Chicago (Ill)

Subterms

    Latest story

    138 Shares16 Views

    Jury Awards $120 Million to Illinois Men Wrongfully Convicted of Murder

    by

    John Fulton and Anthony Mitchell were teenagers when they were coerced into giving false confessions in a 2003 murder in Chicago.A federal jury in Chicago awarded $120 million on Monday to two Illinois men who spent more than 16 years behind bars for a 2003 murder they did not commit.John Fulton and Anthony Mitchell were teenagers when they were convicted in 2006 for the murder of Christopher Collazo, whose body was found bound and partly burned in an alley on the South Side of Chicago in the early hours of March 10, 2003. Their convictions were vacated in 2019.Mr. Fulton and Mr. Mitchell each filed a federal lawsuit in 2020 against the City of Chicago, the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office and several Chicago police officers, arguing that the men had been framed and were coerced into giving false confessions.After a month of testimony, a federal jury deliberated for two days before finding that the men had been railroaded into giving false confessions and that detectives had fabricated evidence against them, according to court records. Mr. Fulton and Mr. Mitchell were each awarded $60 million in damages.Mr. Fulton said in a phone interview on Tuesday that he knew his day of justice would come.“It was a sense of relief,” he said of the verdict. Referring to others still serving time for crimes they did not commit, he added, “I also thought about all the others who haven’t gotten a chance to see this day for themselves.”Jon Loevy, a lawyer for Mr. Fulton and Mr. Mitchell, described the moment the jury read its verdict as “very emotional.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    More stories

    • 150 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      The Torlonia Marbles Are Coming to Museums in Chicago, Texas and Montreal

      by

      For the first time, the ancient marbles are traveling out of Europe to the United States and Canada, for a prolonged stint.Stashed away in a cavernous Roman deposit, hidden from the world for the better part of the last century, the Torlonia Collection — the largest collection of classical sculpture still in private hands — now appears to be continuing its jet-set itinerary that started in 2020.After a glittering debut in Rome, and star turns in Milan and the Louvre Museum in Paris, 58 of the sculptures belonging to the Torlonia family, based in Rome, will be showcased at the Art Institute of Chicago in March, and will then travel to the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.Dating from approximately the fifth century B.C. to the early fourth century, the works on view will include highlights of the Torlonia Collection, but also 24 sculptures that were specifically selected for the North American run by the co-curators Lisa Ayla Cakmak and Katharine A. Raff of the Art Institute of Chicago, after “multiple trips” to the Torlonia laboratory in Rome where the collection is being restored. (“A magical, once in a lifetime experience,” Cakmak said during a video interview.)Titled “Myth and Marble: Ancient Roman Sculpture From the Torlonia Collection,” the exhibition will “feel very different from the European presentations,” Cakmak said. For the curators, it has been important to make it clear “that this is a completely new project,” not just in how it “was presented in our interpretation and storytelling but also the checklist” of works, she added.The Torlonia Nile, formerly Barberini-Albani. Sculptures from the collection had been visible, off and on, until World War II. Then they fell out of sight.Lorenzo De Masi; via Torlonia FoundationIt is “intended to be for non-specialists,” people who “might not know much about the ancient world,” but would be interested in seeing what Marcus Aurelius, known to modern audiences through the first “Gladiator” film, actually looked like, said Cakmak. She added that a scholars day limited to experts was “in the planning stages.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 150 Shares159 Views

      in Elections

      In First Post-Election Speech, Obama Calls for ‘Forging Alliances and Building Coalitions’

      by

      “Purity tests are not a recipe for long-term success,” the former president said in the speech in Chicago.In his first speech since the presidential election in November, Barack Obama urged Americans who want democracy to survive to look for ways to compromise, engage with the other side, turn away from identity politics and build relationships with unlikely potential allies.“Pluralism is not about holding hands and singing ‘Kumbaya,’” Mr. Obama said in Chicago on Thursday. “It is not about abandoning your convictions and folding when things get tough. It is about recognizing that, in a democracy, power comes from forging alliances and building coalitions, and making room in those coalitions not only for the woke, but the waking.”He added: “Purity tests are not a recipe for long-term success.”Billed as an address on “the power of pluralism,” the speech — a road map of sorts for political survival for liberals in a second term for Donald J. Trump — was delivered before hundreds of people as part of an annual Democracy Forum put on by the Obama Foundation, a private nonprofit entity that is led by Mr. Obama.Mr. Obama opened the speech with an acknowledgment that when he told friends of the focus of this year’s forum, the topic drew groans and eye rolls.“We’ve just been through a fierce, hard-fought election, and it’s fair to say that it did not turn out as they had hoped,” said Mr. Obama, who had, along with his wife, Michelle, campaigned intensely for Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate, in the final weeks.For Mr. Obama’s friends, he said, talk of bridging differences in a bitterly divided country seemed like an academic exercise.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 150 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      Ella Jenkins, Musician Who Found an Audience in Children, Dies at 100

