In a major announcement this week, longtime Illinois Congressman Bobby Rush announced he will not be seeking another term.

The exhibit titled “African Diaspora: Chicago” features 20 collage and acrylic mixed media pieces, all related to Chicago.  It opened in May, and a new collection of pieces just went up in November.  The current exhibit will run until May 22.

The standoff between CPS and the teachers union leaves parents in the lurch. Plus, contracts for domestic workers. And meet a local man turning his pandemic hobby into a business. 

Parents react to this week’s shutdown of Chicago Public Schools. The story of civil rights legend Mamie Till Mobley gets told on the small screen. Plus, a downtown office building partners with a Black-owned art gallery.

 Students briefly returned to class for the first two days of this week, but since Wednesday, classes have been outright canceled as teachers refused to work in person and CPS refuses to go remote, leaving families in limbo once again.

In the early days of the pandemic, many Chicagoans used social media to learn new skills and hobbies. One of them is Juan Lopez, a lifelong East Sider who used TikTok videos to teach himself a new skill that he turned into a small business last summer.

The Chicago Domestic Workers Contract Mandate covers jobs like nannies, home care workers, and home cleaners. It requires their employers to give them a written contract with mutually agreed-upon terms.

The pandemic has had a disproportionate effect on the physical, emotional, and financial health of restaurant workers, especially those in the Latino community. Three years ago, a group of hospitality workers created a nonprofit aimed at getting mental health care for struggling workers.

The Chicago Teachers Union on Saturday sent a new proposal to the city hoping to resolve its ongoing labor action in which its members have refused to work in schools in-person during a spike in COVID-19 cases

In the lawsuit, parents claim the union’s action is actually an “illegal strike” — language that’s also been used by Mayor Lori Lightfoot. They want a judge to order teachers to return to their schools and resume in-person learning.

Any hope that a holiday break could reset the raging dispute over the map that will shape Chicago politics for the next decade and determine the balance of power between Black, Latino and Asian Chicagoans was extinguished Friday as members of the City Council clashed during the first of four public hearings scheduled this month.

Chicago schools shut down in a dispute between teachers and administrators. Arne Duncan teases a potential mayoral run. Remembering Jan. 6. And Lightfoot vows a reset on crime in 2022.

Fully vaccinated and mostly masked, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority appeared skeptical Friday of the Biden administration’s authority to impose a vaccine-or-testing requirement on the nation’s large employers. 

Three white men who chased and killed Ahmaud Arbery were sentenced Friday to life in prison, with a judge denying any chance of parole for the father and son who armed themselves and initiated the deadly pursuit of the 25-year-old Black man.