President Biden has been criticized for calling voter-suppression activities by Republicans the greatest threat to our democracy since the Civil War. Note that he said “threat to our democracy,” not “crisis.” This distinction is important because many major crises did not threaten our democracy. I don’t know that the Civil War did.

Now consider what the Republicans are up to. They start with structural advantages from ideas that may have seemed sensible in 1787, but are not in 21st Century America. Twice in this century, they have elected presidents without a popular majority. Achieving a 50-50 Senate requires about 10 million more Democratic votes than Republican votes nationwide.

SEND LETTERS TO: [email protected]. Please include your neighborhood or hometown and a phone number for verification purposes. Letters should be approximately 350 words or less.

Republicans are constructing a defense-in-depth for their power, if they can achieve power. They try to eliminate Democratic voters through roll purges. They obstruct Democratic voters with rules intended to affect Democratic areas more than Republican ones. They attempt to make as few Democratic votes as possible for the House of Representatives count, through gerrymandering. They are taking the power to count votes from traditional local and state officials and giving it to partisan entities. They had, already, prepared for challenges to these actions by packing the federal courts with judges whom they believed would be unsympathetic to voting rights.

If it all works, Republicans will control Congress without the benefit of popular support. In addition to the obvious powers that this confers, there is a new one. On January 6, the House Republicans showed a willingness to invalidate Electoral College votes from Democratic-voting states. They would be able to appoint the president of their choice, regardless of the votes.

We could have only the appearance of democracy by the end of this decade. When has our democracy previously been so threatened?

Curt Fredrikson, Mokena

Ending gun violence

The catastrophic gun violence plaguing our urban areas should surprise nobody. A society that allows many millions of guns to reach the young, poverty-stricken masses is practically demanding that they turn their neighborhoods into shooting galleries.

Giving guns to the vulnerable young is no different than giving them firecrackers. They’re only fun when they shoot them off.

The intersection of capitalism and institutional racism are responsible for America’s killing zones. The gun/ammo makers gleefully exploit cultist reverence for the 2nd Amendment to ward off virtually any regulation whatsoever. The gun-toters outside of those killing zones are either oblivious to the daily street slaughter, or cheer it on as a means of culling the minority population.

In addition, our society does virtually nothing to alleviate the joblessness, despair and rootlessness tha with unlimited gun availability, guarantees unending bloodshed.

All other solutions are simply happy talk.

Walt Zlotow, Glen Ellyn

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Reshorna Fitzpatrick stood with four other pastors as police placed white markers near shell casings strewn on the street and sidewalk near Theodore Herzl Elementary School in North Lawndale.

Five people — three of them teens — had been shot there, minutes after five other people had been shot just blocks away. A 15-year-old boy died in that shooting.

“I’m heartbroken,” said Fitzpatrick, pastor of the Stone Temple Missionary Baptist Church down the street. “It’s heartbreaking and shocking because we had gotten to a place where we were really experiencing some peace.”

The two shootings Wednesday evening were among three mass attacks in Chicago in a single day. The other occurred close to midnight in Lincoln Park when someone in a passing car shot eight people who had been riding in a party bus.

At least 34 other shootings this year have wounded four or more people, according to a Sun-Times analysis of city data. Over the last five years, Chicago has recorded the most mass shootings in the nation by far, according to the Gun Violence Archive.

Three of the victims from the attacks were 15 and younger, continuing a trend of rising violence against children this year.

The neighborhood where they were shot, North Lawndale, has been more deadly this year than this time last year, from 21 homicides to 30.

“I really wish that the community would come together and operate from a place of peace,” Fitzpatrick said. “That they would establish some type of faith, some type of order in the homes with their family members and have conversations, particularly around peace, and also around just being community — to just come in and be one.”

The first attack happened around 6 p.m. when a gunman or gunmen opened fire at the corner of Douglas Boulevard and Christiana Avenue, according to Chicago Police Deputy Chief Ernest Cato.

Damarion L. Benson, 15, was shot in the head and was taken to Stroger Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, police said. Police earlier gave his age as 14. He lived about 2 ¹/₂ miles away on the Near West Side.

Another boy, 16, was also struck in the head and was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital in “grave” condition, police said.

Three men were also taken to Mount Sinai Hospital, where they were stabilized, police said. A 22-year-old was shot in the foot and another, 24, was struck in the leg. A third man, also 24, was shot in the hip.

