This story was produced as a collaboration between The TRiiBE and the Reader.

On February 20, 2020, the Cook County Sheriff’s Office (CCSO) shackled Shannon Ross’s leg with an electronic monitoring device that tethered him to the confines of his home. Although he lived in northern Indiana, Ross was forced to move to Chicago as one of the conditions of being on CCSO’s electronic monitoring (EM) program after he was arrested here in October 2019 on charges of theft of less than $500 and felony possession of a firearm. The move resulted in him losing his job as a forklift operator and losing his car after he was unable to make payments.

Ross, 32, said his electronic monitor sent false alarms daily, each one alleging that he’d left his home in the Chicago neighborhood of East Side without approval. Within the first week of being on EM, Ross said one of the CCSO officers who came to his house tried to pressure him into saying he left his home to take out the garbage—which would have been admitting to violating the terms of EM, since his garbage can is located outside. When he refused, a second CCSO officer advised Ross to record a video of himself in his room whenever he receives a false EM violation alarm.

During the year and a half that Ross was on house arrest, from February 2020 through September 2021, he says that CCSO officers showed up to his home more than 20 times. 

On one visit, Ross said officers nearly arrested him despite the fact that he told them he had video evidence that he hadn’t left his home. “They almost didn’t want to see my proof,” he said. “I told them, like, ‘I have proof.’ And they really wasn’t caring until my girl came out with the proof and [was] like, ‘Look, he’s not lying.’ Some officers are just like that—just don’t care.”

During several of the officers’ visits, Ross’s kids were home, and they saw him get handcuffed and questioned about his whereabouts. “They treat you like you’re a kid, like you’re a criminal,” he said. “Even when you ask for a supervisor or their name, they don’t give it to you–so if I wanted to file a dispute, I can’t. So I mean, they make it difficult.”

Ross had to get a judge’s approval for any movement outside his home because he was placed on EM before January 2021, when Governor J.B. Pritzker signed the Pretrial Fairness Act—which guaranteed movement for “essential functions” like getting groceries. Like many on EM, Ross was never granted movement outside his home even once, not even to buy food. His sister, a manager at Securitas, helped when she could, but work got in the way sometimes, he said.

“So some days I’ll go two days without eating,” Ross said. “Some days I go 24 hours with no food whatsoever.” 

After more than 18 months of being confined to his home with an ankle bracelet, he was found not guilty of the gun charge in September 2021. He was discharged from house arrest soon after. 

He says since getting off EM, life has been better: during those 18 months, he saved money to take a marketing course and now runs his own marketing agency. But the trauma of being on EM affects him even today.

“I feel guilty every time I go outside,” he said. “I feel like I’m not supposed to be there. So I be in the house a lot.”

Today, there are 3,000 people on electronic monitoring in Cook County. According to CCSO, the program is a “community-based alternative incarceration concept” that allows those in pretrial detention to remain in at home rather than in jail. 

The program has grown significantly since 2020 because courts were backlogged by the COVID-19 pandemic, preventing judges from hearing cases or approving pretrial movement for people on EM, and due to growing concerns over the spread of COVID-19 in jails. 

According to a September 2021 report by Chicago Appleseed, the number of people on EM in Cook County declined in August of that year, but was still 31 percent higher than it was in March 2020. Seventy-eight percent of people in the program had been detained for at least three consecutive months.

Consequently, hundreds of people still remain in ankle monitors today who still haven’t been convicted of any crime. Individuals on EM could also face penalties in the future completely unrelated to their original charges. In January, Illinois state representative Martin J. Moylan, whose district includes suburban Elk Grove Village and Des Plaines, introduced a bill that would make unknowingly tampering with, removing, or damaging electronic monitoring devices a Class 4 felony. In April, the bill was sent to the General Assembly’s rules committee.

When a person’s EM device sends an alert, employees at an out-of-state call center review the alert to determine if it’s genuine. Transparency Chicago, a nonprofit whose research includes CCSO’s EM program, shared slides they obtained through FOIA that were presented to Cook County by University of Chicago’s research lab, Radical Innovation for Social Change (RISC), which provides software and analysis to CCSO about the EM program. 

According to the slides, more than 80 percent of the alerts sent by CCSO’s EM vendor, Track Group, to CCSO and its call center are “false positive” alerts, each requiring manual review. RISC’s slides state that these false positives threaten to distract CCSO and call center staff from more serious alerts.

According to CCSO’s contractor, information on how often the ankle monitors trigger an alert that results in a phone call or blaring siren cannot be collected. A spokesperson for Protocol, the third-party contractor that handles call center operations, said the company is unable to distinguish calls made to an EM device used by CCSO from calls made to people on house arrest outside of Cook County. In practice, that means nobody, anywhere, has an accurate picture of how often people on EM are called about alerts, false or otherwise.

To understand how EM is impacting people placed in the program, we collected the experiences of those who were personally plagued with problems from CCSO’s EM program and attorneys who shared their clients’ experiences. Their experiences give insight into where the program’s faults are, raising questions of why these life-destroying problems persist for so long and why it takes so long for officials to notice.

The CCSO’s call center is responsible for reviewing the many thousands of daily automated alerts that get triggered when their systems believe that a person violated the EM conditions—for example, leaving their home. The call center has steps and procedures they follow, which range from noting the violation or calling the person on EM, to blaring a loud siren on their EM device or dispatching sheriffs to their home. 

Documents obtained by The TRiiBE from CCSO via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request indicate that when the siren on a person’s EM device goes off, the contractor’s call center must check if the person on EM is in a courthouse. According to the Public Defender’s office, there have been at least three instances of a person’s monitor sounding an alarm while they’re standing in front of a judge in the courthouse, one of which reportedly happened in front of a jury. A spokesperson for CCSO said they notified the EM contractor about these incidents, and said the contractor “implemented a programming that it believes will reduce or eliminate these events.”

When a person on EM is found to have significant signal issues within their home, one option CCSO provides in rare cases is what’s commonly referred to as a “beacon.” Because environmental issues such as building material can cause signal loss with GPS, the beacons are designed to mitigate signal loss entirely by being inside the person’s home and only alerting if they move away from the beacon. 

About 13 percent of the 178 people who have had their monitor supplemented with a beacon have more than one beacon. According to emails between CCSO and the company that provides them, obtained by The TRiiBE through a FOIA request, a person on EM can have up to ten beacons.

Jeremey “Mohawk” Johnson, 27, has been on EM since August 2020. He is charged with hitting a helmeted police officer with a skateboard during a protest after police charged into a crowd of nonviolent demonstrators. Johnson has posted more than 150 videos on YouTube documenting the false EM alarms and violations he’s received. On March 24, 2021, he received his first EM beacon, and a second one on April 15, 2021, after he moved to the south side. 

Yet Johnson’s double beacons, one of which he said was installed incorrectly by CCSO, have caused a plethora of signal issues and a slew of accusations from call center employees and the sheriff. 

Notes related to Jeremy Johnson’s ankle-monitor false alerts, which were obtained from the Cook County Sheriff via a FOIA request.

In a video Johnson posted May 3, two CCSO officers criticized fellow officers for improper installation and spoke freely with Mohawk about the beacon’s shortcomings. 

“When you hit a dead spot with your cell phone, it’s still shitty at the end of the day. So that’s the same thing with this thing [the beacon],” one officer said on the video. “It sucks,” shrugged the other officer as he uncuffed Johnson.

In February 2021, Johnson received a call from the electronic monitoring agency almost nightly between 12 AM and 5 AM, accusing him of being outside of his apartment when he was in bed. Most of the late-night calls Johnson receives from call center employees end in them chalking the false alarms up to an automatic message or system glitch. 

“If it doesn’t work,” Johnson asked, “why are you still putting it on people?” 

Read more about Jeremey “Mohawk” Johnson’s experience here.

Another man we interviewed, Charles Bobock, shared his experiences with constant false EM violations and sheriff visitations. Most of these visitations begin with him being immediately handcuffed. Bobock says that during his time on EM, starting in July 2021, he was visited in his home by CCSO officers five or six times a month with accusations of leaving his home. Bobock says it wasn’t until early 2022 that he began getting cuffed without explanation as soon as the front door was opened. 

