Category: Chicago Reporter, The

Nowhere to go: since the early 1990s, more women than ever—most of them mothers—have served time in Illinois prisons. Now they’re getting out. But what happens when they head home? Leah Samuel It 1982, Leslie Brown went to prison for conspiring to murder her husband. “It was my second husband, and I was in a […]

Speaking out about affirmative action – Interview Julia Randle In high school, Donald Hubert, a poor kid from the South Side’s Englewood neighborhood, was assigned to classes that prepared him to become a laborer, and few classmates assumed he’d do anything different. Even his mother encouraged him to join the military. But he had a […]

Reparations battles Mick Dumke The reparations movement has amassed impressive energy support and attention over the last several years–and so has its opposition. But arguments on both sides have been pushed at least since the end of the Civil War. A brief history of the battle over slavery reparations: 1865: Union Maj. Gen. William T. […]

Sheldon Baskin – Keeping Current – Rienzi Plaza to keep on renting to low income tenants – Brief Article Sarah Karp In November, the owners of Rienzi Plaza, an apartment building at 600 W. Diversey Parkway in Lakeview, renewed its Section 8 contract with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, agreeing to continue […]

Casey Sanchez Reporter Casey Sanchez left the Reporter to join the staff of the Intelligence Report at the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala., where he covers issues of bigotry and racism across the country. COPYRIGHT 2007 Community Renewal Society COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning

Never-ending cycle: Illinois’ reliance on property taxes as the major source of school funding has major consequences for communities throughout the state Jeff Kelly Lowenstein On Bradley Road in north suburban Lake Forest, cars and trucks rumble off of Interstate 94 and into one of the five industrial parks and large office buildings that stand […]

Bouncing back: Evelyn Purdis remembers getting turned down for jobs because she lived in public housing. Now she runs her own business – New Voices Hiroko Abe When Evelyn Purdis wanted her own home in the 1970s, she felt it was impossible for her, as a young black woman and a public housing resident, to […]

The poor play more – lotteries Leah Samuel Contributing: Rupa Shenoy. Shawn Allee, Dominick Basta, Jocelyn Prince and Julia Steinberger helped research this article. It’s just minutes before the televised noon lottery drawing, and hurried, last-minute players are lining up inside 115th St. Food & Liquor on Chicago’s South Side. One of them is 60-year-old […]

Expanding Chicago’s public square Ben Aaronson “You don’t have to be Kissinger to know that bombing people in Iraq is wrong,” insisted Mary Rickard, drawing several groans of disagreement from the strangers she was addressing. Rickard, a 50-year-old public relations and marketing consultant from Logan Square, spoke recently at a weekly discussion series that attempts […]

Minority faculty finish last on tenure track Rupa Shenoy Behind binoculars, Valerie C. Johnson cried. She watched from a car across the street on a cold day last February as her students, bundled in winter coats, shouted, marched and waved banners that read “Tenure Professor Johnson” on the University of Illinois at Chicago’s campus. Eight […]