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Riot Fest 2021 got underway on Thursday with a “preview party” in the park.

It has been 732 days since Riot Fest packed the stages and carnival attractions following the 2019 event in Douglas Park. It would have been difficult to arrange a better day for an outdoor event to return, with clear blue skies and temperatures dipping into the upper 70s by early evening.

Crowds for Thursday’s earlybird lineup we’re not heavy as concerts began, likely due to ticketholders’ day job responsibilities as much as agoraphobia in the age of COVID. Stagehands were masked, but not many in the crowd were taking such precautions.

Patti Smith, Morrissey, WDRL, Alkaline Trio, Joyce Manor and Kristeen Young are on the bill for the Douglass Park fest’s opener. The festival was canceled last year due to the pandemic.

Looking ahead to the rest of the fest, the lineup boasts Slipknot, Gwar, the Smashing Pumpkins, Living Colour and Run the Jewels among others.

There are plenty of COVID-19 safety protocols in place for the festival including hand sanitizing and handwashing stations throughout the park, and an onsite COVID vaccination station (courtesy of St. Anthony Hospital; Pfizer and J&J vaccines only). In addition, all attendees must show proof of a full vax or negative COVID test results (the latter within 48 hours of entry date) accompanied by a valid, government-issued photo ID to gain entry each day.

Here’s a look at the sights and sounds of Day 1:

Music fans arrive at Douglass Park for Day 1 of Riot Fest, Thursday afternoon, Sept. 16, 2021. Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

Fans head to the carnival at Riot Fest on Day 1 of the event in Douglass Park.Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

Security checks for proof of COVID-19 vaccination at the entrance of Riot fest on Thursday afternoon in Douglass Park.Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

Fans enjoy carnival games in Douglass Park during Day 1 of Riot Fest, Thursday afternoon, Sept. 16, 2021.Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

Festival-goers walk past signs at the entrance to Riot Fest on Day 1 in Douglass Park on Thursday afternoon.Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

Anyone for some Riot Fest Pale Ale? Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

Contributing: Jeff Elbel

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Nolan Allan, the Blackhawks’ 2021 first-round draft pick, is now officially under contract.

The Hawks signed the 18-year-old defensive defenseman, taken with the 32nd overall selection in July, to a three-year entry-level contract Thursday with a $870,000 salary cap hit.

The signing was largely a formality, as Allan’s contract may well end up sliding — and not functionally starting until next season — if he lands as expected back in Canadian juniors this season.

He’s considered more a long-term prospect with little shot of making the Hawks’ crowded NHL defensive corps this season, and he’s not eligible to be assigned to the AHL. Instead, he’ll likely head back for a third year with the Prince Albert Raiders in 2021-22.

However, he’ll first gain valuable experience as a headline player in two Hawks prospect games against Wild prospects this weekend in Minnesota, then in Hawks training camp starting next week.

This story will be updated.

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A man was shot in the leg at the skateboarding park in Grant Park Thursday afternoon.

The 26-year-old was attacked around 2 p.m. in the 1100 block of South Michigan Avenue, Chicago police said. He was taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in serious to critical condition, fire officials said.

Police set up crime tape as people walked their dogs, jogged and rode bicycles, enjoying the cloudless afternoon. Some shook their heads as they walked past.

The shooting took place at a time when the skate park is usually busy, according to skateboarders who gathered behind a fence nearby.

One skateboarder, who did not want to be named, was puzzled that the shooting took place in broad daylight, at a place he considers safe.

“Why here?” he asked. “Four-year-olds come here, bro. So dumb.”

Shootings have risen 76% over last year in the police district that covers the Loop and South Loop, from 21 to 37, police statistics show.

Last July, a 15-year-old was grazed by a stray bullet while walking in the same block of South Michigan Avenue.

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Home-field advantage? Who needs it?

White Sox manager Tony La Russa’s last team didn’t. The wild-card Cardinals of 2011 knocked off the owners of the top two home records in baseball en route to the National League pennant and a World Series title.

“I’m not bragging,” he said. “It’s just a fact.”

Another fact: The Sox can forget about having home-field advantage to open the postseason unless they wake up — like, right now — and smell the opportunity to do damage throughout a season-long 11-game road trip against the highly beatable Rangers, Tigers and Indians that begins Friday in Texas.

