Chicago native Mare Ralph has been a board member at Girls Rock! Chicago since 2021 and a camp organizer since 2019. From 2014 till 2018 they lived in Louisville, where in 2015 they began working with Rockshops, a weekend-long music camp that had launched the year before as part of the festival Louisville Outskirts. In 2016 the camp expanded to a week and became Girls Rock Louisville, which last year changed its name to Out Loud Louisville to better welcome trans and gender-expansive youth. 

Ralph is also a guitarist, and they’ve played in several Chicago bands—most famously Scotland Yard Gospel Choir, which they joined in 2006. A tour-van accident in 2009 (which Ralph describes as “life-changing”) stole the group’s momentum and led it to dissolve in 2012, but it also spurred Ralph to return to school. They’ve since finished a bachelor’s in education and a master’s in urban planning and policy, and today they work as a housing policy organizer for Chicago-based nonprofit Housing Action Illinois. 

What really got me involved when I was in Louisville was coming to understand the radical politics that are also a major part of Girls Rock Camps and Queer Rock Camps. And part of that is an idea of taking up space and recognizing that the music that you create has value—even when and sometimes because it does not conform to the highest technical standards. 

I recognized that not only could I be a part of this camp, but that many of my experiences allowed me to be uniquely helpful—growing up as a queer person in a small town and being able to reflect on my own ability to use music to help me through tough times. 

Camp also provided a space for me where I began to recognize that I identify as nonbinary. Often it was campers that I saw being out and being themselves and openly talking about their identities and who they are—that experience was really inspiring and helped me to recognize that about myself. 

My feeling is that young people are in a process of figuring themselves out and figuring out who they are. And ultimately, what our camp strives to be is a safe place to do that. 

Sometimes we’ll see a returning camper from the previous year, and they’re coming in with different pronouns, a different name, and different ideas about who they are. That’s really rewarding, that young people feel like this is still a place for them. 

And that’s also true on the side of organizers and volunteers. To put it frankly, going from being someone who identified as a woman while playing in bands, to then being someone who identifies as transmasculine or nonbinary, it’s not as if the patriarchy opens its doors. I’ve been really grateful for trans boys who come to camp and still feel like it’s a place where they belong. 

A couple years ago, I remember a friend asking, “This is something you’re super involved in, and I know that in your personal life you’re striving to be seen and have your identity affirmed by the outside world. Is it annoying to be wearing a Girls Rock! Chicago shirt?”

That first weekend camp, I remember we were hanging out before the concert, and I was with another volunteer who’s a drum instructor and a band coach. One of the campers—a maybe ten-year-old drummer—turned to her and said, “Are there more boys in bands than there are girls?” 

The volunteer and I just looked at each other. The recognition of the years of being asked if you’re the merch girl, or just shitty comments from sound dudes or whatever—that sort of recognition, in the look that we shared. But also, how amazing to be learning an instrument without any knowledge of that sort of added pressure or baggage! To just be choosing an instrument, thinking this is what I want to play, this is what I want to explore. It’s pretty awesome.

Being the person who’s helping everybody get their instruments on before they go onstage is so rewarding. And again, this 13-year-old doesn’t care how many records my band sold 15 years ago. They don’t care who we played with, or who our booking agent was, or all that stuff that seems so important and so necessary and infiltrated my mind during so many years of playing in a band. 

I’m talking to this kid and saying, “You’re gonna get up there. It’ll probably sound a little different than when we were playing in the classroom,” just reminding a kid of the chord changes in their song. Just saying, like, “You’re gonna be great, and everyone is going to be so excited to see you and celebrate you.”

That’s such an accomplishment, for a kid to be able to get onstage and perform something that they’ve created—a song that they’ve created with other campers that they maybe didn’t even know a week ago. And I’m able to say, like, “I’ve been there. I get nervous too before going onstage. But remember, you can look out into the crowd and see your band coach and your guitar instructor. Everyone’s gonna be cheering for you.” 

It’s a great reminder to me as a 41-year-old—yeah, I can make something up, and that can be something that stays in your head and you’re singing to yourself. Maybe the first three years in Louisville, every year, there was at least one cat-themed song. Which were really awesome!

Campers can come into camp without the framework of “I’m going against the grain, and I’m gonna be in a band,” but even if that’s not present, there’s definitely awareness of societal expectations. And so there are these little feminist anthems that always end up coming out at camp. 

Like Chicago, Louisville is a very segregated city. The “Ninth Street Divide” is what people call it—the West End of Louisville is historically Black. And we had campers coming from very different socioeconomic backgrounds. Sometimes you’re not sure, musically, what people’s backgrounds are—one camper can be coming to learn their third instrument, while someone else has never held a drumstick. 

We began to more directly confront the divide that was being reflected in our camp—of having volunteers that were mostly white and mostly coming from a rock background—and really working to decenter whiteness and build leadership among our volunteers and musicians that were people of color and specifically Black women. Louisville has a badass history of Black feminism, as the world has come to see in the past few years.

One thing we started thinking about is, while it’s awesome that this 12-year-old is really obsessed with Queen and might hear a Queen song at camp, it shouldn’t only be that kid who has that moment of recognition. And so as part of our applications, we started asking all our campers their three favorite songs at the moment, and then we put together a playlist that we would play during lunch. So that every person had that moment of hearing a song. The campers were not aware that was the reason we were asking for these songs, but we just wanted to make it clear that whatever your jam is, it’s welcome. 

Stage fright is always something that we’re dealing with. Something that we stumbled upon as a really good, low-key way to introduce performing was karaoke. Thank God for YouTube—you can just look up “Losing My Religion karaoke,” and there’s a video that has all the lyrics.

We started doing this every day after lunch. So we’re doing karaoke, and one camper chose the Adele song “Rolling in the Deep.” It starts off, she’s singing, and slowly, everybody that’s hanging out in the gym just starts clapping along to the beat. And then the chorus starts up, and it’s a very powerful song—you know, what a crescendo—and every single camper, people who went to school right down the street in the West End and kids who were coming from the suburbs, everyone knew this song and was sharing this and just singing along as loud as they could. Those moments of pure joy and fun, and singing along with your friends to a song that you love—you can’t plan that.