One week in April 2022, he was visited and cuffed four times. On April 11, he tweeted, “LOL. Cuffed up behind my back again by CCSO. This time they had me walk down the street with everyone watching, so they could ‘get a better signal’ on my ankle monitor. That’s twice in four days.” 

In May, Bobock endured a tumultuous period in which he was cuffed five times in eight days.

“Every time they turn up, I panic, because as soon as those cuffs go on, I think these cuffs might not come off this time,” Bobock said. “I’m useless for the rest of the day, because I’m shaking after they leave. It’s a real PTSD moment every time they put the cuffs on. I really don’t know whether I’m leaving with them or not. It gets to be really, really traumatic every time this happens.”

We reached out to CCSO to ask why people on EM are handcuffed prior to questioning. In an emailed response, a spokesperson said it is to ensure the safety of investigators and others, and noted that CCSO policy states individuals should be restrained “only for as long as reasonably necessary” to ensure officer safety.

According to Bobock, he has never been offered a beacon to help alleviate these false EM violations. 

Bobock said that on May 24, sheriff’s officers came to his home to arrest him, claiming that his home was unfit for the EM program. He added that his neighbor, who witnessed and intervened in CCSO’s attempted arrest, invited Bobock to live in his home rather than be taken back to jail. After a discussion between the arriving officers and Bobock’s neighbor, CCSO approved his move.

After the attempted arrest, Bobock said he asked the officers why he was never given a beacon in spite of the constant visits for false alarms, and the officers responded that he hadn’t hit the threshold needed to get one. When asked, a CCSO spokesperson did not clarify what that threshold might be.

In an email to The TRiiBE, the spokesperson said “environmental interference” at Bobock’s home “made it extremely difficult to comply with the court order and monitor his compliance with program rules,” and that the “nature of the site” prevented installation of a beacon. Bobock said that the only thing he was told was that a garage is an unsuitable place to live. 

Regardless of whether Bobock’s previous home was suitable or not for the EM program, with or without a beacon, one thing is clear—before Bobock was able to move into his home, the CCSO officers who dropped him were required to run an “Initial Residence Verification” process, which should include livability checks and confirmation that the EM device was “activated” with the EM vendor. 

After living in his new home for over a week, Bobock says that things have been quiet, with the exception of one signal strength text, which was followed by a visit and handcuffing by the officers, stating, “just checking up on you.” In spite of everything, Bobock says that he’s able to move around his neighborhood with no complaints from CCSO.

“I’ve been wandering around the block picking up trash, taking the dog to the dog park across the street each day, taking the garbage to the dumpster” Bobock said. “All things that would have got me into trouble before.”

In another case, a company changing its name led to one of its employees, who was on EM, being reincarcerated. Richard Bullock, a 40-year-old man facing first-degree murder charges, was sent back to jail after a CCSO investigator concluded that Bullock had forged pay stubs and proof of employment. The investigator apparently came to that conclusion while looking into Bullock’s scheduled work movement, and found via the Illinois Secretary of State’s website that the company he worked for, Upskel Housing INC, had dissolved in 2019. The investigator seems to have failed to notice that the company had simply reincorporated under a new name, Upskel LLC, which was also listed on the website. According to Bullock’s lawyer, the forgery allegations are unresolved, and the murder case is still pending.

Another man, who shared his experience with us on the condition of anonymity due to fear of impact to his ongoing criminal case, wound up wearing two ankle monitors at once. The sheriff’s office still hadn’t removed his ankle device and continued to visit him at his home despite a court order that had discharged him from the sheriff’s EM program a week earlier so that he could move to the more-lenient EM program managed by the chief judge. At the courthouse, a second EM device, meant to work with the chief judge’s EM systems, was attached to his other leg, and he would have to be scheduled for the removal of CCSO’s. 

The night of his court appearance for his EM discharge, he received a 2 AM visit from the sheriff alleging that he violated EM after leaving the courthouse. The officers who went to his home were not aware that the discharge was filed. When we spoke with him, he’d been wearing two devices for a week and was afraid to leave his home, from worries of another late-night visit or potential reincarceration. 

Tracey Harkins, an attorney whose clients include many on EM, shared her experiences with prosecutors whom she characterized as aggressive and judges who she says have impossible standards and deep misunderstandings of GPS accuracy.

“It was common practice for judges to scoff at any attorney suggesting that technology failure could be at issue for resolution,” Harkins said. In a case where CCSO admitted technology failure, she said the presiding judge responded in earnest, “GPS is the most reliable thing in the world.”

The Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office (CCSAO) relies on progress reports that show when a person on EM allegedly leaves their home to determine whether to increase their bond or re-incarcerate those on EM. Harkins said that in her experience, a vast majority of judges read the reports at face value with no verification, testimony, or additional information. She said that attorneys who requested hearings to challenge progress reports “were frequently scoffed at, or held to an impossible standard” where judges agree to a hearing on the spot and without any preparation. 

“Being held to a hearing immediately was grossly unfair,” she said. 

Harkins said that since last October, she has seen 30-40 people ordered back into custody based on these progress reports. When asked what can be done to improve CCSO’s EM program, Harkins said that the sheriff’s office needs to “properly and fully” investigate alleged violations before writing reports or taking actions. 

“This requires that appropriate training be implemented—something that is currently lacking,” she said.

After WTTW published an article in March detailing the false alarms and prosecutorial action taken by CCSAO against Michael Matthews, one of Harkins’s clients, the state’s attorney’s office withdrew their petition against Matthews, saying that they did so in good faith after seeing video that proved he was home when they claimed he hadn’t been. 

But Harkins said that CCSAO had already had that video in December. 

“One of two things is true,” she said. ”Either they are utterly incompetent and didn’t connect the dots for three months, or they knew that there was a problem and ignored it and prosecuted Michael [Matthews] in bad faith—either option is unacceptable.”

Since the Pretrial Fairness Act went into effect, Sheriff Tom Dart has claimed that the law has resulted in dozens of people on EM who have been accused of violent offenses being automatically given time to move about freely and unmonitored—an assertion the Public Defender’s office disputed at the time. 

“They rarely give the underlying data for those assertions, and so there’s no way to check their work—which is concerning, given that those numbers have been found to be suspect,” said Sarah Staudt, a senior policy analyst and staff attorney at the Chicago Appleseed Fund for Justice. “If Sheriff Dart is going to make proclamations about people on EM, he needs to give the underlying numbers out too, so folks can decide for themselves whether they agree with his assertions.” 

Cook County public defender Sharone Mitchell, who took office in April 2021, said he believes that Dart and Mayor Lori Lightfoot are intentionally misunderstanding the program to stoke fear and shift blame for violence in the city. 

“We know that we’ve seen alerts when people are actually sitting at their home, abiding by the condition of their release,” Mitchell said. “We know that in some instances people are being thrown back into jail without a hearing; it’s just the notification of a violation that causes a person to be detained.”

Mitchell emphasized that those on EM have only been accused of a crime, and could have their case dismissed or be found not guilty at trial. “There are real consequences to both pretrial incarceration through jail, and pretrial incarceration through electronic monitoring,” he said. “And we know that both of those outcomes disrupt people’s jobs, their education, and their family obligations.”

Mitchell added that the impacts on individuals ripple out into communities when EM is concentrated in certain neighborhoods—as is the case in Chicago.

“So when you are talking about a large amount of people who live in the same neighborhoods, and you have that impact over and over and over again, now we’re really talking about the destruction of communities,” Mitchell said. “Now we’re talking about that cycle of incarceration and violence.”

Read More

Jeremey “Mohawk” Johnson has been on electronic monitoring since August 2020, after he was arrested for allegedly hitting a cop with a skateboard at an anti-ICE and defund CPD rally in the Loop. More than a year after the Reader profiled him in March 2021, his case remains in pretrial limbo. Johnson has worn an electronic-­monitor (EM) ankle bracelet and been mostly confined to his home during that time. 

He has documented his struggles with near-incessant false EM alerts—which sometimes bring Cook County Sheriff’s Office (CCSO) investigators to his door—via his YouTube page, Monitored by Cook. The page includes dozens of videos documenting his problems with EM dating as far back as December 18, 2021.