The least they could do is wake up and put an end to the sleepy, sloppy play that marked a 9-3 loss Thursday against the Angels at Guaranteed Rate Field.

La Russa definitely wasn’t bragging about that.

“They’re men, not machines, and once in a while you get in a little funk,” he said. “That’s what momentum’s about. You get in a good thing and it’s a good aura, a good vibe. You get into a funk and stuff gets worse. We were funky today.”

Take the fourth inning — please — when the Angels scored five times off starter Reynaldo Lopez before an out was recorded.

With runners at first and second, Luis Rengifo lined a one-hopper to shortstop Tim Anderson, who bobbled the ball but still had time for an easy forceout. The problem? Second baseman Cesar Hernandez didn’t bother to cover the bag, leaving Anderson to throw late to first instead and be charged with an error — his first of two — on the play. Jack Mayfield then cleared the bases with a double and advanced to third only because left fielder Eloy Jimenez’s perfectly fine throw home skipped past both catcher Zack Collins and — doing a less-than-ideal job of backing up home plate — Lopez. Error, Jimenez.

Mayfield came home on a two-run homer by Jose Rojas. Hey, it happens. But after Lopez struck out Brandon Marsh, first baseman Gavin Sheets ran halfway to the dugout before realizing there were only two outs. That should happen pretty much never.

In all, the Sox piled up errors, wild pitches — and ejections — in the kind of utterly unimpressive performance that makes one wonder how focused they are on the stretch run.

And it was a game that went beyond strange, a tangled mess that included multiple fans running onto the field, Sox reliever Mike Wright and La Russa both getting run in the ninth by umpire Bill Welke after Angels superstar Shohei Ohtani was hit with a pitch, and infielder Romy Gonzalez finishing the ninth on the mound while Jose Abreu manned third base.

Wouldn’t it be nicer if the Sox — even as La Russa is careful with Anderson’s and Carlos Rodon’s comebacks from the injured list — cranked up the intensity and got serious about catching and passing the Astros, their likely opponent in the divisional round? The AL West leaders were 2 1/2 games up on the Sox with 17 to play after the Sox managed to lose a sixth straight series against the Angels.

“We’d love to have home-field advantage because you can see that our numbers are better here, but we’ve played well on the road at times, most times,” La Russa said. “But the postseason is what it is. It’s relevant, but it’s not — what’s the word? — determinative. …

“It would be nice to have it, but it’s nicer just to get in and have a chance to compete.”

Keep this in mind, though: Major league teams with home-field advantage have advanced in nine of the last 12 divisional-round series, a three-year trend that includes five of the last six series in the AL. And who has the best home record in the AL this season? The Sox, at 49-27 (.645).

They might have to prioritize finishing fast if only to regain their edge.

ON DECK: SOX AT RANGERS

Friday: Dylan Cease (11-7, 4.22) vs. Taylor Hearn (6-4, 3.99), 7:05 p.m., NBCSCH, 1000-AM

Saturday: Lance Lynn (10-4, 2.50) vs. Spencer Howard (0-2, 11.81), 6:05 p.m., NBCSCH, 1000-AM

Sunday: Lucas Giolito (9-9, 3.77) vs. Jordan Lyles (9-11, 5.20), 1:35 p.m., NBCSCH, 1000-AM

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A family feud turned deadly when a father and his two sons ambushed their rivals outside their West Pullman home, Cook County prosecutors said Thursday.

The patriarch, allegedly tied to the Aug. 1 attack, remains at large.

But his sons, Nathaniel Butler Jr. and Maurice Butler, have since been arrested and charged with the murder of 35-year-old Jerome Jenkins.

Jenkins is the brother of the Butlers’ sister’s on-again, off-again boyfriend, prosecutors said.

An hour before Jenkins and his father were shot in the 12100 block of South LaSalle Street, the Butlers’ sister went to the Jenkins’ household to confront her boyfriend, prosecutors said.

The couple argued on the porch before the woman started physically attacking her boyfriend, prosecutors said. But she left after her boyfriend’s sister came out and allegedly struck her.

Then, around 10 p.m., a brick came crashing through a front window of the Jenkins’ home, prompting all six family members to come outside and investigate, prosecutors said.

