It is a fact of life in a nation of immigrants that government, the courts and social services work best when offered in the native tongue of those immigrants.

That is why a judge may require a translator in court for a defendant from, say, Belarus. That is why voting instructions are offered in languages other than English, such as Spanish and Cantonese.

And the higher the stakes, the less our nation should allow an inability to speak or understand English to be a barrier to fair play and justice.

But when it comes to the State of Illinois agency that bears the heavy responsibility of working with children and parents in family crisis, that bit of common sense — work with the families as much as possible in their own language — too often is not practiced, despite a federal court order.

The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services is required to provide services in Spanish to Latino families, as part of a 1977 order called the Burgos consent decree. But as the nonprofit journalism site ProPublica reports, DCFS has failed for years to abide fully by the decree.

Caseworkers who work with Spanish-language clients may not speak Spanish. Children from Spanish-language families are placed in foster homes where nobody speaks Spanish.

ProPublica first reported in 2019 that DCFS had violated the Burgos decree almost 300 times since 2005, and that number likely was an undercount. Then early last year, Cook County Public Guardian Charles Golbert conducted his own mini-investigation and found that the problem continues.

For 10 months, lawyers from Golbert’s office counted the number of new cases that involved Spanish-speaking families. Then the lawyers checked how many of those families’ case files included a critical document that indicates whether DCFS should be providing the families services in Spanish.

Of the 80 or so cases Golbert’s lawyers identified, as ProPublica recently reported, not one included the so-called language determination form.

Our message today is simple. We know DCFS has a tough job, working to protect and care for the most vulnerable children in the state. And we know state resources are tight. But in a state in which almost 13% of the population speaks Spanish as their primary language, it is obvious that more DCFS caseworkers should speak the language, and the agency should be doing more to hire accordingly.

At the moment, ProPublica reports, DCFS employs just 153 bilingual workers, though under a 2008 state law it should employ 194. Latinos make up about 8% of the 16,000 children in state care. Nobody should feel confident that caseworkers who cannot speak Spanish are fully on top of any case — picking up on signs of neglect or abuse — that involves a family that only speaks Spanish.

If DCFS can’t get there alone — if it continues to fail to meet the benchmarks of the Burgos decree — perhaps it is time for a federal court to appoint an independent monitor.

“When you have an agency with a record of recalcitrance, despite public attention in continuing to neglect its responsibilities, then that is an appropriate time for outside, independent, well-resourced monitoring,” Thomas Saenz, president and general counsel at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, told ProPublica. “Otherwise you’re not going to change the culture.”

State law could come to rescue, if only a bit. This month, Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed into law a bill that creates a task force to examine the disparate racial impacts of DCFS policy on the families that enter the child welfare system. As part of that effort, the task force is expected to explore language, cultural and heritage issues.

Also, DCFS created a Burgos workgroup last year that meets twice a month to address compliance with the court, and monthly reports on violations are being produced.

The Latino population in Illinois continues to grow. The need for DCFS to provide services in Spanish will grow even more pressing.

Send letters to [email protected].

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Bidders for two new suburban casinos will get one last chance to put their best hands together next month in hopes of landing the lucrative, long-sought gambling licenses.

More than two years after casinos were authorized for Waukegan and the south suburbs as part of a sprawling gaming expansion, state regulators on Thursday laid out the clearest timeline yet for issuing those coveted licenses.

Four applicants for the south suburban license and three for Waukegan will make public presentations of their proposals at a special Oct. 13 meeting of the Illinois Gaming Board, which could give initial approvals to the winning projects by mid-January.

Gaming Board Administrator Marcus Fruchter said the presentations will help in “narrowing the field down to three finalists” for the south suburban gambling house, as required under the Illinois gambling law signed by Gov. J.B. Pritzker in June of 2019.

The Waukegan field is already down to three bidders, but those developers will also have a chance to “explain why each would be suitable for licensure,” Fruchter said during a board meeting Thursday.

The eventual six total finalists will then make their “best and final offers” for the licenses in a competitive bidding process, according to Fruchter. Winners could get the early green light to start breaking ground by the second week of January.

That’ll mark two and a half years since Pritzker’s signature created the suburban licenses in a package that promises to nearly double the number of places to bet across the state.

“I understand COVID made delays, but that’s an awfully slow process. That’s a snail’s pace,” said state Rep. Anthony DeLuca, a Chicago Heights Democrat who wrote a letter to Pritzker last month calling on him to “spur IGB into action.” The letter was also signed by Blue Island state Rep. Bob Rita, who shepherds all gaming legislation in Springfield.

