 Widespread Panic 8 PM, Chicago Theatre b SAT 2/17/2024 Eric Bellinger, Zae France 8:30 PM, Park West, 18+ Widespread Panic 8 PM, Chicago Theatre b

SAT 8/3/2024 Sammy Hagar, Loverboy 7 PM, Credit Union 1 Amphitheatre, Tinley Park b SAT 9/7/2024 Peter Hook & the Light 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ v

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GOSSIP WOLF A furry ear to the ground of the local music scene

CHICAGO INDIE ROCKERS Elena “Lanie” Buenrostro and Travis Newgren, better known as Soft and Dumb, have spent much of the past year writing and recording their forthcoming sophomore album. A few weeks ago, frustrated by the length of that process, the duo paused work on the LP to record a handful of fast-and-loose songs on a fourtrack. On Friday, November 17, they’ll put them out as the EP Heaven. “We were really ready to release something,” Buenrostro says.

Buenrostro and Newgren met at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and started dating in 2019. Newgren was already playing around in Urbana’s DIY scene, but Buenrostro had never performed live. “I was pretty scared and anxious about even playing music with other people,” she says. “But I definitely had this secret desire to perform.”

Buenrostro and Newgren formed Soft and Dumb six months into their relationship.

“The first time we ever sat down, like, ‘Oh, let’s write a song together,’ was December of 2019,” Newgren says. “Then our first show was March 7 of 2020, seven days before the COVID pandemic—which was just a basement show in Champaign-Urbana.” Soft and Dumb have since found a home in Chicago’s young DIY scene. Last year, when they self-released their noisy, rough-around-the-edges debut album, Soft and Dumb, they packaged it with the zine SAD, which features an interview with Chicago youth-scene workaholic Eli Schmitt.

Buenrostro says her romantic relationship with Newgren feeds into the music they make together. “I’m always writing about Travis, just because we spend so much time together,” she says. “I’m very confessional in what I write, which is kind of the antithesis to my personality.” Judging from the lyrics on Heaven, Newgren and Buenrostro are a solid couple.

“I guess this EP is really surrounded by love,” she says. “I’ve described it as love obsessed and incredibly juvenile, because that’s often the place that I write from.”

It’s also drumless and almost entirely acoustic, unlike their debut album. Soft and Dumb have been recording their LP in Buenrostro’s parents’ Forest Park basement, and Heaven sounds different because the duo moved some gear upstairs for a change of scenery.

“It’s really hard to be creative in an unfinished basement, where it’s cold and dingy and whatever,” Newgren says. “So we just

took some guitars and a very stripped-down setup—just a four-track—up to Lanie’s room, where there’s nice natural light and you can chill out.”

They finished Heaven quickly. “We gave ourselves three days,” Newgren says. “There’s parts on this EP that I straight-up listen to, and I’m like, ‘That shouldn’t have been recorded.’ But no, that’s completely what this is— accepting that, accepting flaws, accepting that we’re busy, accepting that you only get so much time on this earth.”

Soft and Dumb celebrate Heaven at Color Club on Thursday, November 16, playing an acoustic set at Eli Schmitt’s monthly all-ages showcase, New Now. They hope to have CD copies of Heaven on hand, and the EP is also coming out on cassette via Hallogallo Tapes, the label run by Lifeguard front man Kai Slater. Teen postpunk trio Uniflora headline, because their EP Plastic Sturgeon comes out that same day.

GOSSIP WOLF FIRST got acquainted with singer-songwriter Jess Robbins through her standout 2018 solo album, Lightfield, which drifts between lush folk and atmospheric indie pop. In 2019, Robbins founded the group Course, which features a shifting lineup of crack producers and backing musicians, with backing vocalist Jamie Semel key among them. In 2020, Course were in Texas with producer Dan Duszynski, tracking their debut album, A Late Hour, when COVID-19 stopped the sessions. (After several months of remote work, the album was released in 2021.)

