What’s New

Good afternoon. Here’s the latest news you need to know in Chicago. It’s about a 5-minute read that will brief you on today’s biggest stories.

This afternoon will be sunny with a high near 74 degrees. Tonight will be clear with a low around 56. Tomorrow will be sunny with a high near 81.

Top story

Two women who say Chicago shaped their work among MacArthur Foundation fellowship recipients

Two women whose work was influenced by their time in Chicago are among this year’s MacArthur Fellows.

Historian and author Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor and Jacqueline Stewart, who studies the history of cinema, both focus their work on the Black experience and uplifting Black voices. They are among 25 recipients of the no-strings-attached $625,000 fellowships, unofficially dubbed the “genius grants,” announced today.

Taylor has lived in Chicago for more than a decade. Stewart was born and raised in Hyde Park. Both said their experiences with Chicago’s Black neighborhoods played a pivotal role in their intellectual development.

Taylor moved to Chicago from New York City to join activist movements focused on ending the death penalty and exonerating Black men on Illinois’ death row. She also organized for Chicago tenants’ rights in the wake of the 2008 housing crisis. Taylor is the author of “Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership,” a book she says was influenced by her time living in Chicago and noticing the city’s stark segregation. She now lives in Philadelphia and teaches history at Princeton University.

Stewart, a professor of cinema and media studies at the University of Chicago, also says her work on the history of African American filmmaking was influenced by her upbringing.

She directs the South Side Home Movie Project, which preserves amateur films shot by Chicago residents, and serves as chief artistic and programming officer at The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles, set to open Thursday.

The Chicago-based John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has granted billions of dollars to “creative people, effective institutions, and influential networks” since its founding in 1970. Fellowships are awarded to “extraordinarily talented individuals” each year, and winners are free to use the grant however they choose.

You can’t apply for a MacArthur Fellowship. Instead, recipients are selected by a team of anonymous nominators. The process is confidential, and recipients usually don’t know they’ve been picked until the congratulatory phone call.

Jason Beeferman has more on the recipients and their work here.

More news you need

Police say an 8-year-old boy playing in front of his home in Markham yesterday was shot and killed when someone stepped out of a car and fired, apparently aiming at his older brother. Demetrius Stevenson was in the third grade and looking forward to the new school year, according to city administrator Derrick Champion.

Some state lawmakers and activists hope to pass legislation next month that would restore voting rights to people in prisons. It’s a change proponents say could help connect incarcerated people “to a process that’s for the betterment of society.”

The Obamas returned to Chicago today for the official groundbreaking of the Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park, calling the center a “university for activism and social change.” Amid the excitement, a plane flew overhead with a banner that read “Stop cutting down trees — move OPC,” a reminder of the controversy that’s followed the project.

With his guilty plea to wire fraud and money laundering yesterday, former Ald. Ricardo Munoz became the 36th member of the City Council to be convicted of a crime since the early 1970s. Munoz is the first former or sitting Chicago alderperson to be convicted since Ald. Willie Cochran’s 2019 guilty plea.

A 25-year-old accused by the feds of running a “significant bookmaking operation” at Illinois State University avoided prison during his sentence hearing today. Instead, Matthew Namoff — the youngest person charged in connection with a massive gambling ring — was given six months of home confinement and a $10,000 fine.

The Illinois Prison Project filed a petition today with the Illinois Prisoner Review Board to commute the sentences of 43 people, all of whom have struggled with mental illness. At one time or another, they ended up in solitary confinement for misbehaving — often for arbitrary infractions that either led to longer prison terms or the elimination of “good time,” the Prison Project said.

The arrival of October on Friday means the start of awards season for theatrical releases, so film critic Richard Roeper pieced together a fall preview of his most anticipated films. From “The Last Duel” and “Dune,” to “The Harder They Fall” and “Spencer,” the films cover a wide range of genres, offering a little something for just about everyone.

A bright one

Zyra Gorecki revels in historic ‘La Brea’ role as a teen with a disability

Zyra Gorecki is well aware of the historic nature of her first series regular role on the NBC series “La Brea.”

