CAN TV Program Archive

On this penultimate episode of Chicago Newsroom, we invite three friends of the show to share their memories and observations about the current political and professional scene. Chicago Tribune investigative reporter Hal Dardick tells us that Lori Lightfoot, with her remarkable mandate, has a short, but powerful window in which to initiate significant change in… View Article

Flint Taylor discusses his new book The Torture Machine, which details fifty years of police abuse of power, on this week’s show. He discusses his early involvement with the murder of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark on December 4, 1969, and how he and other young Northwestern law students, having recently founded the People’s Law… View Article

Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, Alderman of the 35th Ward, is our guest this week. He was, until the recent election, the only Democratic Socialist in the City Council, but he will soon be joined by five others, thereby creating a six-member Progressive Caucus. Ramirez-Rosa discusses the Emmett Street Project, which, when built, will house 100 affordable units,… View Article

Professors Mary Patillo (Northwestern) and Stacey Sutton (UIC) speak with us this week about the many ways in which the City of Chicago exacerbates poverty with its injurious, escalating fines and punishments. At the municipal level, we cite the example that a person can receive a $200 fine for not purchasing a $100 city sticker…. View Article

Aneel Chablani, the attorney from the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights who filed suit to invalidate the TIF funding for Chicago’s Lincoln Yards project, is one of today’s guests. He’s joined by Brenda Delgado, Board President at Raise Your Hand for Illinois Public Education. They assert that tax increment funding for a project in such… View Article

Communications consultant Peter Cunningham, producer David Resnick and Openlands CEO Jerry Adelmann appear on today’s show. Cunningham says of Tax Increment Financing that it’s been proven not to work in blighted regions- the very areas they were designed to help. He also tells us that Chicago’s dropping population is a significant issue, because it affects… View Article

The Klonsky Brothers – Fred and Mike – join Ken Davis for a conversation about the incoming Lightfoot administration and the controversy that erupted over the Lincoln Yards/78 TIF vote in City Council yesterday. Both insist that the Mayor-Elect did not “cave” to pressure from Rahm Emanuel, and that she will have many opportunities to… View Article

Three of Chicago’s most knowledgeable observers of the mayoral political scene convene this week for a conversation about the Lori Lightfoot landslide. Panelists include Delmarie Cobb (the Publicity Works); Bruce DuMont, host of Beyond the Beltway; and the Daily Line’s A.D. Quig. We discuss the factors that led to Lightfoot’s overwhelming victory, the challenges she… View Article

Sarah Karp, WBEZ education reporter, tells us about her most recent story in which she dissects CPS’ claim that graduation rates are quickly improving in the city’s public schools. A major part of the success, Karp reports, is the use by CPS of commercial “alternative schools” that take at-risk students from traditional high schools. The… View Article