State Rep. Bob Rita (right) chats with Marcus Fruchter, administrator of the Illinois Gaming Board, during the public opening of BetRivers Sportsbook in Des Plaines in March 2020.Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times

“It’s disappointing that the fact we have a date in October — still more than a month away — is exciting progress. At least now we have substantive information showing that the process is moving along,” DeLuca said.

Fruchter, who has blamed the pandemic for the licensing delays, said the Gaming Board is doing its best to pick winners “in an ethical, expeditious, transparent, independent and thorough manner.”

At the same time, his perennially understaffed agency has also been tasked with vetting other new casino applicants while also policing an expansion in video gaming and building the framework of Illinois’ entirely new legal sports betting industry from the ground up.

Pritzker, who is counting on the new gambling tax revenue to help fund an ambitious $45 billion capital infrastructure plan, has stayed out of the fray.

The suburban applications were delayed further earlier this year as the Gaming Board struggled to find a consultant to handle the bidding process.

Guests play roulette at Excalibur Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas last year. Casino developers will make their final pitches next month for licenses in Waukegan and Chicago’s south suburbs.Getty

The agency has already given preliminary approvals to new casinos in Rockford and downstate Williamson County, as well as at Hawthorne Race Course in Stickney and at the Fairmount Park racetrack near East St. Louis. None of those selections had to go through competitive bidding.

But the Waukegan and south suburban processes are still well ahead of the crown jewel of the 2019 gaming expansion: the newly authorized Chicago mega-casino. After a tepid response from major casino corporations, Mayor Lori Lightfoot pushed back the city’s application deadline to Oct. 29. It’ll be months before the city picks a developer, let alone advances a proposal to the Gaming Board.

Yet another new casino is in the pipeline in Danville, but they’re behind schedule too, with a new application following an initial bid that fell apart last year.

The Waukegan applicants include a group led by billionaire Neil Bluhm’s Rush Street Gaming, which already runs the state’s biggest existing gambling cash cow, Rivers Casino in Des Plaines. Bluhm is also weighing a bid for the Chicago casino.

His Waukegan proposal is up against bids from Las Vegas-based developer Full House Resorts and Lakeside Casino LLC, a company led by former Grayslake state Sen. Michael Bond, who already has his own video gaming company.

Neil Bluhm, chairman of Rivers Casino, talks with a reporter during the public opening of BetRivers Sportsbook at Rivers Casino in Des Plaines last year.Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times file

The four south suburban proposals, each backed by their respective suburban host, come from Calumet City, Lynwood, Matteson and a site that straddles the border of Homewood and East Hazel Crest.

“This will create jobs and economic opportunity for families,” said DeLuca, who added that he doesn’t have a horse in the race. “That’s what this is about. Not creating new gamblers, but getting people who are spending $100 right across the border in Indiana to stimulate the economy here, where it’s needed so badly.”

The special Gaming Board meeting is scheduled for 9 a.m. Oct. 13 and will be open to the public. It’s not yet known if the meeting will be held in person or streamed online, as has been the case for most of the pandemic.

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Confession: I have always felt warmly toward Texas, but I can’t square the big-hearted, boisterous, self-confident place I’ve known with the petty, mean-spirited, downright vindictive anti-abortion law the state’s Republican legislature and governor have endorsed.

Welcome to Beijing on the Brazos. It’s as if 29 million Texans had surrendered to fundamentalist authoritarianism, brandishing Bibles like copies of Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book, vowing punishment against sinners and informing on their relatives and neighbors.

As I say, this is not the Texas I know: a sprawling, geographically and ethnically complex state larger than France, which sometimes feels like the nation that it was — as Texans never quit reminding you — from 1836 to 1845.

Parts of Texas resemble Louisiana; others, Oklahoma. The Texas panhandle feels a lot like Nebraska, and basically everywhere south of San Antonio feels like Mexico. The territory around Lubbock somewhat resembles the moon. Unless you really put the hammer down, it’s a two-day drive from Beaumont to El Paso or Amarillo.

Texas can be hard to get your mind around. However, having lived there two different times, taught at UT-Austin and traveled everywhere reporting for Texas Monthly magazine, I’ve always felt an intoxicating sense of possibility. If I hadn’t basically married Arkansas, I’d probably live somewhere near Austin.

