Huge news: The Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation has become the first federally recognized tribe to get a portion of their land back in Illinois. Illinois now has tribal lands.
“The nine active-duty Chicago officers who appeared on the Oath Keepers data rolls are: Sgt. Michael Nowacki; Detective Anthony Keany; and Officers Phillip Singto, Alberto Retamozo, Matthew Bracken, Bienvenido Acevedo, Dennis Mack, Alexander Kim and John Nicezyporuk.”
Anna, Illinois is not an anomaly. There are thousands of sundown towns and "recovering sundown towns" across the country. These are places that have been intentionally white. It's American history. It's also our present.
Over and over again, Harvard rejected claims by Wabanaki tribes that human remains in its collections were their ancestors. Turns out Harvard had been using those remains for destructive DNA research & hadn’t told the tribes. New by
@marymhudetz
@ashnguuu
Wow. The team did genealogical research + located "living descendants of many of those who had received and then lost the land. For the first time, these living Black Americans were made aware of the specific land that had been given to and then taken away from their ancestors."
We identified 1,250 formerly enslaved Black Americans who were pledged land as reparations—only to have it seized back.
@AlexiaCampbell
,
@aprilleticia
,
@pratheekrebala
tell the history of a program that gave formerly enslaved people land titles:
In 1927, a chiropractor excavated at least 234 Native American graves and made it a tourist attraction. The state of IL bought it and kept the burial exhibit open until 1992.
Tribal nations have long said the remains should be reburied. They’re still not.
ICYMI: The remains of more than 15,000 Native American ancestors have been excavated from Illinois. The state museum holds at least 7,000.
A new law would finally create a cemetery to rebury them:
I would like for it to be common practice for moderators everywhere to simply say “you did not answer the question” when someone simply doesn’t answer the question. Even if they move on after that! Just assert that the question was not answered.
The fact that several of the same people who showed up to defend a statue of the leader of the Confederacy also showed up to defend against the certification of an election with record voter turnout tells you who these people think democracy is for
1/ Anna, Illinois, was known as a sundown town — a mostly white community that, for decades, was known to not allow black people in town after dark. I spent some time reporting in Anna over the last 18 months. Here’s what I found ... (THREAD)
Actually, when you see “anonymous source” in a story, it is usually a carefully considered and vetted decision.
@jasongrotto
literally wrote about this yesterday. One of our readers wrote to us with a question about it:
We obtained 2,500+ messages from a secret Telegram group created days after the insurrection where members discussed future plans.
Some were assigned to regional militia groups. The chat leader told members to recruit at gun stores. This is WAR, he wrote.
A black lives matter protest ... in Anna, Illinois.
What does this mean for the saying that A-N-N-A stands for “Ain’t No N——— Allowed”?
I talked with a group of young adults who organized the town’s first protest for black lives:
You know what? It feels good to wear a mask. It feels good bc I know I’m keeping myself and my community safe. There are people who follow me who disagree. I’m sad the choice to wear a mask has become political. It’s not political. It’s respectful to our collective existence.
There's something so, so moving about this, and seeing many other people sharing google street view images of their loved ones who've passed.
It's its own memorial.
My grandpa passed away a few years ago. We didn’t get to say goodbye to him. Yesterday we found out google maps finally drove through his farm and as we were curious going through it, where the road ends, there is my grandpa, just sitting there. 😭
Talk of violence at the capitol was out in the open for months. Ive been watching it. Sometimes it’s explicit, like “take the hill or die trying.” But everywhere, the message was defend, rise up, revolt.
New from me
@lydiadepillis
@iarnsdorf
@davidmcswane
:
Mind you, the
@propublica
engagement team has existed in its current form for ... 2 years, tops.
So, news orgs that limit engagement to just social media and audience metrics: join the engagement journalism party instead. 🎈
📢📢CHICAGO: you may be walking right by an immigrant shelter for minors. They are in neighborhoods. The buildings look ordinary. And your alderman may not have even known it was there.
