Impact of coastal erosion through Isle de Jean Charles Resettlement Project
Since 1955, the community has shrunk by 98% because of coastal erosion in Louisiana. Coastal erosion is accelerated during eventful and high impact storm seasons.
Louisiana has the barrier islands of it's gulf coast. They, along with natural wetlands play a crucial role in protecting coastal communities from storms and erosion.
Jefferson Parish officials discuss 2025 hurricane preparations
'My dad told me whenever he was a child, he'd be able to walk to a lake that was a little bit west of the island. He told me as a young man, he'd walk there without getting his feet wet. When I came along, as a kid, we was going by boat over there,' said resident of Isle de Jean Charles, Chris Brunet.
The Isle de Jean Charles Resettlement Project was one of the first of it's kind to move an entire community due to climate change.
Louisiana received $48.3 million from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, to relocate the families on the island.
A total of 37 families moved off the island in the Isle de Jean Charles Resettlement Project. In the past, 300 families called the island home.
'20 years ago, the Corps of Engineers and the Terrebonne Levy District said, it was going to cost $190 million to include us in the Hurricane Protection System. They said, for that much money, the island wasn't worth it. Us as a community, had to make the decision to live somewhere else because we were impacted by the environment. I now live 40 miles inland from where I was originally raised. Water is and will always be part of our lives. Everything about me and how I think comes from Isle de Jean Charles. This new place is nice but it's just a place I was relocated to,' explained Brunet.
The Natural Resources Defense Council Estimates that by 2067, 1.2 million people are at risk of coastal flooding in Louisiana.Impact of coastal erosion through Isle de Jean Charles Resettlement Project
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Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
Trump order on homelessness will undo decades of progress, Kansas service providers warn
A man lies under shading on July 19, 2022, on North Topeka Avenue in Wichita. Service providers say an executive order by President Donald Trump could jeopardize their efforts to help those who are experiencing homelessness. (Lily O'Shea Becker/Kansas Reflector) TOPEKA — Christine English-Baird spends at least one day a week distributing basic supplies to homeless people in Wichita, home to one of Kansas' largest homeless populations. 'I do that because I can't even fathom anybody else going through what I did,' English-Baird said. 'Feeling invisible. Feeling alone.' But English-Baird, who was homeless in Colorado and housing insecure in Kansas, says the services that once helped her could be jeopardized by President Donald Trump's July 24 executive order, which encourages involuntary institutionalization for people in mental health crises and increased criminal pressure on people experiencing homelessness across the United States. The order makes hefty promises of 'fighting vagrancy,' 'ending support for 'housing first' policies' and 'encouraging civil commitment.' Trump followed the July order with another that deployed National Guard troops to police District of Columbia streets, targeting 'drugged-out maniacs and homeless people,' he said in an Aug. 11 news conference. The Trump administration's approach to homelessness has sparked concern among social service providers, experts and advocates, who say the July order is unspooling decades of progress. They are skeptical that the order's provisions will be within reach, especially as cuts to Medicaid and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development are imminent. Plus, institutionalization and criminalization are some of the most expensive and ineffective ways to address homelessness, said Steve Berg, chief policy officer with the National Alliance to End Homelessness. The threat of being taken into custody 'sets people against each other,' Berg said. 'I know one thing really is true about places that have made progress on homelessness is that people are working together,' he said. 'And if people are at each other's throats over things like this, then there's going to be more homelessness.' Kansas Senate President Ty Masterson, an Andover Republican who is seeking his party's nomination for governor, said Trump followed through 'on his promise to restore law and order in our Kansas communities.' 'State legislation should focus on mental health and addiction treatment, reducing encampments, and keeping Kansans safe,' he said in a statement. 'I'm committed to working with the White House in any way I can to deliver on the President's agenda.' English-Baird's life was a series of revolving doors, beginning with fleeing a violent partner in Denver. She slept in a domestic violence shelter, a transitional shelter, an apartment paid for by her ex, then a rental, a bus stop, sometimes a jail cell and then the streets for three-and-a-half years. At times, she nearly died, she said. She lost a lot along the way: apartments, her son, sometimes hope. But English-Baird connected with a friend in Kansas who put her up so she could recover from substance use, build savings and regain hope. With a lifetime restraining order against her ex and a new life with her husband and son, she now works to influence policies and practices for how homeless people are treated in Kansas through her role on a statewide board. 