During my time there, I interviewed a priest in Orange who sponsored two dozen Vietnamese immigrants, covered the great Rockdale football mutiny (undefeated state champs who went on strike against their coach), and hit the road with the Corpus Christi Seagulls, a minor league baseball team. I interviewed migrant workers outside Amarillo, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist at UT-Austin, studied the heavens at the university’s observatory in the Davis Mountains and learned to handle a pistol from an ROTC instructor at Rice University. (Bottom line: Don’t.) I made the pilgrimage to Alvin to interview the great Nolan Ryan.

You don’t meet a lot of shy, retiring Texans. Willie Nelson is your classic example; also, the Eagles’ Don Henley. Buddy Holly, Beyonce, Waylon Jennings and Stevie Ray Vaughn. Jerry Jeff Walker was raised in upstate New York, but his rendition of Gary P. Nunn’s “London Homesick Blues” may be the purest example of slide guitar Texas nationalism extant.

Texas is filled with writers and journalists I admire, from Lawrence Wright and my pal Stephen Harrigan to the late Larry McMurtry. I once drove from Cody, Wyoming, to Little Rock, Arkansas, listening to “Lonesome Dove” and was tempted to carry on to Memphis just to finish the story.

Coming to the point, Texas was also home to two of the strongest American women of my own or anybody else’s generation: Gov. Ann Richards and the inimitable Molly Ivins, the wittiest American journalist since H.L. Mencken.

Molly once observed of a Dallas congressman, “If his IQ slips any lower, we’ll have to water him twice a day.” She described Bill Clinton as “weaker than bus-station chili” — unfair, in my view, but definitely memorable.

One can only imagine what either woman would have made of Texas’ current Gov. Greg Abbott — a poser last seen vowing to protect the state from imaginary invasion during “Operation Jade Helm.” Austin’s own native hoaxer Alex Jones had persuaded thousands of dupes that networks of secret tunnels were being dug between vacant Walmart stores to help ISIS fighters infiltrate. Christian patriots would be imprisoned in FEMA reeducation camps.

Sure enough, the invasion never came. Fresh from that mighty triumph, Abbott has now succeeded in passing an idiotic law empowering every testosterone-challenged goober in Texas to carry a gun anywhere — no lessons or permit necessary. That will cost dozens of lives, but it’s the abortion law that’s getting all the attention.

Look, there has been a strong undercurrent of authoritarianism in Texas culture since slavery times. But this takes it further: If a 13-year-old child gets impregnated by her uncle, Texas now demands that she bear the child. Otherwise, a vindictive relative or nosy neighbor can collect a $10,000 bounty for winning a lawsuit against an abortion provider and, possibly, putting them out of business.

It’s like the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act on steroids. Already, a self-described “Christian” group has put up a website, ProLifeWhistleblower.com, inviting people to inform on anybody obtaining or facilitating abortions. The cheapest form of cheap grace imaginable.

Anyway, it’s official: Every Texas woman’s womb belongs to the state. What’s more, thanks to the cunning and cowardice of the U.S. Supreme Court, every state where fundamentalist Bible-beaters hold sway will soon rush to enact similar laws — even if it ultimately means political disaster, which I think it does.

Because Americans just won’t stand for turning embittered ex-husbands and vengeful mothers-in-law into bounty hunters. So spare me the theological and biological fundamentalism. Nobody thinks abortion is a good thing, but it’s sometimes the least-bad option. Other people’s intimate life decisions are nobody else’s business, in Texas or anywhere else.

Gene Lyons is a columnist for the Arkansas Times.

Send letters to [email protected].

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Patrick Finley, Jason Lieser and Mark Potash debate why exactly Matt Nagy went to Cabo at the same time as Matthew Stafford and make their predictions for Sunday night’s Bears-Rams game.

New episodes of “Halas Intrigue” will be published regularly with accompanying stories collected on the podcast’s hub page. You can also listen to “Halas Intrigue” wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Luminary, Spotify, and Stitcher.

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The pandemic continues to change plans on a moment’s notice. These events were a go as of presstime, but please check listed websites before heading out.

Music

Get Your Groove Back

STAY SMALL

You’ll have no shortage of opportunities to see Kweku Collins live. The 25-year-old rapper, who first gained attention for the self-recorded tracks he made in his bedroom as a teenager in Evanston, is only going to keep getting bigger as he nears the release of his much-anticipated next full-length album.

But you could be running out of time to catch Collins up close in a hyperintimate 100-capacity venue. That’s what’s on the menu for Collins’s fall residency at Lincoln Park’s cozy Golden Dagger, where he and guests are playing four nights, premiering unreleased music from his forthcoming album.

