“Can Digital Media Save Young People’s Lives?” wasn’t just the titular talking point for an Illinois Humanities Council panel discussion.
Woodlawn
Radical Hospitality
by Meaghan Murphy •
Urban Village might seem like another church in a neighborhood already full of churches, but it is determined to set itself apart from the regimented, traditional ways in which Christianity is practiced elsewhere on the South Side.
A Room of Their Own
by John Gamino •
The students here are different. Their average age is thirty-nine. Most of them are women. All live at least 150% below the poverty line.
Behind the CPS Closures
by Hannah Nyhart •
On March 21, CPS announced the closure of more than ten percent of the city’s elementary and middle schools. The decision concluded five months of conversation between communities and the district. Officials hail the effort as genuine engagement. Others call it a sham.
Shango Johnson and De’Andre Short
by Hannah Nyhart •
Shango Johnson, of Englewood, and De’Andre Short, of Woodlawn, are Directors of Mentoring for Riah, a small organization initially founded by Mario Bates to support South Siders struggling with recovery issues.
The Future of Woodlawn’s Housing
by Patrick Leow •
As the city and HUD plan Woodlawn’s future, some yearn for something more like the past. The official plan is an irresistible, seductive vision of Woodlawn’s future—a neighborhood reinventing itself anew as a place safe, immaculate, comfortable, and nothing like it was for the past couple of decades. But, will it work?
Talk about a man
by Hannah Nyhart •
“Sin separated you from seeing the father’s love for his son, so you never knew the type of love a father should have for his son,” Lamar Simms called out. The poet bent over a mic at the head of a makeshift aisle, surrounded by the audience of more than forty that filtered into Woodlawn’s Robust Coffee Lounge on Saturday night.
The right fight
by Isaac Dalke •
As it tends to be with academics, authors, and activists, the narrative was slightly more complicated on Saturday night. At the Experimental Station, WBEZ and the Illinois Humanities Council brought together some of Chicago’s most entrenched activists and advocates to talk about Beth Richie’s most recent book, “Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence, and America’s Prison Nation.”
