Concerts

If you, like me, are a fan of the humble city rat, then the relationship between our fair city and New York is an instructive one. Like all things New York, the allure of America’s biggest city seems to make everything, including its relationship to the quintessential urban rodent, more grandiose. Whether it’s the high-profile search for a well-paid “rat czar” to handle the city’s “real enemy,” the countless videos of rats dragging around slices of pizza, or even the fact that “Rats in New York City” is its own Wikipedia page, you could easily convince yourself that the Big Apple is the singular American locale for ratty obsessions. 

But Chicago is no slouch when it comes to a certain reverence for the oft-despised creature. The transformation of Chicago’s iconic Don’t Feed the Rats poster by artist Derek Erdman into a loving encouragement to “Put ALL garbage on the ground” is only the most obvious example. WBEZ’s Curious City also did an investigation into the proliferation of Chicago’s rat population. While New York gets all the attention, Chicago has quietly held down the title of America’s rattiest city for eight straight years. If we’re the city that works, as Nelson Algren once said, it seems that the rats also got the message.

It’s no wonder then, that the goal of Target: Rats, a new board game from the Chicago-focused retailer Transit Tees, is to grow the city’s rat population, rather than destroy it. Following on the success of the company’s Uno-inspired card game Loop, later turned into a board game, Target: Rats pits up to four rat families against one another, and even more distressingly, an exterminator figure who haunts the city streets. The goal is simple: to spread one’s rat empire above and below ground as far and wide as possible, by building nests, spawning new rats, and fighting to become “Da Big Cheese,” or the ruler of the underground hub that sits at the center of the game board.

Target: Rats The Board Game transittees.com

Like many board games, Target: Rats requires a bit of a learning curve to settle in, although once you’ve established the basic rhythms, gameplay is dynamic and rewarding. Turns are structured by a combination of movement and activity, with several possible outcomes after moving four spaces on the board: feed (if rats are at a food source), breed (if two rats are fed, they can give birth to two others), nest (creating a potential new spawning point), fight (if you happen upon another player’s rats), or scavenge, which involves taking a card from one of two decks. Players move from the surface to the underground via sewers, and placeable dumpsters can create a steady food source that allows more rats to enter gameplay.

The game balances elements of strategic thinking, luck, and interpersonal interactions but not always successfully. For one, there’s an imbalance in the two card decks: surface-level cards are skewed nearly three-to-one in favor of spawning more rats, compared to a more even split underground, which can create inadvertent imbalances in player outcomes depending on where players settle. But the biggest impediment to forward progress is the lack of dedicated food sources that remain on the game board, making it hard to even begin expanding one’s rat population. Even if you’ve played the game before and have a strategy in mind, it can take a frustratingly long time to build momentum, which in my experience warded off some first-time players from wanting to dig deeper.

Courtesy Transit Tees

Like so many board games, house rules can make up for certain limitations in the board game’s base settings. For one, all future playthroughs in my household will include several dedicated, nondisappearing food sources, available to all rats at all times. Rebalancing the game in this way speeds up gameplay and removes some of the frustration for first-time players, better allowing players to focus on the other, more fun elements of the game that are more challenging when resources are scarcer.

Those elements are combat between rat families, and the ever-present threat of the Exterminator, a crucial X factor that can make or break a game. The player who possesses Da Big Cheese, first gained by throwing a one in the center of the board, also gains a critical advantage that makes its possession vital throughout the game. Balancing the strategic question of when and with how many rats to fight your opponents for territory, combined with the luck of a dice throw, ensures that each confrontation around the game board becomes a dynamic showdown.

The Exterminator is the other factor that can cut a player’s momentum in their tracks and prevent someone from winning just as it seems the game is in hand. The Exterminator kills rats, destroys food sources and nests, and otherwise blocks movement around the board. 

It provides a challenging impediment to forward progress, while also allowing those falling behind to catch up by targeting their opponent’s favorite dedicated nesting spot/food source combination for extermination. Even when a player is on the brink of victory, holding possession of Da Big Cheese and with three nests around the board even after every other player has gone, a lucky throw can unexpectedly stretch the game further.

Still, at the end of the day, I found myself wondering: would it be possible to play against the Exterminator? In a game of expanding rat populations, could players work together not in a battle of survival of the fittest, but instead aim to overrun the entire map, until the Exterminator can no longer prevent the rats from taking over the entire city itself?

I have yet to give this rewrite a chance, but my vision is simple: players collaborate to build communal nests, expand food supplies, and otherwise attack the Exterminator at all turns. There’d be a limit on the number of player turns available before the game ended, and the goal would be to get every single nest and rat on the board before time ran out. The game board itself seems capacious enough to carry out this approach and honors our city’s real-life rats, who have done so well to grow their ranks with seemingly nothing to stop them.

In his book Rats: Observations on the History & Habitat of the City’s Most Unwanted Inhabitants,  Robert Sullivan writes, “I think of rats as our mirror species, reversed but similar, thriving or suffering in the very cities where we do the same.” Target: Rats invites us to suspend our usual judgments, embrace our furry rodent counterparts, and spread out a bit, content to proliferate as widely as our own rats have managed. Our rats live in abundance, making us the country’s rattiest city; perhaps it’s time we start to do the same. 

Read More

There’s no restaurant opening in 2023 more desperately anticipated than Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto’s transformation of his brother’s venerable but grotty River North beef joint into a fine dining destina—uhhh, wait. No.

I’m thinking of season two of The Bear, the fictionalized heart-attack-on-a-plate that might be the most harrowing depiction of life on the line ever committed to the small screen. Shooting starts next month in advance of a ten-episode return to Hulu in early summer, according to the trades.

Little noticed amid the deafening buzz is the forthcoming release of the documentary antidote to Jeremy Allen White’s dreamy kitchen dysfunction: Cambodian Futures, a 17-minute short film focused on a real-life restaurant—the beloved, ever-evolving Hermosa. Shepherded these past eight years by Ethan Lim, who took it from a neighborhood sandwich shop to one of the hottest tables in town, the chef serves a visionary expression of Khmer food, a cuisine whose development skipped a generation due to war and genocide.

Lim, the most chill chef you’ll ever meet, soothingly narrates his own sometimes gutting journey, beginning in a Thai refugee camp and leaving off at last year’s Jean Banchet Awards (where, spoiler, he won Rising Chef of the Year). Directed by Dustin Nakao-Haider (Shot in the Dark), it’s one episode in the second season of Firelight Media/American Masters’ In the Making series, focusing on emerging BIPOC artists. Lim’s the only chef to be profiled. There’s no official release date yet, but Nakao-Haider reports it’ll likely appear on PBS sometime in March.

