With victims of COVID-19 including a raft of Hollywood celebrities and United Kingdom prime minister Boris Johnson, it would be easy to think that the pandemic is an equal-opportunity crisis — posing an equal threat to all humans on the planet. In truth, though, existing social and economic inequities become magnified when viewed through the […]
Terry Kath 74th Birthday Tribute On January 31
Friday, January 31, 2020, marked the 74th anniversary of the birth of rock guitar legend Terry Kath (founding member of the group Chicago) and D.J. el Serpentine observed the occasion with a special Terry Kath Tribute Show on “The Rattlesnake Shake”, 8:00 to 11:00 pm (CST) on WORT-FM. This was the 6th Terry Kath tribute […]
Learning from the Chicago Teachers Strike
The Chicago Teachers Union scored a victory for their district last week, following an eleven-day teachers strike that made national headlines. For today’s episode, guest host Richelle Wilson brings the strike into focus: how did it get started? What were the teachers’ demands? What was the outcome? And what does this all say about labor, […]
Gun Violence: Perspectives from Chicago and Pediatric Surgeons
In the wake of the mass shootings in Dayton, Ohio and El Paso, Texas over the weekend, we turn our attention to gun violence for today’s episode with guest host Gil Halsted. First, we talk to Patrick Smith, criminal justice reporter for WBEZ, about Chicago’s most violent weekend on record—and how Chicagoans have a different […]
Racism and Police Violence in Chicago with Flint Taylor
For today’s pledge drive edition, Allen is joined by Flint Taylor to discuss the history of police violence in Chicago and his new book, The Torture Machine. Flint Taylor is a founding partner of the People’s Law Office in Chicago, a longtime National Lawyers Guild member, and a founding editor of the Police Misconduct and Civil […]
Occupied Territory: Policing Black Chicago with Simon Balto
To understand issues like mass incarceration and racist policing, you have to go back in history—farther back than Reagan’s war on drugs or even Johnson’s proposed war on crime. That’s the argument of Simon Balto, our guest today and the author of Occupied Territory: Policing Black Chicago from Red Summer to Black Power. He spends […]