“There’s not a lot of representation for disability in media, and to have a character actually be played by an amputee actor is huge,” said Gorecki, who is one of the few amputee series regular/lead actors on a broadcast TV series.

“Being an amputee, you have a different mental state and how you react to things and how you experience things. And to be able to bring that to a character who is an amputee is something that a fully limbed person would not necessarily be used to because they haven’t experienced it.”

Izzy (Zyra Gorecki, left, with Natalie Zea) sprints to escape an expanding sinkhole in the opening moments of the new NBC series “La Brea.” NBC

“La Brea,” which premieres at 8 p.m. tomorrow on WMAQ-Channel 5, details how a massive Los Angeles sinkhole upends the lives of a family, separating them in the process. Gorecki plays Izzy Harris, a teenager whose mom and brother tumble into the hole.

Gorecki, who splits her time between Chicago and her native Michigan, lost her left leg below the knee at 13 in a lumber accident. She says some people miss a level of understanding when it comes to ableism.

“I think people try to be good; they try to be caring and understanding of other people, and that’s not always the case,” said Gorecki, 19. “And that’s totally fine — you can come back from that, absolutely. It’s just a matter of going to the people who have disabilities, going to the people who are different and understanding. Take something from a conversation with them and going: ‘Oh, I did do wrong. Now I can fix this.'”

More from Evan F. Moore’s conversation with Gorecki here.

From the press box

Your daily question ?

How would you describe autumn in Chicago to someone who’s never experienced it before?

Email us (please include your first name and where you live) and we might include your answer in the next Afternoon Edition.

Yesterday we asked you: Who is your favorite “Saturday Night Live” cast member of all time? Why? Here’s what some of you said…

“Hard one. I felt the first year’s cast was outstanding! They set the sights high. John Belushi — outstanding in his contributions. Chevy Chase — amazing! Gilda Radner — one in a million. They all worked together to make this outstanding program.” — Robin Hickman

“Kristen Wig. Well between her character of The Target Lady and The Californians, she really knows how to capture those personalities. It’s probably why she is a movie star now. ‘Bridesmaids’ is one of my favorite movies.”– Mike Lebron

“Eddie Murphy is the GOAT, but he was on there before my time. So I’ll say Norm Macdonald.” — Nathan Marshall

“Chris Farley, because there has never been another cast member like him. May he rest in peace.” — Joel NK Aleman

“Phil Hartman. He was just so gifted.” — Jennifer Payton

“Keenan Thompson is the longest-running and most versatile cast member ever!” — Miguelito Hartman

“Maya Rudolph. I think she’s awesome. She’s smart, witty, and funny.” — Wilishah Ayana

Thanks for reading the Chicago Sun-Times Afternoon Edition. Got a story you think we missed? Email us here.

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A man was killed in a shooting Tuesday in Lawndale on the West Side.

He was near the street about 1:15 p.m. in the 1500 block of South Christiana Avenue when someone opened fire, Chicago police said.

The 21-year-old was struck multiple times and taken to Mount Sinai Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, police said. He hasn’t been identified.

Area Four detectives are investigating.

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Notre Dame and BYU will play each other at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas next season.

The Fighting Irish and Cougars said Tuesday they will play Oct. 8, 2022, in a Shamrock Series game for Notre Dame. This will be the eighth location Notre Dame has played one of its home games away from South Bend, Indiana.

This past week, the Irish had a Shamrock Series game against Wisconsin at Soldier Field. Notre Dame improved to 10-0 in series games. Fox Sports said the game with the Badgers drew 5.37 million viewers and was the most-watched college game of the weekend.

For BYU, the game with Notre Dame completes its schedule for 2022, which will be its last season as a football independent before joining the Big 12 in 2023.

Notre Dame leads the series with BYU 6-2. The teams last played each other in 2013 at Notre Dame Stadium.

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The Bulls ticket office might want to hold off on printing the playoff tickets for now.