Golden Dagger isn’t an entirely new joint, even though it’s been refreshed and remodeled enough during the pandemic for owner Donnie Biggins to decide it deserved a rebrand. The bar formerly known as Tonic Room has a brand-new stage, reconfigured to improve sightlines and eliminate the L-shaped platform Biggins says created “the most awkward experience for a performer.”

Biggins says he’s committed to making Golden Dagger the most artist-friendly small venue in Chicago, in part by returning 100 percent of ticket sales to the performers. “They didn’t get a [Shuttered Venues Operators Grant], you know? They’ve been out of work; they’re hurting,” says Biggins, who also serves as the talent booker for FitzGerald’s in Berwyn and has been a working musician himself. “That’s our commitment to their recovery.”

Kweku Collins September 30 and October 9, 21, and 30, Golden Dagger, goldendagger.com

GO BIG

Radius, a sprawling music venue in a 55,000-square-foot warehouse conversion in Pilsen, opened in February 2020 — just in time to close for COVID-19. The new hall returned to live programming in June with a slate of EDM giants (Tiësto, DJ Snake) and legacy rock acts. On the latter roster: turn-of-Y2K Chicago pop-punkers Alkaline Trio, who headline a Riot Fest show with Bad Religion.

Alkaline Trio November 13, Radius, radius-chicago.com

Comics

Superfans: Play Dress-up

A superhero, an Autobot, and an Overwatch Assassin walk into a convention center … Oh, you’ve heard this one before? If you’ve ever attended one of Chicago’s two big comic conventions, you know that cosplayers are no joke. At both Wizard World and the Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo, many fans get decked out in elaborate, often masterfully homemade costumes based on their favorite characters.

Cosplay-watching is one of the highlights of the conventions, which return this fall after a pandemic pause. The costumes could be even more astonishing than usual — these cosplayers have had a lot of downtime to work on their looks.

Wizard World October 15–17, Stephens Convention Center, Rosemont, wizardworld.com
C2E2 December 10–12, McCormick Place, c2e2.com

Film

Hit a Drive-in Film Fest

COVID-19 led the city to rediscover the drive-in. Indeed, over the last year and a half, we’ve attempted to enjoy all sorts of culture from our cars: drive-in concerts, drive-in children’s theater, even a drive-through opera. But nothing can top a drive-in movie. Thankfully, the city’s best pop-up drive-in is sticking around. ChiTown Movies, originally a pandemic pivot by Pilsen’s ChiTown Futbol facility to keep its workers employed when indoor sports were off limits, is now a permanent fixture. Check out a full calendar at chitownmovies.com.

OCTOBER HIGHLIGHTS

Asian Pop-Up Cinema Through October 12
Chicago International Film Festival Select screenings run October 13–24.
Halloween family movie nights Late October.

Parade

Haunt the Streets

While it covers part of the same segment of Halsted Street as the Chicago Pride Parade (canceled again this year, due to COVID-19), this long-running neighborhood Halloween celebration is a much more low-key affair — or as low key as any event that features professional fire spinners can be. But the main attractions here are the costumes. With cash prizes for the best scary, cosplay, drag, youth, group, and other costumes, contenders tend to go all-out.

Haunted Halsted Halloween Parade October 31. Halsted from Belmont to Brompton. 6:30 p.m.: contest registration; 7:30 p.m.: parade. Free. northalsted.com/halloween

Big Ideas

Book It to Bronzeville: Black Arts Movement, Considered

An invaluable presenter of eclectic public programming, the Chicago Humanities Festival won’t be producing a full fall festival this year. But the organization is inching back into in-person events around the city, including an enticing “neighborhood hub day” in Bronzeville on October 2. An agenda of book discussions and documentary screenings centering on the Black Arts Movement culminates in a conversation with — and performance by — musician and “beat scientist” Makaya McCraven at the Harold Washington Cultural Center.

Makaya McCraven October 2, Harold Washington Cultural Center, chicagohumanities.org

Theater

The Curtain Rises, Again

Her Honor Jane Byrne opened on March 7, 2020, at Lookingglass Theatre and closed due to COVID-19 restrictions less than a week later. And even while her play was dark, playwright J. Nicole Brooks was still picking up accolades for it: In July, the American Theatre Critics Association announced Her Honor Jane Byrne as the 2020 recipient of its Harold and Mimi Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award, dubbing it the best new script to have premiered outside of New York City in 2020.