The Reader interviewed Johnson on Thursday, May 5; his ankle bracelet had sent four false alerts the previous day. He has encountered more difficulty with the electronic monitoring system after moving on April 13. “There’s been major inconsistencies and communication issues with [the CCSO]—specifically about my beacons and my address change,” he says. 

What follows are Johnson’s words, which have been edited and condensed for clarity.

The move

They gave me a new leg monitor in March. I asked the person at the desk who was doing our forms what relocation would be like. That person just said, “When you get the lease, just send that to us in advance, that way we have the documentation. You should be good.”

I asked for relocation on March 21. We signed the lease online. I told County [CCSO], “I could send you the lease.” I sent it in March 21 at 11:39 AM. They gave me a confirmation email at 11:39; I got it 30 seconds later.

I called them [a week later] and they said, “You still have to process the request.” They called me, like, “We need your landlord’s information.” This happened March 28. I re-sent them the email with my landlord’s information at 8:51 AM. I got the confirmation at 8:52 AM. 

They called me April 4 and said that they never got any of my relocation stuff, and that it was never sent in. I told the woman on the phone, “I did send it.”

She’s like, “OK, you’re saying you have the confirmation emails. You’re giving me dates and times. There’s only a few of us working—can you resend it?” So I sent screenshots of my lease, screenshots of the signature, and the PDF with the entire lease. I sent that April 4 at 2:24 PM, maybe ten minutes after I’d gotten off that call. I got the confirmation email at 2:25.

They said that they approved the movement, and that it was put on my schedule. 

[One evening in April], two officers came to my house, and they had me sign a bunch of paperwork for the address that I was moving from. [One officer] said, “I don’t know what happened, ’cause I know you signed it, ’cause I was here when you relocated the last time.” This is the guy that dropped me off when I first got arrested and got put on house arrest. This is the officer that came and installed my first beacon. I know this guy. Never remember his name, but he’s always pretty pleasant. 

He comes over and he’s like, “When you move next week, and you take your beacons with you, make sure you call them, and somebody should come and set the beacons up immediately.” He said that to me on camera. 

I signed out on April 13, in the morning, to move all of my stuff. Put it all in the moving truck that my mom and my stepdad got to help me move. The sheriff’s officer told me that I have to move my beacons to my new place. They’re not coming to help me move, so nobody else can move them to the new place but me. And I was told by the Sheriff’s Department not to leave them.

I take the beacons with me. The beacons are like, “You’re tampering with the beacon, you’re moving outside of your zone.” And then they start calling my leg monitor, calling my phone—like, “Why are you moving the beacon? Why are you not where you’re supposed to be?” 

I’m like, “Y’all, I’m relocating—look at the movement schedule.” They’re like, “Oh, yeah, you are relocating, you have movement till five.” And I’m like, “Check your own email before you bother me.”

The extension

I asked for a movement extension, ’cause I moved to the other side of the city. It was taking a long time for me to get to work—the Green Line’s messed up. There are massive delays on all the trains, the trains just aren’t running like they used to.

They don’t grant it for weeks. I already have the work movement approved, I’m just asking for more time. I call someone on the phone—he says, “Hey, it does make sense that you need a movement extension—the train’s bad, so you asking for more time to get to work should not be a problem. I need you to resubmit the schedule with whatever current pay stub you have and the new times you need.” 

I did that, and I got a reply from the sheriff saying, “We already granted this movement, just ask for an extension.” And I’m like, “No, you don’t understand, that’s what I’m doing. [My contact] said the system won’t let him add an extension without new paperwork or a new schedule.” Cook County was like, “We approved this already—just ask for an extension.” I’m like, “That’s what I’m doing.” 

They approved my movement, and gave me my movement extension—they said, “If you leave at 11, you’ll get there by 12,” and I’m like, “Not from where I live. I need to leave at 10:30.” They send me my movement request the morning of—giving me permission to leave at 10:30—at 10:44 AM. They didn’t send it to me until I called them four times that morning. 

Because of how the automated system works, if you leave your house late, they assume something happened and you’re not leaving at all; so if you do leave, they call. The system will automatically hit you with an alert if you leave 15 minutes after your leaving time. It’s supposed to be a 15-minute grace period, that’s what I was told by Investigator Collins, because I’ve had multiple phone conversations with Investigator Collins, and that’s how she said it works. I could not leave until 15 minutes late, because I did not get the movement approved until 15 minutes late. 

They called me on my leg monitor in my Lyft, and asked me why I was outside. They called me for leaving late, after they approved my movement late.

The officers

On April 20—after getting beacon violation, after beacon violation, after beacon violation—at about 6:42 PM, officers come and start grilling me. They’re like, “So this is your new spot? Where’s the consent form?” I’m like, “I don’t have a consent form . . . nobody from the Sheriff’s Department came to install my beacon or give me a new consent form.” A resident consent form is the form you fill out that allows you to live where you live. 

My name is on the lease, and the landlord knows I’m on house arrest. I’m allowed to live here, and by the letter of the law this is my place. I was told initially—by the person who said that they never got my paperwork—that because my name is on the lease I’m good. These officers were not notified of that, they were not notified of anything. 

They started asking me about my beacons. They’re like, “Why do you have two beacons?” I’m like, “Because County gave me two beacons.” They’re like, “OK, you’ve moved, why do you still have two beacons?” And I’m like, “Because y’all never came to get them—if you never came to get them, and they gave me two, what was I supposed to do with the other one? Eat it?” 

They’re like, “Oh, your beacon is not registered to your new house.” And I’m like, “I put in this movement request last month. Y’all had from March 21 to April 4, and you got all that paperwork sent in—you got all this time to log the beacons at the new address the day that I moved.” No one did it, no officers came to install them—because they’re supposed to be stuck on the wall. One of them’s just sitting in my windowsill, where it can be reached and tampered with.

There’s a cat here; cats touch anything they can when they can. At that point, the cat’s jumping on the beacon and knocking it down, jumping in the other window where the other one is, knocking it down. I’m getting these tampering violations—sometimes while I’m at work, since the cat’s playing with them. 

Then [Investigator Reimer] asks me, “You’re not putting it in your pocket and then leaving the house with it, are you?” 

That’s multiple charges: that’s tampering with a beacon, that’s unauthorized leave, that’s felony escape. That’s three different things, if I put it in my pocket and try to leave. That is the goofiest thing I can do, because not only is that more charges, but it’s, quite frankly, antithetical to getting away with anything. If I wanna sneak out, I’m not gonna take something that makes my signal stronger. Why would anybody do that? 

He asked me that, and then he told me—after investigating and calling—like, “The language that the call center was using was confusing. It said you were leaving and that you were taking it out on the street, and then it was popping back in the system two minutes later and you were going all over with it. It’s sitting in your window, we see that now, the beacons are probably bouncing off of each other, and messing up the signal, and then because of where your bedroom is, you’re losing it.” 

The beacons

Reimer and I were talking about it, and I asked him, “What do I do with the beacon?” They were like, “Do you want to tape it up now?” We can’t find the tape. [Reimer] tells me, when I can, get some Command Strips, call the call center, tell them that I was told by the Sheriff’s Department to tape the beacon up in the windowsill myself, and then have them track the signal to make sure it works. He said this to me, right? He didn’t tell the call center that he told me to do that—or maybe he did tell them, and they lost it. 

Again, nobody from County came to bring me my paperwork or to install my beacon. It took them seven days to get out to me, after I called them every day for a week saying, “Hey, my beacons aren’t on the wall. I keep getting zone violations, and whenever I call y’all, y’all bring up my old address. You should know that I don’t live there anymore.” 

I keep getting, “The beacon is not registered to your current apartment. You’re getting beacon violations because your room might be too far away from the beacon. Something’s going on with your bedroom.” Stuff like that. 

I ordered some Command Strips. I call the call center: “I’m calling to put my beacon up, because I was told by the sheriff to put my beacon up.” 

The person at the call center tells me, “You’re not allowed to touch that.” I’m like, “I understand that—I was told to call you to let you know that I’m putting the beacon up on the windowsill, and that you should check the signal to make sure that it’s working properly.”