Last month, Course released their next album, Tight Feathers, also recorded remotely, this time via Zoom with Nashville producer Kyle Andrews using his studio in Wisconsin. The only in-person sessions came late in the process—Andrews met the band to record vocals at Chicago’s Jamdek studio—but the songs nonetheless have an intimate feel. On “None of Us Are Good Enough” and “Fur Coats in Bars,” Course hit a lovelorn sweet spot worthy of the XX. The album is the perfect soundtrack to a reflective, solitary rideshare home after a loud night on a crowded dance floor. Course’s next gig is at Constellation on Saturday, January 13, with Steve Dawson of Dolly Varden. —J.R. NELSON AND LEOR GALIL Got a tip? Tweet @Gossip_Wolf or email gossipwolf@chicagoreader.com.

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SCAN HERE FOR TICKETS NOVEMBER 16, 2023 - CHICAGO READER 51

SAVAGE LOVE Big or small, a strap-on can work for all! DEON BLACK/PEXELS

haven’t fucked before—at the office, at a sex club, in the ass, etc.

Q: I’m a 50-year-old man.

My spouse, 46, is in the process of transitioning from male to female. I want to be sensitive to this experience and don’t want to ask hurtful questions, but there are things I just don’t know. For instance, how do most people in her position feel about their male appendage?

I’m hesitant to initiate any intimacy now.

a: Even if you knew how

SEX AND RELATIONSHIPS

Quickies

Pronouns, fissures, doomed relationships, and more

By DAN SAVAGE Q: I met a man whose

wife was very ill.

Their relationship was no longer sexual. He was in a caretaker role and seeking release. We fell in love, and he promised to marry me when his wife passes. That was five years ago. I know he isn’t lying about his wife’s illness, but I no longer want to wait. The only leverage I have is telling his wife and kids, which I would never do. It would destroy him and destroy us. But I’m drunk right now and I need you to tell me I shouldn’t.

a: You absolutely shouldn’t— unless you want stoned CNN viewers to root against the detectives investigating your murder in a future episode of Forensic Files.

Q: Straight boy in the big city who sometimes plays the bull for cuck couples.

Went in for a second job

interview and the boss was a man whose wife I’d fucked in front of him a year ago.

There was lots of verbal abuse that his wife initiated (and I played along with) but their thing was too intense and I politely declined to meet up with them again. I didn’t get the job, and I’m pretty sure why. I still have his wife’s phone number. Do I have any recourse here?

a: You don’t—unless you want stoned CNN viewers to root against the detectives investigating your murder in a future episode of Forensic Files.

Q: I have some questions

about pronouns. I get he/ him, she/her, and they/them, but not he/they or she/they.

This has been a discussion with friends and family.

Personally, I want people to identify with their truth. But I still don’t understand he/

52 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 16, 2023

they or she/they. Can you make it make sense?

a: Ours is not to reason

why, ours is but to make to make a good faith effort to remember the unique and sometimes unpredictable pronoun preferences of everyone we meet. We also have the option of training ourselves to never ever use pronouns at all, in reference to anyone, ever again (She/ they, he/they: “I may identify with and present as my natal/ biological/assigned sex BUT I CONTAIN MULTITUDES, bitches!”)

Q: Sex with hubs is boring

now but I have no new fantasies. How do I get into it again?

a: If the relationship is open, fuck some other people alone and together. If the relationship is closed, fuck each other someplace you

most MTF folks feel about their male appendages—and even if I knew how most MTF folks feel about their male appendages—neither of us knows how your particular MTF spouse feels about her male appendage. It’s entirely possible your spouse feels the way most trans women feel . . . or she could hold a minority opinion. So you’re going to have to ask her.

Whatever she feels about her male appendage, broaching the subject is one way of letting her know you’re still attracted to her and still wanna be intimate.

Q: I am a woman who has

plentiful orgasms very easily and a WAP. I prefer a larger than average penis, which apparently is common (according to some studies) among women who orgasm a lot, because I need to have my cervix rammed to feel completely satisfied. I don’t want to be this way and I feel a little ashamed since it’s something men can’t change about themselves. What do I do if I meet someone who is otherwise a very compatible partner, however, physically through no fault of his own, can’t give me what I need sexually? I like it to be a big enough dick that I hurts a little.

a: Guys with big dicks are great, but guys—big or small— who are secure enough with their dicks to occasionally strap on a big dildo are even better. Find one of them.