That was the message from coach Billy Donovan, as the team had its first practice of the fall camp on Tuesday.

“It’s so hard to sit there and make predictions or project what is or is not going to happen,” Donovan said, when asked about the Bulls breaking a four-year postseason drought. “I just know we have a lot of work ahead of us.”

So was Donovan really under the belief that making the playoffs with this current roster would be a challenge? Likely not. Chalk it up to coachspeak in order to lie in the weeds as long as possible.

“To say what we’re going to look like weeks, months is going to be hard to say,” Donovan said. “I think the expectation is you want to compete at the highest level. You want to be able to make deep runs in the playoffs. And I think we’re continually trying to build and get better from one year to the next.

“But with all these new faces … I’m excited about it because there’s a lot of potential and I think a positivity to what we can become. But we’re going to have to put the work in to do that.”

Training room

Coby White (shoulder surgery) said on Tuesday that he is close to all basketball activity, with the final obstacle being left-handed overhead shots. The guard is still on schedule for a November return.

Patrick Williams (left ankle sprain) is expected to test the injury out this week when he begins running. He was able to get up shots, and the hope is he will be ready close to the start of the regular season.

Selling point

Lonzo Ball and the Bulls had been a rumor for a few seasons, even going back to his days with the Lakers when they were looking to unload him.

The new Bulls regime, however, was able to close the deal on him this offseason in a sign-and-trade for the restricted free agent. So what did it take for the Bulls to convince the point guard that he would be a good fit?

Money, but also the assurance that he would be able to play to his strengths rather than be coached to be something different.

“For me, I think just their interest in me,” Ball said of the process. “They didn’t want me to change anything I had going, any part of my game. They wanted me just to excel in the things I’m already comfortable doing. So it was an easy choice for me, and I think Zach [LaVine] played a big part as well.”

School days

It was only one season together at USC, but Nikola Vucevic admitted that he and DeMar DeRozan hoped that one day they would be able to reunite and play on the same team again.

“DeMar and I were same class, we were both freshman at USC — except he came in as a big star, I came in as a nobody,” Vucevic said with a laugh. “He was only there for one year, I stayed for three … And he mentioned in one of his interviews that we talked about playing together one day, maybe again, a lot of times we knew maybe it wasn’t realistic. But now an opportunity came and we were able to make it happen.”

And now the hope is it will be longer than just one season.

Vucevic is signed through the 2022-23 season, while DeRozan was inked through the 2023-24 campaign.

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NEW YORK — For years, decades even, allegations swirled that R&B superstar R. Kelly was abusing young women and girls, with seeming impunity.

They were mostly young Black women. And Black girls.

And that, say accusers and others who have called for him to face accountability, is part of what took the wheels of the criminal justice system so long to turn, finally leading to his conviction Monday in his sex trafficking trial. That it did at all, they say, is also due to the efforts of Black women, unwilling to be forgotten.

Speaking out against sexual assault and violence is fraught for anyone who attempts it. Those who work in the field say the hurdles facing Black women and girls are raised even higher by a society that hypersexualizes them from a young age, stereotyping them as promiscuous and judging their physiques, and in a country with a history of racism and sexism that has long denied their autonomy over their own bodies.

“Black women have been in this country for a long time and … our bodies were never ours to begin with,” said Kalimah Johnson, executive director of the SASHA Center in Detroit, which provides services to sexual assault survivors.

“No one allows us to be something worthy of protection,” she said. “A human that needs love, and sacredness.” It’s as if, she said, “there’s nothing sacred about a Black woman’s body.”

In a 2017 study from the Georgetown Law Center on Poverty and Inequality, adults were asked about their perceptions of Black girls in comparison with white girls of the same age in terms of their needs for nurturing and protection, as well as their knowledge of adult topics like sex.

At all ages, Black girls were perceived as more adult than white girls, needing less protection and knowing more about sex. The gap was widest between Black and white for girls between the ages of 10 and 14, followed by girls between the ages of 5 and 9.

