SSW 08.13.26

SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY The South Side Weekly is an independent non-profit newspaper by and for the South Side of Chicago. We provide high-quality, critical arts and public interest coverage, and equip and develop journalists, artists, photographers, and mediamakers of all backgrounds.

Volume 13, Issue 16 Editor-in-Chief

Jill Petty

Deputy Editor

Adam Przybyl

Art Director and Layout Editor

Mel Dempsey

Assistant Managing Editor

Ellie Gilbert-Bair

Engagement Editor

Alycia Kamil Moaton

Senior Editors

Martha Bayne Christopher Good Olivia Stovicek Jocelyn MartinezRosales

Fact Checkers

Patrick Edwards Kate Gallagher Jo Harris Victoria Moreno Kateleen Quiles

Office Manager

Mary Leonard

Advertising Manager

Susan Malone

Interim Publisher

Jianan Shi

Editor Emeritus

Jacqueline Serrato

The Weekly publishes online weekly and in print every other Thursday. We seek contributions from all over the city.

Send submissions, story ideas, comments, or questions to editor@southsideweekly.com or mail to: South Side Weekly 6100 S. Blackstone Ave. Chicago, IL 60637 For advertising inquiries, please contact: Susan Malone (773) 358-3129 or email: malone@southsideweekly.com For general inquiries, please call: (773) 643-8533

Cover illustration by Kailey Ryan

FROM THE EDITORS IN THIS ISSUE Celebrated children’s author Natalie Babbitt wrote that “the first week in August ... hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning ... with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color.”

The month can feel fleeting and bittersweet, especially for students—a rapidly closing portal of sunshine, relaxation, and beach trips.

In Chicago, and some other large cities, summer has become the “backdrop” for a less appealing ritual, also relevant to students and other young people: a bump in media coverage of “teen takeovers.”

For example, a May Newsweek story, “Map Shows US Cities Hit by ‘Teen Takeovers,’” catalogued details about events “gone wrong” in several cities, including New York, Orlando, Tampa, D.C., and Chicago. The official answer? “Authorities across the U.S. have responded with a mix of crackdowns and prevention measures, as cities try to contain [them].”

Many media platforms report on these gatherings like bad weather fronts; “teen takeovers” are represented as mysterious, dangerous, uncontrollable, and increasingly inevitable. More often than not, the community members and public officials who are quoted express puzzlement, concern, and/or outrage in these stories.

Yet in this week’s Ask An Expert, a youth leader and a political scientist explore how racism, persistent surveillance, hypercriminalization, and perceptions of “public space” intersect to shape our understanding of “teen trends,” the preferred term for these kinds of events organized by young people on social media.

Mari Lee, an organizer with the Chicago Freedom School, reflects on the limited spaces and opportunities for young people to come together throughout the city, especially on the city’s South and West Sides. For example, Lee says “some spaces [for young people] are just shut down, period. We don’t even get the chance to enjoy ourselves because it’s too late—now we don’t even have the building.” He continues, “we don’t have the proper resources, and I’d say the city uses their money to fund different things that shouldn’t be funded.”

Just as adultism frames punitive policies regarding teen trends, it shapes our perceptions of teens. Cathy Cohen, a professor at the University of Chicago adds, “We often structure adolescence as a space that [should be] controlled, because we have lots of ideas about young people being [uncontrollable].” But teen trends offer evidence that “young people are coming together collectively to engage together and to define how they will behave,” said Cohen.

Reporting on teen trends—and about young people more generally—rarely engages concerns about their limited rights, or their limited access to community resources. These blind spots may be even more common in standard reporting about incarcerated people. In this week’s issue, Doing Time reveals numerous challenges incarcerated people can face when trying to stay clean and healthy on the inside. We also include a story originally published in July by The Marshall Project, “A Prison on Fire,” which highlights the conditions contributing to more than 70 fires and two deaths at Joliet Treatment Center, a facility designed for people with serious mental illness.

These stories, taken along with our July 18 story, “Sixteen Minutes in a Burning Cell,” show how the criminal legal system punishes our desires—and needs—for connection, agency, and space, on our own terms.

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ask an expert: what are teen trends?

Youth leader Camarion Lee and professor Cathy Cohen discuss youth gatherings downtown, the criminalization of Black and Brown youth, and the importance of creating systems of agency, power, and purpose.

ellie gilbert-bair...................................3 university of chicago press union wins landslide election The newly certified union aims to begin bargaining for a contract in November..

olivia stovicek........................................6 lolla beyond the main stage Chicago’s local music scene showed out in aftershows and activations across the city.

jocelyn martínez-rosales.....................7

‘other washingtons’ installation brings new histories to king drive Artist Amanda Williams commemorates the extraordinary people missing from public memory.

marc c. monaghan, hyde park herald.................................... 9 south side sports roundup Chicago’s high school football teams begin training with eyes on the prize, Bears fans anticipate a thrilling preseason, and the Sky grapple with their future without playoffs in sight.

malachi hayes....................................... 10

‘pest control notified’

Insiders resort to creative, desperate measures to keep themselves clean, healthy, and bug-free.

micah clark moody and meghna anand....................................... 12 a prison on fire Designed to help people with serious mental illness, Joliet Treatment Center repeatedly failed to prevent or respond to fires, despite two deaths.

shannon heffernan, the marshall project.......................... 16

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INTERVIEWS BY ELLIE GILBERT-BAIR

Camarion (Mari) Lee is a dedicated logistics coordinator and youth leader at the Chicago Freedom School.

Since 2023, Mari has evolved from a participant to a key facilitator specializing in transformative justice, know-your-rights, and antioppression workshops. Driven by an energetic and outgoing spirit, he is passionate about community building and empowering others to recognize the unique value in every individual.

T

een trends, also dubbed teen takeovers, have been making citywide and national headlines.

They involve large gatherings of young people in public spaces—like beaches, landmarks, or malls—and are often coordinated on social media. They have sparked calls for stricter curfew laws, fines for parents whose teens break those laws, and accountability measures for social media platforms used to advertise trends.

Mayor Brandon Johnson vetoed a “snap curfew” ordinance last summer that would have allowed the police superintendent to declare localized youth curfews with 30 minutes notice.

This summer, he announced the “Get Summer” program, which offers free memberships to seven YMCA centers for Chicago residents ages 12 to 18 during July and August, to expand safe places for young people to gather. Johnson told the Investigative Project for Race and Equity, “You’ve got to make sure that young people know that they are loved and supported.”

The Weekly sat down with Mari Lee, youth leader at the Chicago Freedom

School, and Cathy J. Cohen, professor at the University of Chicago, to discuss these gatherings, how Black and Brown youth have been criminalized, and the importance of creating systems for youth to experience agency, power, and purpose.

Ellie Gilbert-Bair: What is a teen trend?

Mari Lee: A teen trend is a space where teens can make connections and enjoy themselves. But after a while of us being there, it starts turning into chaos a little bit. I’m not even gonna try to fabricate that.

I wouldn’t say it’s just police by itself [creating the chaos], but I would say they’re one thing. I understand they’re there for safety precautions and protocols, but they take their job to the extent where it is excessive force. They just use their badge and how they’re seen as [a] presence to dominate us. But at the same time, it’s not dominating us. I wouldn’t say it makes us act out, but it

Cathy J. Cohen is the D. Gale Johnson distinguished service professor at the University of Chicago in political science. She is the author of The Boundaries of Blackness: AIDS and the Breakdown of Black Politics and Democracy Remixed: Black Youth and the Future of American Politics. Cohen is currently the founder and director of two publicfacing research projects, the Black Youth Project and the GenForward Survey.

does make us act a certain way, because it makes people think that you’re not finna talk, you’re not finna say nothing to me, and I’m not finna say nothing to you. I’m finna be here, and I’m finna do this.

But I also would say we have to hold accountability on ourselves, because we kind of create dangerous spaces for ourselves.

Do you think there are enough spaces for young people in Chicago right now?

No, not really. Some spaces are just shut down, period. We don’t even get the chance to enjoy ourselves because it’s too late—now we don’t even have the building. We don’t have the proper resources, and I’d say the city uses their money to fund different things that shouldn’t be funded.

Because we don’t have that type of funding, I would say the best spaces right now are nonprofit organizations like the Chicago Freedom School, because we have the space to hold people, where we keep you busy after school, try to keep you in safety, and make sure we also teach

you about things that’s going on in the real world.

We got three frameworks: antioppression, healing justice, and transformative justice. We take them frameworks and basically make them our grounding practices of how we teach other youth how we do.

I just recently taught a transformative justice workshop, where basically, I’m teaching to not just restore the problem and say “I’m sorry, it won’t happen again,” but also change your actions.

What do you think young people need, and what are you organizing for?

I think young people would have a better chance if they had job opportunities.

But also, I think that if we just had more resources to hold these spaces, or even if city council will let us hold some spaces, I feel like that’ll be better. Because that’s an even chance for us to enjoy ourselves and make connections with other people, rather than just take our hatred out on everything, anything. If we did have an area where we know we could be safe AUGUST 13, 2026 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 3

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and all get along, I feel like that would definitely help, 100%.