I can’t predict whether the Chicago food world’s onscreen profile this year will match 2022 (which included the Trotter doc, and arguably, The Menu, and season three of South Side), but that’s a good start.

There’s a clearer picture for food writers.

Fieldwork: A Forager’s Memoir Iliana Regan (Agate, January 24): This is the former Elizabeth chef’s second tell-all after 2019’s Burn the Place. Since then, she left the kitchen and earned an MFA in writing from the Art Institute while running the remote Milkweed Inn in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. During the pandemic, Regan’s lengthy family history of mushroom hunting followed her and her wife north, along with the anxieties of a fretful father. Remoteness doesn’t mean idleness, as she recounts fraught trips over dirt roads to the truck stop for broasted chicken, baby-making efforts, and an alcoholic relapse. Regan may have left the mental hazards of restaurant life behind, but she’s found plenty to worry about in the woods.

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Indian Cuisine, edited by Colleen Taylor Sen, Sourish Bhattacharyya, and Helen Saberi(Bloomsbury Academic, February 23): I’m probably more excited for this massive 436-page ($157.50) tome than any other in recent memory. Comprehensively capturing the breadth of subcontinental cuisine seems like an impossible Borgesian labor, but Chicago culinary historian Sen—with seven related titles already to her name—along with two co-editors and 27 writers have made a convincing go at it. You could easily spend weeks bouncing among 236 entries, from Sanskrit scholar and food chemist K.T. Achaya to the kokum fruit, and the black, sticky condiment it produces; from the slow-stewed Muslim beef dish nihari to the galaxy of yams and their infinite purposes.

Made in Chicago: Stories Behind 30 Great Hometown Bites, Monica Eng, David Hammond (3 Fields Books, March 21): Via the Tribune and WBEZ, current Axios reporter Eng has been documenting the dimmer corners of the Chicago food scene longer than just about anyone. With Newcity’s Hammond, they’ve assembled a taxonomic guidebook to the city’s lesser-known endemic eats. With obligatory chapters on familiar signatures like hot dogs and deep dish, its real value lies in the stories behind less celebrated working-class originals like the Japanese-American rice and gravy burger plate akutagawa; sweet sticky Chinese-Korean gampongi lollipop wings; and the city’s other beef on a bun: the sweet steak sandwich.

Pulp: A Practical Guide to Cooking with Fruit, Abra Berens (Chronicle Books, April 4): If two years go by without a sprawling single-subject cookbook from former Chicago chef Berens, did they really happen? Along with 2019’s vegetable-forward Ruffage and 2021’s grain-based Grist, this fruit- and (somewhat) baking-centered book makes a nice boxed set, even if it is just concerned with varieties that can be found in the midwest. (What, no pawpaws?) Still, from her Three Oaks farm kitchen she manages to conjure up Michigan exotica like marigold syrup, ground cherry floats, and rosé-poached apricots with earl grey semifreddo.

Midwest Pie: Recipes that shaped a region,edited by Meredith Pangrace (Belt Publishing, May 9): On the heels of 2021’s Rust Belt Vegan Kitchen, Belt’s creative director tackles a more ubiquitous and crowd-pleasing subject, with recipes spanning “old classic” pies such as funeral and sawdust; regional originals like the Nation of Islam’s bean pie and Indiana’s sugar cream Hoosier pie; “desperation pies” that relied on pantry staples when times were tough (chess, shoofly, mock apple); midwestern produce pies (persimmon chiffon); and retro relics (cottage cheese, chocolate rum).

Read More

If you, like me, are a fan of the humble city rat, then the relationship between our fair city and New York is an instructive one. Like all things New York, the allure of America’s biggest city seems to make everything, including its relationship to the quintessential urban rodent, more grandiose. Whether it’s the high-profile search for a well-paid “rat czar” to handle the city’s “real enemy,” the countless videos of rats dragging around slices of pizza, or even the fact that “Rats in New York City” is its own Wikipedia page, you could easily convince yourself that the Big Apple is the singular American locale for ratty obsessions. 

But Chicago is no slouch when it comes to a certain reverence for the oft-despised creature. The transformation of Chicago’s iconic Don’t Feed the Rats poster by artist Derek Erdman into a loving encouragement to “Put ALL garbage on the ground” is only the most obvious example. WBEZ’s Curious City also did an investigation into the proliferation of Chicago’s rat population. While New York gets all the attention, Chicago has quietly held down the title of America’s rattiest city for eight straight years. If we’re the city that works, as Nelson Algren once said, it seems that the rats also got the message.

It’s no wonder then, that the goal of Target: Rats, a new board game from the Chicago-focused retailer Transit Tees, is to grow the city’s rat population, rather than destroy it. Following on the success of the company’s Uno-inspired card game Loop, later turned into a board game, Target: Rats pits up to four rat families against one another, and even more distressingly, an exterminator figure who haunts the city streets. The goal is simple: to spread one’s rat empire above and below ground as far and wide as possible, by building nests, spawning new rats, and fighting to become “Da Big Cheese,” or the ruler of the underground hub that sits at the center of the game board.

Target: Rats The Board Game transittees.com

Like many board games, Target: Rats requires a bit of a learning curve to settle in, although once you’ve established the basic rhythms, gameplay is dynamic and rewarding. Turns are structured by a combination of movement and activity, with several possible outcomes after moving four spaces on the board: feed (if rats are at a food source), breed (if two rats are fed, they can give birth to two others), nest (creating a potential new spawning point), fight (if you happen upon another player’s rats), or scavenge, which involves taking a card from one of two decks. Players move from the surface to the underground via sewers, and placeable dumpsters can create a steady food source that allows more rats to enter gameplay.

The game balances elements of strategic thinking, luck, and interpersonal interactions but not always successfully. For one, there’s an imbalance in the two card decks: surface-level cards are skewed nearly three-to-one in favor of spawning more rats, compared to a more even split underground, which can create inadvertent imbalances in player outcomes depending on where players settle. But the biggest impediment to forward progress is the lack of dedicated food sources that remain on the game board, making it hard to even begin expanding one’s rat population. Even if you’ve played the game before and have a strategy in mind, it can take a frustratingly long time to build momentum, which in my experience warded off some first-time players from wanting to dig deeper.

Courtesy Transit Tees

Like so many board games, house rules can make up for certain limitations in the board game’s base settings. For one, all future playthroughs in my household will include several dedicated, nondisappearing food sources, available to all rats at all times. Rebalancing the game in this way speeds up gameplay and removes some of the frustration for first-time players, better allowing players to focus on the other, more fun elements of the game that are more challenging when resources are scarcer.