“We don’t value Black girls, and they are dehumanized, and they are also blamed for the sexual violence that they experienced to a greater extent than white girls are,” said Rebecca Epstein, executive director of the center and one of the study’s authors.

For years, girls suffering at R. Kelly’s hands were treated as more of a punchline than a travesty, even during a trial on child pornography charges where a video, allegedly of him abusing a girl, was shown. He was acquitted in 2008.

Lisa Van Allen, who testified against Kelly in 2008, told ABC’s “Good Morning America” in an interview broadcast Tuesday that she “almost cried” when she learned of Monday’s verdict. “You know, this is what I was looking for back in 2008,” Van Allen said. “So I would say that the difference this time around is that there’s power in numbers. A lot of people came forward.”

Asked if she believed the accusers were initially not believed because they were Black women, Van Allen said, “Yes I do believe that that’s the main reason why.”

Music writer and former Chicago Sun-Times music critic Jim DeRogatis couldn’t understand it. He and a colleague were the first to report on R. Kelly’s interactions with girls, in December 2000, and DeRogatis continued writing about it for years after.

Every time something came out, like the video, DeRogatis thought, that had to be it — that had to be the thing that would finally make a difference. And every time, it wasn’t.

It brought a realization home to DeRogatis, a middle-aged white man: the injustice that “nobody matters less in our society than young Black girls.”

And the girls and women he interviewed knew it, he said. The first thing he heard from the dozens he has interviewed, he said, was, “Who’s going to believe us? We’re Black girls.”

And so, R. Kelly continued on for years, making hit songs, performing with other artists, even at times calling himself the “Pied Piper” but professing he didn’t know the story about the musician who kidnapped a town’s children.

Those who welcomed Monday’s conviction, which came after several weeks of disturbing testimony and now carries the possibility that Kelly will spend decades in prison, said it’s a testament to the strength and perseverance of Black women, who have been the driving force, especially in recent years, of speaking out against him and demanding attention remain on him.

Tarana Burke, founder of the Me Too movement against sexual abuse, pointed to the #MuteRKelly campaign, a protest started by two Black women in Atlanta in 2017 to put pressure on radio stations to stop playing his music and venues to stop allowing him to perform.

And the most widespread public condemnation followed in the wake of the 2019 docuseries “Surviving R. Kelly,” executive produced by dream hampton, a Black woman.

Asked about the guilty verdict Tuesday on “CBS This Morning,” hampton said, “You know, I want to believe that this means that Black women survivors will be heard, but I don’t want it to be dependent on a piece of media going viral or being successful.” She said she thinks about “all of the stories of everyday Black girls in neighborhoods like the ones that I grew up in Detroit who don’t have a predator, who don’t have an abuser that was famous or rich.”

Burke, who was interviewed for “Surviving R. Kelly,” said, “I think it says that you have to believe in the power of your own community, because this would not have happened if not for Black women staying the course. It was Black women who decided, ‘We are not going to let this fall on deaf ears.’ It was Black women who decided, ‘If nobody else is going to care, we’re going to care for Black women and girls in our community.'”

___

Associated Press journalist Gary Hamilton contributed to this report. Hajela is a member of the AP’s team covering race and ethnicity. She’s on Twitter at http://twitter.com/dhajela.

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The youngest person charged in connection with a massive international gambling ring, who was accused by the feds of running a “significant bookmaking operation” at Illinois State University, dodged prison during his sentencing hearing Tuesday.

Instead, U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall gave six months of home confinement and a $10,000 fine to 25-year-old Matthew Namoff.

Federal prosecutors say Vincent “Uncle Mick” DelGiudice groomed Namoff and made him an equal partner in the larger gambling ring DelGiudice ran online. They said Namoff managed 60 gamblers at ISU, and DelGiudice saw it as a business opportunity.

That’s because Namoff’s gamblers would eventually leave ISU, get jobs and increase their bets.

“These were not small bets in a dorm room over beer,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Terry Kinney wrote in a court memo.