'Nobody wants to see anybody homeless, regardless of what that means,' English-Baird said. To her, it means providing people safe, affordable housing, support, a sense of belonging and purpose. To the Trump administration, it means something else entirely. During the first Trump administration, there wasn't much attention on homelessness, Berg said, until the end of Trump's term, when elected officials began promoting the idea of putting homeless people in camps. Since then, Berg said, 'there's been a desire to lock people up, I think. There's no polite way of saying it.' The executive order takes a four-pronged approach with the stated goal of 'protecting public safety.' It cites the most recent national data that estimates how many people were experiencing homelessness on a given night last year in the U.S. — nearly 771,500 people, 274,000 of whom were unsheltered. In Kansas, almost 2,800 people experienced homelessness, which is one of the lowest state totals in the country but is also considered by service providers to be an undercount. The order directs the U.S. Attorney General to broaden the criteria that governments use to involuntarily commit people, which currently is based on whether someone poses an imminent risk to themself or others. It also asks federal agencies to give funding preference to governments that 'enforce prohibitions on open illicit drug use, urban camping and loitering, and urban squatting, and track the location of sex offenders.' It directs funding to be allocated to 'ensure individuals camping on streets and causing public disorder and that are suffering from serious mental illness or addiction are moved into treatment centers, assisted outpatient treatment, or other facilities.' It also deprioritizes Housing First programs, which get people into safe, affordable housing, often in tandem with supportive services. Donald Whitehead Jr., executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, said in a July 24 statement that the executive orders take a punitive approach, which 'has consistently failed to resolve homelessness' while exacerbating the challenges faced by people experiencing homelessness, substance use disorders or mental health issues. 'Everyone deserves a safe place to live,' Whitehead said. 'These executive orders ignore decades of evidence-based housing and support services in practice.' The salient question, according to Randy Callstrom, the CEO of Wyandot Behavioral Health Network in Kansas City, Kansas, is where will people go? In Kansas, he said, there is no place for people to turn. 'Even if you move people from one part of a community, they will go somewhere else,' he said. He added: 'Unless those individuals are moving into housing, they're still going to be living in the community unhoused.' Much depends on how the executive order is actually carried out, he said. Regardless, he said, the order significantly modifies people's civil liberties. And he predicts homelessness will get worse. The order moves 'things back 35-40 years or longer,' Callstrom said, 'and that's concerning.' He worries that if the order is enforced, mental health will be stigmatized and local governments, service organizations, hospitals, jails and law enforcement will be strained. The order misses the mark when it comes to effectively serving people experiencing homelessness, Callstrom said. '(A) longtime misperception around people who are homeless is that it is a moral failure,' he said, 'that these are individuals who are less than, that we just want to push them out of line of sight and wish the problem will go away, when the reality is, you know, in many, many cases, the people who end up living unhoused have experienced many traumas in their life.' He leads a community mental health center, which he said doesn't have enough resources to fulfill the order's demands. At the only public psychiatric hospital in eastern Kansas, Osawatomie State Hospital, a waitlist of 30-50 people has remained constant for the past decade, he said. A publicly available report indicated the waitlist was at 37 people in early August. Kansas must build new facilities or convince current facilities to take on more people, Callstrom said. Kansas has budgeted for roughly 710 beds in public psychiatric facilities, said Cara Sloan-Ramos, a spokeswoman for the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services. More than 660 of them are occupied, according to data from the department. More than 2,500 adults and more than 1,500 children use services at private psychiatric institutions. According to a publicly available database containing regular updates of bed availability at public and private psychiatric facilities across the region, no beds were available at state hospitals. In the order, the White House argues federal and state governments 'have spent tens of billions of dollars on failed programs that address homelessness but not its root causes, leaving other citizens vulnerable to public safety threats.' Agencies at all levels of government across the United States have implemented Housing First policies. Once housed, supportive services address people's mental health, substance use, employment, familial connections and other reintegration efforts. The order mimics the anti-Housing First efforts of the Cicero Institute, a Texas-based conservative think tank, which has pushed states for years to ban homelessness. Kansas Republicans in 2023 entertained the group's proposal at a legislative hearing, where a Cicero Institute fellow was the only proponent. English-Baird said she is 'a firm believer' in Housing First. She has seen it work on both sides — as someone in need of housing and as someone offering aid and crafting policy on a board for the Kansas Statewide Homeless Coalition. When implemented correctly, she said, the approach gains people's trust. 