Minutes later, three teenagers and two men were shot outside Herzl Elementary near Douglas Boulevard and Ridgeway Avenue, police said. They included a 14-year-old boy who was getting into a car with his dad. The four other victims were 15, 17, 19 and 22.

Police described it as “extremely chaotic” scene with “multiple shooters.” A car had flipped on its side, apparently the result of someone making a turn at a high rate of speed, police said.

The 19-year-old was in critical condition with a gunshot wound to the chest, the 17-year-old was in serious condition with a gunshot wound to the back, the 14-year-old was shot in the arm and was in good condition, the 15-year-old was shot in the leg and was in good condition and the 22-year-old was struck in the thigh and also was in good condition.

Chicago homicide database and map

Homicides in Chicago — A list of every victim: Our comprehensive database tracks every homicide in the city with information about victims, locations and more.

Though only three blocks apart, the two shootings didn’t appear to be related, Cato said. He pleaded with community members to come forward with information.

“We’re going to need an all-hands-on-deck approach, and that approach is going to involve … our community getting involved and saying what’s going on,” he said. “Our community who has cellphone pictures, who has Facebook information. We’re going to need your help.”

On the two mass shootings occurring so close to one another, Cato said, “Unfortunately, we’re seeing this not only in our city. We’re seeing this in our country, mass shootings. If you’re asking for my feelings, I’m not happy about it at all. I think all of us should be sad about what’s going on in our country and in our city.”

Police Supt. David Brown complained Thursday morning that many of the victims were not cooperating with investigators.

“That signals to us that, ‘We want revenge. We don’t want police solving this case,'” he told reporters at a news conference. “It’s not an exaggeration to say we are in a battle for the heart and soul of some of these communities as it relates to violence.”

Fitzpatrick, the executive pastor of Stone Temple, said she was working in a nearby community peace garden when she heard gunshots. Then she saw people running and shooting each other.

“It kind of reminded me of some of the westerns that my dad [watched],” said Fitzpatrick, who said there was rapid shooting for 30 to 60 seconds.

Fitzpatrick said her church hosts “Wellness Sundays” on the boulevard and invites community members to socialize and participate in activities like face painting and tight-rope walking on the grassy median.

“It’s really been working,” she said. “That’s why this is really shocking to me.”

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Raise your hand if you remember the Olympics Triplecast from the 1992 Summer Games in Barcelona.

Keep your hand raised if you paid the $125 it cost to receive 15 days of 24-hour coverage on three channels – aptly named Red, White and Blue – through your cable provider.

I’m sure lots of hands went down.

The Triplecast, a partnership between NBC and Cablevision, was a colossal failure. Americans didn’t see a need to pay for coverage beyond what they could watch on NBC for free. NBC and Cablevision hoped for 2 million subscribers and ended up with 200,000.

But as you can see by how much Olympics coverage has grown, they were on to something.

As the Summer Games in Tokyo officially begin Friday with the opening ceremony, merely a slice of the 7,000 hours of coverage NBC will provide, I think of how prescient the Triplecast was. The only thing wrong with it was the price.

NBC’s coverage of these Games will span six channels (NBC, USA, CNBC, NBCSN, Olympic Channel, Golf Channel) and Peacock, NBC’s streaming service. It also can be found at NBCOlympics.com and the NBC Sports app.

While it won’t be hard for people to find the Olympics, it might be hard for some to watch. Popular opinion says the Games shouldn’t go on. Japan declared a state of emergency because of a surge in COVID-19 cases, with a majority of citizens still unvaccinated.

Competitions will take place without fans, making for the type of broadcast many sports viewers grew to detest last year. Plus, competitors already have been ruled out of the Games after testing positive for the coronavirus, and there’s a fear more will follow.

Like most big sporting events in the last year, viewership figures to be down, and not just for those reasons. Viewing habits are fractionalized, the 14-hour time difference won’t work with some viewers’ schedules and there has been almost zero buzz in advance of the Games.

It’s an ominous backdrop, but NBC is undaunted.

“As a broadcaster of the Games, if there’s going to be an Olympic Games, we’ll be here to chronicle it,” NBC Olympics executive producer Molly Solomon told reporters. “We also are following the strict and rigorous pandemic protocols that the IOC and the Japanese government have put in place. So we’re fully confident that we can responsibly produce these Games.”