Outside, they saw the Butler brothers and their father standing by a white SUV. The Butlers’ sister was also allegedly standing on the street corner with another woman.

The Butler patriarch went on to tell the Jenkins he was the one who threw the brick, prosecutors said. Then, the Butler brothers and their father started shooting, firing at least 26 shots times on the street and front yard, prosecutors said.

Jenkins was struck between the eyes and his thigh, prosecutors said. He was pronounced dead on the scene. Jenkins’ father suffered a graze wound to his hand, prosecutors said.

Judge John F. Lyke noted Thursday that Jenkins’ murder “all started, honestly, with a bunch of nonsense.”

Police recovered dozens of shell casings that were fired from two 9mm pistols, prosecutors said. Several of the victims’ relatives identified the Butler brothers and their father as the shooters, prosecutors said.

Nathaniel Butler Jr., 20, was arrested Tuesday while carrying a backpack with one of the pistols used in the attack, prosecutors said. He denied being at the scene of the crime.

But Maurice Butler, 23, who was also arrested Tuesday, admitted to detectives on video that he was at the scene of the shooting but did not shoot a weapon, prosecutors said. He did say his father threw the brick and that Nathaniel Butler Jr. opened fire from a pistol with an extended clip, prosecutors said.

Both brothers were on probation for previous gun convictions at the time of the deadly incident, prosecutors said.

Maurice Butler lives with his girlfriend and 1-year-old son, his lawyer said. He spent the last three months in a GED program with the anti-violence program CRED, the defense attorney added.

Nathaniel Butler Jr. lives with his mother and had been taking classes at Excel Academy, his attorney said. Both brothers had been working at a restaurant where their mother is a manager, their attorneys told Lyke.

Lyke ordered the brothers held without bail.

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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 81 degrees. Tonight will be mostly clear with a low around 63. Tomorrow will be sunny with a high near 87.

Top story

For Black entrepreneurs, the dream of opening a pot shop remains just out of reach

Amid a seemingly endless series of delays, Britteney Kapri finally got some good news last month.

Baked, her cannabis startup, had been named the winner of a dispensary license in a sought-after region that covers Chicago.

But instead of feeling joy, or even relief, Kapri fell into a state of panic as she reflected on the latest hurdle stymying the licensing process: a court order that remains intact had blocked the issuance of her permit and 184 others.

“I was just like, don’t let it be another year of waiting,” she said. “So I haven’t actually celebrated.”

Like other Black entrepreneurs from Chicago who were named license winners over the course of three recent lotteries, Kapri has been subjected to a bureaucratic nightmare while pursuing her dream of carving out a stake in the white-dominated weed industry. It’s all taken a serious toll.

After leaving her job at a nonprofit in hopes of fully immersing herself in the cannabis business, she became unemployed in January and only started working again recently.

“It’s definitely bled into my personal life,” said Kapri, who’s also a renowned poet. “It’s led to me being just stuck between a rock and a hard place for the past few months because I couldn’t answer anybody about what was happening.”

Tom Schuba has more on how the city has fallen short on its promises of equity for the pot industry here.

More news you need

An accounting firm that gave a clean bill of health to a Bridgeport bank months before it was shut down by regulators also prepared income tax returns for Ald. Patrick Daley Thompson, who faces federal charges involving the failed bank. Tim Novak and Jon Seidel have more on the latest court filings in Thompson’s case.

Despite Metra seeing low ridership amid the pandemic, its CEO and executive director Jim Derwinski is getting a raise — a 7% hike this year, bringing his annual base pay from $285,000 to $305,000. He’s slated to earn $314,200 next year.

One student has been taken into custody after a social media post threatening violence initiated a lockdown yesterday afternoon at Lake Zurich High School. The lockdown was lifted by 3 p.m. and no injuries were reported.

Starting Sunday, the Art of Institute will pay tribute to artist Barbara Kruger’s broad-ranging cultural impact with “Thinking of You. I Mean Me. I Mean You.” It will be the first museum survey of her work in the United States since 1999.

The Sears store at Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg, the retailer’s final location in Illinois, will close its doors in November. Sears’ parent company said it’s part of a corporate plan to “redevelop and reinvigorate the property,” but didn’t provide details of the planned redevelopment.