“For me, this play is history joining myth. Because everyone I run into, they’ve all got a Mayor Byrne story,” Brooks told Chicago in December 2019.

Her Honor Jane Byrne is about the city’s first female mayor, and though Byrne appears as a character in the play (portrayed by Brooks’s fellow Lookingglass ensemble member Christine Mary Dunford), it isn’t exactly centered on her. Brooks wanted to take on the 1981 episode in which Mayor Byrne took up residence in the Cabrini-Green housing project.

Brooks, who was a young child in Washington Park at the time, aimed to capture the complicated swirl of reactions to the mayor’s temporary move — from Byrne’s enemies on City Council, to cops on the Cabrini beat, to the project’s full-time residents, to the adults in Brooks’s life who crowded around the TV, asking questions like “Is she crazy?” and “What does she think that’s going to do?”

I saw what turned out to be the play’s final performance before a “pause” that looked like it might never end, and I was frustrated on behalf of everyone involved that more audiences didn’t get to see this richly reimagined slice of Chicago history. Happily, Lookingglass plans a full run.

Her Honor Jane Byrne November 11–December 19, Lookingglass Theatre, lookingglasstheatre.org

ALSO CONSIDER

At Steppenwolf Theatre, Namir Smallwood and Carrie Coon resume their roles in Bug, a revival of a 1996 play by Coon’s husband, Tracy Letts. The play’s conspiracy theorist themes stand to be even more resonant now.

Bug November 11–December 12, Steppenwolf Theatre, steppenwolf.org

Heidi Schreck’s play What the Constitution Means to Me will be back at the Broadway Playhouse. Schreck’s cheekily autobiographical work examines the country’s blind spots around race and gender.

What the Constitution Means to Me October 26–November 21, Broadway Playhouse, broadwayinchicago.com

Comedy

After Last Year, Who Doesn’t Need a Laugh?

GO BIG

Feeling vaxxed and relaxed? Catch a big name at the grand old Chicago Theatre. State Street’s crown jewel has returned to its full capacity of 3,600, and several standups worth seeing will be taking the stage. Our top pick: Hasan Minhaj. The Indian American comic and former Daily Show correspondent brings his new tour, The King’s Jester, to the city for four shows across two nights. The last time Minhaj was here, in 2018, he was trying out material for his Peabody Award–winning TV series Patriot Act.

Hasan Minhaj October 1–2, Chicago Theatre, msg.com/chicagotheatre
Also Consider Jo Koy, October 15–17; Mike Birbiglia, November 4; Chelsea Handler, November 12

STAY SMALL

The delightfully peculiar Maria Bamford returns to Wicker Park’s 200-seat Den Theatre for six shows, October 14–17 (thedentheatre.com); Matt Braunger stops on his Out of the House Tour at Schubas Tavern on November 19 (lh-st.com); and Ronny Chieng (The Daily Show, Crazy Rich Asians) comes to Thalia Hall on December 5 (thaliahallchicago.com).

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A person was being questioned by police after a 15-year-old girl was shot in the leg inside a Fernwood home on the South Side Thursday afternoon.

The girl was shot around 2:45 p.m. in the 10000 block of South Lafayette Avenue by someone who approached her, pulled out a gun and fired, Chicago police said.

She was transported to Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn in good condition, police said.

Detectives were questioning a person of interest.

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Bidders for two new suburban casinos will get one last chance to put their best hands together next month in hopes of landing the lucrative, long-sought gambling licenses.

More than two years after casinos were authorized for Waukegan and the south suburbs as part of a sprawling gaming expansion, state regulators on Thursday laid out the clearest timeline yet for issuing those coveted licenses.

Four applicants for the south suburban license and three for Waukegan will make public presentations of their proposals at a special Oct. 13 meeting of the Illinois Gaming Board, which could give initial approvals to the winning projects by mid-January.

Gaming Board Administrator Marcus Fruchter said the presentations will help in “narrowing the field down to three finalists” for the south suburban gambling house, as required under the Illinois gambling law signed by Gov. J.B. Pritzker in June of 2019.

The Waukegan field is already down to three bidders, but those developers will also have a chance to “explain why each would be suitable for licensure,” Fruchter said during a board meeting Thursday.

The eventual six total finalists will then make their “best and final offers” for the licenses in a competitive bidding process, according to Fruchter. Winners could get the early green light to start breaking ground by the second week of January.

