Altin Gün kicked off last year with a Grammy nomination (their 2019 release Gece was up for Best World Music Album) and major festival bookings such as SXSW and Coachella. But like virtually every other working band, they got sidelined by circumstances beyond their control.…Read More
Here’s the latest news on how COVID-19 is impacting Chicago and Illinois.
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When the coronavirus pandemic first closed schools last year, one Chicago mother watched as her son — then a freshman at a public school on the North Side — became hyper-focused on Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s daily briefings, spurring disappointment every time he announced a delay in reopening schools.
As Chicago Public Schools remained closed for the rest of the year and did not reopen in the fall, the mother said her son’s anxiety and depression manifested more severely as he became too angry to function.
He remains “emotionally miserable,” said the woman, who asked not to be named. “He’s in therapy, he’s taking medication. This has never been true before.”
High school students in CPS still have no idea when they will return in person this school year, even as kindergarten through fifth graders returned to classrooms last week and 6-8 graders return Monday. CPS officials on Friday said high school students could opt-in for in-person learning possibly later this spring, but no deal has been reached with the Chicago Teachers Union, and no details of how schools would look if they open their doors have been released.
Now nearing a year of schools being closed, students are suffering from more intense symptoms of depression, anxiety and other mental illnesses, according to mental health experts.
Nationwide, the number of children’s mental health-related emergency department visits increased steadily from April to October 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For children ages 12-17, the number of visits increased by 31% compared to 2019.
At Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital, from September 2020 to January 2021, the rate of emergency department visits for mental health concerns doubled compared to the year before, rising from 2.4% to 4.2% of all cases. While the pandemic more than halved the number of emergency room visits overall, the number of mental health visits remained about the same as the prior year.
Dr. Jennifer Hoffman, an emergency room physician at Lurie, said although there was a hesitancy to visit the emergency room during the pandemic, mental health concerns for some children were so high that families deemed the risk necessary.
Keep reading Clare Proctor’s story here.
Illinois public health officials announced 1,182 new cases of the coronavirus Monday as well as five deaths — the lowest daily fatality count in nearly six months.
The new cases come from a batch of 39,636 tests. As of Sunday night, 1,178 people with COVID-19 were reported to be in the hospital. Of that number, 266 patients were in intensive care units throughout the state; 118 patients with COVID-19 were on ventilators.
The state’s preliminary seven-day statewide case positivity is 2.3%.
The last time the state saw a daily death toll this low was Sept. 14, when the state logged five deaths. Illinois hasn’t seen a single-digit daily death rate since early Oct. 11, when health officials announced nine deaths.
The deaths reported Monday bring the state’s total COVID-19 toll to 20,767 people.
Health officials also reported 3.38 million vaccines have been administered so far, with an average of of 90,135 doses administered daily in the past seven days, slightly less than the 93,183 rolling average of shots reported Sunday.
Read the full story from Rachel Hinton here.
Chicago Public Schools reached a milestone of sorts Monday, with all elementary school grades open districtwide for in-person learning — even though most parents continued to keep their kids at home in remote learning.
The district welcomed back sixth through eighth grade students Monday.
“It never gets old seeing kids come back to school — some of them excited, some of them not so excited about it. But at the end of the day, we know it’s the best place for them,” said Chicago Public Schools CEO Janice Jackson, speaking to reporters outside Robert J. Richardson Middle School, 6018 S. Karlov.
Just before Jackson spoke, students lined up — socially distanced — outside the school, as a staff member with a laptop quizzed them about any recent sickness and out-of-state travel, among other questions.
Staff at Richardson were expecting 185 out of 1,083 students to return for the current quarter.
Overall, about 18,500 students in sixth to eighth grades were expected to return to their classrooms Monday. That’s on top of the 37,000 K-5 students that went back last week. About 145,000 elementary students will continue learning remotely through at least April.
Jackson said that, to date, CPS has offered coronavirus vaccinations to about 25,000 school employees — about 60% of the total.
She said the district has received many questions about the levels of in-person staffing.
“After one week of instruction with K-5 back last week, we don’t have any reports of widespread staffing shortages,” she said.
Read the full story from Stefano Esposito here.