A bright one

Sept. 16 proclaimed ‘Candace Parker Day’ in Chicago

Sept. 16 will never be the same in Chicago after Mayor Lori Lightfoot signed a proclamation yesterday making it Candace Parker Day.

Parker, one of pro basketball’s most decorated players, grew up in Naperville. She led Naperville Central to two state titles before heading to Tennessee and winning two NCAA championships with the Lady Vols.

Selected first overall in the 2008 WNBA Draft by the Los Angeles Sparks, Parker became the first player in league history to be named rookie of the year and MVP in the same season.

She’s a WNBA champion, a two-time Olympic gold medalist, a two-time WNBA MVP, a six-time WNBA All-Star, a Euroleague champion and the 2020 WNBA Defensive Player of the Year.

Today is Candace Parker Day in Chicago.Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

Parker’s family and friends, including former teammate Chelsea Gray, were in attendance for Lightfoot’s announcement. Parker had no knowledge of the honor.

“I never envisioned this,” Parker said. “That’s what is so special about basketball. It opens up so many doors. I have the mayor saying she watched me play my senior year. Her daughter is playing basketball now. It’s about carrying it on and trying to open up more doors for the next.”

Along with Parker being honored with her own day in Chicago, Adidas announced three new colorways for Parker’s signature shoe as part of the brand-new Candace Parker Collection. There are only nine players in the WNBA’s 25-year history with their own sneaker line. Reigning MVP Breanna Stewart became the latest when she signed a multiyear shoe deal with Puma in May.

Annie Costabile has more on Parker and her impact on the Sky here.

From the press box

Your daily question ?

What bar or restaurant do you think is Chicago’s best-kept secret? Why?

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: What’s something you wish would have been taught in school? Here’s what some of you said…

“Money management, the importance of having multiple streams of income, thinking independently, how corrupt politics is (particularly in Chicago), the importance of eating healthy, emotional fitness, martial arts.” — Elliott Avant

“Mental health education and coping mechanisms. Oh, and accurate history that isn’t romanticized.” — Michelle Hora Mickens

“How the stock market works, credit, and finances.” — Maureen Senko

“How to plant and maintain a garden, how to design and build a house, how to invest effectively or how to start a business.” — Christopher B. Alexandrov

“The real truth about Afro-American History and not starting from slavery.” — Joy L. Grossett

“The real history of bigotry in our country.” — Mary E. Sullivan Bauer

“Healthy negotiation and conflict resolution.” — James Chamerlik

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

Sign up here to get the Afternoon Edition in your inbox every day.

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When explaining why he chose Sean Desai over over eight other defensive coordinator candidates in January, Bears coach Matt Nagy will often rattle off the qualities he likes about the first-year play-caller.

“You can see the energy and the swag that he has on the sideline,” Nagy said last month. “The juice. The fire. The guys see that. They feel that.”

Which is what made Sunday’s 34-14 loss to the Rams that much more damning. Not only did the Bears struggle, but they were flat.

Not enough energy? In prime time? On national television? Against one of the three favorites to win the NFC? At SoFi Stadium, the site of this year’s Super Bowl? In front of a full crowd for the first time since 2019? What?

“I played in a lot of games … so I could kinda tell how the energy is,” said Ogletree, who has made 95 career starts. “When you’re feeling good, you can see it on film and everybody can feel it.”

It took only three Rams plays to feel the opposite way. Matthew Stafford’s 67-yard touchdown pass to Van Jefferson — aided by veteran safeties Eddie Jackson and Tashaun Gipson forgetting to touch him when he was down — put the Bears in a hole from which they never climbed out.

“Everybody was hyped up and ready to go,” defensive lineman Bilal Nichols said. “I just think that guys just … First game. Just messed up on technique.”

That’s not supposed to happen to a veteran, expensive defense.

“They had some explosives and that can take away from your energy,” Nagy said Thursday. “But you’ve gotta find it then. You’ve gotta get it back by making big plays. And then we can help it, too, on offense by making big plays to where you kind of feel the juice on the sideline and there is that energy.

“I felt like in that game, we were just kind of playing catch-up the whole game.”