'Without a stable environment, you can't address mental health. You can't address addiction,' she said. Eliminating funding for organizations, especially rural ones, 'literally takes away all the progress we're making,' English-Baird said. Forcing people to be institutionalized, as the order encourages, 'doesn't do anything to get people housed,' she said. Institutional beds are scarce, anyway, she added. The order also bars grant funding from being used for harm reduction efforts, such as safe injection sites. Harm reduction focuses on reducing the adverse outcomes of drug use, which can include distributing naloxone, sterile syringes and fentanyl test kits, along with first aid, treatment resources and educational materials on overdose prevention. Harm reduction offers people supplies to stay alive and as disease-free as possible, said English-Baird, who experienced substance use and addiction. She now offers mutual aid to people experiencing homelessness in the Wichita area. Harm reduction is key, she said, to expanding treatment options and connecting people to needed mental health services. 'But we can't do that if they're dead,' she said. In Kansas, illicit drug possession and distribution carry criminal penalties, as does use or possession of drug paraphernalia. Cities across the state have passed ordinances to restrict unauthorized camping on public or private land, including Lawrence, Leavenworth, Topeka and Wichita. Some also regulate panhandling and loitering. Berg, with the National Alliance to End Homelessness, said he also thinks the order will result in more people experiencing homelessness. If 'the states that want to do the cost-effective solutions to homelessness can't get the money to do it because they're not punitive enough, then that's going to mean more homelessness,' he said. Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
7 days ago
- Yahoo
Trump wants states to feed voter info into powerful citizenship data program
People participate in a Naturalization ceremony last year at Liberty State Park in Jersey City, N.J. The Trump administration is encouraging states to use an online search tool to verify the citizenship of registered voters, alarming some Democrats and privacy experts. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images) BILOXI, Miss. — The Trump administration is developing a powerful data tool it claims will let states identify noncitizens registered to vote. But Democratic critics and data experts warn it could allow the federal government to vacuum up vast quantities of information on Americans for unclear purposes. Some Democratic election officials and opponents of the effort fear President Donald Trump wants to build a federal database of voters to target political opponents or cherry-pick rare examples of noncitizen voters to fuel a sense of crisis. Republican election officials allied with the president counter that he's helping states to maintain accurate voter rolls. The Trump administration has rolled out changes to the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, tool at the same time the U.S. Department of Justice is asking states for copies of their voter rolls. The timing, combined with questions about what happens to voter data uploaded to the program, has alarmed critics. Trump wants Congress to pass a national proof of citizenship voter registration requirement and in March tried to unilaterally impose one for federal elections through executive order. But with the legislation stalled and the order halted by the courts, the citizenship data tool may offer a backdoor way to accomplish the same goal. SAVE was originally intended to help state and local officials verify the immigration status of individual noncitizens seeking government benefits. But U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, this spring refashioned it into a platform that can scan states' voter rolls if election officials upload the data. Justice Department demand for state voter lists underscores their importance The changes to SAVE, rolled out over just a few months and with little public debate, are 'tinkering with sort of the bones of democracy,' said John Davisson, senior counsel and director of litigation at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a Washington, D.C.-based research and advocacy group that argues privacy is a fundamental right. 'You're talking about the voting process and who will be eligible to vote,' Davisson said. 'And to take a system that is not designed for use in that process and repurpose it, really on the fly, without a formal comment process, without formal rulemaking, without congressional intervention — that's pretty anomalous and pretty alarming.' Previously, SAVE could only search one name at a time. Now it can conduct bulk searches, allowing state officials to potentially feed into it information on millions of registered voters. SAVE checks that information against a series of federal databases and reports back whether it can verify someone's immigration status. Since May, it also can draw upon Social Security data, transforming the program into a tool that can confirm citizenship because Social Security records for many, but not all, Americans include the information. NPR reported earlier on changes to SAVE. 