Linda Paul
Trees filter the air, help clean the water and store carbon in their trunks and branches.
A group of Chicago women has been meeting weekly to watch, rate and discuss short films from around the world. They gather in a large echo-filled concrete room. It doesn’t make for the best interview recording atmosphere, but that’s what’s available! Now -- months later -- they’ve curated their own film festival and it’s being shown in Chicago tomorrow night. It’s all part of Women’s View-- a program that – for the first time, has enlisted female detainees at the Cook County Jail as their professional film jurors. Linda Paul brings us the story.
Female detainees rate short films from all over the world, culminating in a film fest this weekend.
Within its own space, Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium exposes city folk to the mysteries of aquatic life. But now, the Shedd wants to broaden the experience, taking it to where people live and play. In that vein, staff at the aquarium tried something new this summer. After brainstorming with local community and cultural groups, they decided to bring Chicagoans eyeball-to-eyeball with their hidden underwater neighbors — the fish of Lake Michigan.
Altgeld Gardens is a Chicago Public Housing community at 130th Street—about as far south as you can get in the city. It’s also the place where Barack Obama did some of his early organizing work. The people of Altgeld have a special link to Obama, which is why WBEZ sent me and photographer Richard Cahan there to talk to residents the morning after Obama’s first presidential win. We went back eight years later, on the morning after Donald Trump became Obama’s successor.
Twice a month, tattoo artist Adrian Torres packs up a tattoo removal machine he purchased online, lugs it to a nearby community center, and instead of creating art, he removes it. Torres said he removes the kind of gang art that can hamper lives. “Somebody can get a tattoo of a teardrop in less than a minute. And it can literally kill them the next day. This isn’t a joke. It’s a war zone out here.”
The city once had a large-scale, affordable tattoo removal service -- it lasted nearly ten years. But machines get old and repairs are costly.
Adolfo Davis is serving life without parole for participating in a double murder decades ago as a teenager. The judge in his resentencing hearing found he had not reformed.
Many people who are homeless in Chicago panhandle at expressway ramps. Linda Paul met some of them to learn about how their system helps them survive.
Many juveniles arrested in Cook County don’t understand that they now have an arrest record that can linger for decades to come.
It’s St. Patrick’s Day and lots of folks – especially here in Chicago – are celebrating the manifold contributions of the Irish. We found an Irishman who’s making maximum impact with miniatures.
Chicagoan Ulysses Bonilla is getting through the winter by riding his bike about 20 miles a day picking up scrap metal for recycling. At night, he couch surfs.
The debate over whether people already imprisoned with mandatory life without parole they got as juveniles should get new hearings goes before Illinois’ top court.
Some publicly financed drug treatment centers report waiting lists for those seeking treatment for addiction
Cecil Locke is the owner, founder and creator of the iconic ‘Touch and Go Chess Party” at the northeast corner of Jackson and Michigan Avenue.
Just south of Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo, there’s a lovely promenade of trees in a noisy, busy part of the part. It seems like an unlikely spot to find a species endangered in Illinois.
Tens of thousands of young people get arrested each year in Chicago, and a lot of those arrests happen on the grounds of Chicago Public Schools.