I would like to see a change in police enforcement, because I feel like they use their badge as dominance. They take their control to an extent where it doesn’t need to be taken. So I feel like a new training or a new policy would be helpful.

Ellie Gilbert-Bair: What are some of the systemic contexts that lead to youth seeking large public gatherings?

Cathy J. Cohen: One of the things I always say is, I wish we spent as much time on the depletion of resources— for example, for educational school systems, or recreational opportunities in neighborhoods, or job and training opportunities—which I think have a much more extended impact on young people’s opportunities and experiences, as we do on this thing that has been labeled “teen takeovers,” but most young people would call “teen trends.”

I think there are a number of things that we could pay attention to in trying to understand why we might see young people gather collectively in urban spaces to make themselves seen, and also to have a good time. And in some cases, those spill into activities that can be detrimental to their condition and to the condition of certain neighborhoods.

One is, people want to get together to socialize. The data and the research says that, especially since COVID, we have an epidemic of loneliness among young people; that there is superficial connection, largely through social media; and that people, and in particular young people, are seeking out ways to connect and to socialize in spaces that they control.

It’s different to be in a school system that is largely authoritarian—that tells you when you can talk and when you can’t; that tells you who you can be in conversation with and who you can’t— than to say, “Hey, we’re going to go

downtown and make ourselves visible.”

I think these questions of socialization, engagement, [and] being in community should not be dismissed as an important driver.

I think there is also this question of collective power that drives some of the teen trends. And what I mean by that is, we often structure adolescence as a space that [should be] controlled, because we have lots of ideas about young people being [uncontrollable]. “Their brains are not fully formed.” “We don’t trust their decision-making.” What I think some of the teen trends tell us, is that there is a way in which young people are coming together collectively to engage together and to define how they will behave.

And some of it, for older people, you might not like. We bring in a whole level of respectability politics when we’re viewing these things. But I think collectively, young people are saying, “We’re going to create a space that we control,” and “We’re going to have visual representation in ways that you often don’t see us.”

the collective power of 300 or 500 young people allow[s] them to be in spaces where generally they are expected not to be.

And this also speaks to even the language of “takeover.” The idea of “takeover” is that there’s a group taking over a space that they’re not generally supposed to be at, or that is controlled by another group. And I think these young people understand that “I’m not supposed to be downtown,” or “I’m not supposed to be in Hyde Park,” or “I’m not supposed to be at the University of Chicago,” and “The way that I can be there is to come together in a group.”

Why do these gatherings draw such a massive police presence?

I would argue that, in fact, there’s a long history of responding to young people in urban spaces, whether they’re parks or beaches or the mall, that has always generated a level of carcerality and criminalization, especially when those young people are Black and Brown people.

“Public spaces, in fact, are spaces that can be populated by white individuals, and those spaces have to be maintained often for the use of, in particular, white residents.”

– Cathy J. Cohen

A while ago, I was doing this research and interviewing young people, and I would ask about downtown. Often they would say either they had never been downtown, or they didn’t feel comfortable being downtown, because there was a hyper-surveillance, there was a criminalization of their bodies and their behaviors downtown. And I do think

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So, the history of criminalizing large groups of people of color who gather is not new. In many ways ... this response—to mobilize carcerality, to mobilize the police, to engage in arrests, to punish parents— should not be that surprising. It is the goto governing structure that exists generally in this country, and often in urban cities where Black and Brown people live.

What are some other ways in which public space use is policed?

I do think there is a way in which, if we think about the history of segregation, the expectation is that, in fact, Black people [and] Brown people will stay in their designated areas. That those areas will often be overpoliced. That there will be cameras everywhere. There are systems of surveillance that have evolved over time. And the expectation is that, if you stay there, then you can do whatever you want in those spaces. You can destroy those spaces. But public spaces, in fact, are spaces that can be populated by white individuals, and those spaces have to be maintained often for the use of, in particular, white residents.

So, it is not teen trends in predominantly Black or Latine neighborhoods that end up with lots of police presence, because there’s already police presence [in those neighborhoods].

It is when those teen trends move out of Black and Brown neighborhoods, into what are thought [of ] as predominantly white spaces or public spaces, that they generate the reactions that we’ve seen, where there’s massive police influx, where there are news stories. There are regulations that we don’t see when young people are gathering in certain segregated neighborhoods on the South and West Sides.

What are some ways you think youth can access a feeling of agency and collectivity in the city?

Yeah, this is hard, right? Because we have to be real. There aren’t a lot of spaces and platforms and opportunities for young people—we’re talking about teens here— to access power in the city. They don’t vote, and that’s one way people exert power. They often go to schools—schools that are highly authoritarian, meaning there’s no democracy. There aren’t young people helping [make decisions] in the schools. They don’t hire and fire in the

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schools. They are meant to be subjects in the schools.

So, if we’re serious about taking the voices, and the ideas, and the agency of young people as things that can help guide policy and programs, then we really have to build systems that allow for that. ... There can’t just be a teen advisory group that gets motivated to say, “Hey, how do we stop teen trends?” [The question should be], “how do we think about the governing policies of the city impacting young people, and what is their voice in that policy-making process?”

These are not little interventions. It has to be that we take seriously the agency, the insights, and the expertise—the lived experiences—of teens, and incorporate that into how we govern a city. And it means changing our framework for how we respond to teen trends. It means

we think of them as opportunities to reimagine and engage with young people about their needs. How do we invest in their communities, how do we create opportunities for collective engagement, how do we nurture their agency and empowerment, and how do we lift up their voices? These are very different processes than how do we jail them and how do we jail their parents to make them accountable for moving into spaces where they are not wanted?

Is there anything else you think would benefit the larger conversation around teen trends?

The only other thing, I think, is to emphasize the history of racializing Black bodies and spaces. I was reading about how, after the Central Park jogger,

there was this language of “wilding,” that young Black people were out there wilding. And malls [also public spaces] began to regulate how many young Black people and Latinos could be in certain stores at a time.

Editor’s note: The Central Park jogger case was a 1989 criminal case concerning the rape of a white woman running in New York City’s Central Park at night.

Five Black and Latino teenagers were wrongfully convicted, served time, and later exonerated. The term “wilding” was used in a media frenzy over Black and Brown teens causing mischief (i.e., partying).

There’s always [been] the racialized fear of teen Black and Brown bodies, [especially] in establishments meant to generate profit. So, in the same way that we want to contextualize all the things that are happening here, we also

want to pay attention to that history of racialization, and the ways it replicates itself and continues to evolve today. These interviews have been edited for clarity and length.

Ellie Gilbert-Bair is the Weekly’s assistant managing editor.

Do you have a topic you would like to ask an expert about?

Email us at elliegilbertbair@ southsideweekly.com

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AUGUST 13, 2026 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 5

LABOR

University of Chicago Press Union Wins Landslide Election

The newly certified union aims to begin bargaining for a contract in November.

BY OLIVIA STOVICEK

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votes in favor, 12 against: workers at The University of Chicago Press (UCP) voted by a landslide to unionize with the Chicago News Guild, Local 34071 of The NewsGuild-CWA. The election—with votes counted on July 8 and the results officially certified by the National Labor Relations Board on July 16—marks another win for labor organizing in Chicago cultural institutions and in the publishing industry nationwide.

“We were feeling confident going into it, but it’s really great to have that level of support and affirmation for our union,” said Meredith Nini, senior promotions manager at the press and UCP Workers Guild member.

The UCP Workers Guild will soon start bargaining for its first contract; according to Nini, the union is hoping to begin the process in November. As members prepare for the next phase, they’ve sought to keep up momentum and stay united.

“There are different divisions of the press, different departments, and they all have unique things that they want to see in a contract,” Nini said. “Making sure we have representation from across the press within our leadership is really important to us.”

UCP is one of the largest university presses in the United States. With more than 270 employees, it publishes about 280 books a year and more than 90 journals, and it also provides distribution services to other publishers. The new union has 134 members in a wide range of roles at the press, including its books and journals divisions and press administration.

In an email, U. of C. spokesperson Gerald McSwiggan wrote, “Following certification of the election results by the NLRB, the University will bargain in good faith with the UCP Workers Guild, Chicago

Illustration by Atlan Arceo-Witzl

NewsGuild—TNG-CWA Local 34071. We greatly value the work of UChicago Press employees and their important contributions to the Press’s scholarly publishing mission.”

According to the UCP Workers Guild, it is the first union for most departments at the press since its founding in 1890.

About 60 warehouse workers at the press’s Chicago Distribution Center in Pullman are already unionized with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

After the UCP Workers Guild announced its union drive in May, inperson and hybrid workers based at the press’s Woodlawn office voted in person on June 9 and 10, with other workers voting by mail.

In accordance with the National Labor Relations Act, employees were categorized as “professional” or “non-professional” in the election process and “professional employees” were asked to additionally vote

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on whether to be in the same bargaining unit. The Guild argued the division didn’t make sense for their workplace, and “professional employees” voted to stick together as one union.

As described in its mission statement, the UCP Workers Guild’s goals fall into three main categories: pay equity, sustainability, and transparency. Now that the Chicago News Guild is officially the workers’ collective bargaining representative, they have a different kind of legal power to negotiate with U. of C. about those goals.