Solomon believes people are craving a shared experience that the Olympics can deliver. They also can fill a void in the sports calendar, coming right after the NBA Finals, during MLB’s dog days of August and right before the NFL preseason is in full swing.

NBC will go to great lengths to make up for athletes not having moral support on site. The network’s “Friends and Family” innovation will integrate watch parties from the U.S. into the broadcast. Their biggest endeavor will come from Universal Resorts in Orlando, Florida.

“We, alongside the [United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee], are putting together a two-week-long watch party in primetime where family members of Team USA will attend and be able to watch coverage and cheer for their loved ones together,” Solomon said. “We’re going to have a reporter there and the ability to connect relatives with athletes.”

Despite a potential drop in viewership, the Olympics figure to be the most watched programming on TV, particularly in prime time. During the 2016 Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro, NBC averaged 27 million viewers in prime time (including digital), according to Sports Media Watch.

NBC won’t ignore the COVID crisis in Japan. Solomon said that will be evident from the network’s first prime-time broadcast at the opening ceremony. Lester Holt, formerly of CBS 2 Chicago, will set the scene and explain how the Olympics are operating within the state of emergency.

“Our policy and our coverage of news has always been, how does that impact the athletes, how does it impact the Games, how does it touch the Games going forward,” Solomon said. “So as news around any of these issues comes up, of course, we will cover it.”

There will be plenty more to cover. Gymnast Simone Biles might be the American face of the Games. The U.S. basketball teams are always appointment viewing. The women’s soccer team is trying to become the first to win a World Cup and Olympic gold in succession. And baseball and softball are back.

There’s no doubt NBC hopes to chronicle competitions more than COVID.

Remote patrol

• The White Sox return to ESPN’s “Sunday Night Baseball” this weekend against the onetime archrival Brewers in Milwaukee. Eduardo Perez will fill in for Alex Rodriguez, who’s taking a prescheduled week off. (Talk about good timing.) Maybe ESPN can dig up video of former managers Terry Bevington and Phil Garner going at it in 1995.
• ESPN2 will air the first round of the NHL Draft at 7 p.m. Friday from NHL Network studios in Secaucus, New Jersey. John Buccigross will host alongside Canadian broadcaster Sportsnet analysts Elliotte Friedman and Sam Cosentino. NHL Network will air Rounds 2-7 beginning at 10 a.m. Saturday.
• Pat Hughes will fill in for Jon “Boog” Sciambi for the Diamondbacks-Cubs game Sunday on Marquee Sports Network. Sciambi will call the Sox-Brewers game that night nationally for ESPN Radio.

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A federal judge on Thursday sentenced a veteran Chicago police officer to 15 months in prison for his role in a large-scale, international gambling ring.

Nicholas Stella, 43, is the third person to be sentenced for his role in the gambling ring once run by Vincent “Uncle Mick” DelGiudice. U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall last year gave three months of home detention to DelGiudice’s father, Eugene “Geno” DelGiudice. And last month, she gave six months of community confinement to Todd Blanken.

But she also ordered Stella into Chicago’s federal lockup six months ago, after prosecutors said Stella “violently assaulted his girlfriend” last January at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Rosemont.

Kendall cited that incident when she handed down Stella’s sentence Thursday, telling him “there can be no tolerance for that in our society.”

The judge also said Stella’s status as a police officer is “so troubling.” Seeing an officer act as though he is above the law brings suspicion to “all of the really good officers out there who are trying to do their jobs — and they are trying so hard, with integrity and good character,” Kendall said.

Before Kendall sentenced him, Stella acknowledged he was “100% guilty” and said he’d “never, or would ever, use my police powers or resources to aid in any crime, let alone gambling.”

Prosecutors have described the operation led by Vincent DelGiuduice from 2016 until 2019 as “an absolutely massive, long-term, very profitable” international Chicago-based gambling ring, and the judge has said the “absolute breadth of this case was remarkable.”

Also charged as part of the February 2020 indictment was Mettawa Mayor Casey Urlacher, brother of Chicago Bears great Brian Urlacher. Donald Trump pardoned Casey Urlacher during the final hours of his presidency in January.

The feds have tied the DelGiudice gambling ring to the mob-connected gambling ring once run by bookie Gregory Paloian of Elmwood Park.

