The May issue of the Chicago Reader is online now! Explore the issue at the link in our bio. Distribution of the print paper begins Wednesdays and continues through Friday.
What's inside? In the latest installment of Just Neighbors, features writer Katie Prout takes readers through the final days of an encampment at Legion Park, culminating in the eviction of 20 or so people from their tent homes.
Contributor Dave Byrnes examines Cook County state’s attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke’s complicated relationship with the Pretrial Fairness Act. Plus, theater and dance editor Kerry Reid details how theatermakers and advocates are reckoning with AI’s place onstage.
On the cover: Calamity June by Chicago-based illustrator and writer @hannahbessross
In January, eviction notices started appearing on trees, fences, benches, and light poles around the 51-acre, oblong park that straddles West Ridge, Lincoln Square, and North Park. At the camp’s height, two dozen tents were scattered loosely along the river channel into a two-part community.
From a distance, it looks like this story ends where it started: unhoused Chicagoans still homeless, still living in city parks. But what happened in Legion Park is different from any other encampment I know.
In the days and weeks before the sweep, residents, with the support of housed allies, organized collectively to fight City Hall. They went before the City Council, interrupted a Chicago Park District board meeting with megaphones, and decided together where they would compromise and where they would hold firm.
They lost, but the precedent they set, and the networks they’ve built, are a blueprint for how other encampments across Chicago can fight the city and ask for what they really need.
Read the full story at the link in bio.
✍️ Katie Prout (@caveofblunders )
📸 Slides 1 + 5: Shira Friedman-Parks (@shifriparshifripar ); slide 4: Katie Prout
Her final Foodball. . . or is it?
Your time starts now when @ketapanenkitchen returns to the next #MondayNightFoodball, the @chicago_reader ’s weekly chef pop-up at @thattuchicago . Bison, wild berries, and more this Monday, May 18, 5 PM till sellout. Happy hour starts with $5 beers and nonalcoholic drinks, and $12 bespoke cocktails by @the_coffeefairy until 7 PM. Swipe for the menu and full Foodball schedule. Story linked in bio. 📸 by Food Network
Cesar Chavez, a cofounder of the United Farm Workers (UFW) union, allegedly abused women and girls for years as a leader in the labor movement, according to first-person accounts in a New York Times investigation published in March.
Difficult conversations are being held within Latine arts and organizing spaces, where Chavez was highly celebrated, as the community works to heal and move forward. The intersection of labor and immigrant rights is a large part of Chicago's identity, which makes the news about Chavez especially tragic to the city's arts and organizing spaces.
In the nearly two months since the earth-shattering news about Chavez’s sexual abuse of women and girls, several entities honoring Chavez are undergoing name changes and painting over his likeness in murals.
Read the full story at the link in bio.
✍️ Corli Jay (@corli_jay )
📸 Kirk Williamson
Leading with care and lending a listening ear to everyone who walks through their doors, Veronica Sanchez Buenrostro and Dave Buenrostro opened BuenGro on Chicago’s southeast side in hopes of beautifying the area in a way that reflects the people who live there.
This hyper-local alternative to big stores like Lowe's or Home Depot is perfect for those looking for an ongoing, personalized partnership with plant experts. Anyone in need of fresh flora for their porch, patio, or even office space, BuenGro is the place that teaches you how to water, while watering you in return.
Read all about BuenGro in this month’s #sponsored Southeast Spotlight at the link in bio!
The explosion of proposed data centers across Illinois has sparked a fierce, bipartisan backlash and even legislation to curb the long-lasting effects on people’s air quality, water quality, and energy bills.
As residents grapple with project proposals, it’s never been more important to understand their impact. Here's what you need to know about the hyperscale data centers coming to the midwest.
Read the full story at the link in bio.
✍️ Siri Chilukuri (@schilukuri_______ )
📸 Illustration and infographic by Shira Friedman-Parks (@shifripar )
Johnny Jones, aka @MrLingoHimself , is a Chicago-based filmmaker, entrepreneur, and community builder. He spent his early years at the west-side public housing project Rockwell Gardens before moving to North Lawndale at age eight following the death of his mother. He was primarily raised by his grandmother alongside his two sisters and grew to be an adventurous city kid, playing Little League and independently navigating Chicago.
After graduating from Malone College (now Malone University), Jones promptly returned to North Lawndale and started putting down roots in the music and events scenes, creating his production company, the Lingo Chicago, in 2015.