The call center tells me, “It’s up to your discretion because you said that the officer told you to and that you got that on video. Our hands are tied—I just know, legally, you’re not supposed to do that. I’m gonna go ahead and put that in the data record.” 

I’m like, “Well, I’m telling you that I’m not gonna do it, so there is nothing going on. Imma just leave that shit where it is.” 

Homie records it anyway. I keep getting zone violations while I’m in my bedroom ’cause my beacon’s in the living room in the front of the house, and my bedroom is towards the back of the apartment. The range is not big enough, so it keeps losing me. Even in my own bedroom, it keeps losing me. 

The system

This is what happens when you have an institution of people who outsource all of their work to different departments, and then don’t talk to each other. The call center is communicating with the sheriff through, like, notes. The sheriff is calling protocol; protocol may have different standards than what every sheriff has. 

And then every sheriff operates differently. They have a general understanding of what the rules are, but I get different things from different sheriffs depending on who comes to work that day. There’s zero consistency—and negative two communication—amongst branches and between officers. On top of the fact that the technology isn’t working particularly well, it creates a mess. 

None of what they were supposed to do on their end happened. I can’t control if they give me consent forms or not; they’re supposed to bring those to my house. I can’t control if they install the beacon or not; they’re supposed to come and install it. That did not happen when I moved, so my hands were tied. The only thing I could do was sit in my house, go to work when I was allowed to, and hope to God that they show up and do what they said they were going to so that I don’t get in more trouble. But that did not happen.

I can’t even get a straight answer on whether or not I’m allowed to answer the door. ’Cause one person, I’ve called him, he’s like, “If you don’t step outside, you can go to your door and [get] deliveries—you can open your door and grab your pizza, you can’t go outside. If you’re not on your porch or outside of your building, it’s fine. Use your own discretion.” Completely different person said, “I don’t know about that. I wouldn’t even chance it.” It really depends on who I talk to that day. So I just do nothing, I just have my roommates do everything for me, because it’s safer that way. 

So the way the system works is, false accusation happens. False accusation gets put on file. Then they fix it. It is accusation, potential punishment, then they fix it.

Even though the system clears them, prosecutors can look at the record, bring up how many alerts you have—not violations, just alerts. Violations are not alerts. All I am getting is alerts saying, “We think you’re outside, we think you’re here, why did you leave late.” 

Prosecutors can look at alerts and say, “He’s sneaking out.” Even if the system clears them—even if the sheriff comes to your house, says, “OK, we see video evidence you didn’t leave at this time”—which I have done before. 

So even though you can have all of this evidence, a prosecutor can still bring this up in court—you can have your bond revoked and be put back in jail, over these alerts, even when they’re not violations. 

I started putting the cameras up and posting the videos. I’m like, “You not finna lie on me in court and get me locked up when I ain’t do nothing. Imma give you hard video, you not gonna play me.”

I have alerts. And oftentimes the alerts clear themselves before they call you. Sometimes they’ll call you and then an alert got cleared ten minutes ago, but whoever called didn’t see that the alert got cleared. So they can call you and bother you about something. It’s a mess over there. And that mess gets people convicted.

These alerts are still admissible in court. And that’s what bothers me. Not just for my situation. Regardless of what you feel about somebody’s relationship with the law, you should not be locking people up over faulty technology, especially when you know it’s faulty. 

Especially with that new law they’re trying to pass that creates severe punishment for multiple violations, because the same County that is saying, “We know the monitors don’t work well, we know the GPS technology is faulty,” is also actively trying to implicate and punish people in legislature for these same signal failures. That just ain’t right.

The impact

I’d go to work; I catch two, three, four violations just trying to commute, and more violations means more chances for a prosecutor to lie on me in court. It’s safer for me to not work. It’s safer for me to be broke, it’s safer for me to ask my parents for money, than it is to risk catching a charge for trying to be productive.

I worked at Warby Parker. I can’t pick up a shift to make more money to pay rent without permission from County. If somebody’s like, “Hey, can you work this location today?” I can’t do it. I can’t trade shifts with coworkers. There’s a whole two-thirds of my job that I can’t participate in that could potentially humanize people—or show people that I’m not a fucking animal—that I just can’t do. 

I’m not trying to go back to jail ’cause the train got delayed. I’m not trying to get locked up ’cause I missed the bus and I didn’t have $30, $40 for an Uber because it’s surging ’cause the weather’s bad. It is safer to not have a job. It is safer to call my parents and borrow money every month. Or to get on Twitter and Instagram and be like, “Hey, y’all, I’m struggling right now, I need help.” ’Cause I do need the help, ’cause I can’t work. Half the time I was working I had to leave early ’cause I’d get called while I’m at work. Or I get called three times before I go to work—I get called at two in the morning, get called at six in the morning, so my sleep’s interrupted. 

My hairline is going, my beard is turning gray. I’m not even 28 yet, and I’m already looking like how my dad might have when he was in his 40s. I’m stressed, I have flashbacks about jail all the time. My leg monitor constantly triggers my fight or flight; my therapist was telling me that just being on this thing for as long as I have—and then having it go off all the time, and interrupting my REM cycle—is triggering my fight-or-flight. If a scale is “one, completely relaxed,” and “ten, thinking you’re about to die,” I wake up most days at a six to seven. Stuff keeps happening with the leg monitor that brings me up to a ten. So it’s been deeply, emotionally taxing. 

I just don’t understand why they want to do this for this long. It’s so disproportionate. I allegedly got into it with an officer, right? I got beat up, I got knocked to the ground—stomped on and hit with sticks by multiple officers, a medic had to pick me up and drag me away. I got pepper-sprayed point-blank in the face multiple times. I got choked. After I got out of jail, I had a bad limp for two weeks ’cause of how bad I got beat up. 

Now, like, two years later they’re still trying to figure out if they’re gonna put me in prison. How much they want to do to a person over an alleged incident? If I ain’t did it, all of this is for nothing. And if you think I did do it, you done got your licks back before I got arrested, so you ain’t tired yet? You gonna take it this far, after you done already beat my ass? No matter how you cut it, this has been taken way too fuckin’ far. 

It’s making me think it was never about justice or public safety. No city that sends police officers to beat up and kettle people in public has any moral authority to put people on house arrest for public safety, in my opinion, ’cause they put the public in danger. ’Cause they were dangerous to me, ’cause they were dangerous to those protestors.

This article was co-published with The TRiiBE, a digital media platform that is reshaping the narrative of Black Chicago and giving ownership back to the people. 

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The Chicago Cubs and Willson Contreras have reached an agreement on a contract for the 2022 season, with a source telling ESPN’s Jesse Rogers that the catcher will make $9.625 million.

The Cubs and Contreras came to terms just before an arbitration hearing that was scheduled for Thursday. The deal is halfway between the $9 million and $10.25 million that the Cubs and Contreras had filed for, respectively, when figures were exchanged March 22.

The agreement is a bit of a surprise after Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer said in April that the sides would go to a hearing. This year was an exception, a source said, due to the nature of an in-season hearing. Arbitration hearings are typically done in January and February, but the MLB lockout forced them to be heard during the baseball season.

Contreras, 30, is in the midst of his best offensive year, batting .277 with 10 home runs and 23 RBIs in 47 games. The two-time All-Star is in his seventh season with the Cubs, batting .260 with 105 home runs and 333 RBIs in 669 career games.

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Denali in her entrance look for RuPaul’s Drag
Race, season 13 Credit: Courtesy the artist

There’s an expectation for most contestants on the drag reality competition show RuPaul’s Drag Race that the gigs will come a’callin’—and for those who have been lucky enough to appear in the big money, Emmy-nominated seasons, this can mean constant and sometimes worldwide travel for a while after their TV appearance.

Denali is one such drag queen. The Chicagoan (via Alaska and Utah) competed in season 13 of RDR, which was filmed during the 2020 Summer of Pandemic and aired on VH1 from January to April of the next year. While Denali left in eighth place at the conclusion of episode ten, she solidified her reputation as a well-balanced performer with dancing and lip-syncing skills that kept her in the sights of her fellow competitors.  