Defense attorney Darryl Goldberg said he “fundamentally” disagreed with the prosecutor’s characterization of Namoff, insisting Namoff “pales in comparison” to others charged in connection with the gambling ring.

Before he was sentenced, Namoff apologized to the judge and said, “I stupidly saw gambling as a way to socialize in college, but through all this I now know that it’s not a victimless crime.”

“You’ll never see me again,” Namoff said. “Thank you, your honor.”

DelGiudice admitted earlier this year that he ran the larger bookmaking business from 2016 to 2019 in and around Chicago. Namoff, who pleaded guilty to his role in April, is the seventh person to be sentenced in a series of related cases that have been filed since early 2020.

Two of the six people previously sentenced landed prison time, but four others avoided it. Another defendant, Mettawa Mayor Casey Urlacher, was pardoned in January by then-President Donald Trump. DelGiudice has not been sentenced.

Goldberg wrote in a court memo that Namoff suffered from an undiagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder stemming from a violent robbery. He wrote that Namoff got drunk and bragged that he knew of DelGiudice and his gambling website in an attempt to increase his popularity.

“What began as $1 to $3 wagers on a sporting event over a beer morphed into something else,” Goldberg wrote. “Mr. Namoff’s [bettors] were betting so small on average that the minimum wager was eventually increased to $5, clearly on the smallest scale of all charged in this case.”

Kinney and Goldberg painted drastically different pictures of Namoff during Tuesday’s sentencing hearing. Despite Namoff’s guilty plea, Kinney even suggested that the judge give Namoff no credit for accepting responsibility for his crime.

Meanwhile, Goldberg pointed to Trump’s pardon of Urlacher, noting that Urlacher “was a suburban mayor when he recruited and profited large amounts from gamblers.”

Goldberg wrote that Namoff “should not be imprisoned to avoid disparate treatment under the law, whether this Honorable Court believes Mr. Urlacher’s pardon was appropriate or not.”

“That needs to be addressed to a different place, not here,” Kendall told Goldberg.

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A woman was killed and a man and infant were seriously injured when a car crashed into a building Tuesday afternoon in Gresham on the South Side.

The crash happened just before 10 a.m. in the 8100 block of South Racine Avenue, police said.

A 23-year-old man driving a Chevy Impala on 81st Street was passing through the intersection when a Chrysler 300 traveling on Racine ran a red light and struck his car, Chicago police said.

The Chrysler spun out and struck a woman on the sidewalk before crashing into a business, according to police and Chicago fire officials. The woman was transported to the University of Chicago Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead, police said.

The man driving the Chevy suffered a broken arm and was taken to the hospital for treatment, police said. An infant riding inside the car was also hospitalized in serious condition, fire officials said.

The woman who was killed has not yet been identified by the Cook County medical examiner’s office.

The driver of the Chrysler — a 26-year-old man — was not injured, police said. Charges were pending, according to police.

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When Michael S. Kelly was a student at Oak Park and River Forest High School, he picked some kids who’d never been in a play to star in “Bleacher Bums.”

The 16-year-old director knew they’d make the characters come to life.

“It’s a play about rebels and oddballs,” said his mother Karen Kelly. “He cast people who had never been in a show, and they could embody these characters so well. It was an absolutely brilliant show.

“He was always a kid that people would talk to or tell their troubles to,” she said. “So I wasn’t surprised when he decided to be a social worker.”

Mr. Kelly worked for 14 years as a school social worker at Indian Trail Middle School in Addison and at Oak Park’s Mann and Lincoln elementary schools.

“He was drawn to people who other folks had given up on, whether it was kids who refused to come to school or teachers who everyone else said, ‘Don’t even bother,’ ” said Kate Phillippo, an associate professor at Loyola University Chicago.

Mr. Kelly went on to be a professor in the School of Social Work at Loyola University. He helped write and edit five books, including “Christianity and Social Work” and “School Social Work: Practice, Policy and Research.”

