Good afternoon, Chicago. ✶
Across the country, students on college campuses are protesting the Israel-Hamas war, with many setting up encampments and expressing solidarity with the people of Gaza.
College students in Chicago are taking part in these demonstrations, mounting encampments on the campuses of Northwestern University, the University of Chicago and other colleges. The latest action touched off this morning at DePaul University’s Lincoln Park campus.
In today’s newsletter, we’ve got more on these demonstrations.
Plus, we have reporting on how much weight-loss drug coverage for Illinois state workers could cost taxpayers, a new exhibit about an all-but-forgotten Greek artist and more community news you need to know below. 👇
⏱️: A 7-minute read
— Matt Moore, newsletter reporter (@MattKenMoore)
TODAY’S TOP STORY
DePaul University students establish pro-Palestinian encampment in latest protest
Reporting by Sophie Sherry, Jessica Ma and Isabel Funk
Latest campus protest: DePaul University students have launched a pro-Palestinian encampment in the Quadrangle of the university’s Lincoln Park campus calling for the school to divest from companies supporting Israel. The encampment officially began at 10 a.m. Tuesday, according to an Instagram post from the DePaul University’s Divestment Coalition Encampment.
Demonstrations ready: The DePaul students join hundreds of University of Chicago students who established an encampment on their university’s Main Quadrangle Monday morning. The demonstrations come after days of protest at Northwestern University’s Evanston campus, where students and faculty began occupying Deering Meadow Thursday.
Agreement reached at NU: By early afternoon Monday, Northwestern administration announced it had reached an agreement with protesters to bring the encampment there to an end. The agreement allows protests to continue without tents until June 1, the last day of class. As a first step toward the divestment, the agreement requires the university to disclose information about its investments within 30 days of the inquiry. Organizers said protests will continue until the university’s total divestment from companies supporting Israel.
Other actions: Students and faculty mounted pro-Palestinian protests at several other Chicago universities and colleges last week, including the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Columbia College Chicago and Roosevelt University. Students at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign also set up an encampment last week, resulting in two arrests Friday.
WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON?
- Relative of suspect arrested: A relative of the man suspected of killing Chicago Police Officer Luis Huesca has been arrested after he allegedly discarded a gun as officers investigating Huesca’s slaying arrived at his home.
- Hundreds attend Huesca funeral: Officer Luis Huesca was remembered Monday as a “pillar of strength and a beacon of kindness” as hundreds gathered to mourn during a funeral service at St. Rita of Cascia Shrine Chapel.
- Costly coverage for weight-loss drugs? Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s office pushed to expand coverage of high-priced weight-loss drugs for state government’s workforce, a quiet maneuver that could cost Illinois taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars starting this summer.
- Pritzker’s abortion rights fight: The governor is taking aim at the country’s next big abortion rights battle with a $500,000 investment to support a Florida ballot initiative that would enshrine abortion protections in the state’s constitution.
- Reviving guaranteed basic income pilot: Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration will relaunch a popular guaranteed income pilot that has provided $500 monthly payments to low-income residents, as the city works to use up federal COVID-19 relief funds before losing them.
EXPLORING THE CITY 🎨
New exhibit celebrates all-but-forgotten Greek artist Chryssa and her impact on 20th century American art
Reporting by Kyle MacMillan
A touring exhibition that opens Friday at alternative art space Wrightwood 659 attempts to refocus attention on Greek-born artist Chryssa and reintroduce her work to art fans.
“Chryssa & New York,” the first museum show in North America in more than four decades to spotlight the late artist, was co-organized by the Dia Art Foundation in New York and the Menil Collection in Houston in collaboration with Chicago’s Alphawood Foundation.
It features more than 80 sculptures, wall reliefs, paintings and silkscreen prints, centering on light art, especially Chryssa’s pioneering use of neon, for which she was best known, but also including work that touches on minimalism, conceptualism and pop art.
Chryssa Vardea-Mavromichali grew up in Nazi-occupied Greece and went to Paris to study art in 1953 but quickly shifted to the United States, opening a studio two years later in New York, which by then had supplanted the French capital as the center of the art world.
The centerpiece of the Wrightwood exhibition is Chryssa’s most famous work, “The Gates to Times Square” (1964–66), a multilayered, 10-foot cube meant to suggest the celebrated New York landmark’s onslaught of intersecting lights and signs. The sculpture, which combines stainless steel, cast aluminum, Plexiglas and neon, was first shown at the Pace Gallery, another prominent commercial gallery in New York, and it was given in 1972 to a museum in Buffalo, New York, now known as the Buffalo AKG Art Museum.
📍 Wrightwood 659, 659 W. Wrightwood Ave.
BRIGHT ONE ✨
Volunteers repair Englewood, Park Forest homes for National Rebuilding Day: ‘It’s like I’m in a new home’
Reporting by Violet Miller
In the 20 years Robert Washington has lived in his Englewood home, he has never been able to use the shower. That changed Saturday as Walsh Construction workers cleaned his floors and put the finishing touches on nearly two weeks of renovations, including new electrical work, a fresh coat of paint, some window repairs and new floors.
“It makes me feel like I’m 20 years younger,” Washington said. “It’s like I’m in a new home.”
The renovations were part of National Rebuilding Day, an unofficial holiday that’s celebrated by Rebuilding Together Metro Chicago and its network of 1,500 volunteers from local unions and businesses on the last Saturday of every April.
More than 60 homes in Englewood, West Englewood and suburban Park Forest had repairs or finishing touches done. Work ranged from installing mobility aids, like grab bars, to overhauling large parts of electrical and plumbing systems. Many of the bigger jobs were begun weeks ago.
Wanda Ramirez, CEO of Rebuilding Together Metro Chicago, said the work-heavy celebration is an important tool to keep neighborhoods together and ensure people aren’t displaced from the communities where they have lived for decades.
“We want to maintain the integrity of the neighborhoods,” Ramirez told the Sun-Times. “We want to make sure these are the folks who can continue living here affordably. ... Strengthening the foundations of these neighborhoods, these buildings and these communities is what’s important to us.”
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Newsletter reporter: Matt Moore
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