Prosecutors asked the judge to sentence Stella to between a year and 18 months in prison, accusing Stella of betraying his oath as a Chicago police officer “by playing an integral role in a multimillion-dollar illegal gambling operation.” They said it employed “overseas co-conspirators, encrypted communications tools, and engaged in significant money laundering” in an effort to avoid detection.

They said Stella worked as a bookie, and they said his gamblers generated more than $450,000 in profits in 2018. The feds also estimated that Stella likely oversaw bettors who wagered tens of millions of dollars.

They have said Stella destroyed his phone when investigators sought to search it but have not said how. Stella’s defense attorney Michael Clancy told the judge Thursday that Stella threw the phone away but “actually went back to the Dumpster and tried to find the phone” before speaking to the feds and admitting his role in the gambling ring.

Clancy also insisted in a court memo that Stella and those connected to him accounted for only up to 3% of the gambling operation’s business. He said Stella spent 20 years as a Chicago police officer, receiving two department commendations and 40 honorable mentions. Clancy said Stella has not carried a weapon since 2011 because of an injury.

A CPD spokesperson said his status with the department is inactive.

“[Stella] was a gambling junkie who started working for Vincent [DelGiudice] to support his gambling addiction,” Clancy wrote. “Stella gambled away all of the money he made as a bookie. … Stella lost on video gaming and sports gambling. Stella did not own a house, drive an expensive car, or live lavishly. Rather, he put every cent he made from booking (and then some) right back into the coffers of the operation.”

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Eight people traveling on a party bus were wounded in a drive-by shooting Wednesday night after it stopped for a break at a gas station in Lincoln Park.

It was the third mass shooting of the day and occurred just hours after two attacks on the West Side wounded a total of 10 people, including a 14-year-old boy who died.

In the latest attack, two Jeep Grand Cherokees and another car pulled up in the 1600 block of North LaSalle Drive shortly before midnight and gunmen began firing at the group, Chicago police said.

Police did not say if the victims were on or off the bus and released no other details of the shooting. No one was in custody and police released no description of the attackers.

A 24-year-old man was shot in the arm and a 26-year-old woman was shot in the leg, police said. They were both taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where the man was in fair condition and the woman was in serious condition.

A 23-year-old man was struck in the groin and was also taken to Northwestern in serious condition, police said. Two men, 42 and 52, were struck in the leg and taken to Illinois Masonic Hospital, where they were in fair condition.

A 27-year-old man was struck in the chest and later dropped off at Northwestern in critical condition, police said. A 29-year-old man was struck in the arm and went to Rush University Medical Center, then transferred to Stroger Hospital in fair condition.

A 26-year-old woman was shot in the hand and drove to Jackson Park Hospital where she was in good condition, police said.

Read More

PEORIA — Former Bradley athletic director and Thornridge basketball coach Ron Ferguson died July 8 at a Peoria senior care facility at age 89.

Ferguson had suffered from dementia the last few years. But he built an indelible legacy at Bradley and through a lifetime in sports.

There will be a celebration of life for Ferguson from 4-7 p.m. Thursday, July 22 at Bradley’s Hayden-Clark Alumni Center, located at 816 N. Tobias Lane in Peoria.

The longtime coach and administrator took over as BU athletic director from Chuck Orsborn in 1978 and re-made the Braves athletic department through his reign, which ended in 1996.

One of the last things Ferguson did was hire Jim DeRose to coach a Bradley soccer program for which Ferguson envisioned big things.

“Ron just loved Bradley, loved Peoria,” DeRose said. “In the years after he left, he’d always reach out and ask if there was anything he could do to help me, anything we needed. What a great man to have in BU athletics.

“I wouldn’t be here celebrating 25 years if not for Ron Ferguson taking that chance.”

Ferguson — head coach of the iconic Dolton Thornridge boys basketball teams of the early 1970s — was a charter member of the Illinois Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame and also a member of the Bradley Athletic Hall of Fame and the Greater Peoria Sports Hall of Fame.

Ferguson set a high bar for athletic directors to follow after him at Bradley. And he did all he could to help them succeed.

“I will always be appreciative of the warm welcome Ron gave to me when I arrived at Bradley six years ago,” Bradley vice president of intercollegiate athletics Dr. Chris Reynolds said. “During a lunch, his love of Bradley University and Bradley Athletics was abundantly clear as he recounted fond memories he experienced with our Braves sport programs.

