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It’s Monday. It’s a new week and will soon be a new month. Get ready for August with these stories from WTTW News.
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In October 2023, nearly 1,000 birds died crashing into McCormick Place Lakeside in a single day, drawing global attention to Chicago as one of the deadliest cities for birds. (Courtesy of Taylor Hains) |
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Six months after Chicago’s updated Sustainable Development Policy went into effect, city officials have declared the revised guidelines a success in promoting bird-friendly building design while wildlife advocates call it a failure.
Representatives on both sides of the debate appeared Wednesday at a subject matter hearing in front of Chicago City Council’s Committee on Environmental Protection and Energy, chaired by Ald. Maria Hadden (49th Ward), with the aim of revisiting whether Chicago is doing enough to minimize bird collisions with buildings.
Elaine Carlson, a volunteer with Chicago Bird Collision Monitors, was firmly in the “no” camp. She was among the public speakers who urged committee members to do more for birds, namely by introducing an ordinance that would mandate bird-friendly design.
Some backstory:
More than 100 million birds migrate through Chicago every spring and fall as they head north to breeding grounds or south for the winter. Thousands of them never make it to their destination, killed by collisions with transparent or reflective window glass that the birds don’t perceive as an obstacle.
In 2020, instead of passing bird-friendly legislation — which cities including New York, San Francisco and Toronto have done — the City Council punted the issue to the Department of Planning and Development, instructing the department to give greater weight to bird-friendly mitigations within the Sustainable Development Policy.
Roughly 50 to 75 projects per year are subject to targets set by the Sustainable Development Policy, Bradley Roback, coordinator of economic development in the Department of Planning and Development, explained during Wednesday’s hearing.
Opponents of a bird-friendly ordinance contend it would stunt economic growth by piling on regulations and red tape, and would make it prohibitively expensive to build anything in Chicago. Advocates for mandated bird-friendly requirements said the impact, in the context of the total amount of construction taking place in Chicago, is minimal, affecting only a few dozen projects.
“The policy has been working,” Roback said. “More buildings than ever are choosing bird-friendly design elements.” |
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Vibraphonist Thaddeus Tukes plays a “sonic sculpture” crafted out of cell bars from Cook County Jail, part of the performance “We Lit the Fire and Trusted the Heat (after Angela Davis).” (Blair Paddock / WTTW News) |
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Cell bars from the oldest section of Cook County Jail were used as an xylophone-like instrument at the University of Illinois Chicago’s Gallery 400 on Wednesday.
As the nearly 100-year-old jail dormitories were demolished in 2021, artist Maria Gaspar was able to salvage 18 cell bars and a couple of bricks. She transformed the jail bars into a “sonic sculpture,” part of a performance piece titled “We Lit the Fire and Trusted the Heat (after Angela Davis).”
In the piece, vibraphonist Thaddeus Tukes played between the drums and vibraphone — from New Orleans second line, to swing, to salsa. Each shift in song came to a halt from faint tapping on the jail bar sculpture.
Behind Tukes was a projection of a claw excavator demolishing one of the jail dormitories.
Gaspar grew up in Little Village, neighboring Cook County Jail. That proximity, and reflections on incarceration and liberation, have informed her practice. In one of her works, she collaborated with currently and formerly incarcerated artists at Cook County Jail, projecting their work outside on the jail’s wall.
The sonic sculpture piece began in 2023, with several other musical collaborators and different configurations of the bars. |
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Chicago Police Supt. Larry Snelling discusses plans for a rally and march down Michigan Avenue on Sunday, Aug. 18, 2024. (Heather Cherone / WTTW News) |
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Amy Williamson serves on the advisory council and is the lead volunteer steward for Winnemac Park natural areas but when she arrived at the grounds Wednesday morning, it resembled a crime scene, of sorts. Thousands of plants in one of Winnemac's sizable prairies had been mowed to the ground. An acre of blooming bee balm, Culver's root, spiderwort, dogbane, cup plant and milkweed had all been chewed up and matted down while neighbors watched in horror. And the contractor responsible for the deed — on instructions from the Chicago Park District — was preparing to do the same throughout the park.
Williamson pressed pause on the operation and dialed the Park District, asking for an explanation. What she was told, she said, made sense: After a controlled burn in Winnemac's prairies late last fall and the subsequent reseeding of the natural areas, the next step in managing the prairies was to follow up with a big mow so that new seedlings don't have to fight with larger, established plants. But while she's not questioning the ecological science behind mowing, Williamson is questioning the timing — when many of the flowers are not only at their most beautiful but most beneficial to pollinators — as well as the scale of the mowing and, perhaps most importantly, the lack of communication. |
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Just as piping plover season was beginning to wind down, volunteer monitors in Waukegan have been called back into action, with four captive-reared chicks released on a Lake County beach last week.
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President Donald Trump is threatening to impose a 50% tariff on Brazil, the world’s largest coffee producer and the source of 30% of U.S. coffee imports. The looming tariff threat sent a wave of trepidation through the coffee industry, especially small business owners already competing with larger conglomerates like Starbucks. WTTW News spoke to local roasters and producers to discuss how it could affect their bottom line.
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Back in the Day: July 28, 1990 - West Side Blackouts
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On this day 35 years ago, a fire broke out at a Commonwealth Edison (ComEd) substation that knocked out power to a wide swath of Chicago`s West Side. 40,000 residents were without electricity as the blackout enveloped neighborhoods. The outages also resulted in 49 people being arrested on looting-related charges and about 15 stores were ransacked. Power was restored to the neighborhood a few days later, but several more ComEd fires occurred that summer. One on Aug. 5 left 25,000 customers without power, while a couple more in late August found 15,655 Chicagoans and 62,200 suburbanites affected by power outages. In an Aug. 21 piece, the Chicago Tribune asked, “Is the frequency with which Chicagoans are hearing about power outages a signal that something is seriously amiss with Edison`s transmission system? Or, in the wake of what all agree were two serious power failures, have the Chicago media simply paid more attention to routine outages?"
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This Week’s Civic Events and Meetings |
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Every Monday, WTTW News highlights the best ways to get involved with local government.
City Council's Committee on Education and Child Development
On Monday at 12:30 p.m., the City Council's Committee on Education and Child Development will hold a subject matter hearing “on the impact of policies from the federal administration on students of the City Colleges of Chicago and other post-secondary institutions, and on how these institutions are responding to these challenges.” Details and agenda can be found here.
Show Up Chicago
Join state Sen. Graciela Guzman and Rey Wences, senior director of deportation defense at the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR), for roundtable discussion and happy hour discussing ICE actions in Chicago and immigrants rights at the Hideout Monday night. Details and RSVP here.
City Council's Committee on Transportation and Public Way
On Wednesday at 10:30 a.m., the Chicago City Council's Committee on Transportation and Public Way will hold a quarterly hearing on the Chicago Transit Authority. Details can be found here.
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What’s your favorite movie that takes place in the Chicago area? Tell us why.
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Email DailyChicagoan@wttw.com with your responses and your answers might be published. |
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5:30 PM | 10:30 PM |
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Newsletter Producer: Josh Terry |
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