Erin Allen: Good morning, I'm Erin Allen and this is The Rundown. More than 100 people gathered for a protest downtown last night after the police killing of Tyree Nichols in Memphis my colleague Shannon Heffernan was there. 

Shannon Heffernan: The chants were familiar. Some of the signs, they looked like they'd been used before. And people explain how long they've been going to protests just like this one by saying I've been doing this is like one since Laquan Mcdonald and George Floyd. Activist Frank Chapman told the crowd he'd been doing it since police killed Fred Hampton in 1969.

Frank Chapman: The same thing. That's because the system has not changed. The same system.

Shannon Heffernan: It's hard to hear, but he says "the system hasn't changed." Still, Chapman was hopeful. He encouraged the crowd to get out and vote next month for representatives to new police district councils that will provide oversight of Chicago police.

Erin Allen: That was my colleague Shannon Heffernan. The financial health network has been working on a report to look at financial health among Cook County residents. The results are showing that even among high earners, Black and Latinx residents of Cook County tend to be more financially vulnerable than their white counterparts. My colleague Adora Namigadde did some reporting on the study. She says only 40% of Black residents are financially healthy versus 69% of white residents. The Chicago Community Trust partnered on the report and their CEO Andrea Sáenz says it's a wake up call that closing the racial wealth gap is about more than just creating more jobs.

Andrea Sáenz: We need to look at ways to accelerate the homeownership rates among Black and Latinx Chicagoans. Because most Americans have most of their wealth in their home.

Erin Allen: Sáenz says home values and the appraisal process need to be examined to. The report also suggested that disparities might be in part because of Black and Latinx folks being less likely to own their homes as well as taking on more debt to complete their education. The report analyzed that indicators of financial health include positive cash flow, manageable debt and the ability to safeguard your assets. 

Chicago Sky fans know just how instrumental Candace Parker was in winning the WNA Championship in 2021. In fact, she's a two time championship winner. But over the weekend, she confirmed that she's leaving the Chicago Sky to start her 16th season in the league with the Las Vegas Aces. Parker is 36 years old. She's from Naperville, and she made the announcement on instagram saying, "I'm beyond grateful for the opportunity to win a championship in my hometown and parade down the same streets, I watched the bulls parade down as a young girl." Cheryl Raye Stout is a sports contributor here. She says it will be tougher the sky without Parker.

Cheryl Raye Stout: You're losing a leader. You're losing the one player that was able to get you over the hump to win a championship with the other players. What it means now is that the Chicago Sky has to start thinking about a rebuild

Erin Allen: Chicago Sky coached James Wade wished Parker well and promised that she would always be a part of the Sky family. All WNBA's players can start signing contracts tomorrow. 

So a couple of weeks ago on The Rundown, I talked to my colleague Alex Keefe about the People's Agenda. And a big part of that project is to support Chicago voters in making what you feel is the right choice for mayor based on your politics and what you find important. So right now at WBEZ.org/elections, there's a questionnaire and in my opinion is kind of a dream. You can go plug in your answers and at the end it will spit out the candidate that best fits your value as a part of The Peoples Agenda. We asked you to send us your questions for candidates. We pulled out the top 23 most common ones, formed them as yes or no questions and then posed them to the nine people running. They answer them and now you can go see based on their answers to those 23 questions which one you might be most interested in electing again. It's kind of a voter's dream, check it out at WBEZ.org/elections.

And a few quick hits before we get to the weather, there's a court hearing today for more sexual assault charges against R. Kelly. Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx is expected to drop the charges. She says her office has quote limited resources and that R. Kelly is already facing decades in federal prison. So, she feels justice has already been served. And the Architecture and Design Film Festival is returning to Chicago tomorrow through Sunday after being absent for nine years. The Chicago Sun-Times is reporting that it will take place at the Chicago Architectural Center downtown, featuring 15 films on architecture, fashion, housing and urban planning. 

As for weather, it's still cold, colder than yesterday. Pretty clear skies, but single digit temperatures almost all day, high of 11 degrees. Tomorrow, we'll be back in the twenties. And that's it for The Rundown today. Thank you for listening. I'm Erin Allen I'll talk to you tomorrow morning, bye!

WBEZ transcripts are generated by an automatic speech recognition service. We do our best to edit for misspellings and typos, but mistakes do come through.