Daywatch: Johnson proposal would put requirements on new industrial developments

Chicago Tribune

27-05-2025

Good morning, Chicago.
Mayor Brandon Johnson will push forward this spring an ordinance designed to reform land-use policies that environmentalists say for decades led to pollution in Black and Latino communities.
Some advocates for heavy industry are worried. None deny minority neighborhoods on the South and West sides suffer more from the dirty air, water and soil that historically came from steel mills, smokestacks and truck traffic. But they say if Johnson's proposal puts more obstacles in the way of new industrial businesses getting started, it could squelch much-needed job creation.
'We need to make sure we're not disincentivizing industry, because these jobs are needed throughout the city,' said Jonathan Snyder, executive director of North Branch Works, a nonprofit advocate for economic development along the North Branch of the Chicago River. 'If we send a signal that coming here is an expensive, complicated process, we will not be successful in attracting business.'
Read the full story from the Tribune's Brian J. Rogal.
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For a city with hundreds of shootings each year, the work that Pha'Tal Perkins does with kids in Chicago is quiet but significant. His team of workers does round-the-clock work to tackle the root causes of community violence, leading peer-to-peer support and group therapy sessions. They help kids apply for college and jobs, and host programming for kids. They are often the first to crime scenes, even before police.
In late April, due to the end of a federal grant that supported many of those efforts, Perkins had to lay off five of the outreach staff at his violence intervention nonprofit, Think Outside Da Block.
David Vojvodich served two tours in Vietnam, and on Memorial Day, he remembers those who didn't come back.
Vojvodich, a 76-year-old lifelong resident of the Canaryville neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, prefers not to talk about his service during the two-decade-long conflict. But the holiday is sacred for him, and a time to reflect.
State legislators who are also lawyers in Illinois are getting a new perk, courtesy of the state Supreme Court.
They just need to show up for work in the Illinois General Assembly and they'll be able to collect credit toward satisfying continuing education classes required to keep their law licenses in good standing.
Jordan Musenbrock, 35, said Medicaid helped pay for her manual wheelchair and its repairs, shower chair, catheters and several medications.
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Sixty-five miles southwest of Chicago, a small hill that looks like a prop from an Indiana Jones movie breaks up the flat, monotone landscape. Consisting of shale, sandstone and rocks from an old coal mine, the waste pile — located on a massive river delta from another era — is an unremarkable remnant from the region's once-thriving coal industry.
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The singer Elaine Dame has had an interesting life, so far.
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