Fully vaccinated Americans can gather with other vaccinated people indoors without wearing a mask or social distancing, according to long-awaited guidance from federal health officials.
The recommendations also say that vaccinated people can come together in the same way — in a single household — with people considered at low-risk for severe disease, such as in the case of vaccinated grandparents visiting healthy children and grandchildren.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced the guidance Monday.
The guidance is designed to address a growing demand, as more adults have been getting vaccinated and wondering if it gives them greater freedom to visit family members, travel, or do other things like they did before the COVID-19 pandemic swept the world last year.
The Cubs and Sox will play before real fans, instead of cardboard cut-outs.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot gave both teams the go-ahead to sell 20% of the seats at Wrigley Field and Guaranteed Rate Field citing the “remarkable” progress Chicago has made toward containing the coronavirus and vaccinating its residents.
“As a diehard sports fan myself, I’m personally excited to have Chicago take its first, cautious steps toward safely reopening our beloved baseball stadiums to fans this season,” Lightfoot, a Sox season ticket holder, was quoted as saying in a press release.
“We’re able to do that thanks to the commitment of our city’s two great baseball franchises who continue to work in close partnership with Chicago’s public health officials to find solutions that are not only safe, but offer a path forward toward safely increasing stadium capacity as we move closer into our COVID-19 recovery.”
Guaranteed Rate has a seating capacity of 40,000. The city’s gradual reopening plan will limit the crowd to 8,122 fans with at least six feet between parties, starting with the home opener on April 8.
Wrigley Field has a capacity crowd of 41,374. There a 20% rule will allow the Cubs to sell 8,274 seats, beginning with the home opener on April 1.
The reopening of both ballparks will start at 20% “with additional restrictions and potentially open to more fans as vaccination and recovery efforts continue,” City Hall said.
Get the full story from Fran Spielman here.
Every year for the last two decades, thousands of people ascend to North Avenue to dive into the frigid waters of Lake Michigan to raise money for Special Olympics Chicago and Special Children’s Charities.
In 2020, nearly 5,000 people charged into the lake, raising a record-setting $2.2 million during what turned out to be one of the last major events in the city to take place before the pandemic uprooted life as we knew it.
But that wasn’t the case this year. Like so many other traditions, this year’s Polar Plunge was forced to take place virtually, with Sunday marking the final day of the weeklong event.
Many participants got creative with the reimagined Polar Plunge.
Some still made the trip to the lakefront to take a dip in Lake Michigan, while another group constructed a homemade dunk tank that they set up in an alleyway. On Saturday, students and teachers at St. Patrick High School hosted a fun-filled event outside on the school’s football field and raised about $10,700.
Find out how others participated in the Polar Plunge this year.
“We needed the [fans], so that’s great news,” Sox manager Tony La Russa says.
GLENDALE, Ariz. — Players feed off the fans’ energy and dig playing in front of crowds more than fans might know.
They listen, they watch and they thrive off crowds, which were absent last season because of the coronavirus pandemic, and until Monday, were still not officially known to be in the plans for some teams during the 2021 season.
And so when Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s expected and welcome announcement that fans, on a limited basis, will return to Guaranteed Rate Field to watch the White Sox beginning April 8 when they host the Royals, the reaction was nothing but thumbs up.
It will be baseball back to being baseball as it was meant to be.
“The way the game was explained to me, we’re all complementary to the two most important things,” Sox manager Tony La Russa said Monday. “The players who play and the fans who pay to watch them and be entertained. You have half the equation if the players are playing. We needed the other side, so that’s great news.”
Fans have been allowed on a limited basis at Cactus League spring training games in the Phoenix area. Most crowds have been below 2,000 fans, but it’s much better than nothing.
“It definitely is a different feeling, a different vibe to have fans in the stands right now,” first baseman Jose Abreu said last week through translator Billy Russo. “But at the same time, we have to be glad that last season was what it was. We were able to play and do what we could do. Now just seeing the fans in the stands and being able to see them enjoy the game again and cheering for us, it’s good. It makes you feel good.”
Second baseman Nick Madrigal, who played his first game of the Cactus League Monday — he is coming back from shoulder surgery — will play his first major league game in front of fans in April after breaking into the majors last season.