The union recently sent out a bargaining survey to gather more information on the specifics of what members want to include in a contract. “While we’ve been collecting thoughts on what people want out of a contract and what people want out of the union since day one, now is the time to get some of that information a little bit more

formally,” said Adrienne Meyers, senior promotions manager at the press and UCP Workers Guild member.

In addition to the critical issue of pay— union members have discussed calling to raise “low, stagnant wages,” as marketing associate Griffin Reed referred to them in a statement on the union’s website, and implement consistent cost of living adjustments—protections for remote and hybrid work are likely to come up. Meyers said workers have seen “varying levels of security in those arrangements,” and that she hopes they can get “some things on the books that are just more stable and could bring us a little bit more peace of mind for folks who are commuting longer or need to be fully remote.”

Another goal is protections regarding use of generative AI, which the UCP Workers Guild mission statement says “threatens to degrade our job security, professional integrity, and author relationships.”

Workers are also worried about layoffs and additional strain on workloads if positions open and are left unfilled, said Nini: “We’re never quite sure how the university situation might impact our situation.”

U. of C. has struggled with its budget in recent years. Hyde Park Herald reported in May that the university estimated the deficit would be reduced to $140 million by the end of the 2026 fiscal year, down from $288 million in fiscal year 2024.

Though the university currently says it “is not planning further University-level [personnel] actions,” measures to close the deficit so far have included layoffs, hiring freezes, and a voluntary retirement program that together have cut university staff by approximately 400.

MUSIC Besides the bargaining survey, the UCP Workers Guild is setting up unit governance and planning monthly allmember meetings. The Guild also wants to continue building relationships with other unions, especially in Chicago.

The union already has good connections with other unions at U. of C., such as Faculty Forward (the union of non-tenure-track faculty) and the campus chapter of the American Association of University Professors, as well as unions at other publishers. They’ve been in touch with workers at Hachette, the third-largest trade publisher in the United States, where workers won their own union election just a day before UCP, becoming the largest union in trade publisher history.

“I think our goal is to reach out and meet more unions that are in Chicago.

We’re thinking of like museums, other publishers, libraries,” Nini said.

As Meyers put it, the union is “trying to just expand the networks and seeing how we can all support each other, in unions in general, and also in related industries around town.”

UCP Workers Guild members have savored the decisive win, and now they’re excited to continue the charge.

“Unionizing is a lot of work, but it’s not difficult work. It takes time. But I think a lot of people have this idea that it can’t be done in their industry. And I would just encourage people to learn more about it and figure out the steps to take to unionizing,” Nini said. Olivia Stovicek is a senior editor for the Weekly.

Join our team!

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Lolla Beyond the Main Stage Chicago’s local music scene showed out in aftershows and activations across the city.

BY JOCELYN MARTÍNEZ-ROSALES

A

t exactly 11:11, making every wish in the room come true, Maria Zardoya emerged from the fog in a white flowy dress, singing in a sotto voice. Known as the vocalist of alternative pop band The María’s, Zardoya performed at Lollapalooza’s official aftershow on Thursday, July 30, as Not For Radio, her solo project.

Hosted by Wrigleyville's Metro, the stage was dressed with moss and droopy lily lamps, transporting us into the middle of Zardoya’s forest, the visual language motif present in her 2025 debut album Melt.

Zardoya’s performance was featured at one of the many official and unofficial Lolla aftershows that helped define the four-day festival, and create more intimate musical moments for festival attendees and Chicago residents alike.

The sold-out show on Thursday offered a preview of Not For Radio before performing on the second day of Lolla at the Allianz Stage. The third-largest stage of the festival can easily accommodate 20,000 people—providing a contrast to the show’s intimate allure. On the Metro stage, Zardoya was joined by a cellist and pianist. Couples and achy hearts swayed to “Back To You,” its hauntingly gorgeous piano intro sending chills down our spines.

On the same night, in the neighboring neighborhood of Lake View, Pilsen-based artist Rudy De Anda opened the night at Schubas with his bolero, “Los Canarios,” a love ballad that De Anda said captures the soulful elements of his sound and felt like a fitting prelude to 54Ultra’s headlining set.

“We have a mutual drummer— Chris Sanchez shout-out because it was his birthday that night—so it just truly

was like a love fest,” De Anda said. “The crowd was having fun. Everything about it was just 10 out of 10.”

De Anda said those are his favorite kind of performances, the events where artists on the bill flow seamlessly into each other. It’s not the first time De Anda and the New Jersey artist have shared a stage; they ran it back from their January show at Lincoln Hall.

For De Anda, the Lolla aftershow marked his first performance back from a Central American tour with post-punk outfit San Charbel, where he played the guitar. He took the opportunity to announce a new project.

“I started a new band, and you might hear some new music soon,” De Anda said with a grin. “We're called Rudo y sus Cursis, and it's just kind of like an alter ego, you could say. It's still me, still us. But what you're gonna hear is a little bit different than that soul sound, R&B sound.”

De Anda is leaning further into cumbia with his new band concept, building on an influence that has already surfaced throughout his music.

Tracks like “Helado,” from his 2020 album Tender Epoch, carry notes of psychedelic cumbia, while “Miel” has become a cumbia rendition in his live sets. He brought that version to the Lolla aftershow. De Anda will be at Thalia Hall at the end of this month for the Free For All supporting Saturday headliner Trish Toledo, a soulies singer from California.

The Long Beach in him says to “bring your lowriders.”

Thalia Hall also hosted several Lolla aftershows including South Sider Ric Wilson’s opening set for alternative R&B AUGUST 13, 2026 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 7

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Rudy de Anda opens for Los Mirlos at Park West on June 16, 2026, in Chicago.

Photo courtesy of Rudy De Anda

Flores Negras is part of ARC's house music festival lineup taking place in Union Park next month.

Photo by James Hoeck

artist Amber Mark. Wilson, an official Lolla artist, was added to the festival lineup a week before and scheduled to perform on the Bud Light main stage Saturday. Unfortunately, due to the rain and festival delays, his set was canceled.

Another South Side venue that

held aftershows was the Ramova in Bridgeport. Legendary rapper Freddie Gibs had a near sold-out show at the Ramova, delivering a stellar performance.

“Freddie Gibbs, he is a hip-hop legend from Gary, Indiana. So having him on the South Side was a great

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Maria Zardoya performs songs from Not For Radio’s debut album, Melt, at the Metro on July 30, 2026.

Photo by Jenna Whalen

experience because we could bring a lot of family and friends, and also fans from the area that grew up listening to him to the theater,” said Luke Manning, Ramova’s talent booker.

In collaboration with C3 Presents, which produces Lollapalooza, Ramova hosted three aftershows, including sets from two EDM acts, Worship and Notion. Both performed on the festival’s emblematic Perry stage. Manning said hosting aftershows gave fans an opportunity to experience the South Side, while supporting an independent venue.

“Being an independent venue, we get to interact with the community and hear the community's thoughts, and it's special because it's bringing arts and culture to the neighborhood,” Manning said. “You can find any of our owners and management on the floor [at] pretty much every show.”

Inside the festival, activations from popular brands like Patron, Toyota and Red Bull featured local DJs. Inside the Red Bull activation, which resembled a car wash, Flores Negras had to turn down the bass.

“The bass was so heavy that the lights fell off,” Flores Negras recalled, noting that the volume was not even turned up all the way.

For Flores Negras, activations can be a powerful way to put the people already doing the work in Chicago’s music industry in the spotlight. She pointed to her friend DJ Gonzo, a South Sider who has thrown several dance parties of his

own, and coordinated the Jack Daniel’s pop-up at Lolla throughout the entire festival.

“Those activation stages are super cool because they're visually really awesome,” Flores said. “Check out an activation stage because it's going to be somebody that is going to be an up-andcoming DJ—a local DJ.” On the last day of the festival, the underground queen blessed the Red Bull decks, bringing the same energy she pours into Chicago’s music scene through her raves and goth cumbia parties. The cozy setting allowed her to explore a softer side of her sound, saving her harder edge for later this month, when she’ll open the Expansions stage at ARC Music Festival on its second day. She’s also saving it for her own afterparty, Cruel Summer, which will follow the festival and be hosted by her production company, Mictlan. For now, she’s taking in her well-deserved seat at the table.

“It's a dream,” Flores Negras said.

“I've been going to concerts and stuff since I was five, and my dad and my tias, they would take me out to fests and concerts. So it's just something that I've always dreamed of. It's pretty wild, honestly, to be able to reach those things and to be a part of those things.” Jocelyn Martinez-Rosales is a Mexican American independent journalist from Belmont Cragin covering music and culture.

She is also a senior editor at the Weekly.

ART

‘Other Washingtons’ Installation Brings New Histories to King Drive A part of the Chicago Monuments Project, artist Amanda Williams commemorates the dozens of extraordinary people missing from public memory.

BY MARC C. MONAGHAN, HYDE PARK HERALD

A

small thicket of blue, cream, brown, and salmon flags now flutters around the massive bronze statue of George Washington on King Drive near 51st Street, drawing attention to the 122-year-old monument even as it partially obscures it.