He was a member of the Oxford Symposium in School-Based Family Counseling, an international group of scholars who meet at the University of Oxford to improve treatment through schools and families working together.

“He was the foremost scholar and practitioner of school-based family counseling in the social work field,” said Brian Gerrard, director of the symposium.

Mr. Kelly, 52, of Oak Park, died by suicide Sept. 2.

“He was seeing a therapist and a psychiatrist and exercising every day and taking his meds,” said his wife, Dr. Lucy Fox.

But he lost his struggle with depression and took his life, Fox said.

“I keep trying to frame it that I had 31 years with him, and 30 of them were really great,” she said. “I feel like I could talk about him for 31 more. He was an amazing man.”

Michael S. Kelly and his wife, Dr. Lucy Fox.Provided

During the civil rights movement, his father Richard traveled to Mississippi to teach at a Freedom School established to improve education for Black children. His mother admired Kwame Ture, the activist formerly known as Stokely Carmichael who was a leader in the 1960s Black Power movement.

They named their son, who was born in 1968, Michael Stokely Kelly.

His mother took him to the haunting film “Grave of the Fireflies.” Young Michael also loved Hayao Miyazaki’s “Spirited Away” and “Princess Mononoke.”

Michael S. Kelly with his sons Benjamin, Isaac and Alfred.Provided

Later, he shared his love of anime with his sons Benjamin, Isaac and Alfred.

“He made sure his boys saw all of those things,” his mother said.

While at Oak Park and River Forest High School, he made money by answering phones at the Oak Park Library and working at Russell’s Barbecue.

His mother said he was 13 when he told her, “Let’s go to Ireland,” where he’d listen to the wit and wisdom in its pubs. “He immediately started conversations,” she said.

It led to a lifelong love of Ireland and frequent trips. For a few summers, he helped lead Rick Steves’ tours of Ireland.

He met his future wife at the University of Michigan.

“He was so cute, so interesting and smart and political,” she said.

He became her Scrabble buddy, but when they played, “I was so distracted,” she said. She kept wondering: “Are we going to kiss tonight?”

Later, he got his master’s and doctoral degrees in social work at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

“He had a knack for letting young people know that his office was a safe space and haven for them to unload their burdens,” said Kila Bell-Bey, an Oak Park Elementary School District 97 social worker.

Goutham M. Menon, dean of the School of Social Work at Loyola, said, “He was a consummate professional. Thoughtful, serious, funny, quirky, he brought to life his passion for school social work in so many ways for our students.”

Tom Tebbe, executive director of the Illinois Association of School Social Workers, said Mr. Kelly “really encouraged social workers with the ideas they had the abilities to do the job and to do it well.”

Mr. Kelly ran 18 marathons. He loved the music of Van Morrison, U2, Alejandro Escovedo and Amy Ray. And he was a youth minister at St. Giles Catholic Church in Oak Park.

An October memorial is being planned at Loyola’s Madonna della Strada chapel.

Contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline any time at (800) 273-8255. The Crisis Text Line can be reached for free, 24/7 mental health support by texting HOME to 741741.

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Music is memory: It’s the refrain that pulses throughout the exuberant “American Mariachi,” Jose Cruz Gonzalez’s play with music about the values of family, love, tradition — and the challenges to those ideals.

The play, which opened Monday night at the Goodman Theatre, begins with el grito, the throaty, primal shout that launches many Latin folk standards, and from that cry, “American Mariachi” breaks into the accelerating trumpet fanfare of “Son de la Negra,” the traditional classic regarded as Mexico’s second national anthem. For many Mexican Americans, the iconic song triggers a sense of welcome recognition that nuestra historia — our story — is about to be told.

This story, set in the ’70s in an unspecified American city, centers on the Morales family, whose trials and tribulations unspool against a backdrop of mariachi music (mariachi, a.k.a. ranchera, is the quintessential sound of Mexico). Federico (a spot-on Ricardo Gutierrez), “an old school Mexican,” and a part-time mariachi musician, tries to keep his family rooted in tradition (and its attendant obligations) but his daughter, Lucha, a nursing student, yearns to break free of his paternalistic rule.