The camp that happened just after the Parkland school shooting, a group of maybe 14- or 15-year-olds ended up writing a song calling for gun control. And you had people who were coming from a perspective of thinking about school shootings and not feeling safe in school, and also people who have gun violence as a part of their daily lived experiences in these historically neglected redlined communities. 

[Let’s Rock!] is taking place at First Presbyterian Church of Chicago. That church is really doing a lot of awesome things for the community—it has a great history of organizing. Gwendolyn Brooks taught writing classes there. In the late 60s, the church organized with the Blackstone Rangers in workforce development programs. 

All the restrooms are all-gender restrooms, so it’s a very welcoming space as well. And huge and beautiful—the first time I took a tour of it, we’re on the third floor, and I was like, “Is that a basketball court?” It has a full basketball court on the third floor! 

[Let’s Rock!] is a really good way to get to know more people and to make friends. We don’t often have opportunities as adults. Our campers often are, like, this is a stop on their summer of basketball camp or ballet or whatever. 

The first year we had an adult camp in Louisville, we were warned by our friends at the Nashville camp that there was a high proportion of divorces coming out of the Ladies Rock Camp—an indication of how empowering the experience was! It resulted in people prioritizing their own well-being and their own mental health and making positive choices in their lives, and in some cases leaving marriages that they weren’t happy in. I can’t guarantee that that will result—I mean, we won’t put it in the marketing materials, maybe just to reassure any spouses or long-term partners. . . . 

The other thing that’s really been cool is getting to know people who have bands and play regularly. I hate to say it, but I am not scouring the Reader for Early Warnings every week the way I was 20 years ago. And so it’s been great to learn about cool bands that are women or gender-nonconforming or trans folks. Through the rock-camp ecosystem, people have been able to plan tours and find couches to sleep on. It’s a really special supportive environment of musicians.

[What drew me to Girls Rock] was joining together with women and gender-nonconforming and trans people to recognize each other and just acknowledge—we’ve all had experiences of not feeling like we quite belonged in the music scene. We’re able to come together and share what we know with young people. 

That was, for me, the beginning of returning to playing music for the reason I started when I was a sad teenager—trying to express how I felt about the world around me.

Correction: The print version of this story misstates the closing day of Let’s Rock! as Sunday, February 20. The correct date is Monday, February 20.

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Like most Chicagoans, I’ve only been half-heartedly following the race for mayor. So on January 31, I settled in to watch WGN’s mayoral debate and see who the best candidate was.

An hour and a half later, I was both outraged at some of the things I heard and relieved that it was over. I was saddened at the prospect of Chicago’s future with the possibility of some of these candidates at the helm. Overall, it was a poor night for Chicago.

I heard a lot of the same old tried-and-failed ideas. Many candidates promised more police and tougher penalties. We hear these same things every election cycle. And how is that working out? Illinois has some of the strictest gun penalties in the country. If an individual possesses a firearm, discharges one, or discharged one to cause the death or serious injury in the commission of a felony, judges are required to add 15, 20, or 25 years, respectively, to their sentence. Despite that, Chicago still has violent crime and high rates of murder.

Doesn’t it seem like this strategy has failed? It’s lazy politics. Candidates can shout for tougher penalties and longer sentences all they want, but this only expands mass incarceration. It does nothing to stop the violence and crime. It’s a good sound bite, but a failed policy.

Some candidates would have you believe that the violence is widespread in Chicago. While violence can and sometimes does spring up anywhere, the highest concentrations of violence are in neighborhoods like Little Village, Englewood, West Garfield Park, and Fuller Park. It’s concentrated in mostly Black and Brown neighborhoods, which experience many forms of disadvantage, from poverty to segregation, food and job deserts, and high unemployment. 

When Paul Vallas talks about putting 500 new cops out there, I wonder if he’s talking about these neighborhoods. He certainly isn’t walking down the streets of any of these neighborhoods in his commercials.

Willie Wilson’s comments were particularly distasteful. He likes to say, “Take the handcuffs off the police.” It’s tone-deaf. Most people, especially in Black and Brown communities, are afraid of having interactions with the police. Yet he evokes the image of someone slipping the leash off an attack dog.

Wilson said that the police should go after criminals and “chase them down like rabbits.” What kind of Chicago does he want to preside over? We have laws, and people have rights. We don’t hunt people down like animals in this country. We don’t need this kind of rhetoric. People who break the law are human. 

The police Wilson wants to uncuff will be invading disadvantaged and underserved Black and Brown communities. I am sympathetic to his son having been killed. I can’t imagine the hurt and pain he must have. But it sounds like he wants to use the city’s resources for vengeance. This, more than anything else, should be disqualifying.

I was also interested to listen to Chuy García and see if he had any new ideas. He didn’t. He said, “Downtown is the engine that runs the city,” and called Loop investment, “building a more equitable Chicago.” Is that what equity means to him—investing in the richest parts of the city, when a quarter of the city does not have rail service, or when neighborhoods like Englewood are struggling to hold on to even one grocery store? Our policy cannot be one of neglect and disinvestment. 

Politicians love the status quo. Punishment is the most consistent response to urban crime, violence, and poverty. All you have to do is look at the nightly news to see that these policies have failed.

Black and Brown Americans are less likely to live in communities with strong institutional support. Exclusionary housing policies and discrimination pushed Black Americans into segregated neighborhoods. The government and the private sector neglected these communities, leaving them with underfunded schools, food deserts, lack of quality healthcare, unemployment, and poverty.

We need to understand the harm caused by widespread disinvestment and abandonment. We need to focus on poverty, segregation, disinvestment, and the widespread availability of guns to people who shouldn’t have them.

I only really heard one candidate speak about investing in neighborhoods and that was Brandon Johnson. He spoke about workforce development and investing in small businesses. He seems to understand the need to shift from punishment and focus attention on the policies that create and sustain poverty in the first place.

Johnson spoke about crime anxiety in Chicago, and he is correct. Community violence translates into fear of public spaces and leads families to leave their neighborhoods if they can afford to. In many of these neighborhoods, large numbers of adults are currently incarcerated in the justice system. This overwhelms the adults and institutions that remain and leaves young people who live there vulnerable to the violence of others.