“Ron is an icon throughout our community, the state of Illinois and the Missouri Valley Conference and his passion for Bradley Athletics serves as an inspiration to me and many others.”

Ferguson was a standout three-sport athlete at Harvey Thornton High School, helping the basketball team reach the Sweet 16 at Huff Gym in Champaign as a junior in 1948.

He studied physical education at Illinois with hopes of becoming a coach. After graduation and a stint in the army, he became an assistant coach in three sports at Thornton Junior College (now South Suburban College).

Ferguson was renowned as the coach of the Thornridge boys basketball team, which won back-to-back state titles in 1971 and 1972 and is regarded as the best team in state history. That team included Quinn Buckner, who went on to Olympic and NBA fame.

Ferguson went on from Thornridge to serve as assistant coach and assistant athletics director at Illinois State for three years, then moved to BU’s athletic helm.

“I was blessed to inherit a great situation from Ron,” said former BU athletic director Ken Kavanagh, who took over after Ferguson left in 1996 and now is in his 12th year as AD at Florida Gulf Coast. “Both Ozzie (Orsborn) and Fergie lived in Naples when I came down here, and I got to visit with them a lot, was blessed to have their friendship for such a long time.

“We had Peoria Day down here, because there were a lot of people from central Illinois in this area and they’d get together. Ron got talked into going to one, and at the end of the first banquet he attended, they announced he and his wife, Linda, were the new co-chairmen of the group. That’s just how he was, you could always count on him to be involved.”

Ferguson led Bradley’s basketball exit from Robertson Field House for the brand new and much larger Carver Arena.

On his watch, Bradley basketball returned to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in 25 years. He also spearheaded Bradley athletics into a new fundraising era and enhanced or built facilities for softball and soccer.

The soccer program and women’s sports were launched. He developed what is now the Braves Club and took athletic fundraising to new levels at the university.

Ferguson also pushed for Illinois State to join the Missouri Valley Conference, seeing an opportunity to save travel expenses and create a rivalry.

A heavyweight statewide, he helped bring the state high school all-star basketball games to Peoria, and later, his expertise was invaluable in assisting the city land the Class A and Class AA state high school basketball tournaments for Carver Arena.

Ferguson moved from the athletic director’s chair in 1996 to assistant to the president, where he remained for three years before retiring.

“When I was AD, I wasn’t a desk guy sitting there going over the budget every five minutes,” he said in a 2013 Journal Star story. “I got out in the community. That’s what I was hired to do was be the front guy for the athletic department.

“I was very happy at Bradley and love Peoria. I was happy at Illinois State, too. I never had a job in my life where I was unhappy or got fired. I enjoyed every place I’ve been.”

In lieu of flowers, the family asked that donations be made to the “Ron Ferguson Scholarship” at Bradley.

Read more at usatoday.com

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I’ve Got The Hippy Shakes

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Tedeschi-Trucks Band is the perfect band to revisit Layla and all the other assorted love songs

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By Howard Moore,
today at 11:40 am

What’ll you do when you get lonely
And nobody’s waiting by your side?
You’ve been running and hiding much too long
You know it’s just your foolish pride

We all know the story. Beatles legend George Harrison is married to model Pattie Boyd. It’s not working out. Harrison’s friend, guitar hero Eric Clapton is smitten with Ms. Boyd. Although she’s not happy with George, she’s not ready to leave him and certainly not for one of his best friends. People tend to do strange things when they’re in love, especially if it’s not returned. Eric Clapton wrote “Layla”, a song about unrequited love that turned into one of classic rock’s greatest anthems.

On November 9, 1970, Clapton and some of his favorite musicians at that time released the double album “Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs” under the pseudonym of Derek and the Dominos. One of those musicians was guitarist Duane Allman from The Allman Brothers Band. For seventy-five minutes the two guitarists traded licks. The guitars were searing and soaring. It’s one of the greatest guitar-centric albums ever. Fifty-one years later, those guitars still holds up.

If it was only the guitars that would be enough, but the album was much more than that. The songs that Clapton either wrote or covered showed how much in love he was with Boyd. You could feel the pain and angst in his vocals. When you combine those vocals with outstanding music, it makes for a special album. “Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs” is certainly that and more.

