If you want to understand the United States in all its complexities and contradictions, shortcomings and triumphs, diversity and hyper-segregation, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better example than Chicago.
I love Chicago. I’ve called the region home for most of my life (since my family moved to the suburbs when I was 14), and lived in the city for fifteen years. It’s a quintessential American city & region: it’s the home of the Haymarket Riots and Moody Bible Institute, it’s where Louis Armstrong learned from King Oliver and invented American popular music, where the atom was split, where cell phones were invented, and Playboy, too. It’s where agricultural futures were refined through the Chicago Board of Trade and where Milton Friedman & co. developed the Chicago school of economics, and Robert Bork developed the consumer welfare standard that defanged antitrust law. (Just because a development was influential doesn’t mean that it was good, and doesn’t mean it isn’t part of our history.)
I could go on. There is so much to Chicago & all the suburbs surrounding it, connected through geography and culture and economics and history. And lest you think Chicagoland is some liberal bubble deserving of Wheaton alum & Christian nationalist/shadow president Russell Vought’s punitive and petty punishments, it’s also where Charlie Kirk was raised (Arlington Heights) and went to school for a single semester and where Nick Fuentes spouts his bile (Berwyn).
At the No Kings rally yesterday, Chicagoland showed up in force to demonstrate their displeasure. I was particularly encouraged by the people of all ages who came out.
I saw an older woman in a frog costume using a bubble gun, inspired by the Portland icon.
I saw a man in doctoral robes evoking Galileo.
I saw others evoke the fights against fascism their fathers fought.
It was a great day.
Later, the sitting president posted an AI video of himself in a crown, dropping raw sewage on his own citizens from a fighter jet.
In Chicago, we only tolerate that sort of thing from Dave Matthews Band (and it’s less of a toleration thing and more of a hilarious anecdote).
In other news, I am going to be in Portland this week.
I’ll be on a panel at the Activists Mobilizing for Power panel alongside Heather Cronk, Tori Williams Douglass, and Lucianne Nelson on Wednesday.
Later in the week, we’ll be having an Exvangelical meetup.
If you’re in the area, stop by!