The city must find ways to invest in these disadvantaged communities. It must help Black and Brown small businesses get off the ground to help build a sense of community and employ people from the neighborhoods. The city also must incentivize developers to build in underserved communities. We need to push for affordable housing. Many vacant lots can be bought cheaply and developed. As heavily taxed as the city is, we need to offer tax credits to developers who come to these communities.

Fifty percent of all 911 calls are for nonviolent issues. These calls should not be handled by the police but by certified experts and community members. This would allow for more police presence in the areas that need them and allow members of the community to be treated as something other than suspects. We need to find alternatives to police for nonviolent calls. We have to explore what can exist rather than what does exist.

We also need more mental health clinics. We cannot discount the significance of community issues, addiction, and undiagnosed mental health issues. We need services for trauma related to community violence and we need to develop strategies to shift funding to culturally competent providers of treatment and healing.

The next mayor needs to reach out to Chicago’s youth. Young people want to be politically active. We need to help them form community organizations that interrupt violence and empower young people to lead change efforts in their schools and communities. The youth need understanding and simply to be heard. The mayor needs to listen—not just to understand the root causes but also the root consequences of exposure to them. How can anyone feel like our leaders really care about us when they won’t even take the time to listen?

Lastly, Ja’mal Green said that “hope is not a plan.” In and of itself, that is true. But hope is also an important form of resistance, both political and personal, and it reaffirms what is possible and what is worth fighting for. 

Hope is a political activity and a large part of what will inform voters’ choices for mayor. There is hope that they will follow through on their promises, hope that they will listen, hope that they will not follow failed policies but build communities, especially in the most underserved communities. 

Hope must be a part of everyone’s plan. 

Anthony Ehlers is a writer incarcerated at Stateville Correctional Center.

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John Mossman has a scary new movie, but he’s not just trying to scare us. Good Guy With a Gun (not to be confused with a 2020 short with the same title) is a feature-length drama/thriller slated for a regional premiere February 27 as part of the Midwest Film Festival at the Gene Siskel Film Center.

A gun owner and hunter who favors “commonsense gun control,” Mossman says his goal for the film is to open a more nuanced discussion about firearms and the dangers of America’s macho-mythic gun culture.  

I’ve seen it and can report back: I am scared.

Mossman, an actor, director, writer, producer, and teacher of those trades, grew up in the circus town of Baraboo, Wisconsin. In 1998, he and actor/director Kathy Scambiatterra (who’s also his wife), cofounded the actor-centered Chicago theater company, The Artistic Home, where he’s still an ensemble member and she is artistic director. A self-described “citified redneck,” he considers the NRA “a terrorist-enabling organization” and says outrage over the January 6 insurrection prompted him to make this movie. But its origins go back a decade. 

“Ten years ago, I had a dream of being a shooter,” Mossman says. “I had never had that dream before, and I’ve never played any of those games where you do that, but I was walking through some sort of suburban rolling wooded area shooting people. And after I’d done that, I realized there was no answer for my deeds, no redemption, and I was going to have to kill myself. It was a terrible dream.

“I hadn’t written in six months, but I woke up and went downstairs at 4:30 or five o’clock in the morning. I tried to write something . . . but I couldn’t do it. I was trying to figure out, from that dream, how could you represent the mind of someone who does that, without making them a demon the entire time? Two and a half hours later, I hear my wife upstairs crying. I said, ‘What happened?’ and she said, ‘Someone just shot 20 kids in Sandy Hook.’

“I was so traumatized, I couldn’t tell her that I had that dream. I didn’t tell anyone for years. I felt, somehow, like I had penetrated some crack in time or in the universe. I’m the son of an engineer, show-me people, so I didn’t believe in that sort of thing, but it was so upsetting that I didn’t tell anybody.”

Mossman says he tried, for years, “to find a way to work that out of my system.” Then, when January 6 happened, “I sort of combined those two [events]. To be honest, this [film] is a bit of an exorcism.”

Good Guy With a Gun (shot in less than a month in Chicago and Lockport) packs a lot of Chicago talent, including Mossman, who, in addition to writing and directing, cast himself as one of the film’s two villains, and Scambiatterra as a church lady—a minor role with a major message. Steppenwolf’s Ian Barford is a neighbor with benefits, John LaFlamboy shows up as a shrewd cop, and Joe Swanberg—oh, spoiler alert.

It would be a disservice to the jarring turns and ramped-up tension in the last half of the film to divulge too much of the plot, but it follows a bereaved mother (deftly played by Tiffany Bedwell) and her teenage son, Will (Beck Nolan), on a sojourn from Chicago to a small midwestern town where Will makes a friend (Jack Cain) and falls under the influence of what appears to be the town’s prevailing tough-guy-with-a-gun culture.  

There are many realistically awkward moments in this film; they struck me as one of its strengths. And its opening scene of urban violence could have literally been pulled from our daily headlines. But the evil forces here—Dan Waller as the racist, sexist, homophobic Duke, and Mossman as his equally warped buddy, Riggs—are so grotesquely extreme and demonic that someone needs to take them out. 

This may or may not work at cross-purposes with Mossman’s main intention, which is to take on “the simplistic idea implied by ‘good guy with a gun’ philosophy”—the idea that “someone could take another’s life and then be OK with it for the rest of their life.” This is false, Mossman says: “You’re not asking them to be a savior, you’re asking them to be a sacrifice. They will never be the same. To pretend that they are is a cheap betrayal of the human spirit that the gun industry shamelessly embraces.” 

Mossman is trying to book film festivals in red and purple states and wants to see what the reaction will be there. But he says the greatest interest in the film is coming from outside of the U.S. He thinks that’s because the rest of the world is “just trying to unravel this weird phenomenon that is America and its love affair with, and worshipping of, firearms.”

I’m afraid it’s because they think it’ll confirm the image of America they already have: gun-besotted, dangerous, and despicable.

That’s scary.

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Volunteer as a sexual assault victim advocate, and make a difference in people’s lives when they need it the most.