Haunted by the memory of her aunt Carmen, who drowned, Amalia, Federico’s wife and Lucha’s mother, is slipping away into a fog of dementia; she snaps back to life when hearing music — in particular, a bolero (ballad) written and specially recorded for her years ago. When the only record of that song is broken, Lucha (an effervescent Tiffany Solano) and her cousin Boli (Lucy Godinez, ebullient and sassy) decide to form an all-female mariachi so they can re-create the ballad for Amalia (Gigi Cervantes, winning at every turn) before she succumbs to her fate. Passed down from father to son, mariachi (then as now) remains the province of men, so Lucha and Boli face an uphill struggle.

Ricardo Gutierrez stars as Federico in “American Mariachi” at the Goodman Theatre.Liz Lauren

Sones de Mexico, the stellar Chicago-based, Grammy-nominated ensemble, serves as the play’s anchor, as it expertly performs classics of the genre, which set the mood and propel the action. Aided by family friend Mino (an excellent Bobby Plasencia), Lucha and Boli, along with Isabel (a beatific Molly Hernandez), Gabby (Amanda Raquel Martinez, totally delightful) and Soyla (a scene-stealing Gloria Vivica Benavides), the women master their instruments and learn that mariachi demands “sacrifce and discipline” … and above all, respect.

The actresses, all accomplished, also learned their instruments in real life and shine in their musical numbers, in particular, an English-language version of the traditional dirge “La Llorona,” performed first by Lucha, then as a stunning duet in Spanish by Tia Carmen (the commanding Erendira Izguerra) and Amalia as they are both decked out in cavalera (skull) face painting and traditional traje de charro suits. (Though primarily spoken in English, “American Mariachi” offers lots of dialogue in Spanish, but the meaning is clear throughout.)

The cast of “American Mariachi” at the Goodman Theatre.Liz Lauren

Henry Godinez, the Goodman’s resident artistic associate, directs with his usual flair. “American Mariachi” is a co-production with Dallas Theater Center (where it was tabled in 2020 due to the pandemic) and is presented as part of Destinos, Chicago Latino Theater Alliance’s annual festival. Introduced three years ago in Denver, the play has had prior productions in San Diego and Los Angeles. Sets, costumes and lighting reflect colorful Mexican motifs — for instance, the water, earth, fire and wind symbols common to Day of the Dead celebrations, such as papel picados (lace banners).

Though a crowd-pleaser at every turn, the play crams many issues into its 95-minute, intermission-less running time: aging, family conflict, mental health, sexism, paternalism, assimilation, marital strife and women’s equality. As it careens between comedy and drama, often within the same scene, the production sometimes falls into an overbroad acting style more suited to a road-company edition of “Scooby-Doo.”

Ultimately, “American Mariachi” commands esteem as it celebrates a culture that is slowly disappearing, with giants of the genre either dead (Juan Gabriel and Joan Sebastian) or retired (Vicente Fernandez). (On this year’s Latin music charts, so far only one ranchera song, “Tus Desprecios” by Pepe Aguilar and El Fantasma, has hit No. 1.) Kudos to “American Mariachi” (and Sones de Mexico) for carrying on the tradition.

As Mino reminds the women, “This music was born from the ashes left by the sword and the cross, La Conquista, and from the embers emerged mariachi, which for generations, has filled ordinary people’s lives from birth to baptism, from marriage to death.” It tells a universal story as it also celebrates a community often marginalized in the arts, and for that, “American Mariachi” deserves enduring respect.

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Bears quarterbacks coach John DeFilippo had the same role on the 2014 Raiders when they drafted quarterback Derek Carr in the second round and made him the Week 1 starter.

After four straight losses, the Raiders fired head coach Dennis Allen. His replacement, Tony Sparano, actually held a funeral for a football during the Week 5 bye, burying it and inviting his players to shovel dirt into a pit. The Raiders went 0-10 to start the season, won their last three of their last six games and then hired a new coaching staff for 2015.

