The Party’s Not Over
Eric Williams’s street festival nearly ruined him financially during its 18-year run. He’s bringing it back anyway.
All Stories
How Chicago Is Using Lawsuits to Force Change
The city's civil action against Glock shows how a municipal legal department can be deployed as a weapon for reform.
How Much Sanctuary Can Chicago Really Offer?
Despite Chicago's determination to protect immigrants from Trump’s deportation efforts, the city is limited in what it can do.
“We Need to Create Space for Someone in Prison to Evolve”
A new documentary, In Their Hands, examines Illinois’s parole system through one man's story.
Matt DeMateo
The Good Neighbor
Amanda Williams
The Conscientious Artist
The Indeterminate Sentence of Johnnie Veal
Who deserves to be paroled and who doesn’t? Deciding that is an imprecise process, one that grapples with our fundamental approach to incarceration, as this excerpt from the new book...
Cabrini-Green and a horror film that captured the fears of public housing
In the 1992 horror film "Candyman," Helen, a white graduate student researching urban legends, is looking into the myth of a hook-handed apparition who appears when his name, Candyman, is...
Cabrini Green
Thirty-seven years ago, Mayor Jane Byrne moved into the Cabrini-Green housing project to draw attention to the violence and poverty there. It would become one of the most famous—and factious—publicity...
McDonald’s CEO Don Thompson
Don Thompson was one of the most powerful executives in the nation. Now he’s cleaning out his desk. The remarkable rise and fall of McDonald’s CEO.