I tried to give you consolation
When your old man had let you down
Like a fool, I fell in love with you
You turned my whole world upside down

Derek Trucks was born in 1979; nine years after the release of “Layla.” He said as he grew up his father helped him get to sleep by playing “Layla” and also the music of The Allman Brothers Band. The latter certainly made sense as his uncle Butch Trucks was a founding member and drummer for the band. By the time he was ten years old, Trucks was becoming a child prodigy on the guitar and he was obsessed with the slide guitar playing of Duane Allman. By the time he was twenty, he formally joined the Allman Brothers Band after several years of performing with them as a guest artist.

Susan Tedeschi was born on November 9, 1970. Coincidentally, that was the same day as the release of “Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs.” Her bluesy voice has been compared to many great artists from the past. She formed her own band in 1993. She married Derek Trucks in 1991. Both maintained their own bands before deciding to somewhat meld them together to form the Tedeschi-Trucks Band.

It’s easy to classify Tedeschi-Trucks as a jam band. They’re known for their live performances in which many of the songs are stretched out with solos from Trucks on his slide guitar. While they perform their own original material, they also do plenty of covers of popular songs from the classic rock era. Some of those have come from the “Layla” album. It wasn’t a huge reach to go from three or four tunes to performing the entire album in one set.

Make the best of the situation
Before I finally go insane
Please don’t say we’ll never find a way
And tell me all my love’s in vain

In 2019, the Tedeschi-Trucks Band was performing at the LOCKN’ Festival. The fans attending the concert had no idea what they were about to hear. This wasn’t unusual because the Tedeschi-Trucks setlist is constantly changing, even from one night to the next. The crowd settled in to hear the performance of “Layla Revisited”. The album was performed in its entirety from start to finish.

To pull this off, the band needed more guitars for a more powerful sound. Joining them that night was Trey Anastasio, from the band Phish, and Doyle Bramhill, who has played and toured with Eric Clapton, as has Derek Trucks, for many years. To say it worked is an understatement. What the fans heard and also shows up on the record is more than ninety minutes of rocking guitars….both solos and dueling licks.

While Anastacio and Bramhill more than hold their own and provide some tasty solos, the highlights from this set are provided by Derek Trucks and his now-legendary slide guitar. Each time he stretches out a lengthy solo, it can’t help but remind you of Duane Allman and his legendary slide play on the original Layla album. This is nothing new. Trucks has been doing this and giving all of us those same feelings for a couple of decades. However, on this album, he’s reaching a new high. This is one of his best performances yet.

The only downside for me on this album was I needed more Susan Tedeschi, especially in a lead singing role. Yeah, the vocals by Anastacio and Tedeschi-Trucks member Mike Mitchell are fine, but fans of the band come to hear the great voice of Tedeschi. Next time, more Susan…a lot more of her, please. But that’s just a minor complaint, especially when you get more than an hour of guitar greatness.

They are very few bands around today that can do justice in re-doing “Layla and Other Assorted Lovesongs.” Tedeschi-Trucks Band, because of their history with the music and their skilled musicianship made Derek and his Dominos proud.

Layla, you’ve got me on my knees
Layla, I’m begging, darling, please
Layla, darling won’t you ease my worried mind

Related Post: The Allman Brothers Band finale

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Reshorna Fitzpatrick stood with four other pastors as police placed white markers near shell casings strewn on the street and sidewalk near Theodore Herzl Elementary School in North Lawndale.

Five people — three of them teens — had been shot there, minutes after five other people had been shot just blocks away. A 15-year-old boy died in that shooting.

“I’m heartbroken,” said Fitzpatrick, pastor of the Stone Temple Missionary Baptist Church down the street. “It’s heartbreaking and shocking because we had gotten to a place where we were really experiencing some peace.”

The two shootings Wednesday evening were among three mass attacks in Chicago in a single day. The other occurred close to midnight in Lincoln Park when someone in a passing car shot eight people who had been riding in a party bus.

At least 34 other shootings this year have wounded four or more people, according to a Sun-Times analysis of city data. Over the last five years, Chicago has recorded the most mass shootings in the nation by far, according to the Gun Violence Archive.

Three of the victims from the attacks were 15 and younger, continuing a trend of rising violence against children this year.

The neighborhood where they were shot, North Lawndale, has been more deadly this year than this time last year, from 21 homicides to 30.

“I really wish that the community would come together and operate from a place of peace,” Fitzpatrick said. “That they would establish some type of faith, some type of order in the homes with their family members and have conversations, particularly around peace, and also around just being community — to just come in and be one.”