Those elements are combat between rat families, and the ever-present threat of the Exterminator, a crucial X factor that can make or break a game. The player who possesses Da Big Cheese, first gained by throwing a one in the center of the board, also gains a critical advantage that makes its possession vital throughout the game. Balancing the strategic question of when and with how many rats to fight your opponents for territory, combined with the luck of a dice throw, ensures that each confrontation around the game board becomes a dynamic showdown.

The Exterminator is the other factor that can cut a player’s momentum in their tracks and prevent someone from winning just as it seems the game is in hand. The Exterminator kills rats, destroys food sources and nests, and otherwise blocks movement around the board. 

It provides a challenging impediment to forward progress, while also allowing those falling behind to catch up by targeting their opponent’s favorite dedicated nesting spot/food source combination for extermination. Even when a player is on the brink of victory, holding possession of Da Big Cheese and with three nests around the board even after every other player has gone, a lucky throw can unexpectedly stretch the game further.

Still, at the end of the day, I found myself wondering: would it be possible to play against the Exterminator? In a game of expanding rat populations, could players work together not in a battle of survival of the fittest, but instead aim to overrun the entire map, until the Exterminator can no longer prevent the rats from taking over the entire city itself?

I have yet to give this rewrite a chance, but my vision is simple: players collaborate to build communal nests, expand food supplies, and otherwise attack the Exterminator at all turns. There’d be a limit on the number of player turns available before the game ended, and the goal would be to get every single nest and rat on the board before time ran out. The game board itself seems capacious enough to carry out this approach and honors our city’s real-life rats, who have done so well to grow their ranks with seemingly nothing to stop them.

In his book Rats: Observations on the History & Habitat of the City’s Most Unwanted Inhabitants,  Robert Sullivan writes, “I think of rats as our mirror species, reversed but similar, thriving or suffering in the very cities where we do the same.” Target: Rats invites us to suspend our usual judgments, embrace our furry rodent counterparts, and spread out a bit, content to proliferate as widely as our own rats have managed. Our rats live in abundance, making us the country’s rattiest city; perhaps it’s time we start to do the same. 

Read More

There’s no restaurant opening in 2023 more desperately anticipated than Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto’s transformation of his brother’s venerable but grotty River North beef joint into a fine dining destina—uhhh, wait. No.

I’m thinking of season two of The Bear, the fictionalized heart-attack-on-a-plate that might be the most harrowing depiction of life on the line ever committed to the small screen. Shooting starts next month in advance of a ten-episode return to Hulu in early summer, according to the trades.

Little noticed amid the deafening buzz is the forthcoming release of the documentary antidote to Jeremy Allen White’s dreamy kitchen dysfunction: Cambodian Futures, a 17-minute short film focused on a real-life restaurant—the beloved, ever-evolving Hermosa. Shepherded these past eight years by Ethan Lim, who took it from a neighborhood sandwich shop to one of the hottest tables in town, the chef serves a visionary expression of Khmer food, a cuisine whose development skipped a generation due to war and genocide.

Lim, the most chill chef you’ll ever meet, soothingly narrates his own sometimes gutting journey, beginning in a Thai refugee camp and leaving off at last year’s Jean Banchet Awards (where, spoiler, he won Rising Chef of the Year). Directed by Dustin Nakao-Haider (Shot in the Dark), it’s one episode in the second season of Firelight Media/American Masters’ In the Making series, focusing on emerging BIPOC artists. Lim’s the only chef to be profiled. There’s no official release date yet, but Nakao-Haider reports it’ll likely appear on PBS sometime in March.

I can’t predict whether the Chicago food world’s onscreen profile this year will match 2022 (which included the Trotter doc, and arguably, The Menu, and season three of South Side), but that’s a good start.

There’s a clearer picture for food writers.

Fieldwork: A Forager’s Memoir Iliana Regan (Agate, January 24): This is the former Elizabeth chef’s second tell-all after 2019’s Burn the Place. Since then, she left the kitchen and earned an MFA in writing from the Art Institute while running the remote Milkweed Inn in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. During the pandemic, Regan’s lengthy family history of mushroom hunting followed her and her wife north, along with the anxieties of a fretful father. Remoteness doesn’t mean idleness, as she recounts fraught trips over dirt roads to the truck stop for broasted chicken, baby-making efforts, and an alcoholic relapse. Regan may have left the mental hazards of restaurant life behind, but she’s found plenty to worry about in the woods.

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Indian Cuisine, edited by Colleen Taylor Sen, Sourish Bhattacharyya, and Helen Saberi(Bloomsbury Academic, February 23): I’m probably more excited for this massive 436-page ($157.50) tome than any other in recent memory. Comprehensively capturing the breadth of subcontinental cuisine seems like an impossible Borgesian labor, but Chicago culinary historian Sen—with seven related titles already to her name—along with two co-editors and 27 writers have made a convincing go at it. You could easily spend weeks bouncing among 236 entries, from Sanskrit scholar and food chemist K.T. Achaya to the kokum fruit, and the black, sticky condiment it produces; from the slow-stewed Muslim beef dish nihari to the galaxy of yams and their infinite purposes.

Made in Chicago: Stories Behind 30 Great Hometown Bites, Monica Eng, David Hammond (3 Fields Books, March 21): Via the Tribune and WBEZ, current Axios reporter Eng has been documenting the dimmer corners of the Chicago food scene longer than just about anyone. With Newcity’s Hammond, they’ve assembled a taxonomic guidebook to the city’s lesser-known endemic eats. With obligatory chapters on familiar signatures like hot dogs and deep dish, its real value lies in the stories behind less celebrated working-class originals like the Japanese-American rice and gravy burger plate akutagawa; sweet sticky Chinese-Korean gampongi lollipop wings; and the city’s other beef on a bun: the sweet steak sandwich.

Pulp: A Practical Guide to Cooking with Fruit, Abra Berens (Chronicle Books, April 4): If two years go by without a sprawling single-subject cookbook from former Chicago chef Berens, did they really happen? Along with 2019’s vegetable-forward Ruffage and 2021’s grain-based Grist, this fruit- and (somewhat) baking-centered book makes a nice boxed set, even if it is just concerned with varieties that can be found in the midwest. (What, no pawpaws?) Still, from her Three Oaks farm kitchen she manages to conjure up Michigan exotica like marigold syrup, ground cherry floats, and rosé-poached apricots with earl grey semifreddo.