      by

      Performing and recording, she transformed what was seen as a marginal genre in the music industry into a celebration of shared humanity. Ella Jenkins, a self-taught musician who defied her industry’s norms by recording and performing solely for children, and in doing so transformed a marginal and moralistic genre into a celebration of a diverse yet common humanity with songs like “You’ll Sing a Song and I’ll Sing a Song,” died on Saturday in Chicago. She was 100. Her death was confirmed by John Smith, associate director at Smithsonian Folkways Recordings.Ms. Jenkins had no formal musical training, but she had an innate sense of rhythm. “I was always humming or singing and la-la, lu-lu or something,” she once said.She absorbed the everyday melodies of her childhood — the playground clapping games, the high school sports chants, the calls of a sidewalk watermelon vendor hawking his produce. As an adult, she paired such singsong rhythms with original compositions and sought not simply to amuse or distract children but to teach them to respect themselves and others.Against the sound of a kazoo, a harmonica, a variety of hand drums or, later, a baritone ukulele, Ms. Jenkins sang subtly instructive lyrics, as in “A Neighborhood Is a Friendly Place,” a song she wrote in 1976:You can say hiTo friends passing byA neighborhood is a friendly place.You can say helloTo people that you knowA neighborhood is a friendly place.Neighbors to learn to shareNeighbors learn to careA neighborhood is a friendly place.Over children’s steady clapping, she recorded the age-old “A Sailor Went to Sea”:A sailor went to sea, sea, seaTo see what he could see, see, seeAnd all that he could see, see, seeWas down in the bottom of the sea, sea, sea.For many parents and classroom teachers, Ms. Jenkins’s renditions of traditional nursery rhymes like “Miss Mary Mack” and “The Muffin Man” are authoritative.Still, from the beginning of her career in the 1950s, Ms. Jenkins pronounced her signature to be call-and-response, in which she asked her charges to participate directly in the music-making, granting them an equal responsibility in a song’s success. She had seen Cab Calloway employ the technique in “Hi-De-Ho,” and for her, the animating idea, veiled in a playful to-and-fro, was that everything good in the world was born of collaboration.In one of her most popular recordings, Ms. Jenkins sings out, “Did you feed my cow?” “Yes, ma’am!” a group of children trumpet back. The song continues:Could you tell me how?Yes, ma’am!What did you feed her?Corn and hay!What did you feed her?Corn and hay!As Ms. Jenkins repopularized time-honored children’s songs, she also gave the genre global scope. Before Ms. Jenkins, children’s music in the United States consisted primarily of simplified, often cartoonish renditions of classical music.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 163 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      On Chicago’s South Side, White Sox Fans Know Misery. But Not Like This.

      by

      The baseball team tied the modern day record for losses on Sunday, dropping a 120th game. In the team’s most loyal neighborhood, some people couldn’t bear to watch. It was the bottom of the second inning on Sunday afternoon before Lauren Eaves, the bartender at BallPark Pub in the Bridgeport neighborhood of Chicago, remembered to turn one of the bar’s six flat-screen TVs to the White Sox game.“Nobody’s asking for it,” she said. In the dwindling days of a spectacularly dreadful season, many White Sox fans are averting their eyes. On Sunday, the team lost for the 120th time this year, tying the major league record for most losses by a modern-day team in a single season. The loss happened nearly 2,000 miles away in San Diego, where the Padres beat the Sox, 4-2. But it landed like one more gut punch on the South Side of Chicago in Bridgeport, the neighborhood where the White Sox have played for more than a century, and home to many families who have loyally cheered for the team for generations.All Sunday afternoon, customers drifted in and out of BallPark, about as Sox-centric as a bar can be. The walls are covered with Sox memorabilia: a mural depicting the notorious Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey Park in 1979 that ended in a riot, a black-and-white portrait of the former maverick team owner Bill Veeck, a yellow vintage sign advertising $3 grandstand seats. Patrons at BallPark Pub, near where the Chicago White Sox play their home games, watched the Chicago Bears and other N.F.L. teams play on Sunday.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times“Welcome Sox Fans!” a large sign by the door beckons. These days, few fans who walk through the door of BallPark are here to watch the Sox. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 150 Shares109 Views

      in Elections

      Nigel Farage’s Anti-Immigration Party Has Big Plans. Can It See Them Through?