Q: What does it mean

when a girl looks at you and runs her finger around her lips like in a circle with her lips open? Round the world? I want to give you a rim job? She did it at me like three times, Dan. I want to interpret this the right way. I’m a straight guy who doesn’t get much, but I think maybe this gal is interested.

Yay or nay?

a: If this girl was in your

league (be honest), it means she wanted it. If this girl was out of your league, it means she takes cash or Venmo . . . or she was secretly filming you for her prank YouTube channel. Proceed with caution.

Q: What are telltale signs a relationship is doomed?

a: I want to be a glib POS and say, “Asking yourself—or asking an advice columnist— that particular question is one of the signs,” but that isn’t true. Everyone in a truly long-term relationship (let’s say over five years) has wondered at some point whether their relationship was doomed. No, the truly telltale signs—the “Four Horsemen of Relationship Apocalypse” according to John Gottman and Julie Schwarz Gottman of the Gottman Institute— are criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling. Learn more at the institute’s website (gottman.com).

Q: I’m wanting to get into

fisting, but my boyfriend isn’t into it. We are open. How do I go about it? How do I even get started?

a: “Open and honest communication about your needs and your partner’s needs is always the most important thing, whatever you’re into,” said Jazzmatazz, the fisting blogger who cohosts the Such FFun podcast. “Two fisting-specific tips: train with toys first, both solo and with partners. And find some experienced fisters in your area—guys you feel you can trust—who are up for showing you the ropes. Then explore and have fun!”

Q: Is it safe to mix XLube with piss?

a: Since XLube is powdered lubricant (just add water) that’s popular with fistfuckers, and since I already had Jazzmatazz on the line, I passed your question to him. “Your large intestine has one job: absorbing water,” said Jazzmatazz.

“Piss in your butt will get absorbed, with or without XLube. If you trust the quality of the piss, go for it.” You can find Jazzmatazz on X at @jazzmatazzoz and the Such FFun podcast— now in its fourth year—on all podcasting platforms and on X at @SuchFFun.

Q: Best BJ trick? a: A gentle bite—just a little pressure applied with the teeth at a moment when the dick isn’t sliding in or out—paired with sustained eye contact. It’s a great way to remind the person whose dick is in your mouth that they don’t have all the power, since you could tear that cock off with your teeth at any moment. v Ask your burning questions, download podcasts, read full column archives, and more at the URL savage.love. m mailbox@savage.love

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Weihnachtsmarkt

SHOPPING | SANTA | HOT GLÜHWEIN | GERMAN FOOD

09 DEC 202 2023

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An original documentary series about the people and events that shaped our great American city Photo credits: Chicago History Museum, MDN-0000014; Chicago Daily News, photographer; Chicago Metropolitan Water Reclamation District; Chicago History Museum, ICHi-026271; Richard J. Daley collection, University of Illinois Chicago Library; DN-0064813, Chicago Daily News collection, Chicago History Museum; Lisa Howe-Ebright, photographer; Chicago History Museum, ICHi-040411

wttw.com/chicagostories NOVEMBER 16, 2023 - CHICAGO READER 53

CLASSIFIEDS JOBS PROFESSIONALS

& SERVICES

HOUSING AUDITIONS MATCHES ADULT SERVICES

JOBS IT Engineer Federal Home Loan Bank Chicago is seeking an IT Engineer in Chicago, IL. Support Business Intelligence operations primarily using Tableau Desktop and Server in a windows and AWS e n v i ro n m e n t .

60% working from home allowed. Must live within commuting distance of office. Apply on-line at fhlbc.com/careers.

Systems Administrator Systems Administrator: Resolve tech problems, training to users to max prod. New tech impl.

Troubleshoot hardware, software, network.

Analyze needs, design software solutions.