Denali spoke to the Reader before a recent hosting gig for the international Pride Bands Alliance (an evening of symphonic band performances at the Auditorium Theatre presented by Chicago’s Lakeside Pride Music Ensembles) about ice skating, drag, and her adopted hometown of Chicago.  

Salem Collo-Julin: What brought you to Chicago originally? 

Denali: It was a funny transitional period in my life where I was like, OK, I am tired of living on the road. I was doing figure skating tours from about ages 20 to 25, and I wanted to stop living out of a suitcase and to really find a city of my own.

And I knew I was a big city kind of girl. I always wanted to be in a big city, and New York just felt like too much to me. I think for a young kid, there’s that feeling of wanting that midwestern friendly kind of deal all the time, but obviously still wanting to be in a big city. And the only city that had both of those feelings was Chicago.

And had you been actively doing drag before you moved here? 

No, I absolutely hadn’t. I moved here purely as Cordero [Denali’s name out of drag]. And then Denali was developed as I started in the club scenes here in Chicago.

I did some very bad bedroom drag and just played around with friends, but nothing serious. I wasn’t yet studying the craft. It wasn’t until I found Berlin nightclub and this really great group of friends that gave me a lot of advice—that’s where I really started to learn and grow.

Can you remember what turned your head to drag performance? Was there a performer you saw that made you think, “Oh, I want to do that”?

I lived and worked on cruise ships for a while, working as an ice skater and performer on the ships. And there’s a large queer community working on cruise ships, which was honestly the first time in my life that I’d ever been surrounded by a large group of LGBTQ+ people—which was really nice.

And we would all get together on Sundays and we would watch Drag Race. I believe it was season five that did it for me. Oh, Lord. I was in a trance. I was just like, “Oh, what is this? I’m obsessed. I love it.” 

This came at a time in my life when I felt really constrained by a lot of the things around me. I lived on cruise ships. It’s just a super limiting kind of lifestyle. You feel like you’re bound to this massive tin can at sea. And as liberating as that might sound to some people, when you’re on the ship for two, three, four years at a time, it feels really restrictive. And I just felt like the world had to be bigger and more beautiful and more colorful.

What was your queer experience growing up in Alaska and going to Utah for college? 

You know, I grew up in a Christian household in Fairbanks, Alaska. So in general, not only was it a small town, but because I grew up with those ideals, I was taught that my sexuality was taboo and that my sexuality was not to be spoken about. 

I grew up ice skating. That’s all I did. All I did was ice skate because it made me happy. And so by the time I reached age 13, I was like, I have to do something with this. And I felt very limited by my hometown. There was no professional coaching available there. So I decided to take a leap. And I moved to train and professionally skate when I was 15, which was way too young (and my mom agrees with me). 

So as surprising as it may be, Salt Lake City, Utah, was where I came into my queerness the most. I was 16 or 17, and that was where I was finally exposed to some other queer people. And they were in my ice skating, my high school, and my college. That’s where I really felt like I started to blossom and develop. I went to my first Pride there when I was 17.

There is something to that—those places where you wouldn’t expect to see the largest amount of queer people often have LGBTQ+ communities that are just so solid. 

I think it’s because there’s so much restriction in those places that the people that have gotten out of that mindset are even more passionate and more intense about making sure that they are loud and proud and things like that, because they know that around them is a lot of bigotry and hate. So actually, I’ve met some of the queerest people in Utah. 

Denali performed during the intermission of the Chicago Blackhawks Pride Night game in April.

Ice skating still seems like it’s a big part of your life and it sounds like it was something that you jumped into early on. 

My sister was a beautiful ice dancer. And of course, being the young queer kid that I was, I emulated her, and I wanted to be her. She was so beautiful. She was just the most ethereal goddess in my life. And when you’re a young gay thing, you glamorize beauty.

I said something so dumb on [RuPaul’s Drag Race] one episode. I was just like, “I love chandeliers,” when I was in costume as a chandelier. But the rest of my thoughts were edited out. While we were doing post-production voiceovers, I was able to add that as a young queer kid trapped in Alaska, I was drawn to beautiful and ornate things. And I didn’t realize that my obsession with these lamps was just my expression of queerness as a kid.

Do you feel like there’s any difference in how you approach choreography for a drag performance versus something that you’re going to be doing on the ice? 

Choreographing for the ice is a totally different mindset. You’re constantly moving [on the ice]. You take one push and you’re suddenly accelerating. Most skaters are going seven to ten miles an hour or something like that. There’s constant acceleration. It’s dancing, but you are flying at the same time.

And then for drag, [choreography is] not always all about being dynamic, but you’re trying to draw attention to yourself. You’re trying to feel the spotlight. A lot of people tell me that they thought I choreographed a lot of my lip syncs [on RDR], and some of them were, but some were just working out a few moves in my hotel room the night before. 

Chicago Drag Excellence was produced by Denali with TransIt Productions and filmed at the Co-Prosperity Sphere in Bridgeport.

You made a video in 2020 [Chicago Drag Excellence, featuring many Chicago drag performers] and released it online after the season premiered in January of last year. 

We have been in quarantine for so long, and the year prior was so difficult for Chicago drag. Nobody was working. Nobody was happy. Nobody was really doing much with their drag besides creating digital drag videos.

The video was an opportunity for us to all gather safely, laugh again, and to just feel like we were being fabulous all together. There were around 40 performers in the video, and everyone had a two-hour block, and it was a lot. I’m really proud of Chicago doing that. 

What would you tell a drag performer new to Chicago that they must do? 

One thing that you should do if you come to Chicago or if you’re trying to get into the scene anywhere is find your people. You need people, you need your sense of community not only to share skills, share wigs, share costumes, all that stuff, but it’s the whole point of drag, in my opinion. Find your tribe and find the people that you click with and grow with them. 

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If you spend any time breathing, you may have noticed polarities everywhere these days, most emanating from a belief gulf that is exponentially widening between conservatives and liberals with every Twitter post. One polarity being heightened not just in social media, but also in government chambers and around dinner tables, is the divide between LGBTQ+ people and the cisgender straights. 

This divide is certainly not new—the original Queer Eye cast tried to bridge the gap between queers and straights back in 2003 by being “Out to make over the world. One straight guy at a time,” hence offering up some skills to thrive on their reality TV show. The trope of gay men who really have their shit together (around grooming, decor, emotional regulation, and cookery) was played out as a fantasy that challenged historically cis-male obliviousness on a case-by-case basis. The idea was to gently hug and shoo away toxic masculinity in favor of a friendlier, rowdier, albeit more organized—and often more gentrified—life experience. 

Queer Eye: The Musical Parody
Through 8/28: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 7 PM; Second City UP Comedy Club, 230 W. North, 312-337-3992, secondcity.com, $29-$79.

The even more popular reboot of the show (2018) was almost a parody of its former iteration, all while taking things further in a good way by modeling emotional intelligence, radical acceptance, and owning trans identities. The show embraced its mission with the same corny if joyous earnestness, and also added a layer of diversity (and made many of our hopes come true) by inviting in non-cis straight people for makeovers at last. Taken in correct doses (binged), the Fab Five can act as a balm against the relentless news cycle or any feelings one might catch about humanity as a whole sucking. That is why I have loved Queer Eye, uncritically accepting its absurd premise—the one where five visibly queer people turn up in American towns, pop up in the life of their subject like a storm front, cheerfully ignore stunned locals, and joyously improve the confidence, setting, and curb appeal of an individual who may have voted for the limitation of their human rights. 

Do I sound cynical? Let me assure you I am not. I have seen every episode of Queer Eye, in all iterations, from the somewhat directionless Queer Eye: We’re in Japan!, to Queer Eye: Germany (where all of the experts were swapped out with actual German people).

And so when I heard that Second City was mounting Queer Eye: The Musical Parody right here in my hometown, and in time for Pride Month, picture my joy. Unless you happen to know my opinion on musicals. With a few exceptions (Hair, Jesus Christ Superstar, and Grease), my avoidance of musicals is palpable for a theater critic. Yes, it is ironic that I accept the blithe Queer Eye story line, yet can’t suspend my disbelief during musicals long enough to imagine how folks might opt to express their feelings in song. Why not angrily journal or call a friend instead? So you see, this is why Queer Eye: The Musical Parody is the perfect conundrum for me. 