Nagy likes Desai’s composure — he doesn’t panic on game day — but Sunday will be the first time he sees exactly how his coordinator adjusts his game plan from week-to-week.

“We’ve got to go out there and make it happen,” Nagy said. “We can’t just say, ‘We’ve got to be better.’ But where you do that is in practice. You see why. You practice it.”

Now the Bears players have to do it.

During training camp, the Bears had Udonis Haslem, a three-time NBA champion with the Miami Heat, address the team. His lesson, Nagy said, was how impactful it is when players — not coaches — lead from within.

“We have guys that have done that,” Nagy said. “And now when you get to a game like that — not just as a defense but as an offense too, right, all of us — we’ve got to be able to everybody pull together.”

That’s the challenge against the Bengals on Sunday. Having a full Soldier Field will help — although if the Bears could be flat last week, they could do it every week.

“I just think this week for us is about bringing the energy and executing on our plays and just being us,” Ogletree said. “Having fun and playing well.”

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Bill Simmons has been looking to expand his podcast empire at The Ringer, the sports and pop culture website he launched in 2016. The site already has dozens of shows, but Simmons wants to create some that are hyperlocal.

He began in April with “New York, New York,” and he has been trying to set up shop in Philadelphia and his beloved Boston. Eventually, Simmons turned his attention to Chicago. In conversations with colleagues about potential hosts, one name kept coming up: Jason Goff.

A mutual contact told Goff that Simmons might reach out. Similar experiences led Goff to take the information with a grain of salt. But the next day, Simmons’ name appeared on Goff’s phone.

“We started with some basketball conversation, and I realized this isn’t just initial conversation,” said Goff, the Bulls pre- and postgame show host on NBC Sports Chicago. “This is something that he and others have talked about, and this is him seeing if I was interested. It kinda dropped in my lap because I didn’t know they were searching.”

The first episode of “The Full Go with Jason Goff” dropped Monday, just in time for Goff to tear into the Bears after their season-opening loss. Shows will come out Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, and Goff will host emergency episodes when big news breaks. He also will host “The Ringer NFL Show” on Tuesdays with former players Ryan Shazier and James Jones.

What appealed most to Goff was Simmons’ insistence that Goff be himself.

“He’s like, ‘I just want you,’ ” Goff said. “Anytime anybody said that to me, I’ve jumped at it because you don’t get that too often in this business.”

In more than 20 years in the business, mostly at The Score, Goff has been as real as it gets. How he sounds on a show is how he sounds on the street, only a little cleaner. He’s a powder keg of passion, but he doesn’t shout at you to make his point. He’s sharp, smart and witty, but he doesn’t come off as a know-it-all. That said, he knows exactly what he’s doing in front of a microphone.

“The Full Go” name, which Goff and Simmons discussed, is a perfect fit for Goff’s personality.

“He threw out a couple of things, and I was like, we should make it so that people here in the city have said it before and it doesn’t feel touristy,” Goff said. “Nothing ‘Windy City.’ I just told him ‘The Full Go’ should be the name, the double entendre kind of vibe to it, if you’re a full-go as a player or as a fan.

“I’m gonna have a lot of guys and girls on this show who probably don’t get a chance to get on ESPN or The Score. I’ve had content conversations with the producers. They’ve entrusted me with as much creative control as you could allow for me to have without everybody getting fired.”

One of those producers is Chris Tannehill, the wizard of sound at The Score who created Goff’s first open when he began hosting part-time back in the day. Goff said Tannehill is helping him on an interim basis to start.

The last time they worked together was in March 2018, before Goff was dismissed unceremoniously at The Score by former boss Jimmy deCastro as part of a lineup revamp. At the time, DeCastro said he sought to “play the hits” – in other words, stick to sports. That left Goff in a bad place.

“When all that went down, I was upset at everybody because of how I was portrayed,” Goff said. “I just got the worst [stuff] put on me that you could possibly get put on you. ‘This guy only wants to talk about race in a world where nobody wants to hear about it.’ “

Goff said he only recently was able to let go of the anger that stewed inside him with the help of therapy. He also was trying to move on professionally. After The Score, Goff worked for ESPN Radio nationally and SiriusXM satellite radio, in addition to landing the NBCSCH job. People kept telling him to jump into podcasting, but that required some soul-searching first.