The flags are part of “Other Washingtons,” a new installation by Chicago artist Amanda Williams that asks passersby to consider dozens of lesserknown Washingtons alongside the nation’s first president.

Williams’ installation, one of eight major public art projects commissioned through the city’s Chicago Monuments Project, was unveiled August 6 during a ceremony attended by more than 50 people, including Mayor Brandon Johnson, Alderman Pat Dowell (3rd), and the royal court of the Bud Billiken Parade.

The George Washington statue was installed in 1904 by the Daughters of the American Revolution. But Dowell said the monument has long had little connection to the community that surrounds it.

“I have really never paid attention to this statue,” Dowell said. “You might pay attention to it on Bud Billiken Day. But other than that, it doesn't really speak to this community.”

The Chicago Monuments Project was launched in 2020 to reconsider who and what Chicago commemorates in its public spaces.

“Who is missing from our public memory, and how can we tell a fuller and more truthful story?” Lydia Ross of the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) said, describing the question at the heart of the project.

Supported by a grant from the Mellon

Foundation, the Chicago Monuments Project centers “histories, communities, and narratives historically excluded from civic commemoration,” according to the city. The Chicago Torture Justice Memorial, which broke ground further south on King Drive last month, is another of the eight projects.

The monuments project grew out of the racial justice protests that followed the 2020 murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, when monuments across the country came under renewed scrutiny over whom they honored and whose histories they left out. In Chicago, protesters repeatedly targeted statues of Christopher Columbus, prompting the city to temporarily remove monuments in Grant and Arrigo parks that summer.

Dowell said residents also began reaching out to her about the George Washington statue.

Williams, according to a DCASE press release, “uses art as a medium to critique and expose the complex intersections of race, capitalism, and the built environment.”

Trained as an architect, Williams creates installations, sculptures, paintings and works on paper that “inspire new ways of looking at the familiar and, in the process, raise questions about the inequitable state of urban space and ownership in America,” according to her website.

“This project in particular really thinks about what it means to tie us to a national and international story, but also [so] the gentlemen who play dominoes here every day and those of us who live in the neighborhood and walk around can enjoy this,” Williams said during the ceremony.

“It's not just about monumentalizing people or things, but also about creating space for those kinds of conversations,” she continued.

Artist Amanda Williams poses with members of the Bud Billiken Parade royal court near her “Other Washingtons” installation on King Drive, Aug. 6, 2026. Photo by Marc C. Monaghan

“Other Washingtons” consists of about 40 flagpoles bearing flags and vertical banners carrying the names and personal stories of people with Washington as part of their names. Positioned around the George Washington statue, these stories are legible to pedestrians and drivers stopped at the nearby traffic light. They invite pause and contemplation.

Many tell the stories of extraordinary ordinary people. On one banner, Anise Harkey writes about her grandfather, George Washington Sims: “George Washington [Sims], Sr., was born in Milford, Texas, in 1885.

His profession was teacher. They had segregated schools, so it would have been all people of color.”

“In 1918, due to the Selective Service Act of 1917, it was mandatory that he register for the Armed Services ... He registered in September, at age 32. Three months later, almost to the date, December 15th, 1918, at age 32, he died.”

“He was one of the millions who died in the great influenza that swept through the entire world from 1918 to 1920.”

Williams said the stories will soon be

accessible online and through QR codes printed on the banners and signs at the site.

The colors used in “Other Washingtons” draw from the palette Williams developed for “Color(ed) Theory,” her earlier installation in Englewood. One of those colors was a shade of blue she recreated with University of Chicago students from a pigment patented by scientist and inventor George Washington Carver.

Williams hopes to work with the schools closest to the statue, including Dyett High School, Burke Elementary School and Mollison Elementary School.

She suggested incorporating “Other Washingtons” into civic and visual arts lessons, giving students opportunities to “learn about different types of writing and storytelling” that could lead to careers in those fields.

Dowell supported that ambition, saying she was glad to see young people attending the unveiling.

“We have to be able to show them the history. You don't always learn it in a book,” she said.

Monroe Edwards, crown princess of the Bud Billiken Parade, said the installation had already changed the way she thought about the monument.

“When I first came, I thought it would just be a presentation, like talking about the history of the statue and about George Washington. But it was actually a lot different,” she said. “It was talking about all the different Washingtons and how they contributed to helping out in the community.” Marc C. Monaghan is a contributing writer for the Hyde Park Herald.

AUGUST 13, 2026 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 9

SPORTS

BY MALACHI HAYES Welcome to the South Side Sports Roundup!

Check back every month for the latest news and updates on everything South Side sports fans need to know.

South Sider of the Month: Antwaan Randle El Though he’s technically a native of suburban Riverdale, just a southwards jump over the Calumet River away from West Pullman, Bears assistant coach Antwaan Randle El and the city of Chicago have no issues claiming each other. Randle El is poised to play a significant role within rising-star Ben Johnson’s second-year coaching staff, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to bring glory to the city and team he spent his childhood supporting.

A three-sport star in football, basketball, and baseball, Randle El is one of the more decorated alumni in Thornton Township High School’s history, a school in nearby Harvey that counts Chicagoarea legends Lupe Fiasco and Melvin Van Peebles among its attendees. Despite being selected by the Chicago Cubs in the 1997 MLB Draft, Randle El chose to attend Indiana University, where he initially played baseball, basketball, and football before his stardom on the field led him to focus solely on football. With nearly 7500 passing yards over his four years in Bloomington, Randle El was the Hoosiers’ all-time passing leader for more than a decade, and remains in second place today. His nearly 3900 career rushing yards are also good for second in Hoosier history, as are his 44 rushing touchdowns.

After finishing sixth in Heisman Trophy voting as a senior, the Pittsburgh Steelers made Randle El a second-round NFL draft pick in 2002, converting him from quarterback to wide receiver in the process. His nine-year career in Pittsburgh, and later Washington, made him a fan favorite thanks to the trick plays made possible by his throwing abilities. He finished his career with 22 passing completions, the most ever for a player who never actually appeared at the quarterback position. In 2006, he became the first wide receiver to throw for a touchdown in a Super Bowl, an iconic game-sealing deep ball to secure a championship for the Steelers.

After his playing career, Randle El won another Super Bowl as an assistant coach for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers before joining the Detroit Lions as wide receivers coach. He now fills the same role for the Bears, with the added title of assistant head coach. Just as importantly, he seems to feel like he’s home. “[I was] growing up and watching the Bears, and rooting for them when [I wasn’t] playing them,” he told the Chicago Sun-Times in 2025. “It’s always been a thing for me to get back here, and the way it happened ... I’m excited, and I’m thankful.”

Do you have a pick for South Sider of the Month? Email our sports contributor Malachi at mzhayes95@gmail.com.

High school football teams gear up for fall High schoolers in Chicagoland are

10 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ AUGUST 13, 2026

getting ready to return to school at the end of August. But if they play football, they might already be kicking it on campus. Practices for the fall season are starting up across the city, and a number of schools are looking to keep the Chicago Public League championship trophy on the South Side.

Coming off a city title, the Morgan Park Mustangs kick off their campaign next week, hoping to become the first repeat champions since the Simeon Wolverines, who accomplished it in 2016 and 2017. The CPL title has made quite the home on the South Side in recent years, as the Wolverines returned to capture the title in 2019 and 2022, while the Kenwood Broncos took gold in 2021 and 2023. Since 2009, a nonSouth Side school has only held the title twice, most recently the Whitney Young Dolphins in 2024.

Having coached that Dolphins team to its first ever CPL plaque, Dan Finger knows what it takes to compete at the highest level. Though he hopes to get the near-West Side school back to the top in 2026, he recognizes that this road still runs through the South Side.

Finger told the Weekly that it “hasn’t changed all that much” since the early 2010s. “It starts with Morgan Park, for sure. Then Simeon and Kenwood are going to be right there,” he said. He also pointed to the King College Prep Jaguars as an up-and-coming program that could make noise.

There’s loads of great competition to be found in the CPL, but there are few high school conferences that boast the competitiveness of the Chicago

Catholic League, which features a pair of South Side state champions from 2025 in Brother Rice and Mt. Carmel.

According to Finger, “they’re one of the best conferences in the country, I’d say the best in the Midwest, top to bottom.”

Having come up short against Rice in last year’s Illinois High School Association Class 7A state championship game, coach Martin Hopkins and his St. Rita Mustangs squad are hungry for another chance to hang a banner in their home gym.

“Our guys had a chance to see what it takes to get to [the championship], and now they have a perspective. They know the amount of work that goes into it, and they’ve been working all offseason,” Hopkins said.

Beyond wins and losses, Hopkins is also enjoying the relationship-building aspects of coaching youth sports. Now in his fourth year running St. Rita’s program, after taking over from longtime coach Todd Kuska, he looks forward to watching the season play out with the first group of graduating seniors he’ll have spent a full four years with.

“It’s exciting to see. [It’s] funny, looking back, I remember them as eighth graders. [It] feels like it was just last week,” he said. “It’s cool to see what they’ve done in their short time [at St. Rita], and I’m excited to see what they do this year.”