The first attack happened around 6 p.m. when a gunman or gunmen opened fire at the corner of Douglas Boulevard and Christiana Avenue, according to Chicago Police Deputy Chief Ernest Cato.

Damarion L. Benson, 15, was shot in the head and was taken to Stroger Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, police said. Police earlier gave his age as 14. He lived about 2 ¹/₂ miles away on the Near West Side.

Another boy, 16, was also struck in the head and was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital in “grave” condition, police said.

Three men were also taken to Mount Sinai Hospital, where they were stabilized, police said. A 22-year-old was shot in the foot and another, 24, was struck in the leg. A third man, also 24, was shot in the hip.

Minutes later, three teenagers and two men were shot outside Herzl Elementary near Douglas Boulevard and Ridgeway Avenue, Cato said.

An 18-year-old man was shot in the upper body and was taken in critical condition to Mouint Sinai Hospital, police said.

Two boys, 15 and 17, were taken to Stroger Hospital in good condition, police said. The 15-year-old was shot in the leg and the 17-year-old suffered a graze wound to the back.

A third boy, 14, was shot in the arm and taken to Mount Sinai Hospital in good condition, police said. A 22-year-old man was struck in the thigh and taken to the hospital in good condition.

At the scene, a car was flipped on its side, apparently the result of someone making a turn at a high rate of speed, according to Cato.

Though only three blocks apart, the two shootings didn’t appear to be related, Cato said. He pleaded with community members to come forward with information.

“We’re going to need an all-hands-on-deck approach, and that approach is going to involve … our community getting involved and saying what’s going on,” he said. “Our community who has cellphone pictures, who has Facebook information. We’re going to need your help.”

On the two mass shootings occurring so close to one another, Cato said, “Unfortunately, we’re seeing this not only in our city. We’re seeing this in our country, mass shootings. If you’re asking for my feelings, I’m not happy about it at all. I think all of us should be sad about what’s going on in our country and in our city.”

Fitzpatrick, the executive pastor of Stone Temple, said she was working in a nearby community peace garden when she heard gunshots. Then she saw people running and shooting each other.

“It kind of reminded me of some of the westerns that my dad [watched],” said Fitzpatrick, who said there was rapid shooting for 30 to 60 seconds.

Fitzpatrick said her church hosts “Wellness Sundays” on the boulevard and invites community members to socialize and participate in activities like face painting and tight-rope walking on the grassy median.

“It’s really been working,” she said. “That’s why this is really shocking to me.”

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A new day will soon dawn at Steppenwolf Theatre Company.

The Tony Award-winning Chicago company on Thursday announced the appointment of co-artistic directors — Glenn Davis and Audrey Francis — marking the first time in Steppenwolf’s history that the job will be shared by two individuals, and the first time that a person of color will helm the troupe.

Davis and Francis, both ensemble members in the company, will assume their leadership roles in late August, following the departure of artistic director Anna D. Shapiro, who announced in May that she was stepping down from the post she’d held since 2015.

“We knew that Anna was most likely not going to renew her contract, so the ensemble had already been in discussion [since last fall] about the succession plan. And through all of those discussions, two beautiful things were born: one, deciding to adopt a co-artistic director model, which to us is basically ensemble leadership. And the second was it was the first democratic process that the ensemble had in electing the two next artistic directors,” Francis said during a recent joint interview with Davis.

“Glenn and I raised our hands as a team and the ensemble voted. And because of the amazing work [that late artistic director] Martha [Lavey] and Anna had done before us, this felt like a natural evolution for the company. Because we already operate as an ensemble company, this idea of ensemble leadership … is such a great exploration for us because Glenn and I have two very different world views and life experiences. It can only benefit the company and the city.”

Davis and Francis have extensive experience locally and across the globe in the theater world, on stage, behind the scenes and in educational settings.

Francis boasts a resume as actor, director, teaching artist and educator, having co-founded Black Box Acting in 2009, serving more than 1,000 Chicago-area theater students and artists. A transplanted Coloradan, she’s a graduate of The School at Steppenwolf and familiar to theatergoers for her roles in “The Doppelganger (an international farce),” “Between Riverside and Crazy” and “I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter.”