'It is incredible what has been done, really since March,' Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray, a Republican who supports proof of citizenship requirements and the SAVE tool, told a gathering of state secretaries of state in Biloxi, Mississippi, last week. Individuals registering to vote in federal elections must already sign a statement affirming they are citizens under penalty of perjury, and those who cast a ballot face criminal penalties and deportation. One study of the 2016 election placed the prevalence of noncitizen voting at 0.0001% of votes cast. But as Trump has spread falsehoods about elections, Republicans have made purging noncitizens from voter rolls a central focus. Democratic concerns were on display last week at the National Association of Secretaries of State conference, held at the Beau Rivage casino-resort in Biloxi. In interviews on the sidelines of the conference, Democratic secretaries of state voiced deep reservations — or outright opposition — about plugging their voter data into SAVE. Maine Democratic Secretary of State Shenna Bellows said Aug. 6 that the federal government appeared to be trying to take over election administration. She formally rejected the Justice Department's voter roll request two days later. Bellows said the Department of Homeland Security told her in a recent phone call that it planned to retain SAVE data for 10 years for 'audit purposes only.' 'Just like the [Justice Department] is asking us to hand over an electronic file of all the voters in our state, it seems like the Department of Homeland Security is through this backdoor system also asking us to share voter information about every voter in our state,' Bellows said. At least one state appears to have granted the federal government sweeping authority over any voter data it provides to SAVE. Indiana Secretary of State Diego Morales announced in July he had reached an agreement with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to access the newly expanded system for voter list maintenance. Indiana's agreement allows the federal agency to use information the state provides for any purpose permitted by law, including criminal prosecutions. Morales, a Republican, said in a news release that SAVE represented 'another step in safeguarding the rights' of eligible voters. His office didn't respond to Stateline's questions. The Trump administration has ramped up efforts to encourage state election officials to use the expanded program. The White House hosted a bipartisan 'fly in' event for state secretaries of state on July 29. Multiple secretaries of state told Stateline that USCIS Director Joseph Edlow, who was confirmed on July 15, spoke at the event. 'The president is very much keyed in on voter list maintenance,' Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, a Republican, said in an interview — echoing other GOP secretaries of state who released statements praising the Trump administration after the meeting. When we disclose information, particularly personal identifying information, we need to have a handle on how it's going to be used, by whom and under what circumstances. – Minnesota Democratic Secretary of State Steve Simon Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, a Democrat who attended the meeting, said he questioned how the federal government would handle voter information provided to SAVE. He added that the Justice Department's request for his state's voter rolls raised his level of concern about how data would be used. 'When we disclose information, particularly personal identifying information, we need to have a handle on how it's going to be used, by whom and under what circumstances,' Simon told Stateline. The White House referred questions about SAVE and the event to the Department of Homeland Security and USCIS. In response to questions from Stateline, USCIS didn't directly answer whether the agency would share voter roll data with other parts of the federal government but confirmed it disposes of records after 10 years. 'The SAVE application is a critical tool for state and local governments to access information to safeguard the integrity of elections across the country. It's no wonder many states have quickly adopted it, and we continue to promote the tool to other states and counties not using SAVE,' USCIS spokesperson Matthew Tragesser said in a statement. 