These are **detention centers.**
@ProPublicaIL
team investigates:
It’s been 30+ years since museums and other institutions were first required to begin returning human remains to Native American tribes. Our investigation shows how some museums avoid return and face little/no consequence.
I am so strangely nostalgic today for my childhood mall. I miss these old food court chairs and this crazy neon entryway, neither of which are still around. Unless someone on here knows something I don’t. Somehow tho Aventura Mall isn’t decaying like many others American Malls
When I told him I am a journalist with
@ProPublica
, he said “isn’t that lefty journalism?” I said: “No, our work aims to hold those in power accountable,” which led to a 30 min discussion and me buying 2 oil lamps. I invited him to come to the workshop later. And he did.
"Try explaining to a guy who owns an antique store in rural Illinois why you, an investigative journalist from Chicago, are in his town and why you brought a theater group with you."
Takeaways from our workshops in Rock Island and Toulon, Ill.:
Any Chicago media: The person recording this video and telling this story over Twitter is (from their bio) an independent photographer and college senior from Chicago's South Side. Know that. Don't be the person asking on social asking to use their footage for free and disappear.
Professional life update: As part of
@ProPublica
's exciting expansion, I'll now be working as a reporter focusing on original newsletter-first projects, including in the Midwest + our new regional offices in the South and Southwest -- and anywhere, really! Keep sending me stories
Cool, just found out I sometimes go camping/climbing next to a clusterf*ck of active toxic waste sites on the Mississippi River. Many more sites like this in Illinois. Do yourself a favor and search the map:
I might regret tweeting this, but can Chicago media just get on the same Slack channel or something? We should coordinate and help each other. Even if it's just the social media folks at diff outlets
Big News: The Illinois State Museum has filed a notice of inventory completion for what will be — by far — the largest repatriation in state history. This includes the ancestral remains of 1,325 Native Americans and those formerly exhibited in situ at Dickson Mounds Museum.
Today Pritzker signed a law that reforms how repatriation works in Illinois. It infuses the process with tribal consultation. It creates burial sites to reinter ancestral remains held by museums. And it gives tribal nations final say in repatriation. Story coming tomorrow
Here in Illinois, we don't hide from history — one of displacement, ethnic cleansing, and disenfranchisement for Native American and Indigenous communities.
We instead take steps forward to right the wrongs of our past, repair generational trauma, and build a brighter future.
Bless you, man on the block who I never see until raking the storm sewers clear during a storm.
Everywhere I’ve lived in the city, there’s been one of you.
Recently got engaged and this was the cake my fam had made for our various celebrations brunch yesterday. Spent the rest of the day yelling “engage!” at each other
Senators are demanding answers about what's taking so long to repatriate Native American remains.
"It's inexcusable, it’s immoral, it’s hypocritical, and it has to stop,” said Sen.
@brianschatz
. 🔥
@marymhudetz
and
@grahambrewer
report:
Personal news: I’m starting a Master’s program in Public History at
@LoyolaChicago
.
I want to help build a way to more intentionally combine investigative reporting/local news with public history/digital humanities.
Don’t know where this will go but I’m excited and here for it.
Processing the news of WBEZ and Sun-Times layoffs. Infuriating. I started as an intern at WBEZ in 2012. Vocalo was so much of what made the org unique and boundary-pushing. Podcasting was some of WBEZ’s best journalism. Gone. What a loss for our city. Chicago deserves better.
Here’s everyone’s reminder that the FOP president has been suspended 7 times by the Chicago police department and his own district commander filed complaint about him for “bigoted views” and “inappropriate emails” sent to staff at a high school where he used to work as an officer
This statement 🤯.
A billionaire getting to decide what is “historic” and how to tell that story to the American public by way of his investments … while paying his bff Supreme Court justice and then ALSO becoming the owner of his mother’s house.
Story:
Justice Thomas didn't respond to our detailed questions. Crow sent us this statement about his plans to create a museum to tell Thomas' story at one of the houses he bought.
For the first time, tribal nations — not state agencies, universities or museums — will have final say over how and when the remains of their ancestors and sacred items are returned to them.