Sexual violence impacts every age group, gender, and community, but for survivors of sexual assault, harassment, or other abuse, finding support can be challenging and, at times, unsafe. That’s where organizations like the YWCA can help. Through its Sexual Violence and Support Services program and the Chicago Rape Crisis Hotline (CRCH), the nonprofit provides counseling services, a vast network of essential resources, and in-person advocates who assist survivors as they navigate criminal justice, medical, and educational systems.

This year, the YWCA is expanding its network of volunteer advocates, and you’re invited to apply. No prior experience or education is required. All you need is compassion, reliability, tolerance, an open mind, and the ability to commit eight to ten hours a month to the cause. 

“We meet the survivors where they are and allow them to guide the conversation in a way that will make them feel comfortable and empowered,” says the YWCA’s manager of crisis lines and dispatch services Nitrisha Lee. “We are all trained in crisis intervention and are prepared to support survivors in acute crises with whatever needs they may have at that time.”

As a YWCA volunteer, you’ll be provided with a free, 40-hour training program through the YWCA. ). Upon completion, our volunteers answer our 24/7 CRCH offering survivors of sexual assault a caring voice, emotional support, referrals, and information about their options. Additionally, volunteer advocates assist survivors at the hospital during a sexual assault exam. 

Operated on a 24/7 basis, the CRCH is key to the YWCA’s Sexual Assault and Support Services. Launched around a Logan Square kitchen table in 1998, the CRCH has helped tens of thousands of survivors of sexual assault access information about sexual violence and find support through some of the most challenging times in their lives.

Today, CRCH serves the Chicago metropolitan area, including DuPage and Cook counties, and receives between 300 and 500 calls each month. The hotline is free and open to all, whether callers are in the midst of a crisis, grappling with events that happened some time ago, or seeking information on how to support a friend or family member struggling with sexual violence or harassment. All calls are anonymous and confidential, though the organization tries to collect zip codes to support its efforts to better reach underserved communities. 

Along with the phone hotline, CRCH also offers text and live chat support for people ages 13 and up from 9 AM to 5 PM Monday through Friday. Bilingual advocates are available over all three lines of communication.   

Volunteering as a sexual assault survivor advocate can be a great way to learn new skills, meet new friends, and further your career while providing crucial support to survivors and making a difference in your community. In addition to direct client support, YWCA volunteers can also assist with monthly tabling events and other community outreach efforts, bringing awareness to YWCA’s Sexual Violence and Support Services, educating the public, and shifting social norms that promote cycles of abuse.

For more information or to apply today, visit http://ywcachicago.org/svss. 

If you have experienced sexual violence and are in need of support, call the Chicago Rape Crisis Hotline at 888-293-2080 today.  

Funding provided in whole or in part by the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority.

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“We go to the playground in search of our fathers. We didn’t find them but we found a game and the game served as a daddy of sorts,” the novelist John Edgar Wideman wrote in his book Hoop Roots. This quote is a fitting epigraph for Thomas Beller’s Lost in the Game: A Book about Basketball, a nonfiction collection of essays by a New York City kid who lost his father at the age of nine and found meaning and lessons on manhood through the sport.

Lost in the Game includes several humorous, psychologically probing profiles of the NBA’s biggest luminaries—Kyrie Irving of the Dallas Mavericks, Anthony Davis of the Los Angeles Lakers, and Zion Williamson of the New Orleans Pelicans, to name but a few—but also of some of its obscure, near-forgotten players, like Bol Bol of the Orlando Magic and Kerry Kittles, a pre-Brooklyn New Jersey Net. 

“The Jokić Files” merits mention for anyone who even casually follows the NBA. These “files” contain precise descriptions of the Joker’s hands, gait, and nose as if his physical traits could be broken down and added back up into the basketball oddity that the pudgy, almost seven-foot, two-time–MVP-winning Serbian is. 

Unfortunately for fans of the hapless Bulls, this collection contains no elaborate descriptions of DeMar DeRozan’s inestimable pull-up jumpers from either elbow or his slinking drives to the basket that defense stoppers nevertheless fail to block or disrupt. 

Nor does it dwell much on the college or high school game, although there is brief mention of Beller playing Division III basketball at Vassar and at a private school while growing up in New York City. 

Beyond the NBA chapters, what is of most interest for those of us past our primes or, at the very least, no longer full of hoop dreams, are his tales of being a “late bloomer,” someone who came into his own only as an adult, and for his attention to the peculiar lingo and unspoken rules of street basketball.

The first thing I did when I moved to Chicago during the pandemic was search out the nearest basketball hoop. The ones at Kozminski Community Academy nearest my apartment were shorn of their rims—they still are—the white backboards attached to long gray poles looked like enormous metal swans with their orange beaks removed. 

Beller writes about playing on a court in New Orleans in the early days of the pandemic just like Kozminski, where he plunked shots off the backboard, imagining that a hoop and net were there. That, for me, is a cheap facsimile of what it’s like to shoot. But maybe if I had been desperate enough, I would have too.

Instead, I found courts, rims miraculously intact, at the playground on 49th Street and Drexel Avenue, with the vibrant mural by Bernard Williams dedicated to the civil rights leader Rev. Jessie “Ma” Houston as a backdrop. 

The Loyola Park basketball court in Rogers Park without rims in August 2018. Credit: Alison Saldanha

Fortunately for Chicagoans, Mayor Lightfoot only shut down courts on the lakefront during the pandemic, and select wards had rims removed by order of their respective alderpeople, unlike in New York City, where the Parks District disabled 138 rims to discourage people from gathering to play or even shoot around. 

Games on that court during the summer of 2020 featured an eclectic, unlikely mix of folks, young kids like Shaggy and gray beards like David from the adjacent housing projects as well as undergraduates and staff from the university in Hyde Park. Every day there were full-court, five-on-five games, with guys milling around on the sidelines waiting for next.

About the dynamics of outdoor basketball, which apply equally well to my experience in Chicago, Beller writes, “It wasn’t personal, but it was. It wasn’t racial, but it was, a little. It was about talent but also about physical grace and personal style . . . Street ball is a place where triumphs and defeats are only partly about basketball.”