Midwest Pie: Recipes that shaped a region,edited by Meredith Pangrace (Belt Publishing, May 9): On the heels of 2021’s Rust Belt Vegan Kitchen, Belt’s creative director tackles a more ubiquitous and crowd-pleasing subject, with recipes spanning “old classic” pies such as funeral and sawdust; regional originals like the Nation of Islam’s bean pie and Indiana’s sugar cream Hoosier pie; “desperation pies” that relied on pantry staples when times were tough (chess, shoofly, mock apple); midwestern produce pies (persimmon chiffon); and retro relics (cottage cheese, chocolate rum).

Read More

Improvisers from around the globe flock to Chicago to learn the “right” way to improvise, yet veteran actor (actor, not improviser) David Razowsky’s new book throws “yes, and” in the trash, sets it on fire, composts it, and plants a tree with it. He’s earned the right, after ten years on Second City Chicago’s mainstage with Stephen Colbert, Steve Carell, Amy Sedaris, Rachel Dratch, and others; serving as artistic director of Second City Hollywood; and now working as a traveling instructor who has taught in prisons, and even delivered a TedTalk. He’s philosophical, funny, and says “fuck” frequently. Razowsky sat down with me to talk about his methodology, the good ol’ days of improv,, and Bacon-Flavored Bacon Bacon.  

Sheri Flanders: So how was writing a book? 

David Razowsky: It’s sort of like waking up one morning and you’re pregnant. And you don’t know what creature got you pregnant, so you don’t know how long the gestation period is, and what you do know is it’s too late to abort it. The most important thing is to keep it alive so that it doesn’t kill you. Then when you’re like, “I think I’m gonna give birth to it,” you go to the Internet and google lists of names for the book, like baby names. Then, if you’re self-publishing it, it’s like there’s no doula, there’s no midwife. It’s like being in a cave and . . .

. . . biting on a stick?

That’s the process!

Most improv instruction is structured around the eight-week class. As a teacher I was always like, “OK, I can see half of you have not gotten it yet, and now I have to move on to next week’s lesson,” and felt super frustrated. What are we missing by being stuck in this format?

In the book, I talk about how I reached a point at Second City where I didn’t want to deal with a rigid structure anymore. That allowed me to do whatever the fuck I need to do. I don’t do eight-week classes anymore. I feel like one of the problems is—what’s the word that everybody’s using nowadays? Pedagogy. My advice to improv teachers is to not worry about what you have to finish teaching and be with the students every step of the way. You’re modeling what kind of an improviser to be by modeling what kind of a teacher you are. Every once in a while somebody says, “Wow, you really spent a lot of time with Alice.” And I’m like, “Alice needs a lot of time right now, and when you need time, I’m going to spend time with you.” Did you ever study with Del [Close]?

No. That was before I moved to Chicago.

Del had a class at iO. It wasn’t a class in improvisation, it wasn’t a class in Harold, it was a class on what was on Del’s mind. I loved it. He would say, “I went to the Art Institute and I saw some Hopper. I think we’re gonna do some Hopper scenes.” And I’m like, what? But when you have the confidence of the students, knowing that they’re along for the ride, they’re gonna do whatever the fuck you want to do.

A Subversive’s Guide to Improvisation: Moving Beyond “Yes, And” by David Razowsky, Boyd Parker Press, paperback and ebook, 496 pp., $9.99, amazon.com

In the book you talk about how most improvisers don’t identify as actors. Why is that? 

When I started at iO in 1985 or ’86, there were maybe four improv schools in the country? Wow, I could be totally wrong! [starts counting] Dudley Riggs? I don’t know if the Committee was around when I was there in San Francisco, Keith Johnstone, of course, Second City, Players Workshop which was connected to Second City at that time, and iO. So six. So the people that I took classes from weren’t improvisers, because there wasn’t such a thing. They were actors, directors, and writers. They were imparting skill sets that are vital in good scene work: blocking, viewpoints, tempo, repetition, typography, architecture . . . I think the reason that people don’t teach it now is they didn’t learn it. 

I love the way your book throws out all of the traditional improv rules like “yes, and,” and that there’s a section geared toward advanced improvisers.

Say NO! There is no play that doesn’t have the word “no” in it. And there is no play that doesn’t have a question in it! There is no play where they’re not talking about somebody who isn’t there! All of that. Why is it that improvisers aren’t fucking allowed to do that? Fuck off!

I don’t teach “yes, and,” so it’s already advanced. I’m teaching, “look at your partner right now, what are they thinking?” And keep going with that. So what ends up happening is we start opening our hearts more, and we start going, “I trust you, you trust me.”

There’s a show called Naked Lunch, a podcast by that guy, Phil, Rosenberg? Rosenthal? One of my fellow Jews, whatever. He interviewed Elaine May for her first podcast. She talked about when she first really sat down with Mike Nichols, just to fuck around on a park bench, or something, she realized, “He’s got my sense of humor! And I like his sense of humor!” The need for “yes, and” doesn’t apply to them! Because they’re living in their own world!

In your book you recall your father telling you to get a real job, and having a meandering career like many artists—myself included. As artists, there’s always the doubt of “Is this what I should be doing?” How did you navigate that?

There’s something that happens to us called compulsion. I’m compelled to do this, I have to do this, I must do this. As much as I feel like I don’t want to do this, I have to do this. 

Like somebody says “Come out, we’re gonna eat dinner together” you’re going to go, even though you just ate. And you’re reading a menu for the restaurant, and you see Bacon Flavored Bacon Bacon! Anything below that, you’re not paying attention to, because you cannot get that Bacon Flavored Bacon Bacon out of what it is that you’re doing. As much as you try to do something else, it’s not going to work, because that’s not what you want to do! There’s always this thing in the back of your head that’s going, “Yeah, like, I’m making the money, and yeah, I got a parking space, and yeah, I got bennies. But you know what?—”

I could be having Bacon Flavored Bacon Bacon. 

Exactly. After a while, the universe gives you signs. It was just a matter of me being at the right place at the right time, which really helped push me. Then to be cast with Mick Napier and Splatter Theatre—which changed the face of theater I think in Chicago, arguably the Annoyance changed the face of improvisation and sketch writing—I was part of that. I was also in a theater company with Carell and Colbert and Amy Sedaris, and that was the universe saying, you’re in the right place. I couldn’t fucking get enough of it because I was given the opportunity—and I think that that is a huge thing right there—I feel I’m coming from a place of privilege. I never take that for granted. 

I went into your book as an improv person, ready to nerd out, then I realized that this book is also really accessible for somebody who’s like, “I don’t do improv and I’m never gonna do improv.” You just have a lot of fun stories about life and theater.

This book is for anybody who has a curiosity about what it was like to be putting on a sketch show, how to work with people, no matter where it is that you are. It’s for writers, I think it’s also for directors. And that’s why there’s a Buddhist part of it—it’s like, this is for everybody. This is for any creative person, you know? Do whatever it is that you want to do! Fuck the voices that are telling you not to do it!