“For three years I’ve been sitting here thinking that if I did it, I wouldn’t be considered a radio guy anymore. Or I wouldn’t feel like I accomplished the mission,” said Goff, who remembers telling his mother at age 11 that he wanted to be a sports-radio host. “And it took a lot of therapy and my lady [Dr. Pia Holec], who is a psychologist, to realize that maybe that isn’t the final destination.”

The Score certainly wasn’t a stepping stone for the next phase of Goff’s career. It was an enormous part of his life since the days he’d call in to shows as “Jason from Evanston.” Radio was all he knew. It was the only job he ever wanted. So podcasting was going to be a challenge.

“Anything outside of a radio booth, that confidence that I move with isn’t always consistent and prevalent,” Goff said. “So for years I’m like, what if I do this and it sucks or no one listens? The self-doubt of placing too much value in other people’s opinions about me, which is what I was born into in radio.”

And then Simmons called.

Whatever you think of Simmons, it’s hard to argue with his success rate in sports media. He listened to people he trusts and sought out Goff for his next endeavor. That eased Goff’s insecurities about his next career.

“I’ve been looking for validation for a long time instead of confirmation,” Goff said, “and I think this is kinda confirmation and this is how I’m just gonna go about the rest of my career, understanding that I’m better than good.”

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The attack happened near 11th Place and Michigan Avenue, according to Chicago fire officials.

By

Sun-Times Wire

Sep 16, 2021, 2:31pm CDT

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I considered enrolling my kindergartner in a dual-language Chicago public school so she could take all of her classes in Spanish. We decided not to for a host of, including logistical, reasons. But as one colleague advised me, taking a foreign language in a traditional school program only yields students who know how to use swear words with aplomb. Of course, this friend was half-joking but her point was well taken about the priority of a second language in our current public education system.

Growing up, my father begged me to be fluent in Spanish. I attended sleepaway Spanish camp one summer or a couple of weeks with friends at Lake Forest College. All I remember is half of the words to the song “La Bamba.” I kept telling him that high school was too late to master a foreign language. He was right; I wish I spoke Spanish with fluency beyond conjugating verbs in the present tense. Four years of high school Spanish and some in college did not elevate me to the bilingualism. An earlier start would’ve helped.

The flip side to being monolingual is you can travel and navigate much of the world because English is spoken as a second, third or fourth language — often regardless of socioeconomic status. It’s a potent reminder of colonialism and our own small borders in the U.S. Being the American who only speaks English makes me feel small and fatuous. Watching children speak other languages fluently while traveling abroad embarrasses me about my own shortcomings.

Meanwhile, I’m a die-hard South Side Chicagoan who aspires to be a global citizen by paying attention to international issues and finding ways to connect them to my own life. I want to help my five-year-old evolve into a better global citizen, which is more than passport stamps from sunning at resorts. She should be able to think critically past our own borders, identify with the human race while understanding global issues such as human rights, antiracism, gender equality, climate change and the uneven distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine across the planet. The vastness of the U.S. presents challenges. In the time it takes to travel one state over, in some parts of the world that same distance lands you in another country. But that’s no excuse.

Another friend — also with a five-year-old — and I text about these issues. There’s a contradiction in global citizen rhetoric that concentrates too much on the marketplace and global capitalism. Or it is perilous like the reality show “The Activist” coming to CBS. The description: “From the Global Citizen movement comes an awe-inspiring look at what can come of it. The Activist pairs advocates from the worlds of health, education and the environment with famous figures in a series of competitions that’ll take the winners — and their ideas for seismic world change — to the G20 Summit in Italy.” In other words — a social media popularity contest drenched in capitalism, not based on quality of ideas or true social justice. Recent reports say the show is being retooled after a Twitter lashing.

According to the National Education Association, there are myriad ways to make young people global citizens such as through literature, virtual field trips, music and culture. Chicago, too, is a global city and there are ways to incorporate a global perspective — from riding the “L” to trying new cuisines to experiencing cultural events out of your comfort zone to calling out the racism and marginalization some residents face here. Being a global citizen isn’t a put down to our city, much less the South Side. After all, a global citizen should be able to order a four-piece mild from Harold’s Fried Chicken with aplomb.

Send letters to [email protected].

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