As I’m guessing it was for many, basketball was a lifeline for me during that period of social isolation and physical inactivity. 

“Like a heavy drinker attuned to the moment in the afternoon when it is acceptable to make the first drink, my afternoons were—and are—always punctuated by a moment when I am suddenly aware that going to play basketball is an option,” Beller writes. These words capture something I have long felt, including that summer.

My basketball education came on the asphalt courts of New York and San Francisco, where I played almost every day from June through August. In those pickup games at Riverside Park and the Panhandle, I was fouled hard and smacked down many times while going for a layup or a rebound, got up bleeding from my chin or mouth, with jammed fingers or skinned knees, but, nevertheless, kept running and hustling until the game was through. And I kept coming back for more, some insane, masochistic impulse driving me.

A more positive spin to my basketball passion has been its role as a source of male bonding. I’ve made lifelong friends, one after an intense mano a mano game against a guy from my freshman dorm, played in the middle of a furious downpour from Hurricane Sandy, and another by simply showing up one day to play at a sandy gym in the middle of the Moroccan desert when I was serving in the Peace Corps.

This past summer, Coach “Tree,” a two-time Illinois state championship-winning assistant coach for Hales Franciscan High School, with the rings to back it up, approached me while I was shooting on a half-court riven with cracks outside Ray Elementary on 57th Street. 

He talked my ear off from the get-go about the history of Chicago basketball. 

Because I grew up there, I knew a bit of New York’s history, but I knew next to nothing about the Windy City’s storied past. Tree filled me in. 

The world-famous Harlem Globetrotters originally hailed not from the streets north of Central Park but from the south side of Chicago, playing at the Savoy Ballroom, a crowd-pleasing prelude to the dances hosted there. 

“Look that up if you don’t believe me,” Tree said. 

I did. He wasn’t kidding.

Tree learned how to shoot not on a flawless hardwood indoor court like the hoopers of this generation but on the fenced-in court on the west side of Washington Park.

There he played with the likes of Mel Davis and Porter Meriwether, guys who had their summers off from pro ball, worked a second job during the off-season, and came to the courts to teach kids like Tree the ins and outs of the game.

That said, the state of pickup basketball is perhaps on the decline, at least according to Beller’s and my own limited observations. 

The culprits: gentrification, the pre-professionalization of the sport (there’s money made in organized basketball, whereas there’s none in street ball), the lure of sports like soccer or video games, and the dangers outside of gun violence or police brutality for young men of color.

For lovers of the game, that’s a tragedy. 

What was once normal in places like Chicago, New York City, San Francisco—where all-time greats like Isiah Thomas, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Bill Russell practiced their skills on outdoor courts for all to see and for those foolhardy enough to compete against—is today unimaginable.

And with the commodification of exercise, meaning indoor recreation spaces for only those who can afford it, and public school closures leaving once teeming gyms vacant, it may be getting harder for young people without the means to find spaces to pick up the game.

Few, if any, will reach the summit of the sport and go pro, but if Beller, Tree, or I offer an example, perhaps they’ll find a lifelong passion that cuts across racial, cultural, and generational divides. 

Lost in the Game: A Book about Basketball by Thomas Beller Duke University Press, paperback, 240 pp., $22.95, dukeupress.edu

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In 2014, the Illinois Lottery launched the nation’s first specialty lottery ticket benefiting the Special Olympics, the world’s largest sports organization for individuals living with intellectual and physical disabilities. While funds raised from most Illinois Lottery specialty tickets are distributed through grants awarded to numerous organizations working in a specific area, such as veteran’s relief or breast cancer care, the Illinois Lottery specialty ticket in support of Special Olympics Illinois (SOILL) is different in that 100 percent of profits are allocated directly to the non-profit organization, which redistributes them to Special Olympics programs throughout the state. To date, the specialty ticket has raised over $7 million dollars supporting some of Illinois’ most dedicated athletes.

The instant ticket costs two dollars and is available at more than 7,000 Illinois Lottery retailers statewide. With its fun design and this year’s “Fat Wallet” game, in which players can win up to ten times for prizes up to $20,000, the Illinois Lottery specialty ticket in support of Special Olympics Illinois makes a great gift for anyone 18 and over who values inclusivity, teamwork, and supporting local athletes. Visit the Illinois Lottery website for more information about this specialty ticket and others, and read on to learn more about Special Olympics Illinois.

The Special Olympics was founded by Eunice Kennedy Shriver in 1968, inspired partially by her sister, Rosemary Kennedy, who lived with disabilities throughout her life. Driven by her desire to break stigmas, build community, and improve opportunities for individuals with intellectual disabilities, Kennedy Shriver launched Camp Shriver, a summer camp for children with intellectual disabilities, at her Maryland farm in 1962. The resounding success of that endeavor led her to expand the concept, and on July 20, 1968, 1,000 athletes from the U.S. and Canada assembled at Soldier Field for the world’s first Special Olympics competition.

Today, the Special Olympics supports year-round athletic competitions for more than five million athletes living in more than 170 countries around the world. Special Olympics Illinois remains a vital part of that international network, with more than 21,000 athletes participating in 19 sports in 11 regions throughout the state. Athletes ages eight and up are encouraged to apply, and there is no maximum age limit. In addition, the organization offers a Young Athletes program for 9,000 children ages two through seven with and without intellectual disabilities, introducing kids to sports while building their self-esteem and social skills.

Thanks to SOILL’s fundraising efforts, which include its partnership with the Illinois Lottery, the organization can provide its athletic programming at zero cost to the athletes or their families. SOILL COO Kim Riddering says that funds raised from the specialty ticket help supply much-needed equipment, uniforms, buses to regional and state competitions, and more (individual teams and programs can apply for funds directly through SOILL on an as-needed basis). They also help fuel initiatives such as the Urban Strategy program, which focuses on athletes and outreach in the Chicago area; MedFests, where athletes can receive free physicals; and Healthy Athletes, which provides six types of health screenings, including vision and dentistry.

“When I first did Special Olympics back in my freshman year, it was amazing for me because I like how I communicate with my team, and [we] try to work together as a team and win games,” says George McDay, a student-athlete at Vaughn Occupational High School in Chicago’s Portage Park neighborhood, which serves grades nine through 12 and offers continuing education to students up to 22 years old.

