That would mean those sealed bags filled with everything from plastic silverware, chopsticks, wipes and condiments to salt, pepper and napkins no longer would be automatically included in take-out meals and deliveries to customers who don’t really need them, since they have silverware at home.

Between 2012 and 2017, the gap grew from 8.3 years to 9.2 years — and that was before the coronavirus pandemic, which had a disparate impact on Black Chicagoans.

“I’ve been at this for a long time. And there are things we know that work to reduce gun violence and violent crime,” President Biden said. He enumerated a few items, ending with, “And strike forces, launched by the U.S. Justice Department, in major cities, like Chicago, to address the issue of gun trafficking.”

“These trends, which accelerated dramatically in the wake of George Floyd’s death and the 2020 riots which swept across American cities, have started to alienate parents and students in Chicago.”

“Over a handful of meetings, the group agreed on food system “pillars” to fortify—production, retail, processing and procurement, entrepreneurship, nutrition benefit programs, and emergency systems—and set priorities for the coming year to shore up emergency services and build long-term, equitable food system infrastructure. “

“I think that the fact that the escape period is in August, isn’t an accident,” attorney Bill Messenger said. “They do it when the teachers and students are not around and not necessarily thinking of their union contracts.”

CTU President Jesse Sharkey: “The COVID-19 pandemic has been a traumatic event, and one that hit the hardest among largely Black and Latinx workers, residents of crowded multi-generational housing, service-sector workers and Chicagoans suffering from poor access to health care to begin with — in short, the families of many of our students…Now consider the impact — not the intent, mind you — but the impact of middle-class white parents demanding a full return to school, work and life as usual, but doing so without any recognition of the trauma and harm felt by Black and Latinx families.”

The mayor’s kitchen sink of a package includes nearly a dozen items, but much debate has focused on the liquor sale curfew and aldermanic prerogative, an issue that has divided Lightfoot and the Council since the mayor used her inauguration address to declare war on the longstanding tradition.

“(Thornton Fractional South High School in Lansing) stopped flying the Confederate flag in 1993, when 8% of students were Black. The mascot Ritchie Rebel was retired about five years ago. In August 2020, the school board voted unanimously to cease using the nickname Rebels. The school will continue to be without a nickname until a new one is selected.”

Jackson has served as CEO for more than three years, but she’s spent more than two decades working within CPS, moving from teacher to principal to network chief, and then on to leadership roles as chief education officer and finally as CEO. “It hasn’t been easy, but there have also been far more positive things that have happened,” she said.

“Ever since we’ve been in a global pandemic, and she got this ultimate power, she doesn’t feel like she has to work with us, and that’s not how this is going to work,” Ald. Jeannette Taylor said. “You saw me tell her to put her hands down. I’m a grown woman like she is. We are coworkers and clearly she doesn’t understand that and I’ll make her understand that.”

Lifeguard shortages are an issue across Chicago’s suburbs and the nation. Indiana beaches reported a shortage of lifeguards earlier this summer.

Said CTU member Dulce Arroyo, a teacher at Carl Schurz High School, “I can’t understand why someone like me, who worked extremely hard during the most difficult time for any educator, that there’s no enough money to save my position.”

The ordinance in question would change the name of Outer Lake Shore Drive to DuSable Drive from Hollywood all the way south to 67th Street.

“We are open enough for everything. The federal government is meeting in person. The state is meeting in person. I just believe we are still hiding behind this whole Zoom issue where you can skirt the rules, manipulate the procedures that we have in place,” Ald. Anthony Beale said.

“Let’s just say for example, instead of 13,000 police officers we had 8,000, but we had 5,000 more outreach workers, clinicians, life coaches, educators, job developers who are stopping the violence,” said Arne Duncan, co-founder of CRED and a former US secretary of education. “We’ve got to give them a reason to stop committing crimes and put down the guns.”

Mayor Dan Biss said the suggestion that city officials had made a decision to cancel Independence Day while deciding to celebrate Juneteenth and Pride was false and an example of manufactured outrage from conservative media. The 4th of July Association’s cancellation was announced just one day before Gov. J.B. Pritzker defined the framework for moving to Phase 5 — full reopening.

Five strike forces within the next 30 days will “focus on significant firearms trafficking corridors that channel guns into New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area and Washington, D.C.,” the Justice Department said, to be led by U.S. attorneys “who will coordinate with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives and with state and local law enforcement partners in places where firearms originate and where they are used to commit crimes.”

Gov. JB Pritzker has not yet toured the area, as he is on vacation this week. There has not yet been a State Declaration of Disaster.