Big news from Illinois:
I am curious what my historian/public historians have to say about the damage done to the UDC's HQ in Richmond. Should we think of it as a memorial to the Confederacy, an archive, a museum--perhaps a combination? How does our answer influence how we assess the damage? Thanks.
If journalists never bother to ask what people *want* the stories of their community to be, it can seem like we don’t care. Journalists know how to fact-check names and statistics. But how often do we fact-check the underlying narrative of a community?
Their parents are lawyers and doctors. The students are high-achieving scholars, athletes, musicians. They're exploiting a legal loophole to win financial aid that would otherwise go to students who legitimately need it.
Have you noticed this? Tell us:
.
@CarolineYLChen
is MVP reporter. She’s been covering the pandemic for
@propublica
with such rigor and intellect but also in approachable ways.
I spoke with Caroline this week to reflect on her reporting and where we’re at now:
I just finished
@katie_prout
’s story about the last men’s hotel in Chicago.
It’s a place that has clearly saved lives and kept men from dying alone. It’s also a place the city relies on without having to admit that it does.
It’s a beautiful, must read:
When we began publishing The Repatriation Project in Jan., we had no idea how many local journalists would want to pursue their own reporting on the return of ancestral remains. Turns out a lot did.
2023 has been a “record-breaking” year for repatriation:
I have some alternatives:
1) 1908 Springfield: when 5,000 white people violently drove out the black population, killing 8.
2) 1917 East St Louis: when 3,000 white people violently attacked the black community, killing 250, leaving about 6,000 homeless.
#illinoisproud
🤫🙃
This story is part of The Repatriation Project, our ongoing
@propublica
series investigating the delayed return of thousands of remains and items to tribal nations.
More to come.
We are hiring another reporter at
@ProPublicaIL
!!
3+ years experience, and you don’t even need to strictly have “investigative” experience. We will relocate you if you don’t currently live in Illinois.
Please share this listing.
In the 10 days between rioting at the U.S. Capitol and his arrest by the FBI, this 25-year-old from New York who used to sell vapes and run an agency for social media models tried to recruit an actual militia. Here’s how that went. New from me+
@jackgillum
Wow — the Manhattan DA office has accused
@artinstitutechi
of “willful blindness" and benefiting from a decades-long “conspiracy of silence” over evidence suggesting it purchased art looted by Nazis from a cabaret star sent to Dachau death camp.
@mannycam
The plotters were no ordinary neo-Nazis. One was a lawyer and local politician with a special hatred of immigrants. Two were active army reservists. Two were police officers, including one who talked to our Berlin bureau chief. His story was chilling.
What's the original source of this graphic? If you made this, I'm looking for you. email me: logan.jaffe
@propublica
.org. Everyone help with an RT? It might be from a
@HuffPost
survey or
@rebootillinois
but not sure
A major Chicago institution comes forward to say it has played a role in the city’s long history of systematic racism by acknowledging it’s benefited from using race restrictive covenants. More cultural Institutions, banks, real estate companies + individuals should do the same
Though the Newberry has been open to the public since 1887, the library’s conception of the public hasn’t always been inclusive.
During the 1930s and 1940s, the Newberry signed restrictive covenants on multiple properties that it owned.
“... the SBA has yet to divulge the names of any recipients. The names of a few — Shake Shack, Ruth’s Chris Steak House and the Los Angeles Lakers among them — have come out through other means. Those three returned the loans after an outcry.”
If I'm having trouble writing a thread based on a reporter's draft, it usually means there's a larger issue to still work out. It's also a good way to catch possible points of confusion in a story and sometimes even errors. If yr story can't be told in 12 tweets, try again.
Whenever I read through the
@Twitter
threads
@loganjaffe
puts together with our reporters for their stories, I think every journalist should have to be able to highlight the point of their work this concisely. If you can't, maybe you don't really know what your story is about?
Sent the last ProPublica Illinois newsletter. It’s a strange feeling to end something you started, 3.5 years later. I’m really proud of what we accomplished and the quality of our newsletter reporting. And it is reporting.