High school football games across the state begin the weekend of Friday, August 21. The conference schedule for the CPL begins on Thursday, September 10.

SPORTS

Illustrations by Kristel Becares

Bears set to open preseason schedule versus Cleveland After two weeks of training camp, the Bears are set for their first preseason bout with the Cleveland Browns, slated for Saturday, August 15 at Soldier Field. The game will mark the beginning of what may be the most highly anticipated season.

The Bears are coming off a year that saw them shatter all pre-season expectations, capturing their first division title since 2018 and engineering a thrilling playoff comeback against the Green Bay Packers during the National Football Conference Wild Card Round in January. Though they’re not favored to take home another NFC North title, they’re widely expected to be serious playoff contenders.

Lifelong Bears fan Brandon Miller, of South Shore, is feeling optimistic about their trajectory.

“I’m feeling really positive. They made a lot of strides last year,” he said. “I’m confident in Ben Johnson’s ability to lead the team as well as Caleb [Williams], so I’m excited. Hopefully they get a couple more wins out of it this year.”

A couple more wins to top off the 12 they posted last year, including playoffs, would likely put them firmly in Super Bowl contention. Unfortunately, their championship aspirations have already taken a blow, as starting safety Coby Bryant is expected to miss eight to ten weeks due to a knee injury he suffered in practice on August 3. Bryant was signed to a three-year, $40 million contract in

the offseason after the departure of both regular safeties from the 2025 season.

Other key players have reportedly experienced minor injuries of varying degrees, including running back Kyle Monangai, edge rusher Montez Sweat, offensive lineman Braxton Jones, and wide receiver Luther Burden. Starting cornerback Kyler Gordon remains on the physically unable to perform (PUP) list with a calf injury.

Despite the injuries, fans of other NFC North teams are wary. Hyde Park resident Ian Daly, who hails from Minnesota and considers himself both a Vikings and Bears fan, told the Weekly that “the Bears look like the best team in the North if they don’t choke.”

On a positive note, the Bears ensured star tackle Darnell Wright will be a long-term fixture on the offensive line, signing him to a record-seeing four-year, $116 million extension. Additionally, quarterback Caleb Williams has reportedly looked good in practice time, as have wide receiver Luther Burden III and tight end Colston Loveland.

Daly believes that Loveland is a player to watch after the 2025 first-round pick emerged as a star late in the season. Miller believes that Monangai, who ran for 783 yards and five touchdowns last season, is poised to make a star turn this coming year.

The confidence in the Bears isn’t universal. Longtime fan Emmanuel Noelliste, of suburban Crestwood, is bearish on the Monsters of the Midway.

“They lost key pieces and that will require Caleb to be a force multiplier for this to work,” he said. Many believe that Williams is on the verge of leaping into the highest tier of NFL quarterbacks, but Noelliste cites his tendencies to “hold the ball too long” and “miss easy throws” as factors that will hold him back.

We’ll get the first look at Williams’ third campaign with the team on Saturday. Starting players typically play no more than one or two drives to open the preseason, but it’ll nonetheless be the first live Bears action in nearly seven months. Some fans are hopeful that it could also be the first look at a true new era in Chicago football.

“Chicago finally has a real quarterback instead of a discount quarterback and a great defense,” Miller said. “This is a different pace and a different team, and I’m really excited for that.”

Sky remain out of playoff picture WNBA All-Star weekend has come and gone at the Wintrust Arena and the United Center, and the Chicago Sky’s future remains bleak. They entered the week with a 12-21 record, good for 11th place in the league. At seven games behind the eighthplace Dallas Wings in the standings, a playoff berth is all but out of reach, and with Washington Mystics owning swap rights to their first round draft pick, no immediate help is on the way.

On the brighter side, undrafted and unheralded guard Sydney Taylor has emerged as a breakout star, averaging 18.8 points per game on nearly 49% shooting since entering the rotation full-time on June 17. In what will be a critical offseason for coach Tyler Marsh and general manager Jeff Pagliocca, resigning the former Louisville and UMass star could become a priority for the Sky this winter.

White Sox make deadline moves The White Sox made a number of small moves, and one notable splash, in advance of the Major League Baseball trade deadline on Monday, August 3.

It’s their first time in a half-decade as clearcut “buyers,” as teams around the league either waved the white flag or loaded up on reinforcements with just under two months remaining in the season.

Their headline acquisition was three-time All-Star starting pitcher Luis Castillo, who came from the Seattle Mariners in exchange for reliever Seranthony Domínguez, outfielder Nolan Jones, and prospect Boston Smith.

Castillo is an electric player but has struggled this season, allowing five runs in five innings in his Sox debut.

The Pale Hose also traded minor leaguers in exchange for outfielder Brenton Doyle from the Colorado Rockies, relief pitcher Huascar Brazobán from the New York Mets, and catcher Joey Bart from the Atlanta Braves.

They remained in first place in the American League Central division entering this week, holding a three-anda-half game lead over their Detroit rivals and Cleveland, and a four-game lead over Minnesota, with a little over a month and a half to play. Malachi Hayes is a Bridgeport-based writer and South Side native.

AUGUST 13, 2026 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 11

JUSTICE

‘Pest Control Notified’

Insiders resort to creative, desperate measures to keep themselves clean, healthy, and bug-free.

BY MICAH CLARK MOODY AND MEGHNA ANAND

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efore going to jail, Kenan carefully looked after his beard, which he grew out to be thick and bushy. “My daughter said I look like Santa Claus,” Kenan said.

Kenan is a clean person, generally.

He hates mess and won’t even go into someone’s home if it’s dirty, preferring to stand and talk from the threshold.

But when he was booked into Cook County Jail in March 2022, he lost control over his personal space. In the Residential Treatment Unit (RTU) of the jail, where people with ongoing medical needs are housed, he encountered other insiders with bugs living on their bodies.

“It don’t matter who you is, anybody can get bugs. All you gotta do is just graze shoulders on somebody,” Kenan said. “I try to keep my area clean. But my area [is] by the bathroom right now, so everybody walks past my bunk.”

These bugs are ecoparasites, according to Dr. Emily Landon, an associate professor of medicine and infectious disease specialist at the University of Chicago Medical School.

“An ectoparasite is a bug that lives on you,” explained Dr. Landon. “An ectoparasite infection is when you're infested. Infested is the word that we use, although that word can be troubling to people.”

Ecoparasites can cause deep anxiety.

This anxiety about becoming infested, and the lack of control over his space and body, led to increasing stress. Eventually, Kenan reached a tipping point.

“Every time I saw somebody scratching, it made me itch,” he said. “So I said, you know what, I’m finna cut this off. I’m cool, I’d rather cut [my beard] off and regrow it.”

Being sick, including having ectoparasites, means losing control over your body, said Dr. Landon. “There’s a loss of dignity every time that you’re sick,” she said. “You’ve got to go bare your body to someone that you don’t necessarily know in order to get them to do things that sometimes violate your skin, your body, to give you medicine.”

Interviews with insiders and documents obtained via FOIA highlight the daily struggles of people in jail to keep themselves and their spaces clean and hygienic.

Insiders’ grievances reveal a pervasive presence of bugs in the jail. Responses from jail officials to grievances often show surface-level compliance in notifying pest control, but do not address underlying problems.

Insiders reported not being provided with towels, sometimes for weeks at a time, in apparent violations of jail policy.

An analysis of internal laundry records suggests that, at times, uniforms

12 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ AUGUST 13, 2026

and sheets are washed less than half as often as they should to meet the jail’s own policies. Yet, jail policies also forbid people from washing and drying their own clothes, and people are penalized for doing so by having funds removed from their commissary accounts.

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he RTU is a 974-bed division of the jail, subdivided into smaller tier living areas, that houses people with ongoing medical needs, making them especially vulnerable to infection. It is not an emergency medical ward, but people in the RTU should have continuous monitoring while undergoing processes like wound care, drug detox, and mental health treatment. Unlike some other buildings of the jail, where people are locked in cells to sleep during part of the day, some tiers in the RTU are open dorms, where everybody sleeps in the same room and can physically move around the room and bathroom during the day and night.

Liam recalled getting assigned to the RTU after being brought to the jail in April 2026. “You get handed a mattress and you walk in and you get any empty bed available or empty concrete slab,” he said.

The concrete slab Liam chose, with the green foam mattress he laid on top, was his only personal space. But “it's

not really your space,” he said, “because people are moving around the [RTU].”

He was constantly on alert to maintain control over his bed.

Still, Liam preferred this open dorm to many other areas of the jail where people are locked in cells. “Better than sitting behind a steel door for twelve hours a day.”

What soon made Liam’s stay difficult was his lack of access to basic cleaning supplies. On his first day in the RTU, Liam was handed the mattress and a set of sheets. He was not given underwear, towels, or shampoo.

The jail handbook states that upon beginning their stay in the jail, insiders are provided with a towel. In response to questions in an earlier story, a spokesperson for the Sheriff’s Office wrote that insiders are provided with two clean 24 inch by 16 inch towels every week. Yet multiple people interviewed by the Weekly said they were not provided a towel.