Read More

Improvisers from around the globe flock to Chicago to learn the “right” way to improvise, yet veteran actor (actor, not improviser) David Razowsky’s new book throws “yes, and” in the trash, sets it on fire, composts it, and plants a tree with it. He’s earned the right, after ten years on Second City Chicago’s mainstage with Stephen Colbert, Steve Carell, Amy Sedaris, Rachel Dratch, and others; serving as artistic director of Second City Hollywood; and now working as a traveling instructor who has taught in prisons, and even delivered a TedTalk. He’s philosophical, funny, and says “fuck” frequently. Razowsky sat down with me to talk about his methodology, the good ol’ days of improv,, and Bacon-Flavored Bacon Bacon.  

Sheri Flanders: So how was writing a book? 

David Razowsky: It’s sort of like waking up one morning and you’re pregnant. And you don’t know what creature got you pregnant, so you don’t know how long the gestation period is, and what you do know is it’s too late to abort it. The most important thing is to keep it alive so that it doesn’t kill you. Then when you’re like, “I think I’m gonna give birth to it,” you go to the Internet and google lists of names for the book, like baby names. Then, if you’re self-publishing it, it’s like there’s no doula, there’s no midwife. It’s like being in a cave and . . .

. . . biting on a stick?

That’s the process!

Most improv instruction is structured around the eight-week class. As a teacher I was always like, “OK, I can see half of you have not gotten it yet, and now I have to move on to next week’s lesson,” and felt super frustrated. What are we missing by being stuck in this format?

In the book, I talk about how I reached a point at Second City where I didn’t want to deal with a rigid structure anymore. That allowed me to do whatever the fuck I need to do. I don’t do eight-week classes anymore. I feel like one of the problems is—what’s the word that everybody’s using nowadays? Pedagogy. My advice to improv teachers is to not worry about what you have to finish teaching and be with the students every step of the way. You’re modeling what kind of an improviser to be by modeling what kind of a teacher you are. Every once in a while somebody says, “Wow, you really spent a lot of time with Alice.” And I’m like, “Alice needs a lot of time right now, and when you need time, I’m going to spend time with you.” Did you ever study with Del [Close]?

No. That was before I moved to Chicago.

Del had a class at iO. It wasn’t a class in improvisation, it wasn’t a class in Harold, it was a class on what was on Del’s mind. I loved it. He would say, “I went to the Art Institute and I saw some Hopper. I think we’re gonna do some Hopper scenes.” And I’m like, what? But when you have the confidence of the students, knowing that they’re along for the ride, they’re gonna do whatever the fuck you want to do.

A Subversive’s Guide to Improvisation: Moving Beyond “Yes, And” by David Razowsky, Boyd Parker Press, paperback and ebook, 496 pp., $9.99, amazon.com

In the book you talk about how most improvisers don’t identify as actors. Why is that? 

When I started at iO in 1985 or ’86, there were maybe four improv schools in the country? Wow, I could be totally wrong! [starts counting] Dudley Riggs? I don’t know if the Committee was around when I was there in San Francisco, Keith Johnstone, of course, Second City, Players Workshop which was connected to Second City at that time, and iO. So six. So the people that I took classes from weren’t improvisers, because there wasn’t such a thing. They were actors, directors, and writers. They were imparting skill sets that are vital in good scene work: blocking, viewpoints, tempo, repetition, typography, architecture . . . I think the reason that people don’t teach it now is they didn’t learn it. 

I love the way your book throws out all of the traditional improv rules like “yes, and,” and that there’s a section geared toward advanced improvisers.

Say NO! There is no play that doesn’t have the word “no” in it. And there is no play that doesn’t have a question in it! There is no play where they’re not talking about somebody who isn’t there! All of that. Why is it that improvisers aren’t fucking allowed to do that? Fuck off!

I don’t teach “yes, and,” so it’s already advanced. I’m teaching, “look at your partner right now, what are they thinking?” And keep going with that. So what ends up happening is we start opening our hearts more, and we start going, “I trust you, you trust me.”

There’s a show called Naked Lunch, a podcast by that guy, Phil, Rosenberg? Rosenthal? One of my fellow Jews, whatever. He interviewed Elaine May for her first podcast. She talked about when she first really sat down with Mike Nichols, just to fuck around on a park bench, or something, she realized, “He’s got my sense of humor! And I like his sense of humor!” The need for “yes, and” doesn’t apply to them! Because they’re living in their own world!

In your book you recall your father telling you to get a real job, and having a meandering career like many artists—myself included. As artists, there’s always the doubt of “Is this what I should be doing?” How did you navigate that?

There’s something that happens to us called compulsion. I’m compelled to do this, I have to do this, I must do this. As much as I feel like I don’t want to do this, I have to do this. 

Like somebody says “Come out, we’re gonna eat dinner together” you’re going to go, even though you just ate. And you’re reading a menu for the restaurant, and you see Bacon Flavored Bacon Bacon! Anything below that, you’re not paying attention to, because you cannot get that Bacon Flavored Bacon Bacon out of what it is that you’re doing. As much as you try to do something else, it’s not going to work, because that’s not what you want to do! There’s always this thing in the back of your head that’s going, “Yeah, like, I’m making the money, and yeah, I got a parking space, and yeah, I got bennies. But you know what?—”

I could be having Bacon Flavored Bacon Bacon. 

Exactly. After a while, the universe gives you signs. It was just a matter of me being at the right place at the right time, which really helped push me. Then to be cast with Mick Napier and Splatter Theatre—which changed the face of theater I think in Chicago, arguably the Annoyance changed the face of improvisation and sketch writing—I was part of that. I was also in a theater company with Carell and Colbert and Amy Sedaris, and that was the universe saying, you’re in the right place. I couldn’t fucking get enough of it because I was given the opportunity—and I think that that is a huge thing right there—I feel I’m coming from a place of privilege. I never take that for granted. 

I went into your book as an improv person, ready to nerd out, then I realized that this book is also really accessible for somebody who’s like, “I don’t do improv and I’m never gonna do improv.” You just have a lot of fun stories about life and theater.

This book is for anybody who has a curiosity about what it was like to be putting on a sketch show, how to work with people, no matter where it is that you are. It’s for writers, I think it’s also for directors. And that’s why there’s a Buddhist part of it—it’s like, this is for everybody. This is for any creative person, you know? Do whatever it is that you want to do! Fuck the voices that are telling you not to do it!

