Chicago
Cultural Comment
The Chicago Band Whitney and the Fear of Being “Too Indie”
The bandmates Julien Ehrlich and Max Kakacek discuss how to make music that transcends the Spotify playlists that dictate how people discover them.
Dispatch
How Illinois Became an Abortion-Rights Haven
As many state legislatures are restricting access to abortion, the Prairie State is removing financial and legal barriers and welcoming “refugees” from across state lines.
Q. & A.
The Exemplary Legacy of the Chicago Defender
The renowned black newspaper that championed civil rights and helped spark the Great Migration will no longer publish a print edition.
Culture Desk
The Unexpected Power of Your Old Neighborhood
Neighborhoods are how we experience both order and flux, persistence and succession, the intensely familiar and the disorientingly unfamiliar, the daily round and the big picture at the same time.
Dispatch
How the Jussie Smollett Case Threatens Kim Foxx’s Efforts to Reform Chicago Law Enforcement
Foxx was elected on a promise to bring nuance to the criminal-justice system. Her office’s handling of the Smollett case has given an opening to her critics, who say she’s soft on crime.
Our Columnists
Jussie Smollett and the Impulse to Punish
Criticism against the Cook County state’s attorney for the handling of Smollett’s case exposes an uncomfortable truth about the depth of America’s attachment to mass incarceration.
Our Columnists
Lori Lightfoot, the Slovakian Elections, and the Rise of Political Outsiders
Lori Lightfoot, the mayor-elect of Chicago, and Zuzana Čaputová, the President-elect of Slovakia, both pulled off big election upsets.
Dispatch
Chicago Prepares to Elect Its First Black Female Mayor
On policy, little separates Lori Lightfoot and Toni Preckwinkle. But, as one political strategist put it, “This was always going to be a change-versus-old-guard election.”
Dispatch
In Chicago’s Mayoral Race, the Establishment Leads the Outsiders
Among the crowded field of fourteen candidates, in an election that David Axelrod called “historically unfathomable,” there is no dominant figure for the first time in decades.
Daily Comment
Kanye West, Donald Trump, and the Truth About Chicago
The belief that the violence in Chicago is the product of a single political party is troublesome when expressed by reactionaries, but an outrageous one when expressed by a black Chicagoan who ought to know better.
Culture Desk
On the Hypnotic “Room 25,” Noname Comes of Age
Noname does not casually offer herself up for facile or pitying consumption; she will have you press through her language, peeling back layers and metaphors, to earn understanding.
Cultural Comment
A Great Writer at the 1968 Democratic Disaster
Letter from Trump’s Washington