Develop, write comp p ro g r a m s t o s t o re , locate, retrieve specific docs, data, info. Write, update, maintain comp p ro g r a m s , s o f t w a re packages. Website support, monitoring systems security incl servers & cloud. Associate Degree in Comp Information Systems. 2 yrs exp. MK Construction & Builders, Inc. 2000 N Milwaukee Ave, Chicago IL 60647 Assistant Professor Assistant Professor, Erikson Institute in Chicago, IL. Teach graduate courses focused on child development & research. Advise graduate & doctoral students.

Participate on at least one standing committee.

Develop active program of funded research w/ publications. Req: PhD in Early Childhood Education, Child Development, or related field w/coursework in advanced child development and quantitative research methods.

Apply online: www. e r i k s o n . e d u / c a re e r s .

AWS Engineer NPV Staffing, LLC (Chicago, IL) seeks AWS Engineer. Research, design, & develop computer & network software or specialized utility programs. Req: MS in Comp Sci or rel/equiv.

2 yrs exp as AWS Engr/ Architect or rel. 2 yrs exp w/ AWS, Jenkins, JSON, Scala, QA, GitHub, S3, Hive, Python, Kubernets, & Lambda req.

Travel or relocation to various unanticipated worksites throughout US req. Telecommuting allowed. Send resumes: hr@npvstaffing.com S o f t w a re A rc h i t e c t Software Architect (Buffalo Grove, IL) Dsgn, dvlp & maint complex algorithms for math analysis & computational geometry. Optimize & dvlp software using tools on Linux w/ C++ Support, incl GDB & Valgrind to ensure high performance. Conduct

54 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 16, 2023

in-depth research & analysis of new software dvlpmnt technologies, tools, & processes to recommend improvements to existing systems. Write & maint tech documentation & user manuals for software products written using scripting languages: skill, VHDL, Verilog, Bash, & csh. Work w/ version control systems such as Perforce, CVS, & Git to dvlp & mng software code. Utilize math analysis & computational geometry, graph theory, & optimization techniques to optimize software performance.

Dvlp & implement data processing solutions for big data system. Dsgn software using linear algebra & computational geometry for software products. Req. 3 yrs of exp in the occupation.

Mail CV to 1330 Busch Pkwy, Buffalo Grove, IL 60089, Abagy Robotic Systems, Inc. Attn: N i k i t a P a v l o v, C E O D i r e c t o r, Senior Compliance and Operational Risk Control UBS Business Solutions US LLC seeks Director, Senior Compliance and Operational Risk Control in Chicago, IL. Provide independent advice, challenge and control to compliance risk-taking and risk assessments.

Assist in the administration, maintenance and improvement of compliance policies, procedures and processes of Real Estate and Private Markets (REPM) and Cross-Border Business, and connect them to those of UBS Asset Management and the wider UBS Americas organization. Qualified Applicants apply through sh-profrecruitingcc@ ubs.com. Please reference 000066. NO CALLS PLEASE. EOE / M / F / D / V. # L I - D N I Business Systems Analysts Business Systems Analysts, Itasca, IL: Engg solutions & establish standards for App Dynamics Controller. Design & implement Splunk based solutions.

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Getech Law LLC is seeking a Public Relations Specialist to identify Getech’s advertising & promotion needs & targets, execute proactive project-management roles, & etc.

Pos reqs a Master’s deg

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Application Support Engineer Inforeach, Inc. in Chicago, IL seeks Application Support Eng w/HS & 5 yrs exp in job. Exp w/ MS Windows & Linux, DevOps, VCSs. Knwl of trading protocols, market structures, asset types, options, futures & fixed income.

Send res: careers@ inforeachinc.com Senior Engineer Inforeach, Inc. in Chicago, IL seeks Sr. Engineer w/MS in CS, IT, Math or rltd & 2 yrs exp in job. Exp w/ software for fin trading industry & el trading.