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Panama-born, Chicago-based drummer Daniel Villarreal is involved with myriad musical projects. He coleads the groups Dos Santos, Valebol, the Los Sundowns, and Ida y Vuelta; he’s collaborated extensively with grab-bag marching band Mucca Pazza, sibling duo Wild Belle, and soulful psych-pop singer Rudy De Anda; and he’s a familiar face on Pilsen’s DJ circuit. At the intersection of all those endeavors is his debut album, Panamá 77, released last May on International Anthem. Working with plenty of colleagues from his various projects, Villarreal cocomposed 11 lush, hypnotically motivic instrumental tracks, many of which undulate with psychedelic organs and synths.

Villarreal’s affinity for the organ runs deep: his father was an organist in a touring conjunto band, and it was the first instrument Villarreal learned as a boy. (“Patria,” the only cover tune on the album, was written by Panamanian organist Avelino Muñoz, whose family taught Villarreal’s father.) But Villarreal dedicated Panamá 77 to his late grandmother Ofelia De León, who helped raise him while his parents worked in nearby Panama City. She’s the namesake of the album’s second song, which is buoyed by surfy solos from guitarist Nathan Karagianis (a Dos Santos colleague) and an organ groove by Cole DeGenova (who’s also collaborated with a long list of artists, including Chance the Rapper, Lupe Fiasco, and Meshell Ndegeocello).

For this show, Villarreal will be joined by Danjuma Gaskin on congas and the same musicians who recorded “Ofelia” and “Patria”: DeGenova on keys, Karagianis on guitar, and Gordon Walters on bass. As they did at the Panamá 77 release show at Thalia Hall last July, the quintet will play the record in its entirety with help from a few surprise guests.

Daniel Villareal Thu 2/2, 7:30 PM, SPACE, 1245 Chicago, Evanston, IL, $15-$22, all ages

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Panama-born, Chicago-based drummer Daniel Villarreal is involved with myriad musical projects. He coleads the groups Dos Santos, Valebol, the Los Sundowns, and Ida y Vuelta; he’s collaborated extensively with grab-bag marching band Mucca Pazza, sibling duo Wild Belle, and soulful psych-pop singer Rudy De Anda; and he’s a familiar face on Pilsen’s DJ circuit. At the intersection of all those endeavors is his debut album, Panamá 77, released last May on International Anthem. Working with plenty of colleagues from his various projects, Villarreal cocomposed 11 lush, hypnotically motivic instrumental tracks, many of which undulate with psychedelic organs and synths.

Villarreal’s affinity for the organ runs deep: his father was an organist in a touring conjunto band, and it was the first instrument Villarreal learned as a boy. (“Patria,” the only cover tune on the album, was written by Panamanian organist Avelino Muñoz, whose family taught Villarreal’s father.) But Villarreal dedicated Panamá 77 to his late grandmother Ofelia De León, who helped raise him while his parents worked in nearby Panama City. She’s the namesake of the album’s second song, which is buoyed by surfy solos from guitarist Nathan Karagianis (a Dos Santos colleague) and an organ groove by Cole DeGenova (who’s also collaborated with a long list of artists, including Chance the Rapper, Lupe Fiasco, and Meshell Ndegeocello).

For this show, Villarreal will be joined by Danjuma Gaskin on congas and the same musicians who recorded “Ofelia” and “Patria”: DeGenova on keys, Karagianis on guitar, and Gordon Walters on bass. As they did at the Panamá 77 release show at Thalia Hall last July, the quintet will play the record in its entirety with help from a few surprise guests.

Daniel Villareal Thu 2/2, 7:30 PM, SPACE, 1245 Chicago, Evanston, IL, $15-$22, all ages

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This story was co-published with The TRiiBE.

At a forum on Police District Council races hosted on January 22 by the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (CAARPR) at CTU headquarters, dozens of candidates stood in lines that wrapped around a dais at the front of Jacqueline Vaughn Hall, waiting their turn to explain why they’re running. 

Nearly all of them are seeking office for the first time in their lives, but they spoke clearly and with conviction about the trauma they’ve experienced at the hands of police.

Many have family members who were brutalized or killed: Cynthia McFadden’s father escaped white supremacist terror in the South by coming to Chicago during the Great Migration, only to be shot and killed by police at 47th and King Drive on the day he arrived. Coston Plummer’s older brother was tortured for 39 hours and forced to falsely confess to murder by officers under notorious commander Jon Burge when he was just 15 years old, and remains in prison today. When Craig Carrington’s sister was brutalized and arrested for protecting her children from police in 2004, he promised her that if he ever could, he would do something about it.

They talked about running for Police District Council in order to heal—not just themselves and their families, but entire communities whose relationships with public safety have long been fractured.

“The amazing thing about these candidates who are running for district council is that they are overwhelmingly Black and Brown, overwhelmingly working class, and there’s also a lot of poor people in the ranks,” Frank Chapman, a CAARPR field organizer and a leader of the movement that ushered in the Police District Councils, told the crowd. “This is who is running. So just on the basis of that, this election on February 28 will be the most democratic election that this city has ever seen.” 

Of the 112 candidates running in the newly-created Police District Council races, 63 used resources provided by CAARPR to file election paperwork. These 63 candidates support police accountability: overwhelmingly, they want Chicago Police Department funding to be redirected to violence prevention and transformative justice programs, for care workers to accompany police to mental health crises, and for their churches, block clubs, and community organizations to be included in public safety. Despite what they have personally endured at the hands of police, only a few want to totally defund or abolish CPD.

They described knocking on countless doors in Chicago’s coldest months to discuss that opportunity with voters. Meridth Hammer, a candidate in the Fourth District, was hoarse from talking about public safety with voters day in and day out. They are ordinary people whose resilience carries them as they fight for a seat at the table.

Ordinary people have always been at the center of this struggle. The movement for community control of the police, or CCOP, was led by revolutionaries, but it has always been carried onward by neighborhood people. 

In Chicago, CCOP was first conceived by the Black Panther Party and Chairman Fred Hampton in the 1960s. A charismatic visionary, Chairman Fred built a Rainbow Coalition of Black, Brown, and working-class white residents who, fed up with police violence, gentrification, and not-so-benign neglect of their communities, became revolutionaries. 

Neutralizing revolutionary coalitions was at the top of the FBI’s list of COINTELPRO goals, and the Cook County State’s Attorney Office and Chicago Police Department conspired to assassinate Hampton on December 4, 1969. His murder only spurred the Panthers and Rainbow Coalition to redouble their efforts for control of police. Within four years, they built a citywide campaign for elected civilian police boards in every police district. Ultimately, Mayor Richard J. Daley’s political machine repelled the effort. The movement regrouped and found other inroads to power as revolutionaries ran for office. 