Liam and the people in the RTU with him were distressed that they could not shower with “essential[s] to maintain personal hygiene.”

“It's really hard to go take a shower and clean yourself without a towel,” Liam said.

Insiders repeatedly asked staff for towels, soap, and shampoo, but told the

JUSTICE Weekly that staff denied them these supplies.

Liam and 21 other people in the RTU with him advocated for their access to hygiene products by filing a grievance.

“A grievance is your formal way of complaining to the jail that they’ve done something wrong,” Liam said. “Basically violated your civil rights.”

They quickly hit a barrier: there were only two physical forms. Insiders asked for more forms. “Guys were arguing with [COs] that, hey, we need more grievances,” Liam said, “and they wouldn’t bring the forms. They didn’t bring the forms. Because if they bring the forms, then they’ve got to deal with the paperwork.”

Liam alleges the COs broke jail policy by discouraging people from filing grievances, and limiting access to grievance forms.

According to a jail spokesperson, the Cook County Sheriff’s Office (CCSO) is unaware of any such incident. The spokesperson said, “there are multiple avenues for individuals to file grievances, including via the grievance form, by contacting a supervisor in the division, by speaking with a Corrections Liaison, or even by filing a complaint with the Office of Professional Review.”

The men continued to fight for themselves. They filled out the form on the front and added their names to the back—one grievance signed by 22 men.

“We have not received towels and other essential personal hygiene items since arrival,” the men wrote. “This is a detox deck there is vomit on the floors, urine, feces, and mold all of which carry pathogens that can lead to sickness and death. Attached is a formal list of all inmates who wish to file a grievance!!!”

All 22 people wrote their full name and ID number, asking for supplies together.

Among the signers was a man who had appeared to be going through withdrawal. He had been using crutches, but for three days he laid in his space without moving. “If you’re five feet away from him, you smell it,” Liam said. “[Guys] kept bringing it up to the COs and the nurses and everybody else.”

Women in Cook County Jail, most likely laundry workers, fold uniforms that everybody housed in the jail is required to wear. Laundry is done by jailed workers, who go to each tier twice a week to collect dirty laundry and exchange clean linens. Still, insiders interviewed by the Weekly reported not being able to get clean clothes as often as they should for various reasons.

Photo by Lloyd DeGrane, year unknown, sourced from the University of Illinois at Chicago archive

After they submitted the grievance, Liam remembers him saying, “I really appreciate this [grievance]. I couldn’t help myself for the last couple of days.”

Liam said that within 12 hours of filing the grievance, he was transferred out of the RTU, where he had been for 14 days. He was released from jail days later. He was never given a towel.

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he Weekly reviewed grievances that insiders wrote about bugs and pests from January to March 2026. “I always hear buzzing noise in

ear,” wrote M.D. in a grievance. “Hard time to sleep.”

“Got bit by ants in my cell,” wrote J.W. “We have an infestation of gnats, from the showers, cells, dayrooms, toilets, and garbage. Hundreds if not thousands are along the walls of the whole tier,” wrote J.N. “They are incubating in the feces and urine water that’s tracted amongst the entire tier due to a busted sewage pipe in the closet.

These gnats and flies land in our food in your face and body.”

Within days of submitting these

grievances, insiders received a short response from jail officials: “pest control notified.” The response to J.N.’s grievance, about gnats incubating in waste from a “busted sewage pipe,” did not address the underlying problem of raw sewage on the tier.

J.N. replied he was “not happy or satisfied” with the response. The next communication he received stated, “original response stands.”

T.H. experienced a similar back and forth in grievances about the mice in his cell. “I have mice living in my cell, they’re entering through a hole under my toilet,” wrote T.H. Nine days later, jail services staff wrote a response to T.H.: “pest control notified.”

T.H. wrote back, “not one person showed up from Pest Control. The mice are all over the place.”

Jail staff did not address T.H.’s appeal or take further action. They responded to T.H. “original response to stand.”

The CCSO did not respond to a request for comment on T.H.’s situation or the jail response to T.H.’s grievance.

In the fall of 2025, there was substantial ectoparasite presence in the RTU. “They put this man on deck with us—he had more than 30 bugs on him,” Kenan said. Several others in the RTU were suffering too. Internal emails from the Sheriff’s office reveal, in an inspection of one floor, they found 10 people with ectoparasites and gave 9 haircuts. A dedicated “ectoparasites team” swept multiple tiers.

But sometimes treatments appear to fall short when paired with other policies and procedures of the jail.

“Here you get new people from off the streets every day,” Kenan said. “It's like giving a dog a flea bath, but put them back in the same cage that had the fleas without washing it out.”

He added that jail officials sometimes treat people for bugs, but don’t replace sheets and clothes; sometimes everything is treated but somebody with bugs is introduced to the tier, restarting the spread of bugs.

AUGUST 13, 2026 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 13

JUSTICE

I

n jail, insiders wear “DOCs,” jailissued uniforms, which serve as clothing and pajamas. Unless a person buys long underwear or undershirts from the commissary, the DOCs are the only clothing an insider can wear.

Laundry workers come to each tier twice a week. When laundry comes to the tier, insiders have to strip first and hand laundry workers their dirty clothes, and then receive a clean replacement.

“You’ve got to take off your pants and your top in front of the door right down to your boxers,” Liam said. “If you have boxers because you came in with them or bought them. And hand the uniform through the doors. Then they give you a medium or a large, or whatever size is closest.”

The jail gives insiders a handbook to explain jail policies. The laundry section states, “The CCDOC provides you a clean uniform twice per week, fresh linens once per week, and a clean blanket once per month. In addition, laundry service for clothing purchased on commissary is regularly provided.”

Yet, internal laundry documents suggest that laundry is done less often than would be needed for the jail to meet this policy.

The jail keeps a record of all the sheets and uniforms cleaned each day. In the RTU, while Kenan was there, the most common weekly rate of sheet cleaning was one set of sheets cleaned weekly for every three people in the RTU. During that period, jail records show uniforms were washed twice a week at a rate that could provide clean clothes for between 25% and 75% of the population.

A CCSO spokesperson wrote, “Individuals have the right to accept or decline the exchange of their linens and clothing unless the items are unsanitary.

If IICs are not present when their scheduled laundry exchange service occurs, they can request new linens and uniforms, and those items are delivered within hours of their requests.”

The Weekly was not able to independently verify that insiders can receive clean sheets and clothes within

Insiders pass the time while waiting for their clothes to dry on a handmade clothesline.

Hanging up a clothesline is a violation of the jail’s policy, and can result in funds removed from commissary accounts, but some do it anyway to exercise control over their clothes and because the jail’s laundry services are inconsistent.

Photo by Lloyd DeGrane, year unknown, sourced from the University of Illinois at Chicago archive

“We have not received towels and other essential personal hygiene items since arrival.

This is a detox deck there is vomit on the floors, urine, feces, and mold all of which carry pathogens that can lead to sickness and death.

Attached is a formal list of all inmates who wish to file a grievance!!!”

– Excerpt from grievance filed by 22 men in the RTU hours of requesting them. None of the insiders interviewed for this story referenced access to clean linens outside of the bi-weekly laundry exchange time.

One reason insiders might not be exchanging their clothes with laundry workers is they struggle to navigate the system. Our reporting suggests this impacts the most vulnerable people in jail.

In the RTU, M.C. wrote a grievance that “They have not came and asked me do I want to change my green suit in a

14 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ AUGUST 13, 2026

month. I have had the same green suit for a month and it stinks.”

The green suit indicates he was charged with a sex offense, like masturbation, while in jail. The green suit is stigmatizing. It is a visual symbol of punishment for sexual behavior.

“This is not right,” M.C. continued.

“I should be able to have clean clothes please and thank you.”

Six days later M.C. received a response: “IICs are given 2 opportunities

to change their uniforms” with the date of the last uniform exchange for M.C.’s tier. It’s possible M.C. didn’t know how the laundry system worked. It is possible M.C. could not safely go to the laundryexchange area of the tier. It is possible M.C. struggled to communicate with the laundry workers enough to get new clothes.

A person jailed on a woman’s tier wrote, “I need new clothes and sheets/ blankets. They need to come weekly.

Women need to change our clothing more often.” A response to this grievance was not contained in the documents obtained via FOIA. The Weekly also spoke to insiders who described people struggling to move, let alone navigate laundry exchange. Other insiders described negotiating to convince laundry workers to take dirty sheets that had been used to clean up flooding. Front-line decisions about what laundry is exchanged are made by incarcerated workers assigned to the laundry and supervised COs.

S

ome insiders do laundry on their own, washing uniforms and sheets in the showers with soap they buy themselves. Typically, these are people who have been in jail for a while or are more self-sufficient. By doing laundry themselves, they take on more work and risk violating jail policies with disciplinary consequences. But it can be worth it to exert some control over their clothes and environment.

J Keith has been in the jail for more than ten years, and cleans his own clothes. He said when you turn in sheets or uniforms, you may get worse quality in return. “I actually got a good jumpsuit with the buttons on it, so I don't let it go,” J Keith said. “If you got the ones with the Velcro, they might not button up.” J Keith prefers to keep his own linens instead of exchanging them every week.