“Once the game happens, we’re out there competing, no matter if there are fans in the stands or if there’s not,” Madrigal said. “But there was a part of the game missing. I think everyone kind of missed that. There’s just that extra adrenaline when the crowd’s screaming and you get the base hit.
“Another side of it that people don’t really think about is base running. Sometimes that helps you to hear the crowd kind of roar if you’re going first to third, or if someone makes a diving catch, the crowd roars. Those are things that a lot of people don’t think about. So I miss that. There was a side of the game that was missing last year.”
Said chairman Jerry Reinsdorf in a statement: “We are proud of the important and historic role baseball plays in our country, offering respite during some of the most difficult times or in providing fans with a sense of comfort when circumstances seemed uncertain. We believe this is a moment when baseball can indeed serve our fans and our communities again as we all hope for a gradual return to normal. It’s why we applaud Mayor Lightfoot, the leadership role she and Governor Pritzker have played for our city and state, and the decision today — guided by an unwavering commitment to public health and safety — to allow fans to return to Guaranteed Rate Field for Opening Day.”
The weekend’s last fatal shooting left a 51-year-old man dead in Avalon Park on the South Side.
Twenty-two people were shot, two of them fatally, this weekend in Chicago, including a wounded 11-year-old boy who was the second child that age shot in a week.
The period was less violent than last weekend, when six people were killed and 21 others hurt in shootings between 5 p.m. Friday and 5 a.m. Monday.
The weekend’s last fatal attack left 51-year-old Matthew Harlan dead Sunday in Avalon Park on the South Side.
He was inside a vehicle about 7:25 p.m. in the 1600 block of East 83rd Street, when he heard shots and felt a pain, Chicago police said. He was shot in the head and taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center, where he died. He was identified as Harlan, of Chatham, by the Cook County medical examiner’s office.
On Saturday, a 60-year-old man was fatally shot and then lit on fire in an abandoned building in Englewood. Officers arrived about 3:10 p.m. and found the man in the 5900 block of South Sangamon Street, police said. He died at the scene. The medical examiner’s office said the man, 60, died of multiple gunshot wounds to his back. His name hasn’t been released.
Several minors were among those wounded in the weekend’s nonfatal attacks, including an 11-year-old boy who was shot Sunday in West Pullman on the Far South Side.
The boy was inside a vehicle about 5:45 p.m. in the 400 block of West 119th Street, when a white Honda pulled up alongside and someone inside fired shots at his vehicle, police said. The boy was struck in the arm and brought to Comer Children’s Hospital where he was stabilized.
He was the second 11-year-old wounded this month. On March 1, an 11-year-old girl was critically hurt by a stray bullet at a gas station on the Far South Side.
Also Sunday, a 15-year-old boy was shot in East Garfield Park on the West Side. He was in the parking lot of a convenience store in the 3900 block of West Monroe Street when someone walked up to him and fired shots, police said. He was shot in the abdomen and brought to Stroger Hospital.
On Saturday, two teenagers were wounded in a shooting in Brighton Park on the Southwest Side. They were outside about 4:20 p.m. when someone in a light-colored SUV fired shots at them in the 4400 block of South Homan Avenue, police said. A 19-year-old man and 17-year-old boy were each struck in a leg, and were taken to Mount Sinai Hospital.
Saturday night, two people were shot after a fight in Longwood Manor on the Far South Side. About 10:40 p.m., the two were at a gathering inside a residence in the 10100 block of South Winston Avenue when a fight broke out and someone fired shots, striking them both, police said.
A 29-year-old man suffered four gunshot wounds to the chest, abdomen, hip and lower backside, and was taken to Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn for treatment, police said. A 31-year-old woman was also struck four times in the lower backside and brought by a friend to the same hospital, where she was listed in fair condition.
Two men were wounded in a drive-by Saturday afternoon in Englewood on the South Side. About 4:45 p.m., the men, 18 and 27, were on the front porch of a residence in the 6300 block of South Elizabeth Street when someone in a dark-colored car pulled up and opened fire, police said.
