By Steve Rhodes
I can’t keep up. Something’s gotta change.
Posted on June 12, 2018
The [Monday] Papers
By Steve Rhodes
For completists, there was no column on Friday and no Weekend Desk Report. Sorry!
“You may already know the Bureau’s work on drones,” the Bureau of Investigative Journalism says in its morning e-mail today.
“We’ve covered strikes and their impact on civilians since 2010, producing an award winning body of work and contributing to a push for greater US military transparency. Now we have launched a new project – Shadow Wars. It will expand our reporting focus beyond drone strikes, although we will still be tracking them. We felt that the changing – and increasingly murky – nature of US military and counterterrorism engagements required a broader approach.
“We began this project to follow new developments in US military engagements under President Donald Trump. In some ways, these are a continuation and evolution of trends seen under President Obama. The same reluctance to deploy American troops applies, and so does the impetus to respond militarily to radical groups around the world. But as radical groups spread and metastasize, the US’s military engagements are becoming ever more widespread, and complicated. You can read our thinking on this here.”
Posted on June 11, 2018
The [Thursday] Papers
By Steve Rhodes
Someone I don’t know well but is in my orbit has been having scary mental health issues to the point that an intervention is clearly needed. He’s been harassing others and seems like he could be a danger to them or himself. I’ve discussed with others what the appropriate response is. An obvious course of action is to call the police. I’ve been afraid to do that because he’s an African American and I fear in an interaction with the police he could end up dead when he really just needs help.
Posted on June 7, 2018
The [Wednesday] Papers
By Steve Rhodes
For completists, there was no column on Tuesday.
It once looked like issues surrounding CPD would be the ones that would most make Rahm Emanuel vulnerable in his re-election campaign, and that the presence of Garry McCarthy in the race would center much of the campaign discussion on the Laquan McDonald case and everything that has followed from it, including the seeming slow-walking of reform efforts. In such a campaign, Lori Lightfoot, who led a mayoral post-McDonald task force that many, including me, thought would be a whitewash but instead was an excoriating indictment of the city, would emerge as the most potent challenger given McCarthy’s own involvement in the McDonald case, as well as his narrow appeal to basically the city’s tiny Trump faction.
Now, however, it appears that CPS will take center stage in the campaign – barring whatever awfulness CPD or some other city agency or department engages in over the next 10 months, which is certainly more than enough time for evil to manifest all over the place.
But consider: The mayor’s signature “achievement” and most dramatic reshaping of the city remains his massive school closures, and those closures have just been shown to have widely and deeply failed. The district’s special education practices were so fucked up by cost-cutting consultants installed by the mayor’s third superintendent, the second one indisposed in prison for enriching herself at the expense of some of the nation’s poorest kids, that the state has taken over servicing the most vulnerable students in the city. The administration’s privatization schemes have left the schools filthy. And now comes the Tribune investigation into widespread, horrific sexual abuse in CPS that the district ignored, kept secret or otherwise failed to properly address.
One might reasonably ask, How does a mayor survive that?
Posted on June 6, 2018
The [Monday] Papers
By Steve Rhodes
People are why Mondays suck so much. We had 2 days of not having to deal with stupid people, then we crash back into dumb asses. Stop blaming Monday. #MondayMotivation #Monday #MondayMood #MondayBlues #mondaythoughts #Dumbassery
— Myangryvagina (@Myangryvagina1) June 4, 2018
Posted on June 4, 2018
The Weekend Desk Report
By Steve Rhodes
“Friends of a boater who disappeared Monday, prompting a search that left a Fire Department diver dead, located a body in the South Branch of the Chicago River on Friday while searching for the missing man, they said,” the Tribune reports.
“[F]amily and friends were not happy with official efforts to look for the body, leading them to organize their own search.
“We had to do it ourselves,” [one man] said. “So we went out and we started looking for him.”
That strikes me as . . . unusual? Unprecedented?
Posted on June 2, 2018
The [Friday] Papers
By Steve Rhodes
Clear right fucking now. From Samuel L. Weatherman himself. #chicago #weather
— Samuel L. Weatherman (@sljweather) June 1, 2018
Posted on June 1, 2018
The [Thursday] Papers
By Steve Rhodes
“As the White House’s policy to separate immigrant parents from their children at the border continues to fan the flames of the national immigration debate, attorneys with the American Civil Liberties Union said Wednesday that the case of a woman detained in El Paso could be the catalyst for change,” the Texas Tribune reports.
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced last month his office was imposing a “zero tolerance” policy on people who enter the country illegally. The policy means that parents caught with their children will go to a detention facility while their children are placed elsewhere. He doubled-down on that pledge this month in separate speeches.
“If you’re smuggling a child, then we’re going to prosecute you, and that child will be separated from you, probably, as required by law,” he said. “If you don’t want your child separated, then don’t bring them across the border illegally. It’s not our fault that somebody does that.”
Lee Gelernt, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, said it’s not clear how many families have been affected since the policy was announced because “only the government” knows. But he said his case against the federal government would reverse that policy if a federal district judge in California grants a preliminary injunction against the practice.
The Texas case involves a Brazilian referred to only as “Ms. C” in court documents. She arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border last summer and was approached by a federal border agent within seconds, court documents state. She explained she was applying for asylum, passed a credible fear interview, but was subsequently placed in custody after being prosecuted for illegal entry. Her minor son was sent to a facility for unaccompanied children in Chicago. She completed her 25-day criminal misdemeanor sentence in September and was sent to an immigration detention facility in El Paso, the filing states.”
Boldface mine. Assignment Desk, activate!
Posted on May 31, 2018
The [Wednesday] Papers
“Cook County Commissioner Bridget Gainer, who’s weighing whether to try to unseat Mayor Rahm Emanuel next year, already has done her part to boost City Hall’s finances,” the Sun-Times reports.
“Records show that, since 2013, the three vehicles registered to Gainer’s Lakeview home have been ticketed nearly 200 times for speed-camera, red-light-camera and parking violations.”
Whoa. That hardly even seems possible – I mean, given that Gainer is white.
Posted on May 30, 2018
The [Tuesday] Papers
“The solemn ritual of a burial with military honors is repeated dozens of times a day, in foul weather or fair, at Arlington National Cemetery, honoring service members from privates to presidents. But in order to preserve the tradition of burial at the nation’s foremost military cemetery for future generations, the Army, which runs Arlington, says that it may have to deny it to nearly all veterans who are living today,” the New York Times reports.
“Arlington is running out of room.”
Posted on May 29, 2018