Kenan makes the same choice as J Keith. He uses supplies bought in the commissary to wash his own clothes.

The jail’s handbook states that “ropes or hand-made clothes are not permitted to be used ... for drying clothes and/or

JUSTICE

linens ... Washing and drying clothes in housing areas is not permitted.”

The handbook also states that “failure to follow laundry procedures is a violation of the rules and regulations and will result in disciplinary report and possible disciplinary sanctions.” For violating the clothesline policy, “The CCDOC may seek reimbursement/ restitution ... i.e. money will be taken from your commissary to pay for the damaged property.”

But according to multiple people interviewed by the Weekly, the practice is tolerated.

“The lieutenant came up here and snatch [the clothesline],” Kenan said. “I’m not gonna lie to you, I’m not supposed to have the clothes lined up, but that’s how I dry [my laundry]. I wash my clothes when I get a shower. I wash my clothes by hand because they barely do the laundry.”

“I said, ‘Okay, well, you worried about our clothesline and why we haven't

his tier justified the policy-breaking clothesline.

J Keith hangs a clothesline, too.

“I shower every day so I'm washing my clothes every day,” J Keith said.

“Yesterday I was just washing and I said, ‘I'm so tired of washing clothes.’”

His clothesline hangs in the cell he shares with another person.

“We make it simple,” he said. “It’s basically his clothes line and my clothes line, but if he ever needs, if he ever needs the space, and I ain't got enough, he always can use mine.”

J Keith imagined a day when he doesn’t live in a cell: “I can’t wait to get a washing machine and dryer.” ¬

Rate of laundry compared to RTU population, fall 2025 Weekly rates of sheets, shirts, and pants cleaned compared to the RTU population for August–November 2025.

Avg. sheets cleaned weekly; as % of pop.

Avg. shirts cleaned weekly; two shirts cleaned as % of pop.

Avg. pants cleaned weekly; two pants cleaned as % of pop.

Month

Avg. RTU Pop.

August

890

301 | 34%

701 | 39%

731

September

893

181 | 20%

1080 | 60%

1146 | 64%

October

894

234 | 26%

1059 | 59%

968

November

888

389 | 44%

1139 | 64%

1135 | 64%

| 41%

| 54%

Method: Using documents obtained via FOIA, the Weekly used the RTU population and count of laundry recorded in Laundry Weekly Exchange Reports for the RTU to calculate the average amount of laundry done per week as a percentage of the average RTU population. For example, in August, on average there were enough clean sheets laundered by the jail for 34% of the RTU.

had laundry in months?’ Because they're not washing our clothes. So why is y'all complaining about us having lines up and putting our stuff where we need it to

dry if y’all don’t wash our clothes?’”

In the grey areas between policy and daily reality, Kenan argued with a Lieutenant that the lack of laundry in

Micah Clark Moody is a PhD candidate in Sociology at Northwestern University.

She has investigated pretrial jailing systems in Michigan, Los Angeles, and Chicago.

Meghna Anand researches neuroscience and social policy. She works with Jail Solidarity Network.

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AUGUST 13, 2026 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 15

JUSTICE

A Prison on Fire

Designed to help people with serious mental illness, Joliet Treatment Center repeatedly failed to prevent or respond to fires, despite two deaths.

BY SHANNON HEFFERNAN, THE MARSHALL PROJECT Editor’s note: Last month, we published Sixteen Minutes in a Burning Cell, an investigation into the November 2025 death of Martinez Duncan in Cook County Jail. That investigation showed Martinez was kept in a burning cell for sixteen minutes while officers issued commands and pepper sprayed him three times. His cellmate survived with burns; Martinez did not. This story from The Marshall Project, WBEZ and Chicago Sun-Times investigates how pervasive fires are in an Illinois prison.

This article was published in partnership with The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system, WBEZ and Chicago SunTimes. Sign up for The Marshall Project’s newsletters at themarshallproject.org/ newsletters, and follow them on Instagram, TikTok, Reddit and Facebook.

A

round 10 pm, a haze of gray smoke wafted down a hallway lined with prison cells at the Joliet Treatment Center. The window of cell A9 began to glow red as the fire within grew. Jason Stephens was locked inside.

Minutes ticked by, and the smoke became so thick you could not see more than a few feet. No one came to let Stephens out.

There have been more than 70 fires at the facility in the last three years, according to an investigation by The Marshall Project, WBEZ, and the Chicago Sun-Times. That includes a dozen cases in which men incarcerated there set themselves on fire.

The Joliet Treatment Center opened in 2017 with the promise of being a new kind of prison in Illinois, designed to provide intensive mental health treatment.

But in the years leading up to that night in the summer of 2024, incarcerated men and

Illustration by Joseph Rogers

civil rights lawyers who visited the facility said the conditions declined. Men were kept locked in their cells for long stretches, with nothing to do. They complained about a lack of medical care and mental health treatment, which the prison system is legally obligated to provide. Men reported that guards used excessive force.

As the men grew more despondent, some became willing to do anything to draw attention to their troubles and resorted to setting their cells—or themselves—on fire.

One man needed surgery to graft new skin onto his charred calf.

Another lost a leg.

Two have died.

Last year, the prison—with a population of about 200 people— recorded roughly three fires a month.

16 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ AUGUST 13, 2026

Despite that, officials at the Joliet Treatment Center have repeatedly failed to meet their responsibilities to prevent or respond to the fires, government records show.

Cellblocks lacked sprinklers, and fire alarms were turned off or inoperable.

At an annual inspection, the prison would not provide a fire evacuation plan.

Guards delayed ambulances responding to emergencies at the prison or trying to take men with serious injuries to the hospital.

The Illinois Department of Corrections did not answer questions about the epidemic of fires at Joliet Treatment Center, but in an email a spokesperson wrote that it is “committed to ensuring the safety and security of staff, individuals in custody, and all persons who enter our facilities” and takes its

responsibility to uphold requirements related to facility safety seriously.

Craig Haney, a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz and an expert on mental health in prisons, said the frequency of fires at the Joliet Treatment Center is a sign of abject hopelessness.

“These are the kinds of desperate acts that somebody takes when they feel they have no alternative,” Haney said.

As the blaze in Stephens’ cell intensified, three correctional officers gathered around a desk in a nearby room.

Security camera footage from that night on July 27, 2024, shows that they seemed to notice something was wrong on the wing and grabbed a fire extinguisher. A call for help went out over the prison radio, and more officers slowly trickled in and put on medical gloves and masks.

JUSTICE About 10 minutes after smoke began to seep out of Stephens’ cell, officers entered the hallway.

Guards sprayed a fire extinguisher and pepper spray into his cell through a slot in the door usually used to deliver food.

Then, with Stephens still locked inside, they walked away.

A prison worker called 911. The fire department arrived within minutes, but precious time had already been lost. And more was about to be wasted.

Corrections officers told firefighters that the fire was out and that they needed help to clear out the smoke. According to a fire department incident report, it wasn’t until later, as the firefighters set up fans and officers meandered nearby, that prison employees mentioned that someone was still locked inside the burnt cell.

A group of guards and firefighters opened Stephens’ door, stained black with soot. Firefighters found Stephens lying on the floor, unconscious but still breathing, after having spent a half hour in a smoke-filled cell.

They looked into his airway and found it charred. Guards handcuffed his unconscious body, and he was loaded into an ambulance waiting outside.

But at the prison’s exit, guards refused to open the gate for the ambulance to leave until prison employees filled out paperwork and guards were ready to follow in a van.

An argument erupted, and a guard walked up to the ambulance, yanking open the driver’s door. A group of firefighters and guards rushed over to intervene.

According to one guard, a firefighter said, “This man can die while y’all pussyfooting around.”

As the guards and firefighters argued with each other, one guard pulled another away, attempting to defuse the tension.

But the prison still would not allow the ambulance to depart.

A firefighter called his dispatcher again and again to report that the ambulance was stuck, with Stephens in the back hooked up to a machine forcing air into his lungs. Guards made the ambulance wait for nearly 28 minutes before finally opening the gate, allowing it to drive to a nearby hospital.

The next day, Stephens was moved to a Chicago-area hospital. Doctors performed a tracheotomy, cutting a hole in

Illustration by Joseph Rogers

his throat so they could insert a breathing tube. But they could not save him.

Two weeks later, at age 38, Jason Stephens died. The medical examiner listed his official cause of death as “complications of inhalational injuries due to mattress fire.”

P

atrice Daniels sifted through a gray box of Stephens’ belongings.

While incarcerated at the prison, Daniels’ job was to pack up the property of men who transferred out or died.

For Daniels, the fires—and the hopelessness that led men to set them— felt especially tragic because the Joliet Treatment Center was supposed to be a model of a prison that prioritized mental health treatment and healing, instead of punishment.

As a child, Daniels survived sexual abuse and would injure himself by banging his head on the wall. In his teens, he was in and out of mental hospitals and juvenile detention, where he put glass in his ears and eyes. At 18, he killed a woman in a park. He turned himself into police and confessed and was sentenced to life in prison for murder. He continued to mutilate himself. Instead of receiving therapy, he said, he was put in solitary confinement for stealing razor blades that he had cut himself with.