One question I asked myself, and then, somewhat rudely, asked talented composer/music director/lyricist/orchestrator Heidi Joosten was, “Can my love of the Fab Five (and their relentless shenanigans) override my fight-or-flight urge when that first actor belts out a tune?” Joosten politely described her faith in the show’s ability to win me over. “In the same way that we set out to honor the people that we are parodying, the music for this show is meant to honor lots of people’s different tastes. We make fun of many musical theater tropes, but the music does not feel like Rodgers and Hammerstein 2.0. . . . I would suggest that anybody that’s comfortable turning on their radio is going to find something to like about the music in this show.”

But: “Can the pleasure of watching gay men crush the patriarchy one makeover at a time be enhanced with music?” I asked, clearly just unable to let this go.

“I believe in musical theater that you are obligated to tell an honest story. This particular show to me made a lot of sense to parody because there is no true human villain (in it),” Joosten explained. “The villain is societal expectations, and trying to just find the true person within that gets to shine. Everybody there is just trying to find the happiest version of themselves.” 

The first run of Queer Eye: The Musical Parody played to sold-out audiences in a pre-pandemic 2019. I asked Joosten if the show has changed much since. “It honors the last show that we did and it is a completely different show. We have cut characters, we have added characters, we have expanded characters. It is now a full two-act musical when it was a one-act before. It’s been exciting to see the show grow from the playground version through the pandemic as we grew as people.”

Growth is good. But, I wondered, will parody be applied in a punch-up or punch-down direction? For example, in parodying a show that already is a parody, couldn’t things veer into satire territory? Evan Mills, co-director/writer/creator, is certain that is not the case. “They are real people, and we’re parodying real lives . . . taking their qualities and just heightening it to a fun and playful level. When you start writing parodies, you immediately pick up on the things that maybe they get teased about, but then you take it and you’re able to flip it and to twist it and showcase everyone’s strengths in humor.” 

Seasoned actor Evan Tyrone Martin, who plays culture expert Karamo, agrees, explaining how the Queer Eye series has captured his admiration. “It wasn’t something that I necessarily would’ve seen myself watching initially, but once I got into it, the relationships that these men built with each other, with the people that they were helping and even with families . . . these people truly care for each other and want to help each other. What Evan and Heidi put together is so smart and really funny, but also cares so much about these people and the message that they’re trying to convey. They did an excellent job of being funny without losing the heart that exists with the show.”

I wondered if the show would involve improvisation, since it was taking place at Second City. “While there could have been pockets for a scene that we could improvise, we didn’t want to take the risk of anything feeling out of place. And we wanted to really make this a musical and not an improvised musical,” Mills explained. 

Fair enough—inviting audience commentary on LGBTQ+ identities in today’s climate (even in queer-friendly Chicago) could potentially get dicey. I picture well-meaning drunk audience members suggesting inappropriate things, like I dishearteningly once endured at a dog improv show not long ago. (Second City performer Peter Kim left the 2016 Second City e.t.c. show, A Red Line Runs Through It, in the wake of what he described in a Chicago magazine piece as “increasingly racist, homophobic, and misogynistic comments [hurled] at me and my castmates.)

Mills explained, “It’s significantly important that we are opening that first weekend of June. We wanted this to be a Pride show, but we also didn’t want it to just be a Pride show.” The run is all summer long, giving the show the opportunity to showcase queer identities beyond the rainbow-bloated month of June.

Martin added, “So many of the messages around Pride itself are about inclusion and acceptance and just celebrating the person that you are. And this show is all of those things.”

Read More

If you spend any time breathing, you may have noticed polarities everywhere these days, most emanating from a belief gulf that is exponentially widening between conservatives and liberals with every Twitter post. One polarity being heightened not just in social media, but also in government chambers and around dinner tables, is the divide between LGBTQ+ people and the cisgender straights. 

This divide is certainly not new—the original Queer Eye cast tried to bridge the gap between queers and straights back in 2003 by being “Out to make over the world. One straight guy at a time,” hence offering up some skills to thrive on their reality TV show. The trope of gay men who really have their shit together (around grooming, decor, emotional regulation, and cookery) was played out as a fantasy that challenged historically cis-male obliviousness on a case-by-case basis. The idea was to gently hug and shoo away toxic masculinity in favor of a friendlier, rowdier, albeit more organized—and often more gentrified—life experience. 

Queer Eye: The Musical Parody
Through 8/28: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 7 PM; Second City UP Comedy Club, 230 W. North, 312-337-3992, secondcity.com, $29-$79.

The even more popular reboot of the show (2018) was almost a parody of its former iteration, all while taking things further in a good way by modeling emotional intelligence, radical acceptance, and owning trans identities. The show embraced its mission with the same corny if joyous earnestness, and also added a layer of diversity (and made many of our hopes come true) by inviting in non-cis straight people for makeovers at last. Taken in correct doses (binged), the Fab Five can act as a balm against the relentless news cycle or any feelings one might catch about humanity as a whole sucking. That is why I have loved Queer Eye, uncritically accepting its absurd premise—the one where five visibly queer people turn up in American towns, pop up in the life of their subject like a storm front, cheerfully ignore stunned locals, and joyously improve the confidence, setting, and curb appeal of an individual who may have voted for the limitation of their human rights. 

Do I sound cynical? Let me assure you I am not. I have seen every episode of Queer Eye, in all iterations, from the somewhat directionless Queer Eye: We’re in Japan!, to Queer Eye: Germany (where all of the experts were swapped out with actual German people).

And so when I heard that Second City was mounting Queer Eye: The Musical Parody right here in my hometown, and in time for Pride Month, picture my joy. Unless you happen to know my opinion on musicals. With a few exceptions (Hair, Jesus Christ Superstar, and Grease), my avoidance of musicals is palpable for a theater critic. Yes, it is ironic that I accept the blithe Queer Eye story line, yet can’t suspend my disbelief during musicals long enough to imagine how folks might opt to express their feelings in song. Why not angrily journal or call a friend instead? So you see, this is why Queer Eye: The Musical Parody is the perfect conundrum for me. 

One question I asked myself, and then, somewhat rudely, asked talented composer/music director/lyricist/orchestrator Heidi Joosten was, “Can my love of the Fab Five (and their relentless shenanigans) override my fight-or-flight urge when that first actor belts out a tune?” Joosten politely described her faith in the show’s ability to win me over. “In the same way that we set out to honor the people that we are parodying, the music for this show is meant to honor lots of people’s different tastes. We make fun of many musical theater tropes, but the music does not feel like Rodgers and Hammerstein 2.0. . . . I would suggest that anybody that’s comfortable turning on their radio is going to find something to like about the music in this show.”

But: “Can the pleasure of watching gay men crush the patriarchy one makeover at a time be enhanced with music?” I asked, clearly just unable to let this go.

“I believe in musical theater that you are obligated to tell an honest story. This particular show to me made a lot of sense to parody because there is no true human villain (in it),” Joosten explained. “The villain is societal expectations, and trying to just find the true person within that gets to shine. Everybody there is just trying to find the happiest version of themselves.” 

The first run of Queer Eye: The Musical Parody played to sold-out audiences in a pre-pandemic 2019. I asked Joosten if the show has changed much since. “It honors the last show that we did and it is a completely different show. We have cut characters, we have added characters, we have expanded characters. It is now a full two-act musical when it was a one-act before. It’s been exciting to see the show grow from the playground version through the pandemic as we grew as people.”

Growth is good. But, I wondered, will parody be applied in a punch-up or punch-down direction? For example, in parodying a show that already is a parody, couldn’t things veer into satire territory? Evan Mills, co-director/writer/creator, is certain that is not the case. “They are real people, and we’re parodying real lives . . . taking their qualities and just heightening it to a fun and playful level. When you start writing parodies, you immediately pick up on the things that maybe they get teased about, but then you take it and you’re able to flip it and to twist it and showcase everyone’s strengths in humor.” 