'We look forward to continued optimization efforts and implementing more updates to SAVE.' Some Republican election officials and Trump allies have long wanted the federal government to take an expanded role in searching state voter rolls for noncitizens. Last summer the Trump-aligned litigation group America First Legal, co-founded by Trump adviser Stephen Miller, encouraged states to submit to the Department of Homeland Security the names of individuals for citizenship or immigration status verification. Some states did just that. Texas, for example, asked USCIS to verify the citizenship of some voters in September, and Indiana asked the agency to verify 585,774 voters in October. The same month, 16 Republican state attorneys general signed a letter criticizing Homeland Security, then under the Biden administration, for failing to work with states on verification. Trump's DOJ wants states to turn over voter lists, election info After Trump took office, GOP state officials kept up the pressure. Twenty-one Republican secretaries of state urged Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in February to prioritize SAVE improvements. On April 16, Indiana sued the department in federal court for not responding to its verification request last fall. USCIS announced an overhaul of SAVE less than a week later. As the agency continues to remake SAVE, the tool will soon allow searches using the last four digits of a Social Security number, multiple state secretaries of state told Stateline. The agency confirmed the feature is under development and will be available soon but didn't provide an exact date. The change would mark another significant expansion of the program because most states collect the last four digits when individuals without a driver's license register to vote. Idaho Secretary of State Phil McGrane, a Republican, said SAVE represents a better way to verify citizenship than a state law requiring voters to produce documents. 'I think there's a real opportunity for us to do a lot of this through just sharing of information and I think that's what we're seeing happen,' McGrane said in an interview. But some voting rights advocates and experts on government data caution against an overreliance on Social Security data. The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, a progressive policy nonprofit, has noted that Social Security only began tracking the citizenship status of all applicants in 1978 — meaning the database doesn't include comprehensive citizenship information for older Americans. Additionally, Social Security may not always have up-to-date information on the status of naturalized U.S. citizens. The nonpartisan Institute for Responsive Government also warned in May that since SAVE hasn't used Social Security numbers to verify citizenship in the past, its accuracy and effectiveness are unknown. The success of the expanded SAVE program may also partially depend on whether it has adequate staff and resources, it said. Though noncitizens can vote in few local elections, GOP goes big to make it illegal A 2017 Government Accountability Office report found that between fiscal years 2012 and 2016, about 16% of the nearly 90 million SAVE searches required additional verification, which the institute says often translates into federal workers manually checking files. Now that SAVE allows bulk searches, the need for manual checking could rise dramatically. Nick Doctor, director of implementation at the Institute for Responsive Government, said in an interview that a tool confirming the eligibility of registered voters in a way that doesn't burden individuals can be a good thing. But he emphasized that it depends in large measure on SAVE's implementation. 'The changes that have been made to SAVE happened very quickly and, to my knowledge, we haven't seen releases on the level of accuracy of that information,' Doctor said. During interviews, Republican secretaries of state stressed that voters aren't kicked off the rolls because SAVE can't verify their citizenship. Instead, an inability to verify would likely trigger a follow-up process with the voter. 'Just because we get something back from the SAVE database, it's not a cut and dry, especially on those they're not sure about,' Hoskins, the Missouri secretary of state, said. Still, Arizona illustrates why some Democrats worry about any large-scale effort to ask voters — especially longtime, older residents — to prove their citizenship. After the state discovered errors in how it tracked voter citizenship dating back years, election officials are contacting some 200,000 voters seeking proof of citizenship documentation. Some have been casting ballots for decades without incident and many feel targeted, Arizona Democratic Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said during a presentation at the state secretaries of state conference. 'They feel insulted when they get that letter,' Fontes said. There's a lot of good-government reasons to believe that something like this, governed properly and governed with fail-safe mechanisms, could have an upside. – Charles Stewart III, professor of political science at MIT who studies elections Charles Stewart III, a professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies elections, said Arizona may actually point to the potential usefulness of SAVE. If Arizona runs its voter roll through the program, a list of 200,000 voters needing citizenship verification would perhaps drop into the hundreds, he suggested. 'There's a lot of good-government reasons to believe that something like this, governed properly and governed with fail-safe mechanisms, could have an upside,' Stewart said. Connecticut Democratic Secretary of State Stephanie Thomas told Stateline that every secretary wants tools to keep voter lists as clean as possible. But the details are important. When she hears of something new, Thomas said she asks whether it's the best option available and whether 'the i's are dotted, the t's crossed.' She said she's asked USCIS a series of questions about SAVE and is waiting on some responses. 'When it comes to voter lists,' Thomas said, 'I don't want Connecticut voters to be a guinea pig.' Stateline reporter Jonathan Shorman can be reached at jshorman@ SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE


Chicago Tribune
07-08-2025
- Chicago Tribune
Daywatch: HUD drops housing discrimination complaint against Chicago
Good morning, Chicago. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is dropping its investigation into whether or not aldermanic prerogative, which typically gives Chicago aldermen the final word on zoning decisions in their ward, resulted in housing discrimination. In a letter HUD sent yesterday to the complaining parties, which was obtained by the Tribune, the agency said it was closing the case to instead focus on 'real concerns regarding fair housing.' 'It is the Department's policy to focus on the original understanding and enforcement of the law and therefore rightfully return such decisions on zoning, home building, and more, to local leaders who are directly responsible for those matters,' the letter says. 'HUD enforcement will continue to prioritize investigations of specific allegations of actual discrimination, rather than dictate or influence land use policy.' Read the full story from the Tribune's Lizzie Kane and Alice Yin. Here are the top stories you need to know to start your day, including what we know about yesterday's ground stop of United flights, what's on deck for the Cubs and White Sox and what to do this weekend. Today's eNewspaper edition | Subscribe to more newsletters | Asking Eric | Horoscopes | Puzzles & Games | Today in History United Airlines paused departures of flights nationwide yesterday evening due to an unspecified technology issue at the Chicago-based carrier. At about 9 p.m., the carrier in a statement said the technology issue had been resolved and that 'while we expect residual delays, our team is working to restore our normal operations.' The Chicago man accused of fatally shooting two staff members of the Israeli Embassy in Washington outside a Jewish museum has been indicted on federal hate crime and murder charges, according to court documents unsealed yesterday. The indictment, filed in federal court in Washington, charges Elias Rodriguez with nine counts, including a hate crime resulting in death. The indictment also includes notice of special findings, which would allow the Justice Department to potentially pursue the death penalty. Gov. JB Pritzker emphasized his administration was closely coordinating with state and even local law enforcement to protect Texas House Democrats who fled to Illinois to stop a Republican congressional remap, especially after a bomb threat caused the lawmakers to be evacuated yesterday from their suburban hotel. The Department of Justice placed Chicago, Cook County, and the state of Illinois on its latest 'sanctuary jurisdiction list,' with Attorney General Pam Bondi promising to 'continue bringing litigation' against places the department says stand in the way of federal immigration enforcement. A Chicago police officer with a history of financial trouble has been indicted on federal bank fraud charges alleging he lied on loan paperwork tied to the purchase of three properties in 2019. Nine months after an Illinois appeals court called the circumstances surrounding the murder case against a Chicago man 'extraordinary' and reversed his convictions, his quest for an on-paper exoneration in the form of a certificate of innocence has been delayed after the Cook County state's attorney's office reassigned the case to outside prosecutors. Kevin Jackson, whose journey for release from prison in a 2001 murder case took many twists and turns, was in court Wednesday as Cook County Judge Erica Reddick granted a request by special prosecutor Fabio Valentini to give the state nearly two more months to respond to Jackson's petition for a certificate of innocence. Top Trump administration officials boast that a new state partnership to expand immigrant detention in Indiana will be the next so-called ' Alligator Alcatraz.' However, the agreement is already prompting backlash in the Midwest state, starting with its splashy 'Speedway Slammer' moniker. Here's a closer look at the agreement, the pushback and Indiana's role in the Trump agenda to aggressively detain and deport people in the country illegally. The Cubs head into an off day after avoiding a three-game sweep for the first time this season with a win in yesterday's series finale against the Cincinnati Reds. They head to St. Louis and then Toronto as they look to get the offense back on track. Meanwhile, the Sox haven't had much success against the American League Central (7-20). In the sci-fi comedy 'Demascus,' a man attending therapy tries a new technology that allows him to visit alternate versions of his life that exist in his subconscious in an effort to figure out why he's feeling so bleh, writes Tribune film and TV critic Nina Metz. But which version is closest to his real life? Actually, which one is his real life, anyway? The story premise sounds like Stephen King or M. Night Shyamalan material, though writer-director Zach Cregger has cited Paul Thomas Anderson's sprawling wonder 'Magnolia' as a chief inspiration. In the town of Maybrook, a terrible thing happened not long ago, the young narrator tells us. Seventeen students from schoolteacher Justine Gandy's third-grade class left their beds and their homes at 2:17 a.m. one night, running, arms outstretched, to a destination and a fate unknown, writes Tribune film critic Michael Phillips. Here are our picks for events in and around Chicago this weekend.