That’ll mark two and a half years since Pritzker’s signature created the suburban licenses in a package that promises to nearly double the number of places to bet across the state.

“I understand COVID made delays, but that’s an awfully slow process. That’s a snail’s pace,” said state Rep. Anthony DeLuca, a Chicago Heights Democrat who wrote a letter to Pritzker last month calling on him to “spur IGB into action.” The letter was also signed by Blue Island state Rep. Bob Rita, who shepherds all gaming legislation in Springfield.

State Rep. Bob Rita (right) chats with Marcus Fruchter, administrator of the Illinois Gaming Board, during the public opening of BetRivers Sportsbook in Des Plaines in March 2020.Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times

“It’s disappointing that the fact we have a date in October — still more than a month away — is exciting progress. At least now we have substantive information showing that the process is moving along,” DeLuca said.

Fruchter, who has blamed the pandemic for the licensing delays, said the Gaming Board is doing its best to pick winners “in an ethical, expeditious, transparent, independent and thorough manner.”

At the same time, his perennially understaffed agency has also been tasked with vetting other new casino applicants while also policing an expansion in video gaming and building the framework of Illinois’ entirely new legal sports betting industry from the ground up.

Pritzker, who is counting on the new gambling tax revenue to help fund an ambitious $45 billion capital infrastructure plan, has stayed out of the fray.

The suburban applications were delayed further earlier this year as the Gaming Board struggled to find a consultant to handle the bidding process.

Guests play roulette at Excalibur Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas last year. Casino developers will make their final pitches next month for licenses in Waukegan and Chicago’s south suburbs.Getty

The agency has already given preliminary approvals to new casinos in Rockford and downstate Williamson County, as well as at Hawthorne Race Course in Stickney and at the Fairmount Park racetrack near East St. Louis. None of those selections had to go through competitive bidding.

But the Waukegan and south suburban processes are still well ahead of the crown jewel of the 2019 gaming expansion: the newly authorized Chicago mega-casino. After a tepid response from major casino corporations, Mayor Lori Lightfoot pushed back the city’s application deadline to Oct. 29. It’ll be months before the city picks a developer, let alone advances a proposal to the Gaming Board.

Yet another new casino is in the pipeline in Danville, but they’re behind schedule too, with a new application following an initial bid that fell apart last year.

The Waukegan applicants include a group led by billionaire Neil Bluhm’s Rush Street Gaming, which already runs the state’s biggest existing gambling cash cow, Rivers Casino in Des Plaines. Bluhm is also weighing a bid for the Chicago casino.

His Waukegan proposal is up against bids from Las Vegas-based developer Full House Resorts and Lakeside Casino LLC, a company led by former Grayslake state Sen. Michael Bond, who already has his own video gaming company.

The four south suburban proposals, each backed by their respective suburban host, come from Calumet City, Lynwood, Matteson and a site that straddles the border of Homewood and East Hazel Crest.

“This will create jobs and economic opportunity for families,” said DeLuca, who added that he doesn’t have a horse in the race. “That’s what this is about. Not creating new gamblers, but getting people who are spending $100 right across the border in Indiana to stimulate the economy here, where it’s needed so badly.”

The special Gaming Board meeting is scheduled for 9 a.m. Oct. 13 and will be open to the public. It’s not yet known if the meeting will be held in person or streamed online, as has been the case for most of the pandemic.

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The second half of the Cubs season has been a whirlwind and after the trade deadline brought a significant amount of roster turnover, it looked like the Cubs would be in for a long final two months. Things started out rough and headed toward rock bottom, including the team’s second 11-game losing streak of the season.

But after the long losing streak ended, something happened. The Cubs’ group of unknowns and first-time major leaguers began to show life and started playing good baseball in the process.

Guys like Frank Schwindel, Rafael Ortega and Patrick Wisdom had never had success in the big leagues before this season. The success they are having is not only having a positive impact on the team, but as individuals who want to continue to make a name for themselves and potentially be part of the team’s plans in 2022.

“The best way to press forward is to continue to push guys who are playing really well and that’s not their ceiling,” interim manager Andy Green said. “As long as the guys are climbing, they’re not trying to just hold their ground and there’s a huge psychological advantage in that. So anybody that has accomplished what a few of our guys have accomplished in the last month or last week, there’s always more and as long as you’re hungry for more and pushing for more, you’re more concerned about your trajectory than you are your legacy.

