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Indigenous Peoples Day is coming up on Monday, which makes this weekend a good time to remind ourselves of the original peoples that inhabited our area, as well as support local makers and doers with Indigenous ties. While the city of Chicago hasn’t officially decided to recognize Indigenous Peoples Day as a holiday, other states and governments do, and even Chicago Public Schools has pivoted from its observance of Columbus Day to observe Indigenous Peoples Day instead....

Chicago Independent Police Review Authority chief Sharon Fairley yesterday hailed a “new accountability structure” for the Chicago Police Department that aims to “cultivate trust from the community.” IPRA made the data dump in response to a Police Accountability Task Force recommendation that audio and video recordings, along with written documents such as police reports, be made publicly available no later than 60 days from the date of an incident. IPRA’s Soundcloud page, meanwhile, includes 638 audio clips, mostly 911 calls and police scanner chatter related to incidents formerly or currently under review....

Lockdown has been hard on Laura Jane Grace. The front woman of Against Me! and Devouring Mothers is a natural performer with a strong social-media presence, but lately her Twitter account has been full of laments for the pre-pandemic live-music experience. On October 1, she surprised her fans with Stay Alive, a raw, stripped-down acoustic solo album. Recorded live (and strictly analog) over four days with Steve Albini at Electrical Audio, it features only Grace’s voice and guitar and occasionally a drum machine....

As part of his campaign to convince the public that the mayor really cares about neighborhoods other than downtown Chicago, planning commissioner David Reifman came to the City Club Thursday to unveil a plan for “equity and balance” in development. TIF, of course, is the city’s Tax Increment Financing program, in which the mayor slaps a surcharge on your property tax bill and uses the money to fund just about anything he wants....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Tuesday, July 26, 2016. Who will the Democrats run for governor against Rauner? Most of Illinois’s top Democrats are gathering in Philadelphia for the Democratic National Convention this week, and speculation is swirling over which Democrats might be interested in running against Governor Bruce Rauner in 2018. House speaker Mike Madigan mentioned Senator Dick Durbin as a possibility and said that they spoke about it months ago....

Shadow and light. Wood and paper. Dust and clay. Alchemy. These are the tools of Chicago’s master puppeteers. Within the implacable constraints of quarantine, they remain—as ever—monarchs of infinite space, conjuring sentience where none exists and creating vast worlds even as a pandemic walls us away in spaces that often feel small enough to be bound by a nutshell. Of all the live art forms, puppetry is arguably the one most readily adapted to the privations of lockdown....

West Virginia gave me the opportunity to make a home, make a claim to some land, choose my tribe,” says photographer Nancy Abrams. She tells the story of her life there in the 70s and 80s in her lively new book, The Climb From Salt Lick: A Memoir of Appalachia (West Virginia University Press), in which she paints a vivid picture of what it was like to make her way in an unfamiliar territory during a turbulent time in the nation’s history....

Not long ago, Bret Stephens, the right-of-center columnist for the New York Times, wrote a column about the Democratic presidential debates that managed to offend, insult, and denigrate immigrants, Spanish-speaking residents, Democratic taxpayers, and anyone who gets their health care from the Veterans Administration. In short, Spanish speakers are law-breaking freeloaders who drive up our taxes and are coming to take away our health care. I do this because 1) every now and then, one of them, even Stephens, actually writes something that almost sort of makes sense....

Q: There is a guy at my work who is into puppy play. I know this because I have some friends in the gay puppy community. I don’t give two shits what anyone I work with does to get off. All well and good, except . . . he wants us to call him Spike, his puppy name. Isn’t this a case of him involving everyone at work in his sex life, whether we want to be involved or not?...

Chicano indie-folk band Las Cafeteras formed in 2005, after their members forged friendships while taking classes in traditional music, dance, and art at Los Angeles Mexican American cultural center the Eastside Cafe. The six-piece have built a signature hybrid sound rooted in the Afro-Mexican genre son jarocho, which employs a rich mixture of indigenous themes and melodies, European stringed instruments, and African call-and-response vocals and syncopated rhythms. It took root in U....

This Friday sees the belated Chicago premiere of Abel Ferrara’s Pasolini (2014), a reverential consideration of the Italian poet, novelist, essayist, and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini. Set during the final days of Pasolini’s life in 1975, the movie opens with the artist looking at scenes of what would turn out to be his final film, Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom. (The Gene Siskel Film Center will revive that shocking masterpiece this week to coincide with its run of Pasolini....

HBO Trouble always finds Robert Durst—or is it the other way around? It’s been a few months and I’m ready to be honest about something: I didn’t love Serial as much as everyone else did. As a subject, Durst couldn’t be further from an Adnan Syed. This is not a charming, well-liked high school athlete—he’s a rodent-eyed, antisocial old billionaire whose only hope of earning our sympathies is a genuinely sad story from his childhood and our better natures, which encourage us to think the best of people....

Several weeks ago, Donald Trump went on a trip to Paris, saw a big military parade, and rushed back to the White House with big dreams racing through his little brain. In any regards, the president is moving ahead with his parade plans even though . . . And when he returned to Chicago, he could barely contain his excitement, leading to an exchange on the fifth floor of City Hall that probably went something like this....

There are plenty of shows, films, and concerts to attend this week. Here’s some of what we recommend: Wed 4/25: “Saxophonist Caroline Davis was based in Chicago for seven years before relocating to New York in 2013, and her five years there have demanded serious adjustment. She’s spent much of that time gigging as a side person while forging new partnerships and developing new music of her own. Last month she revealed what she’s achieved since leaving on Heart Tonic (Sunnyside), the first recording she’s released under her own name since 2015’s Doors (Ears & Eyes), a session made with Chicago musicians and inspired by veteran Chicago musicians like Lin Halliday and Von Freeman....

Making plans during this pandemic is akin to making plans during any cold Chicago winter: indoor stuff with a minimal amount of people is preferred (you know I don’t want to share cocoa to begin with) and outdoor stuff is not terrible if you take the proper precautions. We’re not out of the woods yet but there are some places to go if you’re feeling up to it. And in the throes of deep Chicago winter, you have time while you’re getting your 15 layers of clothing on to reflect upon the big questions....

The cover of Kima, Keisha & Pam Hyde Park’s the Promontory has been hosting some of the finest shows in town, partly thanks to the ingenious bookings of jack-of-all-trades (and Reader writer) Jake Austen. One such performance takes place this Saturday, when 90s R&B trio Total plays two shows at the south-side concert hall. Members Kima Raynor, Keisha Spivey, and Pamela Long were the biggest R&B act on Sean “Puffy” Combs‘s initial Bad Boy Records roster, making their debut on two of Notorious B....

When we first catch sight of her, waiting at a Greyhound Bus stop in the mountain hamlet of Spruce Pine, North Carolina (which actually exists, by the way), the eponymous 25-year-old heroine of Violet looks like any young woman on the verge of an adventure. What we can’t see is, ironically, what’s most obvious to the people she meets over the course of this 1997 musical set in 1964: a grotesque facial scar, the result of a freak accident she suffered as a child....

The Chicago police officer who shot and killed a mother of five and a distraught teen wielding a baseball bat in the early hours after Christmas has now been identified. A Reader analysis of internal police records and scanner audio from the day of the incident point to Robert Rialmo as the officer who fatally shot Bettie Jones, 55, and Quintonio LeGrier, 19, on December 26. According to the scheduling logs obtained by the Reader, Rialmo was assigned to work an overnight shift in beat 1172R beginning at 10:30 PM on December 26....