Chicago Newsroom

Ken Davis is joined by mayoral candidate La Shawn Ford. He shares his observations about the current economic and social issues facing Chicago, the police code of silence, the need for a massive infusion of funding for affordable housing and the ways in which he, as mayor, could influence business and banking executives to re-think how they invest in Chicago's neighborhoods. It's time, he says to move away from machine politics and the thinking of the past. This program was produced by Chicago Access Television.

Ken Davis is joined by Chicago Reader columnist Ben Joravsky, who was fired last month from his highly-acclaimed radio show on WCPT for what he believes are political reasons. They discuss the upcoming Mayor’s race, candidate by candidate, and speculate on the relative strengths of the candidates believed to be current front-runners. This program was produced by CAN TV.

Ken Davis is joined by mayoral candidate Bill Daley. They discuss his recent proposals to reduce the number of local school councils from about 500 to 60, and his assertion that the City Council should be reduced from 50 to 15 aldermen. He also proposes a hybrid school board, composed of four mayoral appointees and three members chosen from the local school councils. With respect to retirees,S he says he wants to see a revision to the Illinois Constitution that would allow negotiations which could eventually lead to the reduction of certain retiree benefits, such as the 3% compounded cost of living adjustment. This program was produced by CAN TV.

Ken Davis is joined by Mayoral candidate Amara Enyia. They discuss her vision for Chicago’s education, policing, housing and finance. This program was produced by Chicago Access Network Television (CAN TV).

Ken Davis is joined by Daniel Kay Hertz, author of The Battle of Lincoln Park. They discuss the profound impact that urban renewal had on the mid-century development of Lincoln Park, when early artists and rehabbers began reconstructing dilapidated brownstones and Victorians in the Old Town Triangle. Although the process began almost a hundred years ago, the patterns of displacement and gentrification are almost identical to those being criticized today in Pilsen, Logan Square and along the 606. This program was produced by Chicago Access Network Television (CAN TV).

Ken Davis is joined by the BGA’s Casey Toner and WBEZ’s Miles Bryan to discuss “an American Suburb2018: Dolton Illinois.” In their joint reporting, they chronicled the rapid decline of that south suburb over the past 20 years as thousands of jobs evaporated and people who didn’t have the resources to move away got stuck with financially underwater houses, the inability to pay property taxes and the increasing number of shallow-rooted renters occupying formerly abandoned housing units.

Toner and Bryan tell heartbreaking stories of schools that can’t maintain academic standards, a police department that can barely staff its shifts, unpaid municipal water bills and a town council that’s deteriorated into shouting matches and recrimination. Although the story is about Dolton, it can easily be about a number of Chicago suburbs, they tell us, because for the first time last year, poverty in American suburbs has eclipsed that in cities. This program was produced by Chicago Access Network Television (CAN TV).

Ken Davis is joined by Mayoral candidate Lori Lightfoot. They discuss her recent filing of petitions and her strong confidence that she’ll survive challenges and appear on the February ballot. She discusses the corrosive effects of aldermanic prerogative, which she blames for the total lack of affordable housing construction in 22 of 77 community areas. She speaks forcefully about the vanishing middle class in Chicago and the serious need for a wide range of affordable housing options. She says she opposes further closing of public schools, despite their declining enrollment. She says she’s not sure a publicly-owned bank would work, but she’d study it. This program was produced by Chicago Access Network Television (CAN TV).

Ken Davis is joined by the Chicago Rehab Network’s Executive Director David Jackson. They discuss yesterday’s City Council action which sought to create pilot programs in Pilsen and Little Village that could stem the rapid gentrification and Hispanic displacement in both communities. The Council also re-established the Department of Housing, which had been disbanded in 2008 (although with considerably less funding than it had a decade ago.)

They discuss the effect on affordable housing that the loss of Amazon might trigger in Chicago, and the long-term result of Mayor Emanuel’s Affordable Requirements Ordinance, which collects fees from developers who opt not to include affordable units in their buildings.

In the second segment, The Better Government Association’s Madison Hopkins tells us about her investigation into the multiple failures of the City’s Blue Cart recycling program, which is turning in the worst recycling rate of any major American city and is mired in charges that a private contractor, Waste Management, is incentivized to reject carts-full of recycling, because then city crews haul the content away, often to landfills owned by Waste.

This program was produced by Chicago Access Network Television (CAN TV).

Do you really want to know what happened in Tuesday’s mid-term elections, and why? Join guest host Bruce DuMont and his stellar guests Delmarie Cobb and Ray Hanania on this week’s Chicago Newsroom. You’ll learn who got elected and why and you’ll also hear about the next big election in Chicago – the race for Chicago Mayor. This program was produced by Chicago Access Network Television (CAN TV).

Jamie Kalven has played a significant role at every phase of the LaQaun McDonald shooting investigation. He was able to meet first with a critical eyewitness to the crime. He was first to obtain the autopsy report, which he says was almost as effective as having McDonald himself as a witness. And finally, Kalven played a major role in forcing the dash-cam video to be released to the public. As our guest today, he looks back at the Van Dyke verdict, which he considers fair, and sets the stage for the upcoming “conspiracy” trial of the officers who were at the scene with Van Dyke on the night of the shooting. Kalven takes us for a brief, live tour of their new Citizens’ Police Data-base Project web site, which includes registries for nearly a quarter-million accusations of police misconduct between the early 1960s and 2016. This program was produced by Chicago Access Network Television (CAN TV).