The 18-year-old was struck in the left leg and the older man was struck in the right leg and buttocks, police said. They were both brought to the University of Chicago Medical Center for treatment.
In the weekend’s first shooting, a 26-year-old woman was grazed in Chatham. She was arguing with her ex-boyfriend through the door of her home about 8:40 p.m. Friday in the 8100 block of South Ellis Avenue, police said.
When the woman refused to let the 27-year-old man in, he fired shots into the home, grazing her on the chest, police said. The woman was taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center for treatment.
At least 11 other people were wounded in citywide shootings over the weekend.
The proposed $65 million worth of projects are part of City Hall’s plan to encourage investment in neglected areas.
Three areas targeted for improvement under Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s Invest South/West program will get an estimated $65 million in commercial development under plans announced Monday.
The projects are supposed to revitalize commercial stretches of Auburn Gresham, Austin and Englewood. The city’s planning department, after sessions with community groups, selected the winners from among 12 development teams who answered a call for proposals made last year.
The favored projects include 56 units of affordable housing with a playground and private gardens in Auburn Gresham; a blues museum and commercial and residential development that includes a landmark building in Austin; and a new phase of the Englewood Square Shopping Center at 63rd and Halsted streets that would turn an old firehouse into a commercial kitchen and a business incubator for culinary startups.
Lightfoot, in announcing the projects at an event in Austin, said each will inspire other private investments nearby while providing employment. “Initiatives such as Invest South/West are critical in advancing our goal to enhance the socioeconomic vibrancy of our historic South and West Sides,” Lightfoot said in prepared remarks. “Each of these winning proposals will contribute to this goal by giving residents access to new and exciting cultural, affordable housing and employment resources.”
Factors an evaluation committee used in picking the winners included design quality, financial viability and diverse ownership of the development teams. Officials said it was the first time proposals have been reviewed with an explicit goal of encouraging minority-owned firms.
Each project will require zoning changes subject to City Council approval. If there are no hitches, construction could begin by the end of the year, officials said.
The development teams selected:
• In Auburn Gresham at 838 W. 79th St., Evergreen Real Estate Group and Imagine Group’s plan for affordable housing and open space involves construction of 77,150 square feet to complement a healthy lifestyle hub across the street.
• In Austin at 5200 W. Chicago Ave., Heartland Housing Alliance and Oak Park Regional Housing’s plan includes a multistory rental building and public plaza with a renovation of the former Laramie State Bank into a blues museum, bank branch, café and business incubator.
• In Englewood on the 800 block of West 63rd Parkway, Ignite Technology, Innovation and DL3 Realty’s plans include a container market for a rotating group of merchants, a coffee shop and coworking space. A landmarked former firehouse would be a centerpiece of what’s imagined as a town square. DL3 was the firm that developed the adjacent Whole Foods-anchored Englewood Square.
The properties are city-owned or in private hands. The proposals were developed in consultation with the owners.
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Matthew “Sweaters” Knight, 47, could face more than a year in prison after admitting to his role in a gambling conspiracy. Vincent “Uncle Mick” DelGiudice and Todd Blanken also pleaded guilty in the case earlier this year.
A fourth defendant in the federal sports gambling case that once involved Mettawa Mayor Casey Urlacher pleaded guilty Monday.
Matthew “Sweaters” Knight, 47, could face more than a year in prison after admitting to his role in a gambling conspiracy. Vincent “Uncle Mick” DelGiudice and Todd Blanken also pleaded guilty in the case earlier this year.
DelGiudice’s father, Eugene “Geno” DelGiudice, pleaded guilty last summer. U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall sentenced him to three months of home detention.
A 28-page indictment filed in the case early in 2020 alleges that Vincent DelGiudice recruited Knight, Blanken, Urlacher and others to work as agents for the illegal, multimillion-dollar gambling ring DelGiudice has admitted to running from 2016 to 2019 around Chicago. The feds say it involved as many as 1,000 gamblers.
The indictment alleged that Knight collected $500 in gambling losses from a gambler he met in Frankfort in September 2018, and that he sent a text message the next month to a gambler that read, “Morning Bronco, going through figs, can you please tell Bronco 33 to pay or play, hasn’t played since February, down 938.”