“These guys, like there is no legacy here. So they’ve got a long way to go. You know, there was a legacy for the group that came before for Willson [Contreras] and Kyle [Hendricks]. But other than those few guys, these guys need to establish something and so they’re just pushing forward. And that’s the healthiest way to go.”

The success of guys like Wisdom, Ortega and the latest offensive outburst from Schwindel hasn’t just affected the Cubs’ win total. But it’s been getting the attention of the team’s veteran players and despite being out of contention for the first time in a long time, the vibe in the clubhouse hasn’t been one of a beaten team.

”I know I said in an earlier interview that we have really good talent because I see that,” catcher Willson Contreras said. “And the way they’re playing right now is nothing but amazing. . . . I haven’t felt this energy in a really long time.”

It would have been easy for the players who remained after the deadline to do their own thing. But once the dust cleared from the team’s trades, the Cubs have played some of their best baseball since they were back in first place in June.

They’ve also been one of the league’s best offensive teams recently, scoring 4.9 runs per game and ranking fifth in MLB with 44 homers over the last month.

“From day one with this group at the trade deadline, I feel like all of us kind of came into the same situation together,” right fielder Jason Heyward said. “We were all kind of a bit of a whirlwind. The guys that have been here from the beginning to now and the guys that have come aboard, this has been awesome to watch their work, watch their preparation, watch us help each other grow.

“This is the first time in my career being in that position to play spoiler. And, it’s a lot of fun playing good baseball, of course, but we have some incentive to do it and go out there together. So it’s really nice to see results.”

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

This afternoon will be mostly sunny with a high near 76 degrees. Tonight will be partly cloudy with a low around 57. Tomorrow will be sunny with a high near 81.

Top story

Historic treasures offer journey back in time at Claude Barnett, Etta Moten Barnett estate sale

With such a treasure trove of history, it was a matter of time before museums swooped in.

And now a fourth of the Bronzeville estate of Associated Negro Press Founder Claude A. Barnett and his legendary actress/socialite wife Etta Moten Barnett is en route to the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.

That leaves plenty remaining for this estate sale to be conducted Sept. 18-19, at an undisclosed Bronzeville location. Offering a journey back in time — and a peek at lives once considered Black royalty — the sale is being handled by Estate Sale Goddess, a rare Black-owned firm operating in the lucrative estate liquidation industry.

There are the Swarovski, Waterford and Cartier crystal, the diamonds, gold and Tiffany; St. John, Prada, Yves St. Laurent and other designer haute couture of decades past.

But then there’s the never before seen ephemera and historic artifacts of a trailblazing couple, handed down through two subsequent generations.

“This is the most important collection that we have ever seen in our lives, and we don’t know if we will ever top this,” Lynne McDaniel said of the treasures that once filled the Barnett/Ish family’s three-story Victorian mansion on South King Drive.

Maudlyne Ihejirika has more on the Barnetts’ legacy and the upcoming estate sale.

More news you need

The mayor of suburban Crestwood, Louis Presta, intends to plead guilty to charges in his federal red-light camera bribery case, a lawyer for Presta told a judge in court today. The guilty plea would scuttle a trial that’s set to begin in early December.

With nearly $11 million in donations from West Coast supporters, San Francisco venture capitalist Jesse Sullivan officially entered the Republican race for Illinois governor today. Sullivan, 37, is the latest — and so far, best-funded — Republican to announce a challenge to Gov. J.B. Pritzker.

The Rev. David Ryan has been reinstated as pastor at St. Francis de Sales Parish and School in Lake Zurich after an independent archdiocese investigation determined decades-old allegations of child abuse were unfounded. Ryan was asked to step away from pastoral duties last November following accusations he sexually abused minors about 25 years ago.

The Chicago Police Department increased its nightly police presence in River North last weekend after a recent uptick in violent crime prompted an outcry from community leaders, residents and business owners. In a press conference yesterday announcing the new initiative, police said the increased presence will be permanent.

A federal judge today gave six months of community confinement to Matthew Knight, a key player in a large-scale, international gambling ring based around Chicago. He is the sixth person to be sentenced in a series of related gambling cases filed in Chicago’s federal court since early 2020.

A New York museum is collecting meaningful artifacts, aiming to ensure that the nearly 3,000 people who died in the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 won’t be forgotten. Among those remembered is Chicago trader Andrea Haberman, who was 25 and on a business trip in New York City that day, the Associated Press reports.