Send res: careers@ inforeachinc.com Security Engineer I Harbor Capital Advisors, Inc in Chicago, IL. seeks a Security Engineer I, responsible for assisting the Information Te c h n o l o g y ( “ I T ” ) Security & Risk team in various aspects of the Information Security program including, but not limited to Information Security Policy oversight, security operations and analysis, vendor risk management, v u l n e r a b i l i t y management, security awareness and training, endpoint security and creating security reports for Senior Management consumption. Must have a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Information Systems, Information Security, Network Security or related field and five (5) years of experience in the job offered or related information security role.

Must have experience with (1) Various operating systems including Windows/Mac/Linux (2) Theoretical knowledge and understanding of computer networks, ISO OSI and TCP/IP protocol stacks (3) ARP, IP, TCP, U D P, H T T P, L D A P, FTP (4) Security tools.

Te l e c o m m u t i n g a n d remote working allowed.

Apply online at https:// www. harborcapital. com/ careers Refer to Job ID AA23 Lead Event Designer & Executive Producer.

Chicago, IL. Devise creative strategy for event visual design & presentation in print, photos, videos, web, and social media; Meet

w/ clients to determine design objective, budget, & schedule; Oversee photoshoots, printing, design layout & execution. Req: 3yrs work exp job duties; Knowledge of p h o t o g r a p h y, e v e n t styling, food styling, visual brand strategy.

Send resume: Job#3, Christine Janda Design & Events LLC, 1000 N North Branch St Chicago IL 60642 Job Opportunity: Electrical Engineers II Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago d/b/a Shirley Ryan Ability Lab seeks Electrical Engineers II for Chicago, IL location to assist in the design, dev, fabrication, testing, installation, adjustment & maintenance of electronics, mechatronics & control systems. Bachelor’s in Electrical Eng/ related field +2yrs exp req’d. Req’d Skills: exp dev wireless biomedical implantable devices, using Python programming for data acquisition, visual, &control; Altium; circuit simulation using SPICE/ similar; dev sw at the app layer, driver dev for microcontrollers & digital signal processors (ARM Cortex-M, TI, Atmel AVR), C, C#, MATLAB; RF design, Rowley CrossStudio for ARM; Eclipse, Visual Studio, GIT; design, fabricate, troubleshoot, program &test systems to validate design performance; using test equipment, VNA, spectrum analyzer, RF power meter, LCR meter.

40% telecommuting permitted. Apply online: https://www.sralab.org/ careers, REQID:61555 Software Developer(s) Software Developer(s) RedMane Technology LLC seeks Software Developer(s) in Chicago, IL to provide system analysis, development, and production support as part of a project team. 25% domestic US travel to client sites. Telecommuting permitted. Email resume to yourcareer@redmane. com; reference job code D7038-00108. E.O.E. Logistic Specialist 2 Cute Clothing Corp. seeks a Logistic Specialist w/BS. Provide logistics-rel. supp. expertise to plan, coord., & assist in the execution of acquisition.

Send resume to Joseph Chung, 96 River Oak Ctr, Ste D13, Calumet City, IL 60409 (Chicago, IL) R.J. O’Brien & Associates LLC seeks Product Development Manager

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w/Bach or for deg equiv in Fin, Math, Bus or rltd fld & 2 yrs exp in job offer or in oversng oper incl exp w/derivt prod trde proc syst (both intrnl & 3rd prty) w/a spec foc on eqty optns; sup cash equit, cash bnds & strct prod & Exch & prme brkr recon proc & terrmlgy.

Occ dom & intl trvl reqd. Apply to HR, 222 S Riverside Plaza, Ste 1200, Chicago, IL 60606 Senior Specialist, R e g u l a t o r y A ff a i r s Baxter Healthcare Corporation is seeking a Senior Specialist, Regulatory Affairs in Deerfield, IL to develop and execute regulatory strategies aligned to business objectives to support market life-cycle management and new product development activities to align business objectives related to a specific portfolio of products/ projects; and maintain awareness of regulatory requirements. 100% telecommute role, may live anywhere in the U.S. Up to 20% domestic travel required. Full time. $76,000 - $114,000 p e r y e a r. Q u a l i f i e d applicants can apply directly to the Baxter Website at: jobs.baxter. com. Please search job #JR-117302. EOE

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