Knight and Vincent DelGiudice also discussed money owed to and by certain gamblers in October 2018, the indictment said. And in November 2018, it said Knight sent a message to a gambler that read, “Owe u 2254, will drop.”
Before Knight pleaded guilty Monday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Terry Kinney told Kendall that evidence in the case is made up of several secret recordings, as well as “surveillance evidence” of Knight meeting with gamblers, either to pay them or accept money from them.
Knight’s sentencing has been set for June 25. Meanwhile, Donald Trump decided in the final hours of his presidency in January to pardon Urlacher, brother of Chicago Bears great Brian Urlacher.
Casey Urlacher is now running for reelection in Mettawa.
The scapegoating of Asian Americans is taking an ugly, violent turn.
A new wave of anti-Asian racial violence is sweeping the country. Sadly, racial violence, bigotry and hatred directed at Asian Americans has scarred their history in this country.
Nothing is more dehumanizing. Asian Americans come from many countries and many cultures. They have played a remarkable role in building this country. And yet, the violence erases their humanity, identifies them as the other, and ignores their contributions.
I remember in May of 1983, I met with Lily Chin and Asian American leaders at San Francisco Chinatown’s Cameron House. A year earlier, her son Vincent was chased down in the streets of Detroit by two unemployed white auto workers, who beat him to death with baseball bats.
“It’s because of you mother-(expletive)s we’re out of work!” shouted one of his attackers. They thought Vincent was Japanese. This was the 1980s when U.S. auto plants were shutting down during the Reagan recession, and blame was wrongfully placed on competition from Japanese auto imports, setting off a wave of anti-Japanese/anti-Asian hysteria.
I was struck then by the way Lily Chin stood up and fought against this injustice, and how leaders like Norman Fong, Mabel Teng and Helen Zia organized marches and resistance in the Asian American communities from Los Angeles to New York.
They rose up to organize against anti-Asian racial violence. They found common ground with African Americans, Latinos and others, and forged alliances with people and organizations that have long been targets of racial violence. The fight against racial violence became a key pillar of my 1984 presidential campaign, and Asian Americans became an integral part of our Rainbow Coalition from its very start.
Today, violence targeting Asian Americans is becoming an alarming weekly, if not daily, occurrence. It is stoked to no small degree by more than a year of Trump obsessively describing the coronavirus as the “China Virus” and “Kung Flu.” Fueling his base of white nationalism, Trump resurrected a “Yellow Peril” scare.
Trump combined this vitriol with a big lie, blaming our loss of jobs to China. The reality is that American corporations took our jobs to China, seeking to take advantage of low-wage labor with few rights and few environmental protections. It was U.S. policy that failed to protect our jobs. Now Trump and others blame China when it was our leaders who were at fault.
Words matter. The scapegoating of Asian Americans is taking an ugly, violent turn: On Jan. 28, 2021, 84-year-old Vicha Ratanapakdee was out for a morning walk in San Francisco when he was violently assaulted. Days later, he died.
On Feb. 3 in Manhattan, Noel Quintana, 61, was riding the subway when his assaulter slashed his face.
Last year, an Asian woman in Brooklyn had acid thrown in her face as she took out the garbage. A Burmese man and his two children were slashed by a knife-wielding attacker while shopping in Midland, Texas.
On streets corners and in shopping malls, “Asian Americans Have Been Attacked, Spat On, and Cursed Out,” as reported by Slate. Stop AAP I Hate received reports of more than 3,000 incidents of anti-Asian violence in 2020.
It’s reminiscent of the post-9/11 hysteria that targeted Muslims, as well as Sikhs and other South Asians living in the U.S.
For Chinese Americans, Lunar New Year in the month of February is usually a time for firecrackers, lion dances and celebration in Asian communities. This year, community leaders marked the occasion by confronting this inglorious rise of racial violence.
From progressive Asian community activists to Hollywood actors, business leaders and athletes, Asian communities are rising up and confronting this new wave of racial violence. Community activists are organizing self-patrols and community escorts for the elderly. They want these anti-Asian attacks to be prosecuted as hate crimes.