Sometimes, he said officers tied down his limbs and injected him with psychotropic drugs.

More than a decade after Daniels

landed in prison, a lawyer asked him to join a lawsuit accusing the Illinois Department of Corrections of failing to treat the mental illnesses of people in the state’s prisons.

After a yearslong battle, the Department of Corrections settled the case and committed to opening a facility dedicated to providing mental healthcare: the Joliet Treatment Center.

Daniels called it the most gratifying day of his life.

In 2017, Daniels was among the first people transferred to the new prison in what had been a juvenile detention center.

The building smelled clean, nothing like the overwhelming scent of mold and feces he was used to in other prisons. The officers played cards and basketball with the men. Therapy and psychiatry were readily available.

In the first two years of the Joliet Treatment Center, a court-appointed monitor reported that men there routinely had plenty of time outside their cells and received 15 hours of structured therapeutic activity a week, unlike in some other prisons. But then, the oncehopeful mood dimmed.

A new warden took over in early 2020. According to Daniels, she had a more punitive approach. Daniels said the start of COVID-19 that year gave the prison an excuse to keep men isolated in their cells for long stretches with little treatment, and the facility never rebounded.

Over the next few years, the prison began to cancel mental health groups and recreational time. Men complained about frequent use of pepper spray.

Daniels said that in the early years of the Joliet Treatment Center he’d allowed himself to become emotionally vulnerable. He felt betrayed by the prison’s new harshness.

A mental health worker at the prison said she noticed men hurting themselves more frequently when the coronavirus lockdowns began. Prison employees got numb to the routine self-harm.

They “experienced something that the human brain was not meant to process,” said the worker, who asked not to be named because she still works in corrections and fears retaliation for talking about the conditions she saw at the Joliet Treatment Center.

“In order to do our job every day, we had to expect it,” she said, “and we had to get used to it.”

Around the same time, men began to set fires.

The Marshall Project interviewed or corresponded with seven men and asked why they set their cells, or themselves, on fire at the Joliet Treatment Center. They described poor medical treatment, and loneliness while being locked in their cells.

Many said that prison employees had grown inured to other forms of selfharm. But fires were impossible to ignore.

“We try to talk and write to them, but they don’t respect that. But when we act like animals and set things on fire and ourselves on fire, they listen,” one man said.

In the spring of 2020, Alexander Yracheta set himself on fire, after he said the prison repeatedly canceled his mental health groups, and he spent much of his time alone in his cell. He used the spark from an electrical outlet to light a cloth tied to his leg.

According to prison investigations, guards pulled him from the cell and put cuffs on his legs while his shorts were still on fire. He later had to have skin graft surgeries to repair the damage to his leg.

The pain had been excruciating, but he said it was worth it to go to the hospital and get a break from his cell.

“I couldn’t really take it,” he said, adding, “I knew I had to do something extreme to get out.”

AUGUST 13, 2026 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 17

JUSTICE

N

o one knows for sure what made Stephens start the fire in his cell. But examining his path to that day in 2024 offers some clues.

Stephens had a difficult life, according to his family and court records. As a toddler, he was diagnosed with sickle cell disease, a genetic disorder that can cause blood cells to become misshapen, leading to episodes of extreme pain and organ damage.

Sometimes, his muscles hurt so badly he couldn’t move and would just scream.

Around age 7, he and his mother were living on the street and in shelters.

By 14, he had dropped out of school and would pick up odd jobs in construction.

Stephens’ medical records say he began struggling with mental illness as a child and was eventually diagnosed with major depressive disorder, with psychotic features and PTSD. When Stephens was 27 years old, he was arrested and charged with shooting a friend in a drug dispute a few years before.

Stephens maintained his innocence.

Court records note he had been hearing voices, but a judge found him mentally fit to stand trial. In 2015, a jury found him guilty of murder, and he was sentenced to 50 years in prison.

Behind bars, Stephens routinely complained to guards, nurses and doctors about extreme pain from his sickle cell disease.

Dr. William Weber, a physician and medical director at the Medical Justice Alliance, an organization dedicated to ensuring that people in prison get proper healthcare, reviewed Stephens’ medical records for The Marshall Project. Weber said the records show that when the prison took him to outside hospitals, doctors prescribed Stephens with medications for sickle cell pain, but the prison often failed to provide them to him.

By early 2024, housed at a maximumsecurity prison, Stephens made more

desperate pleas for attention. He staged a hunger strike that lasted for 34 days.

When that failed to get him the medical help he wanted, he asked employees, “What do I need to do to get medical treatment or sent to the hospital? Cut myself or swallow a bunch of pills?”

Later that day, he swallowed two razor blades and a nail clipper. The prison system refused to send him to the hospital because the facility was on lockdown due to a staffing shortage.

His medical records note several hospital visits in the ensuing weeks, but it’s unclear when, or if, those objects were ever removed.

Prison officials transferred Stephens to the Joliet Treatment Center in May 2024, presumably to give him additional mental health help. Stephen’s mental health records show some psychiatric visits, but rarely mention indivdual therapy and largely reflect brief mental health evaluations conducted to assess his risk of suicide.

At the Joliet Treatment Center, Stephens continued to complain about the lack of medical treatment. He insisted he needed a specific kind of blood transfusion that had helped him in the past. A prison doctor acknowledged that he would have “been better off ” with the transfusion but failed to make sure he got the treatment.

In early July 2024, an officer at the Joliet Treatment Center wrote in a report that Stephens said he was going to do whatever he needed to do to get medical help, including hurting himself. “This has been an ongoing issue,” the officer wrote.

One day, a few weeks later, several men on Stephens’ wing began to harm themselves. Two of the men were sent to a separate part of the prison, and guards tied down their arms and legs in what are called four-point restraints. A doctor sent a third man to the emergency room.

The mental health worker, who was

18 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ AUGUST 13, 2026

also on duty that day, said even with all the chaos, it was a normal day at the Joliet Treatment Center.

“It’s just what we would call a really busy shift,” she said.

By the end of the day, Stephens was one of only two men remaining on the wing. The other man said later that they both told officers they were also in crisis and wanted help. But no one from the mental health team responded.

That night, Stephens set a fire in his cell. The Illinois Department of Corrections did not answer questions about the fire in Stephens’ cell or about his complaints about medical care, citing pending litigation. The department has refused to provide a full investigative report about the incident, and The Marshall Project has sued to obtain the record, along with those of other fires.

The lawsuits remain ongoing.

Still, there is evidence the Joliet Treatment Center was unprepared for the fire that killed Stephens, even after more than a dozen earlier blazes at the prison.

In an interview with prison investigators, an electrician at the facility said that the wing where Stephens was housed didn’t have working alarms or sprinklers. The only safety plan, he said, was for “correctional staff to be vigilant to watch for fires.” He said the issue was raised in staff meetings prior to Stephens’ death, but the fire protection systems never got fixed.

The Illinois State Fire Marshal’s Office, which inspects buildings to ensure that they meet fire codes, repeatedly documented problems at the prison. In 2023, a year before Stephens’ death, a fire marshal noted alarms in other parts of the prison were disconnected or inoperable and that prison employees said they said they didn’t know if the alarms worked on the wing where Stephens would later set the fire. The prison also couldn’t produce a written plan for how to evacuate the building. Days before Stephens set his fire, a marshal again noted similar violations.

As far back as 2020, local fire officials had complained that guards delayed ambulances trying to enter and exit the prison grounds to respond to fires. Jeff Carey, chief of the Joliet Fire

Department, said that his department reached out several times to the prison’s administrators before Stephens’ death to get the problem fixed, to no avail.

I

n the years since Stephens’ death, the fires have persisted unabated at the Joliet Treatment Center. There have been more than 60 since then, including at least eight cases of self-immolation, according to department records.

In November 2024, officers saw flames coming from under the cell door of a man named Latrell Edwards. They evacuated other men housed on his wing before letting him out of his cell, according to prison reports. Edwards was taken to the hospital with labored breathing and soot coating his throat and died two months later.

Since Stephens’ death, fire officials have continued to note delays at the gate and problems with alarms and evacuation plans. The mental health worker at the Joliet Treatment Center said that prison employees had grown used to the fires, even after two men had died. That made it easier to ignore problems. “It's almost like there’s nothing they can do that will shock us anymore,” she said, adding, “No matter what they do, it’s not enough.”

As the prison environment became more focused on security and punishment, and opportunities to provide meaningful therapy declined, she decided to leave.

Daniels said that for a long time he had hoped he could help the prison return it to its mission of healing. But the culture became so toxic that last year he asked the Illinois Department of Corrections to transfer him to another prison.

As he rode away in a prison van, his legs and hands shackled, he saw the sign for the Joliet Treatment Center, and he thought, “That’s a sham. Treatment doesn’t happen there.” If you or someone you know is in crisis or considering suicide, help is available at the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988. For more information, visit 988lifeline.org.

Shannon Heffernan is a staff writer for The Marshall Project.

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