It’s the worst-case scenario for the Bears and head coach Matt Nagy this year.

It was bad for Carr, but just at first — he started all 16 games as a rookie and reached Pro Bowls in his second, third and fourth seasons.

Justin Fields, the Bears’ rookie, needs to keep playing, too.

Nagy wouldn’t name a starter Monday but figures to Wednesday. The coach picking anyone but Fields to face the Lions at Soldier Field would be compounding an unacceptable showing in Cleveland with another mistake — and failing the future of the franchise.

Even if Nagy wouldn’t say it last week, it was clear from the moment Andy Dalton suffered a bone bruise in his left knee six quarters into the season that Fields could remain the starter so long as he didn’t prove to be a disaster. The Bears offense was exactly that against the Bengals, though, gaining 1.1 yards per play in a 26-6 loss.

It was enough of a mess that Nagy simply can’t let Fields spend the next month — Two? Three? The rest of the season? — wallowing in one of the worst offensive performances in the history of the oldest franchise in the sport. Nagy needs to start Fields Sunday and actually try to build an offense around his skills this time — whether Dalton’s “week-to-week” knee injury has recovered or not.

“I hate to use the old coaching saying this is a marathon not a sprint, but it’s the truth — it really is,” DeFilippo said Monday. “Derek Carr’s rookie season, I think we all would say Derek has had a pretty good career. We started the season 0-10. You know? So I mean it’s a long way to go for these guys.

“Derek, if you went and talked to him, he would say he made some bonehead plays and this and that. You didn’t see Justin throwing the ball into double coverage [Sunday]. You didn’t see him putting the ball on the ground. To me, those are good things. There were no sack fumbles. I didn’t think he put the ball in harm’s way very often …

“Part of the deal is it’s a learning curve.”

That curve stops the moment Fields stops starting games. The Bears can’t afford that.

The most disturbing part of Sunday’s game was the spectacular level of the Bears’ offensive failure — not that Fields struggled. He’s expected to. Rookie quarterbacks all do.

Five rookie quarterbacks — the Jaguars’ Trevor Lawrence, the Jets’ Zach Wilson, the Patriots’ Mac Jones, the Texans’ Davis Webb and Fields — have started 11 games this season. They’ve gone a combined 1-10 — with the only win coming when Jones beat a fellow rookie, Wilson. They’re 1-10 against the point spread during that time, too, meaning their teams have done worse than expected all but once.

All those teams play their rookie quarterbacks anyway, knowing it will spur development. The Bears need to, too — and run an offense that gives him a fighting chance. All the Bears could learn about Fields on Sunday was his mental and physical toughness after getting sacked nine times and hurting his throwing hand. He didn’t break it, though the team will monitor his hand for swelling this week.

“First and foremost, [Fields] is a competitor,” receiver Allen Robinson said Tuesday. “Obviously he has the talent — we see the talent. Again, it’s about him just continuing to grow. …

“I’m sure he’ll play ? have games, many other games — where he’ll play better. It’s one game. I don’t think it’s anything for him to lose sleep over. He’s very young in his career.”

Watching a young quarterback struggle isn’t in Robinson’s best interest — he’s set to hit the free-agent market in March and needs counting stats to court massive contracts.

It’s not good for Nagy, either, who is in a different camp than his peers coaching rookie quarterbacks. The Jaguars, Jets and Texans have first-year head coaches, while the Patriots boast Bill Belichick, the most unimpeachable coach in the NFL. None have to worry about their job this year. Nagy does.

That doesn’t change the fact that playing Fields is the right thing to do.

We saw what Fields did against the Browns.

Now we need to see what he can do.

“That’s part of the maturation process in this thing, is being able to not let Cleveland beat you two times,” DeFilippo said. “That’s going to be our deal this week, is, moving on and flushing that out and moving on to the Lions. It’s a big game for us.”

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