Good afternoon, Chicago. ✶
In today’s newsletter, we’re focusing on a resettlement program pioneered by a local pastor who, along with an expanding list of churches, is working to provide temporary shelter for newly arrived migrants languishing in police stations.
It’s a story that is just one in a long line of examples of how Chicagoans step up and support each other in various ways.
And further down, we highlight two local musicians and the different ways they’ve commemorated the music of their storied careers. 👇
Plus, we’ve got the community news you need to know this afternoon.
⏱️: A 7-minute read
— Matt Moore, newsletter reporter (@MattKenMoore)
TODAY’S TOP STORY
Northwest Side pastor pioneers migrant resettlement program through churches
Reporting by Michael Loria
A pioneering program: Not long after the first buses carrying migrants arrived in Chicago last year, the Rev. John Zayas began welcoming them to his Chicago church, Grace and Peace Community, in North Austin. Since then, he has developed a church-based resettlement program that connects migrants to a growing network of churches in the area, providing new arrivals with temporary housing and resources. Five churches are hosting migrants, Zayas said, with several more offering financial support.
City response moves slowly: The expanding church-based effort comes as the city’s resettlement program moves slowly, leaving thousands in and around police stations and nearly 12,000 in 24 city shelters. Zayas’ program is small — he said at least 400 migrants have gotten housing through it — but he imagines if only “a hundred of the thousands of churches in Chicago” participated, no one would be sleeping at a police station.
Mother and daughter find shelter: Jimena and Kamila Juma, a mother-daughter pair among the most recent migrants to Chicago, arrived to a city with winter weather unlike anything they had ever experienced at home in Ecuador. “I was shaking beneath my blankets,” said Kamila, 5, recalling several nights they spent outside the Grand Central District police station, particularly the last — Halloween night — when it snowed. Fortunately, the pair were at a station near Grace and Peace Community. They were among 20 migrants sleeping outside whom Zayas helped move to an Oak Park church, where they can expect help with everything from their immigration cases to housing and work. “It’s just so much better, so much better than outside,” Juma, 29, said.
WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON?
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Business owners respond to burglaries: The Sun-Times spoke with North Center and Lincoln Square business owners who said they were feeling mixed — but bouncing back — after burglars hit nine businesses in two hours overnight. “An isolated incident like this doesn’t deter me at all,” one bar owner said.
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Shooting survivor preps to lead team: Tavariyuan Williams and his two brothers were shot in November 2022, one day before basketball practice began at De La Salle Institute in Bronzeville. All three survived. Now fully recovered, Tavariyuan, a senior wing, is readying to lead the Meteors’ basketball squad as it enters a new season. “I’m just so happy to be here,” Williams said. “Just to be at practice. This is what I missed last year, all of this stuff. I’m just taking it all in.”
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President Biden in Illinois Thursday: President Joe Biden will spotlight his support for organized labor Thursday when he comes to Belvidere, where United Auto Workers scored a big win with their new contract. Then he’s off to Chicago for a fundraiser with megadonors.
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In-person work costing employees: A new study by videoconferencing company Owl Labs found that working in-person costs employees $51 a day over remote work. And although companies are calling employees back to the office, only 22% want to be there, the survey found.
- 4 stars for ‘Daughter of the Regiment’: The Lyric revives this 1840 comic gem with a charming, effervescent and fun-filled production, writes Kyle MacMillan in a review for the Sun-Times.
MEET YOUR NEIGHBOR 👋
Bradley Parker-Sparrow, musician
Reporting by Katie Anthony
How do you immortalize music? Bradley Parker — also known as Bradley Parker-Sparrow — has done it on vinyl, cassette, CDs, even 8-tracks. And, oh, yeah, the jazz musician also has had the titles of his first four albums inked into his skin.
The first of those tattoos pays tribute to the first album he released, “Latin Black.” The album was released in 1979, when Parker-Sparrow says his genre was thought by many to be passé.
“Jazz was thought of kind of passé and boring because you couldn’t dance,” Parker-Sparrow says. “I couldn’t find a label. So I started my own label.”
In a time in which rock ‘n’ roll was king, Parker-Sparrow says he wanted to come up with a way to get people to pay attention to his jazz album. That’s where the idea for a tattoo was born.
In 1977, after starting his own label, Sparrow Sound Design Recording Studio and Production Facility, Parker-Sparrow also was Chicago’s composer-in-residence from 1979 to 1980. He’s still a partner in two other labels: Southport Records and Northport Records.
“In a way, it’s a visualization of the music,” Parker-Sparrow says. “You write a song, you tool it, and you’ve got it. It’s more fixed as a tattoo. It’s kind of like experimenting visually with your body.”
With a career spanning decades — and about two dozen more albums — Parker-Sparrow says he had to cut off the ink at four tattoos and doesn’t plan on getting more.
BRIGHT ONE ✨
Jeff Tweedy’s new book is a soundtrack through childhood, sobriety and stardom
Reporting by Mendy Kong
If there’s anyone who can get a crowd teary-eyed at one moment, then belly laughing the next, it’s Chicago’s Jeff Tweedy, frontman of the Grammy Award-winning rock band Wilco.
Tweedy has a new book, “World Within a Song: Music That Changed My Life and Life That Changed My Music,” released Tuesday. He kicked off his national book tour in Chicago Sunday with a live WBEZ event moderated by Peter Sagal, host of the radio program “Wait … Wait, Don’t Tell Me!”
The songwriter and bandleader told a sold-out crowd at the Athenaeum Center that he wanted to share through his book the emotional spaces music can hold. His book spans 50 chapters, each named after a song that he connects to his life and his own creative process — one he has refined over nearly three decades. The songs include music from well-known artists such as Bob Dylan and Billie Eilish, as well as lesser-known artists, such as Leo Sayer.
At the event, which included questions from the audience and a short, acoustic set of song requests, Tweedy talked about his early days sorting through his brother’s record crates, how addiction and sobriety affects his songwriting and his greatest influences along his path as a musician.
“Art is there to help people see an authentic world, and you can’t just show them the same world over and over and over again. But that being said, I probably lean toward the side of the world that feels like it’s enough to have people be free of care for 3½ minutes in a theater, and that probably is way more important,” Tweedy said Sunday.
YOUR DAILY QUESTION ☕️
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Editor: Satchel Price
Newsletter reporter: Matt Moore
Copy editor: Angie Myers
