Adelaido Olea

This Interview Issue, the fourth of its kind, contains eight interviews with artists, activists, writers, and residents of Chicago.

You’ll find in these pages our conversations with a documentarian, a DJ on the brink of a world tour, a writer from “the free newspaper,” and the editor of a young magazine. We also bring together multiple voices from the city’s Black philanthropic community, an anti-violence campaign, a group of asylum seekers from Africa, and an artist collective from Englewood.

In every issue of the Weekly, we strive to bring light to people and issues that get overlooked or misrepresented in traditional media. But sometimes even our stories can’t capture the whole narrative, our words insufficient. It’s a lesson from Chicago journalist and interviewer Studs Terkel that we’ve long taken to heart—there are some things we can’t say any better than our subjects could themselves.

So in this issue, rather than put each narrative in our own words, we open ourselves up to the whole story, as it happened to the people we spoke to. And as much as possible, we try to get out of their way.

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Ben Joravsky: An Alternative Voice | Olivia Stovicek

Bianca Betancourt: In the Center of the Ring | Lois Biggs

Jana Rush: Out of Order | Christopher Good

Black Philanthropy Month: An Ecosystem of Giving | Bridget Vaughn

Asylum Seekers: Seeking a Home, Without a Country | Sarah Conway

Reginald Rice: A New Lens on Life | Elaine Chen

Increase the Peace: From Summer Nights to the Long Haul | Julie Xu

Photo Essay: Chicago Youth Work to Increase the Peace | SebastiĂĄn Hidalgo

Englewood Arts Collective: More Than Just Optics | Anna Aguiar Kosicki

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