A bright one

Latest book lets novelist Colson Whitehead ‘have a bit more fun’

The 36th Printers Row Lit Fest, which is scheduled to kick off Saturday, will include novelist Colson Whitehead’s first public appearance since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Whitehead, who has written 10 novels including the Pulitzer Prize-winning works “The Underground Railroad” and “The Nickel Boys,” is co-headlining this year’s event with award-winning journalist and novelist Dawn Turner. (Other panelists and speakers include Sun-Times editorial board member Lee Bey.)

“I’m excited,” said Whitehead. “I’m excited for the new book, and being in Chicago. I love Chicago for a lot of events, but I haven’t been in the last couple years, so I think it’s a great place to return to doing events.”

Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Colson Whitehead says Chicago is “a great place to return to doing events” amid COVID-19.Chris Close

Whitehead’s latest creation, “Harlem Shuffle” (Penguin Random House, $28.95), comes out Sept. 14. It’s set in 1960s New York, where a furniture salesman named Ray Carney, who is descendant of a thief, is involved in a crime saga.

As for the lit fest, all programs are hosted in tents and indoor venues; masks are required and guests over the age of 12 will be required to show proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test result from the previous 48 hours, along with a valid photo ID.

The festival encourages guests to adhere to CDC-mandated social distancing or to wear masks whenever that is not possible.

Read more from Evan F. Moore’s conversation with Whitehead here.

From the press box

Your daily question ?

How did Sept. 11, 2001 change your life?

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

Yesterday, we asked you: What’s some of the best advice you’ve ever received? Here’s what some of you said…

“Look out for #1 and don’t step in #2.” — Greg LaVeau

“Two actually: When you know better, do better. Release the idea that things could’ve been any other way.” — Peg Dusza

“The best advice I’ve ever received was from my late Grandfather: ‘Follow your dreams and you will find happiness.'” — Erika Hoffmann

“When I became a mom for the first time, my mother gave me advice I’m still using 24 years later: ‘Talk to your kid, listen to what she says, and don’t be afraid to admit you are not perfect.'” — Oneda Cushman

“‘Keep your friendships in good repair.’ My grandpa used to say it and he was right.” — Michael R Butz

“You can learn something from everyone, so long as you listen.” — George Curran

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A 19-year-old South Shore man was ordered held without bail Thursday for allegedly killing a man he was buying a gun from over the Labor Day weekend.

Surveillance cameras recorded Daveon Houston when he left his apartment Sunday afternoon in the 7800 block of South Clyde Avenue to meet with Peter Lee Jackson Jr. in a nearby alley, Cook County prosecutors said.

Surveillance cameras nearby recorded, Jackson, 20, opening a bag he was carrying and Houston reaching inside and taking out a gun that he placed in his waistband, prosecutors said.

Jackson opened the bag again and reached in before taking out a firearm magazine and a white box that contained ammunition for the gun, prosecutors said. Authorities were able to conclude the white box had ammunition inside based on text messages the men exchanged, prosecutors said.

Daveon HoustonChicago police

The two men eventually walked back to Jackson’s red Ford Focus that was parked near Houston’s apartment. Jackson got into the front seat and Houston got into a rear passenger seat, prosecutors said.

Surveillance video, though grainy, showed Houston lifting his hand up behind Jackson’s head inside the car while other surveillance cameras recorded audio of two gunshots, prosecutors said. Jackson’s head then is seen on video going limp and his body slumped over inside the car, prosecutors said.

Afterward, Houston went to the driver’s seat and appeared to search Jackson’s body before running back to his apartment, prosecutors said.

Chicago police officers found Jackson shot twice in the head and pronounced him dead at the scene, officials said. Two 9-mm shell casings were recovered.

After obtaining a search warrant for Houston’s apartment, investigators found a 9-mm handgun inside that matched the bullet casings found near Jackson’s body, as well as a .40-caliber handgun, prosecutors said.

While in custody, Houston identified himself in photos taken from the surveillance recordings and admitted to buying and taking the gun from Jackson, which he said he planned to pay for via Apple Pay, prosecutors said.

Houston told detectives his phone was having problems sending the money and he gave the gun back to Jackson, who started to load it, prosecutors said. Believing Jackson was going to rob him, Houston allegedly said he grabbed the gun, causing it to fire and strike Jackson.

Houston was subsequently charged with first-degree murder and unlawful use of a weapon.

Jackson was one of six people killed in gun violence in Chicago over the holiday weekend. At least 61 others were wounded.

Houston has been working for a landscaping company owned by a relative to support his son, an assistant public defender said.

He is expected back in court Sept. 28.

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