Over the ensuing decades, elected officials made several attempts to establish oversight of the police. Following a series of police brutality incidents, U.S. representative Ralph Metcalfe (IL-1) convened a Congressional blue-ribbon panel in 1972 that led to the creation of the Office of Professional Standards (OPS). Comprised of civilian members of CPD, it became notorious for stifling misconduct investigations. After a brutality incident was caught on camera in 2007, the City Council voted (with Mayor Richard M. Daley’s approval) to replace OPS with the Independent Police Review Authority (IPRA). Moving oversight out of the department did little to increase accountability. Following the CPD murder of Laquan McDonald, the City Council (with Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s blessing) replaced IPRA with the Civilian Office of Police Accountability, which investigates misconduct and makes recommendations to the Police Board, in 2016.   

Through it all, Chicago police continued killing and brutalizing people. The victims’ families never stopped fighting for justice. Many have been doing so for decades, often on their own, wandering the wilderness of a city that took police harassment, torture, and murder of its residents for granted. The best most could hope for was a cash settlement. The price of police violence was shunted onto Chicago’s residents as the City’s payouts for police misconduct ballooned to more than $50 million a year.

Simeon Henderson, a candidate for the Tenth Police District Council, speaks at a candidate forum, Credit: Jim Daley

In 2012, one police killing, of Rekia Boyd by off-duty CPD officer Dante Servin, became a flashpoint around which the scattered survivors of police violence coalesced. The Grassroots Alliance for Police Accountability (GAPA) and the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (CAARPR) spent a decade painstakingly building a movement rooted in the communities. In 2020, the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police set off rebellions around the country. Amid the uprisings, GAPA and CAARPR formed a coalition and, with their allies in City Council, passed the Empowering Communities for Public Safety (ECPS) ordinance in 2021 despite Mayor Lightfoot’s objections.

The district councils that the ECPS ordinance created will not have the kind of direct oversight powers the Panthers initially sought for district-level boards in the CCOP movement, like hiring and firing police and setting department policy. However, they will have the right to engage with district commanders and recommend restorative justice and other alternative approaches to safety. Among other duties, they’re also charged with helping community members request investigative information from COPA and CPD. The councils’ effectiveness at serving and engaging with the community will most likely vary by district. 

Each of the 22 three-member councils will send one representative to meetings where they will nominate the citywide Community Commission on Public Safety and Accountability (CCPSA). It is in that commission that ECPS achieves civilian power—in a layered, not direct, manner—over the degree to which police are held accountable. The CCPSA can hire and fire the chief administrator of COPA. It can also hold hearings about the police superintendent and take a vote of no confidence that triggers City Council hearings and a vote to retain or fire the superintendent. 

The hope of the ECPS organizers is that the CCPSA will exercise these powers should COPA or the superintendent fail to hold officers who brutalize or kill accountable. 

Mayor Lori Lightfoot and her allies initially resisted the proposals brought forth by organizers, and it took grueling negotiations between organizers and the mayor’s office before the City Council passed the ECPS ordinance. Then, the mayor and her allies slow-walked its implementation. Lightfoot’s floor leader, Alderperson Michelle Harris, delayed the opening of applications for the interim CCPSA for months. And although the ECPS ordinance required the mayor to appoint members to the interim CCPSA by January 2022, she waited until August to do so. At that point, it was too late for the CCPSA to review the mayor’s police department budget and recommend changes to the City Council, one of their key duties mandated by the ordinance. 

The police are aware of the ramifications of reform. Just as the machine poured its efforts into thwarting the CCOP ordinance 50 years ago, the Fraternal Order of Police and its allies have organized to undermine ECPS. 

The FOP has spent at least $25,000 to get their people on the ballot and try to knock progressive candidates off, and they gave the green light to one of their election attorneys, Perry Abbasi, to run in the 25th District. In northwest side districts like the 16th and southwest-side districts like the 22nd, where neighborhoods like Galewood and Mount Greenwood are home to many police, nearly everyone running has ties to the FOP. 

In the Fifth District, Thomas McMahon, a former police lieutenant who has 21 misconduct allegations, is running. He hired his own attorney to challenge the ballot petitions of Robert McKay, a candidate in the same district who helped usher in reform to the CFD in the 1990s; the reformer is now running as a write-in candidate. Lee Bielecki, a retired sergeant who has 26 allegations of misconduct, is running in the 22nd District. In the 12th, Juan Lopez, a former state police trooper who was fired and charged with seven felonies for firing six shots into his ex-girlfriend’s home after seeing her with another man, is running. Lopez was acquitted of the felonies, for which he was facing 26 years in prison, and convicted of a misdemeanor. 

But the block club members, teachers, and pastors who stood at the microphones at CTU headquarters know the stakes of this race better than anyone. They want the opportunity to ensure that the radical proposition they fought for and won—a chance for the community to have a say in creating public safety and holding police accountable—is borne out. According to Chapman, that opportunity is revolutionary.

“These people are running out of dedication to a cause,” Chapman said. “And their dedication is that it’s time, in this city, to hold the police accountable for the crimes that they commit against that community.” For these candidates, it is time indeed. 

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This story was co-published with The TRiiBE.

At a forum on Police District Council races hosted on January 22 by the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (CAARPR) at CTU headquarters, dozens of candidates stood in lines that wrapped around a dais at the front of Jacqueline Vaughn Hall, waiting their turn to explain why they’re running. 

Nearly all of them are seeking office for the first time in their lives, but they spoke clearly and with conviction about the trauma they’ve experienced at the hands of police.

Many have family members who were brutalized or killed: Cynthia McFadden’s father escaped white supremacist terror in the South by coming to Chicago during the Great Migration, only to be shot and killed by police at 47th and King Drive on the day he arrived. Coston Plummer’s older brother was tortured for 39 hours and forced to falsely confess to murder by officers under notorious commander Jon Burge when he was just 15 years old, and remains in prison today. When Craig Carrington’s sister was brutalized and arrested for protecting her children from police in 2004, he promised her that if he ever could, he would do something about it.

They talked about running for Police District Council in order to heal—not just themselves and their families, but entire communities whose relationships with public safety have long been fractured.

“The amazing thing about these candidates who are running for district council is that they are overwhelmingly Black and Brown, overwhelmingly working class, and there’s also a lot of poor people in the ranks,” Frank Chapman, a CAARPR field organizer and a leader of the movement that ushered in the Police District Councils, told the crowd. “This is who is running. So just on the basis of that, this election on February 28 will be the most democratic election that this city has ever seen.” 