Now, at 37, his main focus is film. In 2025, he was granted a residency at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, which provided him with resources to create his short documentary Our Lawndale Stories. It’s the first in a planned trio of shorts combining archival and contemporary film, meant to preserve the history and culture of North Lawndale while simultaneously serving the neighborhood’s current community of artists, musicians, and creatives.
Part one has screened locally and played on CAN TV, but the 12-minute film is also free to watch on YouTube.
Read the full story at the link in bio.
✍️ Taryn McFadden (@taryn.mcf )
📸 Kenn Cook Jr. for Chicago Reader (@bykenncook )
Sheriff Tom Dart is quietly lobbying the Cook County board to expand surveillance both inside the Cook County jail and on the streets.
Within the jail’s walls, he’s eyeing a system that uses artificial intelligence to monitor cameras for drug use, while outside, he’s seeking nearly $1 million to fund his office’s growing network of automated license plate readers, largely scattered throughout the western portion of the county.
Civil liberties and privacy advocates, meanwhile, are alarmed by the growth of invasive surveillance technology and the collection of biometric data with seemingly few, if any, guardrails.
The tendency in modern policing toward “data-driven” solutions purports to make law enforcement less violent, cops more efficient, and communities safer.
In reality, the explosion of unchecked state surveillance has enabled police at all levels to amass troves of personal information on private citizens.
Read the full story at the link in bio.
✍️ Shawn Mulcahy
📸 Illustration by Shira Friedman-Parks (@shifripar )
Join us this Thursday for Invisible Institute’s Spring Opening at Experimental Station.
We’re excited to partner with the Chicago Reader to offer free copies of their latest issue at the event.
Freudenfreude is the joy we feel in the happiness of others, and this evening is a chance to gather in that spirit—with games, food, music, and community, both indoors and outdoors.
Thursday, May 14, 2026
5:30–8:00 PM
Experimental Station
6100 S. Blackstone Ave
Free and open to all ages and abilities!
“They have come from Lincoln Park all the way to Brighton Park just to go into the pharmacy and get my medication, and then they’ll go back home,” said Melanie Diaz, 26, about her long-distance Chicago bestie, Spencer Harrigan, 22. “You can’t let that go once you have someone like that. It’s really special.”
On a rainy day in March, they traversed trains, buses, and the slick streets of Chicago from their different corners of the city to attend a community art night at Pilsen Arts & Community House and reflect on their friendship.
Free time together is often spent at art markets, community workshops, and Chicago Park District events. They emphasized the importance of third spaces and art venues for sustaining their friendship.
Still the city’s flaws remain apparent: Disparities in public transportation access and lack of affordable housing are two major challenges.
🚌 Despite the structural barriers to traveling between Chicago’s 77 community areas, many friends are willing to face the city’s geographic hurdles and sustain relationships that transcend race, gender, age, and class. In an effort to chronicle human connection and love despite systemic and structural barriers, the Going the Distance series examines the enduring friendships between people living in distant neighborhoods.
Read the full story at the link in bio.
✍️ Jasmine Barnes
📸 Tonal Simmons
Being a tipped worker in certain contexts can be incredibly lucrative. At Michelin-starred restaurants in the Gold Coast, big spenders leave big tips. But these servers don’t represent the vast majority of the 80,000 tipped workers in Chicago, many of whom struggle to make ends meet.
If an employee doesn’t make enough tips to bring their hourly wage to the minimum, their employer is supposed to supplement their pay. But many workers argue that bars and restaurants routinely flout the law and that merely earning minimum wage doesn’t leave them with enough to survive.
In 2023, tipped workers and advocates successfully fought to eliminate the subminimum wage in Chicago, part of a compromise between the proworker One Fair Wage campaign and the pro-industry Illinois Restaurant Association.
That debate reentered the zeitgeist this winter as restaurant owners, represented by the IRA, sought to undo the compromise just two and a half years into the five-year phase-out of the subminimum wage.
Read the full story at the link in bio.
✍️ Devyn-Marshall Brown (DMB) (@dmbrown_tboy )
📸 Nguyen Tran for Chicago Reader (@ontheleft )
Mercado Central via Avondale . . .
. . . opens for business when @_chefshirley_ aka Margot’s Fusion Kitchen, debuts at the next #MondayNightFoodball, the @chicago_reader ’s weekly chef pop-up at @thattuchicago . Guatemalan street food: shuco mixtos, pupusas, chuchitos, and more this Monday, May 11, 5 PM till sellout. Happy hour starts with $5 beers and nonalcoholic drinks, and $12 bespoke cocktails by @the_coffeefairy until 7 PM. Swipe for the menu and full Foodball schedule. Story linked in bio. 📸 by Shirley Cisneros
