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November, 2004
On a recent Tuesday evening, Audrey Cho, 28, was sitting in front of her 10 students, holding a handout that listed this year’s federal holidays. Pointing to an item in February, she asked her class: "Who is Washington?” A confusing murmur arose in the accents of Korea, Mexico, Peru and Mongolia, above the faint buzz that emanated from bare light bulbs hanging overhead. Julio Lamas, a goateed...
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October, 2002
When Peter Magai Bul and other Sudanese boys came to the attention of aid workers in the early 1990s, they presented a grim image: a river of thousands of children, uprooted from their homes amid the chaos of Sudan's civil war, rail-thin and often naked, walking hundreds of miles in scorching heat. The world has come to know these boys—very few were girls—as "Lost Boys," named after the...
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November, 2002
Two years ago, Tankow Kwong stepped into a voting booth to cast his first ballot as a naturalized U.S. citizen. He voted for president, but skipped over all the other offices. The 71-year-old Chinatown resident said he was stymied by the list of obscure political positions that were rendered even more confusing in English than in his native Chinese. But that shouldn't happen again on Nov. 5....
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October, 2007
It is a story of triumphs and setbacks, of lofty goals and earthly accomplishments earned at an agonizingly slow pace, of substantial change and overriding continuity.
It is a story of Chicago in 1966 and 2006. The story started 40 winters ago in North Lawndale on the city's West Side and spread throughout Chicago's neighborhoods. It ends, for now, in many of the same communities where the...
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October, 2007
Last year, Aaron Bowen was dubbed a "future gay hero" by The Advocate, a national gay and lesbian magazine, but there was a time when he felt more like a victim. The 21-year-old Chicago native spent the past six years living on his own ever since his family found out he was bisexual. "My mom had issues with my lifestyle---which resulted in confrontation and constant conflict," he said.
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September, 2007
"Fighting the Odds" provided insight into the problems of many urban men but included little about their lack of job skills. "There aren't any jobs out there. –¦ If that's what we got to resort to, I'll sell some drugs out there," said one. No jobs? Allstate and Sprint turned down new locations in Chicago and Cook County, offering 1,500 new jobs, in part due to a lack of qualified workers....
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September, 2007
Helen Zia traces the evolution of Asian Americans from a politically impotent ethnic group into a mature and influential voice in her new book, "Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People." The 48-year-old daughter of Chinese immigrants uses her personal journey as activist and writer to chronicle the transformation. "Our demographics and achievements, trials and tribulations,...
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September, 2007
Daniel Seals' bronze complexion has left many people guessing when they try to determine his racial background.
"People will walk up and start speaking Hebrew to me sometimes. They assume I'm Israeli," said Seals, 34, the Democratic Party nominee for Illinois' 10th Congressional District. "An Egyptian guy thought I had this whole kind of North African type of thing. Who knows, but all my...
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September, 2007
Last May, Anthony W. Williams, a longtime pastor in Englewood, met with about 10 residents from Roseland on Chicago's South Side. The residents were upset that a local company was allegedly hiring undocumented immigrants, instead of community members, to staff its meat packaging plant.
Williams' first move was to turn to Rick Biesada, co-founder and director of the Chicago Minutemen Project...
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