Seasoned actor Evan Tyrone Martin, who plays culture expert Karamo, agrees, explaining how the Queer Eye series has captured his admiration. “It wasn’t something that I necessarily would’ve seen myself watching initially, but once I got into it, the relationships that these men built with each other, with the people that they were helping and even with families . . . these people truly care for each other and want to help each other. What Evan and Heidi put together is so smart and really funny, but also cares so much about these people and the message that they’re trying to convey. They did an excellent job of being funny without losing the heart that exists with the show.”

I wondered if the show would involve improvisation, since it was taking place at Second City. “While there could have been pockets for a scene that we could improvise, we didn’t want to take the risk of anything feeling out of place. And we wanted to really make this a musical and not an improvised musical,” Mills explained. 

Fair enough—inviting audience commentary on LGBTQ+ identities in today’s climate (even in queer-friendly Chicago) could potentially get dicey. I picture well-meaning drunk audience members suggesting inappropriate things, like I dishearteningly once endured at a dog improv show not long ago. (Second City performer Peter Kim left the 2016 Second City e.t.c. show, A Red Line Runs Through It, in the wake of what he described in a Chicago magazine piece as “increasingly racist, homophobic, and misogynistic comments [hurled] at me and my castmates.)

Mills explained, “It’s significantly important that we are opening that first weekend of June. We wanted this to be a Pride show, but we also didn’t want it to just be a Pride show.” The run is all summer long, giving the show the opportunity to showcase queer identities beyond the rainbow-bloated month of June.

Martin added, “So many of the messages around Pride itself are about inclusion and acceptance and just celebrating the person that you are. And this show is all of those things.”

Read More

Denali in her entrance look for RuPaul’s Drag
Race, season 13 Credit: Courtesy the artist

There’s an expectation for most contestants on the drag reality competition show RuPaul’s Drag Race that the gigs will come a’callin’—and for those who have been lucky enough to appear in the big money, Emmy-nominated seasons, this can mean constant and sometimes worldwide travel for a while after their TV appearance.

Denali is one such drag queen. The Chicagoan (via Alaska and Utah) competed in season 13 of RDR, which was filmed during the 2020 Summer of Pandemic and aired on VH1 from January to April of the next year. While Denali left in eighth place at the conclusion of episode ten, she solidified her reputation as a well-balanced performer with dancing and lip-syncing skills that kept her in the sights of her fellow competitors.  

Denali spoke to the Reader before a recent hosting gig for the international Pride Bands Alliance (an evening of symphonic band performances at the Auditorium Theatre presented by Chicago’s Lakeside Pride Music Ensembles) about ice skating, drag, and her adopted hometown of Chicago.  

Salem Collo-Julin: What brought you to Chicago originally? 

Denali: It was a funny transitional period in my life where I was like, OK, I am tired of living on the road. I was doing figure skating tours from about ages 20 to 25, and I wanted to stop living out of a suitcase and to really find a city of my own.

And I knew I was a big city kind of girl. I always wanted to be in a big city, and New York just felt like too much to me. I think for a young kid, there’s that feeling of wanting that midwestern friendly kind of deal all the time, but obviously still wanting to be in a big city. And the only city that had both of those feelings was Chicago.

And had you been actively doing drag before you moved here? 

No, I absolutely hadn’t. I moved here purely as Cordero [Denali’s name out of drag]. And then Denali was developed as I started in the club scenes here in Chicago.

I did some very bad bedroom drag and just played around with friends, but nothing serious. I wasn’t yet studying the craft. It wasn’t until I found Berlin nightclub and this really great group of friends that gave me a lot of advice—that’s where I really started to learn and grow.

Can you remember what turned your head to drag performance? Was there a performer you saw that made you think, “Oh, I want to do that”?

I lived and worked on cruise ships for a while, working as an ice skater and performer on the ships. And there’s a large queer community working on cruise ships, which was honestly the first time in my life that I’d ever been surrounded by a large group of LGBTQ+ people—which was really nice.

And we would all get together on Sundays and we would watch Drag Race. I believe it was season five that did it for me. Oh, Lord. I was in a trance. I was just like, “Oh, what is this? I’m obsessed. I love it.” 

This came at a time in my life when I felt really constrained by a lot of the things around me. I lived on cruise ships. It’s just a super limiting kind of lifestyle. You feel like you’re bound to this massive tin can at sea. And as liberating as that might sound to some people, when you’re on the ship for two, three, four years at a time, it feels really restrictive. And I just felt like the world had to be bigger and more beautiful and more colorful.

What was your queer experience growing up in Alaska and going to Utah for college? 

You know, I grew up in a Christian household in Fairbanks, Alaska. So in general, not only was it a small town, but because I grew up with those ideals, I was taught that my sexuality was taboo and that my sexuality was not to be spoken about. 

I grew up ice skating. That’s all I did. All I did was ice skate because it made me happy. And so by the time I reached age 13, I was like, I have to do something with this. And I felt very limited by my hometown. There was no professional coaching available there. So I decided to take a leap. And I moved to train and professionally skate when I was 15, which was way too young (and my mom agrees with me). 

So as surprising as it may be, Salt Lake City, Utah, was where I came into my queerness the most. I was 16 or 17, and that was where I was finally exposed to some other queer people. And they were in my ice skating, my high school, and my college. That’s where I really felt like I started to blossom and develop. I went to my first Pride there when I was 17.

There is something to that—those places where you wouldn’t expect to see the largest amount of queer people often have LGBTQ+ communities that are just so solid. 

I think it’s because there’s so much restriction in those places that the people that have gotten out of that mindset are even more passionate and more intense about making sure that they are loud and proud and things like that, because they know that around them is a lot of bigotry and hate. So actually, I’ve met some of the queerest people in Utah. 

Denali performed during the intermission of the Chicago Blackhawks Pride Night game in April.

Ice skating still seems like it’s a big part of your life and it sounds like it was something that you jumped into early on. 

My sister was a beautiful ice dancer. And of course, being the young queer kid that I was, I emulated her, and I wanted to be her. She was so beautiful. She was just the most ethereal goddess in my life. And when you’re a young gay thing, you glamorize beauty.

I said something so dumb on [RuPaul’s Drag Race] one episode. I was just like, “I love chandeliers,” when I was in costume as a chandelier. But the rest of my thoughts were edited out. While we were doing post-production voiceovers, I was able to add that as a young queer kid trapped in Alaska, I was drawn to beautiful and ornate things. And I didn’t realize that my obsession with these lamps was just my expression of queerness as a kid.

Do you feel like there’s any difference in how you approach choreography for a drag performance versus something that you’re going to be doing on the ice? 

Choreographing for the ice is a totally different mindset. You’re constantly moving [on the ice]. You take one push and you’re suddenly accelerating. Most skaters are going seven to ten miles an hour or something like that. There’s constant acceleration. It’s dancing, but you are flying at the same time.

And then for drag, [choreography is] not always all about being dynamic, but you’re trying to draw attention to yourself. You’re trying to feel the spotlight. A lot of people tell me that they thought I choreographed a lot of my lip syncs [on RDR], and some of them were, but some were just working out a few moves in my hotel room the night before. 

Chicago Drag Excellence was produced by Denali with TransIt Productions and filmed at the Co-Prosperity Sphere in Bridgeport.

You made a video in 2020 [Chicago Drag Excellence, featuring many Chicago drag performers] and released it online after the season premiered in January of last year. 

We have been in quarantine for so long, and the year prior was so difficult for Chicago drag. Nobody was working. Nobody was happy. Nobody was really doing much with their drag besides creating digital drag videos.

The video was an opportunity for us to all gather safely, laugh again, and to just feel like we were being fabulous all together. There were around 40 performers in the video, and everyone had a two-hour block, and it was a lot. I’m really proud of Chicago doing that. 

What would you tell a drag performer new to Chicago that they must do? 

One thing that you should do if you come to Chicago or if you’re trying to get into the scene anywhere is find your people. You need people, you need your sense of community not only to share skills, share wigs, share costumes, all that stuff, but it’s the whole point of drag, in my opinion. Find your tribe and find the people that you click with and grow with them. 