Now in his seventh and final year at Vaughn, McDay has participated in Special Olympics’ basketball, soccer, softball, track and field, flag football, and Unified Sports (a competition that includes basketball, flag football, soccer, and bowling)—though he says bowling is his specialty. In his junior year, his basketball team placed 1st in regionals, which meant he was invited to the State Championships, which includes Opening Ceremonies, complete with a torch run with first responders, and an overnight stay in a college dorm with his fellow athletes.

“​​I really like helping students to interact with teammates [or athletes] from another team. We just help each other out.” McDay says.

Vaughn teacher Deb Yarovsky, who is also the school’s athletic director, says that participation varies depending on the sport but that the school typically has between 80 to 120 students participating in its most popular programs, which include basketball, soccer, and track and field. “I feel like it’s such an incredible program,” she says of Special Olympics Illinois. “It’s something super near and dear to my heart. In addition to the athletic competition—I think George could talk about this too—it’s just the friendships that have formed, the social opportunities, and the communication, not just with the Vaughn students. Still, when we go to those competitions, they get to interact with other athletes from Chicago and with other athletes from the state.”

For many SOILL athletes, the benefits of playing go far beyond the playing field. McDay plays in a north-side bowling league with his friend Ian, who he met while competing in Special Olympics, and he and his parents are talking with local coaches about ways he can pursue his interests in sports after graduation.

SOILL also has an extensive athlete leadership program, which offers a variety of ways for athletes to develop new skills, express their voices, and pursue interests in coaching, fundraising, governance, and more. “We have athlete leaders that sit on our board of directors—technically, they’re my boss,” Riddering says. “They work at [companies such as] United Airlines, Amazon Fresh, and Amazon, but they have a say on what goes on within their own program. And this is their program. We’re just the people putting it on for them.”

Riddering says the COVID-19 pandemic hit the Special Olympics particularly hard, as health concerns, school closures, and strict state guidelines on group homes and state-run institutions meant that, for a time, athletes couldn’t participate in their usual activities. In some cases, athletes moved between facilities due to closures or moved in with family members, leaving SOILL without their updated contact information.

In response, the organization is building an outreach plan to reconnect with those athletes and get them back in the game. “This is a lifestyle, Special Olympics Illinois, I absolutely believe that with my whole heart. And when you pull a lifestyle away from an athlete, that’s tough. So it is our mission to get them back and provide them with everything they need to get going again,” Riddering says.

Beyond purchasing lottery tickets or making individual donations, the public can support SOILL by volunteering or simply attending a competition. “It’s such an incredible opportunity,” Yarovsky says. “It’s one thing to hear about Special Olympics or read about it. But being there to be able to see the interactions of these athletes is—this might be a stretch—but for me personally, it’s life-changing to see the effort that [the athletes] put in their hard work and the relationships they build. It’s really touching.”For more about Special Olympics Illinois, visit soill.org.

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Volunteer as a sexual assault victim advocate, and make a difference in people’s lives when they need it the most.

Sexual violence impacts every age group, gender, and community, but for survivors of sexual assault, harassment, or other abuse, finding support can be challenging and, at times, unsafe. That’s where organizations like the YWCA can help. Through its Sexual Violence and Support Services program and the Chicago Rape Crisis Hotline (CRCH), the nonprofit provides counseling services, a vast network of essential resources, and in-person advocates who assist survivors as they navigate criminal justice, medical, and educational systems.

This year, the YWCA is expanding its network of volunteer advocates, and you’re invited to apply. No prior experience or education is required. All you need is compassion, reliability, tolerance, an open mind, and the ability to commit eight to ten hours a month to the cause. 

“We meet the survivors where they are and allow them to guide the conversation in a way that will make them feel comfortable and empowered,” says the YWCA’s manager of crisis lines and dispatch services Nitrisha Lee. “We are all trained in crisis intervention and are prepared to support survivors in acute crises with whatever needs they may have at that time.”

As a YWCA volunteer, you’ll be provided with a free, 40-hour training program through the YWCA. ). Upon completion, our volunteers answer our 24/7 CRCH offering survivors of sexual assault a caring voice, emotional support, referrals, and information about their options. Additionally, volunteer advocates assist survivors at the hospital during a sexual assault exam. 

Operated on a 24/7 basis, the CRCH is key to the YWCA’s Sexual Assault and Support Services. Launched around a Logan Square kitchen table in 1998, the CRCH has helped tens of thousands of survivors of sexual assault access information about sexual violence and find support through some of the most challenging times in their lives.

Today, CRCH serves the Chicago metropolitan area, including DuPage and Cook counties, and receives between 300 and 500 calls each month. The hotline is free and open to all, whether callers are in the midst of a crisis, grappling with events that happened some time ago, or seeking information on how to support a friend or family member struggling with sexual violence or harassment. All calls are anonymous and confidential, though the organization tries to collect zip codes to support its efforts to better reach underserved communities. 

Along with the phone hotline, CRCH also offers text and live chat support for people ages 13 and up from 9 AM to 5 PM Monday through Friday. Bilingual advocates are available over all three lines of communication.   

Volunteering as a sexual assault survivor advocate can be a great way to learn new skills, meet new friends, and further your career while providing crucial support to survivors and making a difference in your community. In addition to direct client support, YWCA volunteers can also assist with monthly tabling events and other community outreach efforts, bringing awareness to YWCA’s Sexual Violence and Support Services, educating the public, and shifting social norms that promote cycles of abuse.

For more information or to apply today, visit http://ywcachicago.org/svss. 

If you have experienced sexual violence and are in need of support, call the Chicago Rape Crisis Hotline at 888-293-2080 today.  

Funding provided in whole or in part by the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority.

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“We go to the playground in search of our fathers. We didn’t find them but we found a game and the game served as a daddy of sorts,” the novelist John Edgar Wideman wrote in his book Hoop Roots. This quote is a fitting epigraph for Thomas Beller’s Lost in the Game: A Book about Basketball, a nonfiction collection of essays by a New York City kid who lost his father at the age of nine and found meaning and lessons on manhood through the sport.