      by

      Nigel Farage, a Trump ally and Brexit champion, thinks his Reform U.K. party can become a major political force. At a conference on Friday, he will explain how.A week ago, he was the keynote speaker at a glitzy Chicago dinner for the Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank with a history of denying climate science, where the top tables went for $50,000.On Friday, it was back to the day job for Nigel Farage, the veteran political disrupter, ally of Donald J. Trump and hard right, anti-immigrant activist whose ascent has alarmed both of Britain’s main political parties.In a cavernous exhibition center in Birmingham, in England’s West Midlands, Mr. Farage is set to address supporters of his upstart party, Reform U.K., at its first annual conference since its success in Britain’s July general election. He is expected to lay out a plan to professionalize the party and build support ahead of local elections next year.His ambitions are clear. But the jet-setting lifestyle of Mr. Farage, 60, whose visit to Chicago was his third recent trip to the United States, underscores the question hanging over Reform U.K.: Does its leader have the ability and appetite to build the fledgling party into a credible political force?Mr. Farage, a polarizing, pugnacious figure, is one of Britain’s most effective communicators and had an outsized impact on its politics for two decades before finally being elected to Britain’s Parliament in July. A ferocious critic of the European Union, he championed Brexit and helped pressure Prime Minister David Cameron to hold the 2016 referendum.“A fairly strong case can be made that Nigel Farage has been the most important political figure in all the elections of the last decade,” said Robert Ford, a professor of political science at the University of Manchester.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Israeli-American Hostage Found Dead, Mourned Across U.S.

      by

      Hersh Goldberg-Polin loved soccer and music. He was curious, respectful and passionate about geography and travel, according to his mother. He was born in the Bay Area and moved to Israel when he was 8.Some 15 years later, he became one of the most internationally recognized hostages among the 240 who were taken by Hamas on Oct. 7. For months, his parents made pleas to bring their son and the other hostages home.But he was among the six hostages whose bodies were found in a tunnel in Gaza over the weekend. In a statement, President Biden said they were killed by Hamas.“With broken hearts, the Goldberg-Polin family is devastated to announce the death of their beloved son and brother, Hersh,” his family said in a statement. Family members declined to be interviewed for this article, asking for privacy.On Sunday, tributes to Mr. Goldberg-Polin, who was 23 and a dual citizen of the United States and Israel, poured in from many pockets of America. People who knew him expressed immense grief and recalled moments they shared. To many across the country, he had become a symbol of hope.Hersh Goldberg-Polin.The Hostages Families Forum, via Associated PressWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 88 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      Democrats Look to End the Electability Question

      by

      The party is battling a squishy, often self-reinforcing concept about the perceived ability to win.This year, Angela Alsobrooks, the county executive of Prince George’s County, Md., and a Democrat, sought support for her U.S. Senate bid from an elected official she had known for years.“She said to me, ‘I’m so sorry. I want to be really blunt with you, Angela,’” Alsobrooks, who is Black, said, recalling that the official, a fellow Democrat whom she did not name, said she thought Alsobrooks could not win. “We are not ready to elect a Black woman in the state of Maryland,” Alsobrooks recounted the official as saying.It turned out that Maryland Democrats were ready to do just that.Alsobrooks beat a white man in her Senate primary by more than 10 percentage points. Public polling has shown her leading another, former Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, whom she will face in November.But the exchange, which Alsobrooks described in an interview last week during the Democratic National Convention, underscores the way a party that is trying to elect the first Black female president is still battling anxieties about the idea of electability — and preparing to confront them.Electability — a squishy and often self-reinforcing concept about who is perceived as being able to win elections — was a through line of the Democratic primary in 2020, when voters stung by the 2016 election wrung their hands over whether preferred presidential candidates who were female, nonwhite or both could garner enough support in key battleground states. The party ultimately coalesced around Joe Biden.Democrats did not have a chance to air those concerns in a drawn-out primary in 2024, and many suggested last week that identity-based questions about electability should remain firmly in the past. They view the issue of electability as providing cover for racist and sexist notions about white voters being apprehensive about backing Black candidates and male voters being reluctant to vote for female candidates.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More