In the best tradition of the civil and human rights movement, they are holding marches and rallies to defend their communities against violence, and building alliances with African Americans, Latinos and other communities fighting against racial injustice.
NBA basketball player Jeremy Lin said, “It would be hypocritical of me to say I’m anti-racism if I only stand up for people who look like me. There is definitely power in unification and solidarity. … We as minorities also have to collaborate, unify and use our voices and stand up for each other.”
President Biden has weighed in, issuing an executive memorandum saying the “inflammatory and xenophobic rhetoric has put Asian American and Pacific Islander persons, families, communities and businesses at risk.” Special task forces are being organized by local police departments. Local elected leaders have taken to the media to call for unity with the Chinese and Asian communities and decry the violence and harassment.
Some of the most shameful chapters of our history involve racial prejudice against Asian Americans. In 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act (extended to all Asians in 1924) made it illegal for Chinese to immigrate to the U.S. In the Rock Springs Massacre of 1885, white mobs in Wyoming murdered 28 Chinese coal miners and burned Chinatown to the ground. World War II witnessed the internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans in U.S. concentration camps, even as many of their sons fought loyally in the U.S. Armed Forces.
Asian communities are suffering, even as they are summoning the courage of Lily Chin, turning their pain into power, determined to stop the violence and never surrender. At Rainbow PUSH, we stand with them, and call on all citizens of conscience to join them in their drive to confront the hatred and stop the violence.
Send letters to [email protected].
The man was found with a gunshot wound to his back when officers arrived to a fire at an abandoned building in the 5900 block of South Sangamon Street, Chicago police said.
A 60-year-old man was fatally shot in his back and lit on fire Saturday in Englewood on the South Side.
Autopsy results released Monday found the man, whose name hasn’t been released, died of multiple gunshot wounds to his back. His death was ruled a homicide.
The man was found about 3:10 p.m. when officers arrived to a fire at an abandoned building in the 5900 block of South Sangamon Street, Chicago police said. He had at least one gunshot wound to his back and was pronounced dead on the scene.
Area One detectives were conducting a death investigation.
He was one of at least 22 people shot in weekend gun violence.
Beginning this week, folks over the age of 65 are able to receive their first COVID-19 vaccinations at the United Center vaccination site. However, after a few technical glitches and last second changes, all of the site’s 110,000 appointment slots have been taken as the interface draws ire from those successful and unsuccessful.
This is not the end of it though. Those who missed out on booking their appointment will still be able to register as the site will remain open for weeks to come and more appointments will be made available week by week, but only for residents of Cook County moving forward. Originally, any eligible Illinoisan was able to register and receiver their vaccinate at the home of the Chicago Bulls and Chicago Blackhawks but after a huge influx of appointments, the Governor’s Office announced that requirements would be amended and only Chicago residents would have access.
This did not limit the demand for individuals seeking appointments, as Zocdoc (the appointment booking platform those wishing to get the COVID-19 vaccination can use) tweeted late Sunday night that all available appointment was taken at that time.
While vaccinations at the United Center are still open to eligible Cook County residents, we don’t have those scheduling details at this time. For more information, check https://t.co/pdkfTn0WT5 or https://t.co/HLpVQsgxDP (3/3)
Advertisement— Zocdoc (@Zocdoc) March 7, 2021
The site opens fully on Wednesday but a few select individuals will be able to get their shot on Tuesday. More appointments are to come but at this time officials do not know when that will be. One thing is certain, and that is whenever the newest batch of appointments becomes available, the user interface will need some repair as the technical difficulties made it damn near impossible for those waiting to make an appointment to even have a chance to do so. Frequent browser crashes, impossibly slow load times, and a complete absence of appointments being shown on the site all confronted folks as they tried to register. On top of that, when the site asked for a code sent to individuals phones, it failed to send the needed information for users to verify.
For more information on how to register for a COVID-19 vaccination at the United Center vaccination facility, you can check out specifics via this link. For other vaccination sites and updates from around the Chicagoland area, here is a full run down of how to get registered for your vaccination today. If you’re still looking for testing information, utilize our rundown of testing procedures here.
Featured Image Credit: United Center on Facebook
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