Lost in the Game includes several humorous, psychologically probing profiles of the NBA’s biggest luminaries—Kyrie Irving of the Dallas Mavericks, Anthony Davis of the Los Angeles Lakers, and Zion Williamson of the New Orleans Pelicans, to name but a few—but also of some of its obscure, near-forgotten players, like Bol Bol of the Orlando Magic and Kerry Kittles, a pre-Brooklyn New Jersey Net. 

“The Jokić Files” merits mention for anyone who even casually follows the NBA. These “files” contain precise descriptions of the Joker’s hands, gait, and nose as if his physical traits could be broken down and added back up into the basketball oddity that the pudgy, almost seven-foot, two-time–MVP-winning Serbian is. 

Unfortunately for fans of the hapless Bulls, this collection contains no elaborate descriptions of DeMar DeRozan’s inestimable pull-up jumpers from either elbow or his slinking drives to the basket that defense stoppers nevertheless fail to block or disrupt. 

Nor does it dwell much on the college or high school game, although there is brief mention of Beller playing Division III basketball at Vassar and at a private school while growing up in New York City. 

Beyond the NBA chapters, what is of most interest for those of us past our primes or, at the very least, no longer full of hoop dreams, are his tales of being a “late bloomer,” someone who came into his own only as an adult, and for his attention to the peculiar lingo and unspoken rules of street basketball.

The first thing I did when I moved to Chicago during the pandemic was search out the nearest basketball hoop. The ones at Kozminski Community Academy nearest my apartment were shorn of their rims—they still are—the white backboards attached to long gray poles looked like enormous metal swans with their orange beaks removed. 

Beller writes about playing on a court in New Orleans in the early days of the pandemic just like Kozminski, where he plunked shots off the backboard, imagining that a hoop and net were there. That, for me, is a cheap facsimile of what it’s like to shoot. But maybe if I had been desperate enough, I would have too.

Instead, I found courts, rims miraculously intact, at the playground on 49th Street and Drexel Avenue, with the vibrant mural by Bernard Williams dedicated to the civil rights leader Rev. Jessie “Ma” Houston as a backdrop. 

The Loyola Park basketball court in Rogers Park without rims in August 2018. Credit: Alison Saldanha

Fortunately for Chicagoans, Mayor Lightfoot only shut down courts on the lakefront during the pandemic, and select wards had rims removed by order of their respective alderpeople, unlike in New York City, where the Parks District disabled 138 rims to discourage people from gathering to play or even shoot around. 

Games on that court during the summer of 2020 featured an eclectic, unlikely mix of folks, young kids like Shaggy and gray beards like David from the adjacent housing projects as well as undergraduates and staff from the university in Hyde Park. Every day there were full-court, five-on-five games, with guys milling around on the sidelines waiting for next.

About the dynamics of outdoor basketball, which apply equally well to my experience in Chicago, Beller writes, “It wasn’t personal, but it was. It wasn’t racial, but it was, a little. It was about talent but also about physical grace and personal style . . . Street ball is a place where triumphs and defeats are only partly about basketball.”

As I’m guessing it was for many, basketball was a lifeline for me during that period of social isolation and physical inactivity. 

“Like a heavy drinker attuned to the moment in the afternoon when it is acceptable to make the first drink, my afternoons were—and are—always punctuated by a moment when I am suddenly aware that going to play basketball is an option,” Beller writes. These words capture something I have long felt, including that summer.

My basketball education came on the asphalt courts of New York and San Francisco, where I played almost every day from June through August. In those pickup games at Riverside Park and the Panhandle, I was fouled hard and smacked down many times while going for a layup or a rebound, got up bleeding from my chin or mouth, with jammed fingers or skinned knees, but, nevertheless, kept running and hustling until the game was through. And I kept coming back for more, some insane, masochistic impulse driving me.

A more positive spin to my basketball passion has been its role as a source of male bonding. I’ve made lifelong friends, one after an intense mano a mano game against a guy from my freshman dorm, played in the middle of a furious downpour from Hurricane Sandy, and another by simply showing up one day to play at a sandy gym in the middle of the Moroccan desert when I was serving in the Peace Corps.

This past summer, Coach “Tree,” a two-time Illinois state championship-winning assistant coach for Hales Franciscan High School, with the rings to back it up, approached me while I was shooting on a half-court riven with cracks outside Ray Elementary on 57th Street. 

He talked my ear off from the get-go about the history of Chicago basketball. 

Because I grew up there, I knew a bit of New York’s history, but I knew next to nothing about the Windy City’s storied past. Tree filled me in. 

The world-famous Harlem Globetrotters originally hailed not from the streets north of Central Park but from the south side of Chicago, playing at the Savoy Ballroom, a crowd-pleasing prelude to the dances hosted there. 

“Look that up if you don’t believe me,” Tree said. 

I did. He wasn’t kidding.

Tree learned how to shoot not on a flawless hardwood indoor court like the hoopers of this generation but on the fenced-in court on the west side of Washington Park.

There he played with the likes of Mel Davis and Porter Meriwether, guys who had their summers off from pro ball, worked a second job during the off-season, and came to the courts to teach kids like Tree the ins and outs of the game.

That said, the state of pickup basketball is perhaps on the decline, at least according to Beller’s and my own limited observations. 

The culprits: gentrification, the pre-professionalization of the sport (there’s money made in organized basketball, whereas there’s none in street ball), the lure of sports like soccer or video games, and the dangers outside of gun violence or police brutality for young men of color.

For lovers of the game, that’s a tragedy. 

What was once normal in places like Chicago, New York City, San Francisco—where all-time greats like Isiah Thomas, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Bill Russell practiced their skills on outdoor courts for all to see and for those foolhardy enough to compete against—is today unimaginable.

And with the commodification of exercise, meaning indoor recreation spaces for only those who can afford it, and public school closures leaving once teeming gyms vacant, it may be getting harder for young people without the means to find spaces to pick up the game.

Few, if any, will reach the summit of the sport and go pro, but if Beller, Tree, or I offer an example, perhaps they’ll find a lifelong passion that cuts across racial, cultural, and generational divides. 

