The history of segregated swimming showcased on stage – Chicago Tribune newstrendslive

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When Aurora Ald. Patty Smith learned about a homeless woman less than a week away from giving birth who had little to offer her son, Smith asked for help and the community answered.

All week long, Smith said, she was overwhelmed by phone calls and texts from constituents. And all week long she was inundated with baby items, from diapers to clothes to toys to books to blankets and linens, not to mention all the big items: such as a crib, car seat, stroller, swing, changing table and play pad.

One donor even wrote a check for $1,000 for the new mom. Read the full story.

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Chicago City Council members running for reelection endure referendums on their time in office, but in the Northwest Side’s 45th Ward Ald. Jim Gardiner’s critiques from challengers go far beyond the usual complaints about crime, business development and potholes.

His time in public office has been marked by allegations he used his power as alderman to target political opponents, including a reported federal investigation into whether he sought to withhold ward services from some residents who opposed his agenda.

Lanetta Haynes Turner gets choked up when she talks about family. Turner, 45, the chief of staff for Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, is emotional when recalling her childhood growing up in the Illinois foster care system. “From the age of 6, I’ve always been in an environment where it was about being very aware of my circumstances and the stigma,” Turner said.

Turner made the transition from staff attorney to policy work and the public sector, and she said she hasn’t looked back. Her latest fight centers on the Cook County Equity Fund, a multimillion-dollar plan to address institutional and structural barriers to racial equity — operations, policies and practices — inside and outside local government.

In 2021, when “Rust” star and producer Alec Baldwin accidentally shot and killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins with a pistol containing live ammunition that should not have been on a movie set, a lot of actors nowhere near that incident in New Mexico thought a lot of things.

For Michael Shannon, “the main thing was: This is what comes of making a movie on the cheap.”

When the Chicago Bears narrowed their search for a new president and CEO, general manager Ryan Poles sat down for conversations with the finalists to evaluate how they would work and communicate with one another.

In Kevin Warren, Poles found someone with an impressive background and presence who values people and shows humility in his everyone-contributes approach to working toward a championship. Poles saw a leader who shares his mentality on how to build sustained success through the draft and selective free-agent signings.

Public swimming pools aren’t always understood as flash points during the long American struggle toward racial integration; most white Americans think of schools, buses and diner counters first.

But “the ripple, the wave, that carried me home,” the eloquent new Christina Anderson play at the Goodman Theatre, makes a richly worded argument that segregated swimming had an especially pernicious history, born of the remarkably pervasive and long-lived panic over Americans of different races sharing the calming shifts of water. (In Chicago, we are especially familiar, given the notorious fights over who got to swim at which Lake Michigan beach.)