In the Loop with Sasha-Ann Simons

One of the biggest rallies took place right here in Chicago. Although organizers expected and planned for a potential 50,000 attendees, an estimated 250,000 people showed up, rallying in and around the Loop. Outside of the anchor march in Washington, Chicago’s rally is reported to have been the largest sister march. WBEZ’s Lauren Chooljian and Miles Bryan talk about what happened on the ground in both Chicago and D.C.

Harlem Avenue between Cermak and North raked in more than $26.5 million in red light camera citations in less than three years. Brett McNeil, a former reporter with the Chicago Tribune, has been investigating the numbers and following the money. He joined Morning Shift Monday to discuss his findings.

In a new hour-long documentary from WBEZ, education reporter Linda Lutton spends the 2014-2015 school year in a fourth-grade class at William Penn Elementary in North Lawndale, a poor, predominantly African-American neighborhood where the schoolchildren face a myriad of obstacles to success inside and outside of the classroom. The big question at the center of her reporting is whether a school in a community like North Lawndale can truly make the American dream possible by letting kids who work hard pull themselves up by their own boot straps.

On Friday, the country will swear in a new commander-in-chief. On Saturday, women march. Put off by the divisive rhetoric of the recent campaign, organizers say their mission is to show the incoming Trump administration that their “presence in numbers is too great to ignore.” There are more than 600 solidarity events, or "sister marches" comprising of more than 1.3 million participants around the country. One of those will be right here in Chicago this Saturday morning, at Jackson and Lake Shore, just south of the Petrillo Bandshell. Morning Shift talks to Liz Radford, co-organizer of the Chicago event, and march emcee Fawzia Mirza.

Lil Hardin was already an accomplished, in-demand musician here in Chicago when she met young cornet phenom Louis Armstrong, who had just moved here from New Orleans. It was at the home she owned on East 44th St. that she taught this “country boy” (in her words) how to dress, how to talk, and how to conduct his affairs in the big city. The small band they formed together, The Hot Five, practiced at that greystone, and those practices soon turned into some of the most important recordings in the history of music, and the blueprint for almost all the jazz that was to follow. Crain’s reporter Dennis Rodkin joins us to talk about the home, and the remarkable woman who owned it from the early 20’s until her death in 1971.

For decades, certain Chicagoans have been using a strange--even offensive--piece of slang that often involves the question: “Who’s Your Chinaman?” So where did this term come from? Why do we use it? And is it actually racist? WBEZ’s Monica Eng dug into these questions for our Curious City podcast. She’s here to talk about the funky theories and most likely origin of the word. But she also wrestles with its racial implications.

Department store giant Macy’s has announced they’ll be shuttering 63 stores in 2017. The Christmas retail numbers were sluggish, particularly for the traditional “anchor” stores in malls across the U.S. These and other signs point to a re-imagining of the American mall, an institution that’s stayed pretty much the same for the last 5 decades. Matt Billerbeck and his colleagues at the architecture and planning firm of Callison RTKL have been re-imagining the mall of the future.

Ask a millennial in the U.S. about their top concerns and chances are the spread of nuclear weapons isn’t on the list. The economy, education and inequality ranked high on the list, according to polls taken before the 2016 presidential election. There's one millennial though who calls nuclear weapons the biggest public health issue today and is trying to get her peers to see the dangers and take action. 

President Barack Obama made Chicago his hometown in the 1980s, but Michelle Obama is a true Chicago native. She grew up in the South Shore neighborhood and attended Whitney M. Young Magnet High School. WBEZ’s Jenn White and Natalie Moore last week spoke to current and former students at the high school about the connection they feel toward the first lady and what could be her legacy. Below are highlights from the conversation.

Before she was First Lady, Michelle Obama was a daughter of the South Side neighborhood of South Shore, a graduate of Princeton and Harvard Law, a lawyer, a University of Chicago dean and a hospital administrator. From the East Wing of the White House, she fought against childhood obesity and for veterans services and education for girls around the world.  Morning Shift spoke with Peter Slevin, associate professor at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism and author of the 2015 book Michelle Obama: A Life about the impact Michelle Obama had during her eight years as first lady and what her legacy will be.