Lost in the Game: A Book about Basketball by Thomas Beller Duke University Press, paperback, 240 pp., $22.95, dukeupress.edu

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In 2014, the Illinois Lottery launched the nation’s first specialty lottery ticket benefiting the Special Olympics, the world’s largest sports organization for individuals living with intellectual and physical disabilities. While funds raised from most Illinois Lottery specialty tickets are distributed through grants awarded to numerous organizations working in a specific area, such as veteran’s relief or breast cancer care, the Illinois Lottery specialty ticket in support of Special Olympics Illinois (SOILL) is different in that 100 percent of profits are allocated directly to the non-profit organization, which redistributes them to Special Olympics programs throughout the state. To date, the specialty ticket has raised over $7 million dollars supporting some of Illinois’ most dedicated athletes.

The instant ticket costs two dollars and is available at more than 7,000 Illinois Lottery retailers statewide. With its fun design and this year’s “Fat Wallet” game, in which players can win up to ten times for prizes up to $20,000, the Illinois Lottery specialty ticket in support of Special Olympics Illinois makes a great gift for anyone 18 and over who values inclusivity, teamwork, and supporting local athletes. Visit the Illinois Lottery website for more information about this specialty ticket and others, and read on to learn more about Special Olympics Illinois.

The Special Olympics was founded by Eunice Kennedy Shriver in 1968, inspired partially by her sister, Rosemary Kennedy, who lived with disabilities throughout her life. Driven by her desire to break stigmas, build community, and improve opportunities for individuals with intellectual disabilities, Kennedy Shriver launched Camp Shriver, a summer camp for children with intellectual disabilities, at her Maryland farm in 1962. The resounding success of that endeavor led her to expand the concept, and on July 20, 1968, 1,000 athletes from the U.S. and Canada assembled at Soldier Field for the world’s first Special Olympics competition.

Today, the Special Olympics supports year-round athletic competitions for more than five million athletes living in more than 170 countries around the world. Special Olympics Illinois remains a vital part of that international network, with more than 21,000 athletes participating in 19 sports in 11 regions throughout the state. Athletes ages eight and up are encouraged to apply, and there is no maximum age limit. In addition, the organization offers a Young Athletes program for 9,000 children ages two through seven with and without intellectual disabilities, introducing kids to sports while building their self-esteem and social skills.

Thanks to SOILL’s fundraising efforts, which include its partnership with the Illinois Lottery, the organization can provide its athletic programming at zero cost to the athletes or their families. SOILL COO Kim Riddering says that funds raised from the specialty ticket help supply much-needed equipment, uniforms, buses to regional and state competitions, and more (individual teams and programs can apply for funds directly through SOILL on an as-needed basis). They also help fuel initiatives such as the Urban Strategy program, which focuses on athletes and outreach in the Chicago area; MedFests, where athletes can receive free physicals; and Healthy Athletes, which provides six types of health screenings, including vision and dentistry.

“When I first did Special Olympics back in my freshman year, it was amazing for me because I like how I communicate with my team, and [we] try to work together as a team and win games,” says George McDay, a student-athlete at Vaughn Occupational High School in Chicago’s Portage Park neighborhood, which serves grades nine through 12 and offers continuing education to students up to 22 years old.

Now in his seventh and final year at Vaughn, McDay has participated in Special Olympics’ basketball, soccer, softball, track and field, flag football, and Unified Sports (a competition that includes basketball, flag football, soccer, and bowling)—though he says bowling is his specialty. In his junior year, his basketball team placed 1st in regionals, which meant he was invited to the State Championships, which includes Opening Ceremonies, complete with a torch run with first responders, and an overnight stay in a college dorm with his fellow athletes.

“​​I really like helping students to interact with teammates [or athletes] from another team. We just help each other out.” McDay says.

Vaughn teacher Deb Yarovsky, who is also the school’s athletic director, says that participation varies depending on the sport but that the school typically has between 80 to 120 students participating in its most popular programs, which include basketball, soccer, and track and field. “I feel like it’s such an incredible program,” she says of Special Olympics Illinois. “It’s something super near and dear to my heart. In addition to the athletic competition—I think George could talk about this too—it’s just the friendships that have formed, the social opportunities, and the communication, not just with the Vaughn students. Still, when we go to those competitions, they get to interact with other athletes from Chicago and with other athletes from the state.”

For many SOILL athletes, the benefits of playing go far beyond the playing field. McDay plays in a north-side bowling league with his friend Ian, who he met while competing in Special Olympics, and he and his parents are talking with local coaches about ways he can pursue his interests in sports after graduation.

SOILL also has an extensive athlete leadership program, which offers a variety of ways for athletes to develop new skills, express their voices, and pursue interests in coaching, fundraising, governance, and more. “We have athlete leaders that sit on our board of directors—technically, they’re my boss,” Riddering says. “They work at [companies such as] United Airlines, Amazon Fresh, and Amazon, but they have a say on what goes on within their own program. And this is their program. We’re just the people putting it on for them.”

Riddering says the COVID-19 pandemic hit the Special Olympics particularly hard, as health concerns, school closures, and strict state guidelines on group homes and state-run institutions meant that, for a time, athletes couldn’t participate in their usual activities. In some cases, athletes moved between facilities due to closures or moved in with family members, leaving SOILL without their updated contact information.

In response, the organization is building an outreach plan to reconnect with those athletes and get them back in the game. “This is a lifestyle, Special Olympics Illinois, I absolutely believe that with my whole heart. And when you pull a lifestyle away from an athlete, that’s tough. So it is our mission to get them back and provide them with everything they need to get going again,” Riddering says.

Beyond purchasing lottery tickets or making individual donations, the public can support SOILL by volunteering or simply attending a competition. “It’s such an incredible opportunity,” Yarovsky says. “It’s one thing to hear about Special Olympics or read about it. But being there to be able to see the interactions of these athletes is—this might be a stretch—but for me personally, it’s life-changing to see the effort that [the athletes] put in their hard work and the relationships they build. It’s really touching.”For more about Special Olympics Illinois, visit soill.org.

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