Of the 112 candidates running in the newly-created Police District Council races, 63 used resources provided by CAARPR to file election paperwork. These 63 candidates support police accountability: overwhelmingly, they want Chicago Police Department funding to be redirected to violence prevention and transformative justice programs, for care workers to accompany police to mental health crises, and for their churches, block clubs, and community organizations to be included in public safety. Despite what they have personally endured at the hands of police, only a few want to totally defund or abolish CPD.

They described knocking on countless doors in Chicago’s coldest months to discuss that opportunity with voters. Meridth Hammer, a candidate in the Fourth District, was hoarse from talking about public safety with voters day in and day out. They are ordinary people whose resilience carries them as they fight for a seat at the table.

Ordinary people have always been at the center of this struggle. The movement for community control of the police, or CCOP, was led by revolutionaries, but it has always been carried onward by neighborhood people. 

In Chicago, CCOP was first conceived by the Black Panther Party and Chairman Fred Hampton in the 1960s. A charismatic visionary, Chairman Fred built a Rainbow Coalition of Black, Brown, and working-class white residents who, fed up with police violence, gentrification, and not-so-benign neglect of their communities, became revolutionaries. 

Neutralizing revolutionary coalitions was at the top of the FBI’s list of COINTELPRO goals, and the Cook County State’s Attorney Office and Chicago Police Department conspired to assassinate Hampton on December 4, 1969. His murder only spurred the Panthers and Rainbow Coalition to redouble their efforts for control of police. Within four years, they built a citywide campaign for elected civilian police boards in every police district. Ultimately, Mayor Richard J. Daley’s political machine repelled the effort. The movement regrouped and found other inroads to power as revolutionaries ran for office. 

Over the ensuing decades, elected officials made several attempts to establish oversight of the police. Following a series of police brutality incidents, U.S. representative Ralph Metcalfe (IL-1) convened a Congressional blue-ribbon panel in 1972 that led to the creation of the Office of Professional Standards (OPS). Comprised of civilian members of CPD, it became notorious for stifling misconduct investigations. After a brutality incident was caught on camera in 2007, the City Council voted (with Mayor Richard M. Daley’s approval) to replace OPS with the Independent Police Review Authority (IPRA). Moving oversight out of the department did little to increase accountability. Following the CPD murder of Laquan McDonald, the City Council (with Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s blessing) replaced IPRA with the Civilian Office of Police Accountability, which investigates misconduct and makes recommendations to the Police Board, in 2016.   

Through it all, Chicago police continued killing and brutalizing people. The victims’ families never stopped fighting for justice. Many have been doing so for decades, often on their own, wandering the wilderness of a city that took police harassment, torture, and murder of its residents for granted. The best most could hope for was a cash settlement. The price of police violence was shunted onto Chicago’s residents as the City’s payouts for police misconduct ballooned to more than $50 million a year.

Simeon Henderson, a candidate for the Tenth Police District Council, speaks at a candidate forum, Credit: Jim Daley

In 2012, one police killing, of Rekia Boyd by off-duty CPD officer Dante Servin, became a flashpoint around which the scattered survivors of police violence coalesced. The Grassroots Alliance for Police Accountability (GAPA) and the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (CAARPR) spent a decade painstakingly building a movement rooted in the communities. In 2020, the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police set off rebellions around the country. Amid the uprisings, GAPA and CAARPR formed a coalition and, with their allies in City Council, passed the Empowering Communities for Public Safety (ECPS) ordinance in 2021 despite Mayor Lightfoot’s objections.

The district councils that the ECPS ordinance created will not have the kind of direct oversight powers the Panthers initially sought for district-level boards in the CCOP movement, like hiring and firing police and setting department policy. However, they will have the right to engage with district commanders and recommend restorative justice and other alternative approaches to safety. Among other duties, they’re also charged with helping community members request investigative information from COPA and CPD. The councils’ effectiveness at serving and engaging with the community will most likely vary by district. 

Each of the 22 three-member councils will send one representative to meetings where they will nominate the citywide Community Commission on Public Safety and Accountability (CCPSA). It is in that commission that ECPS achieves civilian power—in a layered, not direct, manner—over the degree to which police are held accountable. The CCPSA can hire and fire the chief administrator of COPA. It can also hold hearings about the police superintendent and take a vote of no confidence that triggers City Council hearings and a vote to retain or fire the superintendent. 

The hope of the ECPS organizers is that the CCPSA will exercise these powers should COPA or the superintendent fail to hold officers who brutalize or kill accountable. 

Mayor Lori Lightfoot and her allies initially resisted the proposals brought forth by organizers, and it took grueling negotiations between organizers and the mayor’s office before the City Council passed the ECPS ordinance. Then, the mayor and her allies slow-walked its implementation. Lightfoot’s floor leader, Alderperson Michelle Harris, delayed the opening of applications for the interim CCPSA for months. And although the ECPS ordinance required the mayor to appoint members to the interim CCPSA by January 2022, she waited until August to do so. At that point, it was too late for the CCPSA to review the mayor’s police department budget and recommend changes to the City Council, one of their key duties mandated by the ordinance. 

The police are aware of the ramifications of reform. Just as the machine poured its efforts into thwarting the CCOP ordinance 50 years ago, the Fraternal Order of Police and its allies have organized to undermine ECPS. 

The FOP has spent at least $25,000 to get their people on the ballot and try to knock progressive candidates off, and they gave the green light to one of their election attorneys, Perry Abbasi, to run in the 25th District. In northwest side districts like the 16th and southwest-side districts like the 22nd, where neighborhoods like Galewood and Mount Greenwood are home to many police, nearly everyone running has ties to the FOP. 

In the Fifth District, Thomas McMahon, a former police lieutenant who has 21 misconduct allegations, is running. He hired his own attorney to challenge the ballot petitions of Robert McKay, a candidate in the same district who helped usher in reform to the CFD in the 1990s; the reformer is now running as a write-in candidate. Lee Bielecki, a retired sergeant who has 26 allegations of misconduct, is running in the 22nd District. In the 12th, Juan Lopez, a former state police trooper who was fired and charged with seven felonies for firing six shots into his ex-girlfriend’s home after seeing her with another man, is running. Lopez was acquitted of the felonies, for which he was facing 26 years in prison, and convicted of a misdemeanor. 

But the block club members, teachers, and pastors who stood at the microphones at CTU headquarters know the stakes of this race better than anyone. They want the opportunity to ensure that the radical proposition they fought for and won—a chance for the community to have a say in creating public safety and holding police accountable—is borne out. According to Chapman, that opportunity is revolutionary.

“These people are running out of dedication to a cause,” Chapman said. “And their dedication is that it’s time, in this city, to hold the police accountable for the crimes that they commit against that community.” For these candidates, it is time indeed. 

Read More