Davis, a native of Chicago’s South Side, is a graduate of the Theatre School at DePaul University and the first African American to graduate from the Birmingham Conservatory for Classical Theatre at the Stratford Festival in Ontario, Canada. His work at Steppenwolf includes “Downstate” and “The Brother/Sister Plays.” He’s a partner at the Cast Iron Entertainment collective along with Sterling K. Brown, Brian Tyree Henry, Jon Michael Hill, Andre Holland, and Tarell Alvin McCraney.

“I wouldn’t say doors were closed to me as an artist of color, but when you’re a Black artist, the doors are limited in number,” Davis said. “So we formed this production company and we started to build projects in film, TV and theater. … If the world is not going to put us in this, we are going to put us in this.”

The duo already has a sense of how to divvy up the job.

“Glenn is definitely going to be the point person on programming and institutional advancement,” Francis said, “and I’ll be the point person on things like education and artistic and organizational leadership. But not one decision will be made without us being in conversation with each other.”

Central to their plans will be Steppenwolf’s new 50,000-square-foot Arts & Education Center, scheduled to open this fall.

“We have a beautiful new building that will be an entry point to reach out to communities in Chicago that don’t normally get to come to places like Steppenwolf … communities that have been historically marginalized, to be honest, that don’t get the chance to come to Lincoln Park and experience cultural entities like Steppenwolf,” Davis said. “So we think of that building as a love letter to the city. The arts and education building will be pivotal in terms of all the things we will do going forward. There’s a big audience we want to cultivate of the next five, 10, 15 years, and that will be their entry point. But also we want to continue to center the ensemble, that everything continues to emanate from the artists who built the company years ago and who are the main ingredient.”

Contributing: Darel Jevens

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As reported in the Chicago Daily News, sister publication of the Chicago Sun-Times:

On the morning of Sunday, July 20, 1969, Chicagoans kept one eye on the sky and the other on their daily paper. Since Wednesday, all news centered on the three-astronaut crew of Apollo 11, which was scheduled to land on the moon that day. If everything went well, man would walk on the moon.

In Houston, Sun-Times correspondent William Hines covered the expected — though nevertheless extremely suspenseful — 34 minutes in which Apollo 11 floated behind the moon, coasted towards the surface and lost contact with mission control.

To successfully maneuver into lunar orbit, the ship’s engine needed to gulp “12 tons of fuel in six minutes of operation, reducing Apollo’s weight from 48 tons to 36 between 12:22 p.m. and 12:28 p.m.,” Hines wrote.

For 10 minutes after that, “it was the case here at mission control of no news being good news. Each passing second after 12:37 p.m. added to the likelihood that a crucial lunar orbit insertion maneuver had been carried out successfully on schedule,” Hines reported.

Had the ship resumed communications at 12:37 p.m., the reporter noted that it would have spelled disaster for the mission and ended the chance to make history.

As the astronauts got their first close-up glimpse of the moon’s surface, commander Neil Armstrong told mission control that no training, simulations or rehearsals could have prepared him for what he was seeing, Hines said.

“The pictures and maps brought back by Apollos 8 and 9 have given us a very good preview of what to look at here,” Armstrong said. “It looks very much like the pictures; but like the difference between watching a real football game and one on TV, there’s no substitution for actually being here.”

Gazing out at the moon’s surface, Armstrong later quipped, “The view is worth the price of the trip.” Hines said experts estimated the trip to the moon cost $3.5 million, but others put that price tag closer to the $1 billion mark. (From 1960 through 1973, the Apollo program spent more than $25 billion developing the rockets and other equipment for those missions.)

That night, a Sun-Times photographer headed to State and Madison downtown to capture Chicagoans who watched the moon landing from their homes and storefront windows. Outside a Walgreens, residents stood reading the electronic news ticker near State and Madison.

From the Sun-Times archive.

The moon landing happened on a Sunday long after the papers had finished publishing for the day. The Chicago Daily News picked up the story the next day with a full-page photo of the astronauts unveiling the American flag on the moon and an accompanying story.

“Neil Armstrong, commander of lunar landing craft Eagle, set first foot on the powdery surface at 9:56 p.m. (Chicago time) with these words: ‘One small step for man, but one giant leap for mankind.’ Twenty minutes later he was joined by Edwin E. Aldrin Jr. The two U.S. astronauts explored the moon surface for 2 hours and 11 minutes before returning to the Eagle,” the paper reported.

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