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Chicago native and Austin resident Samantha Jordan, 33, has been rapping as FURY since 2015, with a sound that emphasizes live-band instrumentation and politically conscious lyrics. Her community activism focuses on housing justice, and until recently she worked in rental assistance for Oak Park Regional Housing. In January 2022, her proposal for renovations to Columbus Park in Austin won a $1.5 million city grant as part of the Chicago Works Community Challenge. 

FURY and south-side rapper-producer BOLY Blaise run the open mike Lyrics & Libations every Wednesday at Hairpin Arts Center. On Friday, June 24, she performs upstairs at Subterranean to celebrate the release that day of the EP FURY REVOLUTION, her first new music since the 2018 EP Black Magic.

As told to Philip Montoro

In 2020, when everything stopped, I couldn’t do music. Thankfully, unemployment went through. I didn’t work for like a year and a half, from the end of March until last August. So I had nothing but time. So I was like, “What is going on out here?” When everything shut down, often all I had was my neighborhood to go to, and I was very upset because there was nothing to do. 

Everything was just closed, and there wasn’t a lot of walkable areas that I felt safe being in, and they were just closing grocery stores left and right. And you just saw disparity after disparity, and they didn’t care. I’ve just seen everything I grew up with closed, shut down, abandoned. 

So this grant came out in May of last year. And I loved the fact that it was a grant that a resident could fill out—you didn’t have to be with any organization. Because I found it difficult to connect with organizations. They kind of just wanted you to pay your dues, and I straight-up had people who were like, well, you just find somewhere to align with for ten years, and then you can do something. 

I did get the idea from—she was a Chamber of Commerce president for Austin at the time, Tina Augustus. She suggested Columbus Park, because I’m just like, should I do it on a vacant lot? It could’ve been a vacant lot, a city-owned park, or a library that you can use this grant—up to $1.5 million—to renovate, to do upgrades. 

And I found out in late October that I was a semifinalist. Then I gave a presentation against two other finalists. 

Columbus Park is huge. It’s historic, it’s on the National Registry for parks, which is very rare for a city park. And so I just went for it. And I found out in January that we won, and I have been over the moon ever since. We’re using it to upgrade the park. So new tennis court, basketball court. And an amphitheater. 

Samantha Jordan, aka FURY, was awarded a $1.5 million Chicago Works Community Challenge grant in January 2022.

Because one of the things I said is we need events here; we don’t have any event spaces. There’s really no bars in Austin—there’s nothing but churches and abandoned buildings. We needed something to where we can have businesses come and see there’s money out here to be made. A lot of times we’re forced to go to Oak Park or neighboring communities like Belmont Cragin or Cicero just to find fun, food, entertainment. There’s not a lot of options in Austin. 

There’s a huge field [in Columbus Park], it’s called the bowling green, which is what they used back in the day—the park is over 100 years old. And they used to use it to bowl on the grass. So there’s like a little hump in the middle of it, but it’s almost the size of a football field. And it’s right by the lagoon, where the water is. So it’s a beautiful location. And I want to have music events, I want to have festivals, I want to have Taste of Austin, I want to make it a place where we can come have pop-ups. 

I’m thinking a nice stage with a covering, some shade in the field, just so we can have events all through the summer and have businesses come and see, “Hey, maybe I should open up here because every time my food truck is here, I sell out.” And that’s the goal, is just development. 

Development—but through music, through something that’s more organic and less trauma-based. People are always like, we got to come together. But if we’re just always talking about how we’re hurt, poor, broke, that’s not what we want. As a younger generation, we don’t want to focus on—we know we’re messed up. What helps us is going to a show, having some drinks, you know, dancing, blowing off that steam. And when you go to events like that, that’s where you meet people, and people can just start forming groups organically rather than like, hey, let’s all just come here and meet and just assume that we’re all going to be on the same page—that has not worked for Black people in general, just because we’re different. 

So I want to focus on having events where we can learn each other, talk to each other. You know, like each other. I lived in Austin five years and didn’t know the people I was around. Only time I heard from my neighbors was when they were fighting, and I’m not gonna be like, “Hi, I’m Samantha. I just heard you cussing out your man. Are you fighting?” 

And green spaces—another part is, hopefully we can add an exercise park where they just have machines that are stationary, and they’re there year-round. So people can come do circuit training and, you know, walk around, and just promote health and wellness and getting back outside.

They’re already starting on the basketball courts. And then the tennis courts should be late summer, early fall—because these are gonna be major renovations. So they may be in phases, but most of it should be done by the end of this year. We still have to design the performance area. So that may be finished early next year, early summer. We definitely want some art, some murals. But the goal for this project is something with a quick turnaround, not a long drawn-out five years.

“Columbus is so big—it goes from the expressway all the way up past Jackson, and from Central to Austin,” says Samantha Jordan, aka FURY. “It has a golf course, nine holes. So it’s like, why don’t we know this? Why aren’t there golfing classes, or tennis, if we have all these things?” Credit: Gonzalo Guzman for Chicago Reader

I got a little 11-year-old. She don’t want me to call her “baby” anymore. She’s still my baby, though! She had virtual class, so it was important for us to get out and walk and not be cooped up in the house 24-7. And that’s when I was like, man, why aren’t there more parks? Why, in the park that is here, is there nothing but open space? 

So I definitely had her in mind. Her school was like two blocks from Columbus Park. Even when I was applying, I was just telling her, “Hey, I’m gonna get this grant.” And she’s like, “OK, ma.” You know kids, they don’t believe nothing. They just think all adults are full of crap. But I was like, “Camille, you guys are gonna be able to do stuff at Columbus Park.” And she’s a believer now. That’s all I gotta say. 

And to get an 11-year-old to believe you—oh, now she loves me. Now we got in the newsletter at her school, so she’s just like, “My mom’s a celebrity! She just won $1.5 million!” Like, it’s real. 

I was performing at one of those Sofar Sounds shows, and someone was talking to me afterwards. And they were like, “Oh yeah, I have a friend. She teaches in Austin at Circle Rock.” And it turns out their friend was my daughter’s teacher. “My friend told me they saw your show. Oh, I couldn’t believe it! Please let me know the next one.” So my daughter really thinks I’m a superstar now. I can’t go back.

After the shutdown, when things started opening back up, I was totally back at the beginning. To help myself get back out there as an artist, as a creative, I hit up my guy BOLY Blaise. And we brought back this open mike that I used to do—this is where I got my start. It’s called Lyrics & Libations. I had a venue that was willing to let me throw something. Hairpin Arts Center, that’s over on Milwaukee and Diversey. And we’ve been throwing this open mike since September. 

We have beer and wine, but it’s open mike—so everything from comedy, poetry, monologues, rap, R&B, country, just everything. And people have come out consistently. I know one week we had Hannibal Buress just drop in randomly. Which was so cool, because he was just, “I saw this on Eventbrite, so I just came to check it out.” 

But that’s how Chicago is—if you build it, they will come. And that’s what I’m excited to do—throw festivals. I know music, and I know food. So I’ve already gone out for another grant. Hopefully I get it next year. The Neighborhood Access Program grant. And that’s kind of the same thing: come up with an idea, something you want to do in your neighborhood, and we’ll see about funding you. I would love to do a summer series to celebrate the new performance area, so I’m hoping it all lines up.

Violet Crime, Da$htone, Barry & the Fountains, FURY
FURY’s set is a release celebration for her new EP, FURY REVOLUTION, which comes out the day of the show. Fri 6/24, 8 PM, Subterranean, 2011 W. North, $15, 17+

My new project, FURY REVOLUTION, is gonna be an EP. It absolutely is about just me coming back into contact with music, with my community. I really had to have a reckoning—2020, it broke me. There’s no pretty way to put it. Because I lost everything. 

In 2020 I had my song “I Won’t,” which is one of my favorite singles, it was put in a Netflix original series called Gentefied. And they put it in two episodes. So I’m like, 2020 is gonna be my year. Like, I got shows booked, my band, all that. And then everything stopped. So this was me asking, Who are you when the music stops? And why do you have this super-conscious music, but you don’t know anybody in your neighborhood? There’s just no connection. 

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