Good afternoon. Here’s the latest news you need to know in Chicago. It’s about a 5-minute read that will brief you on today’s biggest stories.
It’s a cool and cloudy afternoon, with the chance for showers and thunderstorms and a high around 71 degrees. Tonight’s low will be near 59 degrees. Tomorrow, we’ll get some sunshine, with a high of around 74 degrees.
Top story
Teachers, activists rally to keep CPS schools closed during COVID-19 pandemic
Chicago teachers, activists and families rallied outside City Hall today to oppose reopening Chicago Public Schools for in-person learning when classes resume next month.
The protests are part of similar demonstrations in several cities across the nation as the debate over whether to reopen schools during the pandemic heats up.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot and CPS officials have proposed a return to schools that would put most students in classrooms two days a week and school staff, including teachers, in classrooms four days a week. They’ve asked that families sign up children for in-person or fully remote learning by this Friday.
One of the leaders in the push to keep school buildings closed is the Chicago Teachers Union, which has said it believes in-person instruction is not safe for teachers or students as COVID-19 continues to spread.
At a press conference outside union headquarters on the Near West Side, Andrea Parker, an English Language Arts teacher at Fulton Elementary, said she loves her students and wants to see them, but she isn’t willing to put herself or the kids at risk. Fulton is in Englewood, which neighbors some of the communities hardest-hit by COVID-19 in the state.
“Sending our students to school in a hybrid model is putting our children and all our staff members in harm’s way. It is very dangerous,” Parker said. Parker added that she doesn’t believe a return to an unusual school setting will benefit students’ emotional and social health the way some might think.
“I have to tell my students they can’t hug each other,” she said. “They can’t be too close to each other. They can’t share pencils. … It’s not going to be what you think it is.“
Union president Jesse Sharkey said Lightfoot “does not have the guts to close the schools,” renewing a rivalry with a direct attack on the mayor who the CTU battled against in an 11-day strike last fall: “They’re putting it on us to close the schools,“ Sharkey said. “That’s what we feel like is happening.”
CTU Vice President Stacy Davis Gates said she doesn’t believe CPS has done enough — such as hiring nurses for every school, replacing dirty or broken ventilation systems and hiring more teachers — to ensure a safe reopening.
Davis Gates said she doesn’t deny the impacts that continued remote learning could have on students in special education or from low-income families who don’t have the same resources outside of school. But those problems existed before, she said, and putting those students back into unhealthy situations isn’t a solution.
“At what point is Chicago going to lift up the lives of people who live here?” she said. “The worst thing in the world was for our school communities to shut down. We know that there is not a social safety net in a lot of the communities that we work in. We knew that already. … At some point we’ve got to do better than normal.”
More news you need
- A suspect is in custody in the fatal shooting of 9-year-old Janari Ricks, who was killed while playing in a vacant lot near the site of the former Cabrini-Green housing project on Friday. Police are crediting neighbors for their help in tracking down the suspect.
- Illinois recorded another 1,298 coronavirus cases today, pushing the state’s positivity rate just past 4%, state figures show. The state also logged another nine deaths, bringing the total number of Illinoisans killed by the virus to 7,526.
- Be’rashett Mitchell was a protector right up to the morning he was killed: Mitchell was coming to his sister’s aid as she argued with her boyfriend when the man fired shots at him, police said. The 21-year-old aspiring architect died the next day, on July 17, at Christ Medical Center.
- Illinois dispensaries sold a record $61 million in recreational pot products in July, eclipsing the previous benchmark set in June by more than $13 million. In the first seven months since recreational cannabis was legalized, the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation has reported over $300 million in total sales.
- Big Star in Wicker Park is closing “for a few days” so the restaurant can undergo “a deep clean and complete sanitization” after an employee tested positive for COVID-19. The restaurant didn’t specify whether the employee who tested positive had interacted with customers while at work.
A bright one
Founder of start-up helping poor erase debt for free says legal fees block ‘civil rights’
Rohan Pavuluri was a sophomore at Harvard University with plans to attend law school when he came across “a nagging problem in America that got me really, really angry.”
“The reality [is] that if you can’t afford a lawyer in this country, you don’t have access to the same legal rights as everyone else,” said the 24-year-old North Sider and founder of Upsolve, a start-up helping the poor eliminate debt for free. “This applied to so many areas of poverty law — if you’re evicted from your home, if you need a restraining order from an abusive spouse, if you are sued for debt, if you need to file for bankruptcy. In each of these cases, you have no right to a free lawyer.”
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Pavuluri skipped law school to build what’s become the nation’s largest nonprofit helping the poor eliminate debt for free. Launched in 2018, the web app, very much like Turbo Tax, walks an individual through the many complicated forms needed to file a Chapter 7 bankruptcy on their own.
To date, Upsolve, which has offices in Chicago and New York, has helped clear over $225 million in debt for nearly 4,000 low-income families nationwide — including, since March, more and more Americans who are citing financial hardship because of COVID-19 as reasons behind bankruptcy filings.
“To me, this was a civil rights injustice that people weren’t really talking about. We must face the reality that we will never have enough free lawyers for everyone who wants or needs one,” Pavuluri said.
Read the full story from Maudlyne Ihejirika.
From the press box
What’s it been like for the Blackhawks inside the NHL bubble? Two members of the team spoke with our Ben Pope about their experiences shortly before the start of the series against the Oilers, which continues tonight at 9:30 p.m.
The White Sox, in the midst of a four-game winning streak, also got some reinforcement today with the activation of outfielder Nomar Mazara from the injured list. Mazara joins a team that currently leads the big leagues in batting average and ranks second among AL squads in runs scored.
Your daily question ☕
What’s something you’ve gotten better at since March?
Email us (please include your first name and where you live) and we might include your answer in the next Afternoon Edition.
Friday, we asked you: What’s the nicest thing someone has done for you during the coronavirus pandemic? Here’s what some of you said…
“Both my daughters picked us up groceries and brought them over. I was too afraid to go out often then.” — Michelle Karli
“I’ve been in the hospital for eight weeks now (not COVID related), and someone paid my bills for a whole month.” — Monty Scruggs
“My best friends helped me and my fiancé move into our first home! They made us feel so loved and special again when we had to reschedule our wedding reception for next year!” — Linds Mac
“My sister gave us a break from the kids.” — Tamika Redmond
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