Writing this one now: . More soon.
A yearish ago I was visiting a local history museum somewhere in Illinois. I knew the county had been sundown. I asked the museum prez if he'd consider an exhibit about it. He laughed. “People don’t want to read bad things about their community," he told me.
Professional news: I'll be a fellow for the next year with
@NewAmerica
's US
@250
initiative, reporting a story I'm really excited about at the intersection of journalism/local history. This is a great cohort, too. Looking forward to doing this work.
🎉 The 2024 class of New America’s Us
@250
Initiative is here!
13 fellows & 2 senior fellows will reimagine the American narrative through storytelling that reflects our shared values/aspirations, just in time for the nation’s 250th anniversary.
🇺🇸
#Us250
There is so much in this story. The way
@marymhudetz
and
@ashnguuu
write about how Harvard’s repeated denials devastated the tribes is just gut-wrenching. This is what some tribes have to go through to get their ancestors back. Meanwhile Harvard benefited. Give it a read.
The reporting
@Jodiscohen
and I did was recognized as best feature reporting by
@headlineclub
tonight but what I want to say is this: MAKE ROOM FOR PEOPLE TO TELL THEIR OWN STORIES and then ask how you fit in.
Confederate monuments are coming down across the country ... in Chicago, creating a permanent, public memorial was part of a historic reparations package promised to survivors of police torture.
It’s the only requirement the city hasn’t fulfilled. Why?
This is looking like a new era of repatriation from museums to tribal nations.
The
@AMNH
still holds the remains of at least 1,800 people & at least 4,060 funerary items. Today it announced closure of two 'outdated' exhibit halls.
Story w/
@marymhudetz
:
.
@nhannahjones
#1619Project
is a model for journalism and much more.
If we’re to do our jobs correctly today, we have to look to the past. White ppl have dominated the industry forever and still do. We have missed, misunderstood and ignored so, so much.
📢 We're hiring an engagement/social media reporting fellow at
@ProPublicaIL
.
[I'm trying to not use all caps or too many exclamation points to set a good social media example but I'M PUMPED about this!!!]
Apply. Ask me Qs. DMs are open. Email in bio.
I’m curious if the Chicago Tribune will count the outrage, conversation and impact of the Zorn column as audience engagement. Any outlet would do this if the engagement was “positive.”
High clicks/social interaction can be used to argue they should do more of this...which is bad
So I collect a lot of old media. One of my collections is just answering machine messages on mini cassettes. I’ve had these for years and hadn’t listened to them. I did tonight. I’d say 60% relates to health care. A lot of debt calls, too.
It’s sad that it feels so timeless.
I'm all for the newish swath of tools and innovative ways that help journalists engage with communities. But in 2020, let's not miss opportunities to listen to people already talking to us — however, wherever they reach out. Thx,
@NiemanLab
.
Damage and population loss in DC. No grocery stores in Newark. Manufacturing decline in Chicago and Pittsburgh.
@_tonybriscoe
and
@harucoryne
lay out how these cities tried to revive commerce in Black neighborhoods, what worked, and what the catch was:
Omg, just remembered that in 2013 I used my first ever paid vacation vacation time to hitchhike a damn multi-state yard sale and write, take photos and make a video about it for a literary magazine that paid me exactly $0. I self-funded the trip, too.
Wtf was I thinking
Has your child learned about Illinois’ history of slavery? Have you?
Illinois, the Land of Lincoln, was a “quasi-slave state,” Darrel Dexter says.
Learn this. Teach that this happened.
When you head into work right after an early morning flight, after nearly a week away from the office for work and fun related things and you’re exhausted, but your office has a key lime pie waiting for you for your birthday when you get back. 💙
@ProPublicaIL
In January, we reported that
@UCBerkeley
held more unrepatriated ancestral remains than any institution in the country.
Today my colleague
@marymhudetz
reported the university intends to return the remains of 4,400 people to Bay Area tribes.
Hey Chicago I’m gonna be on
@wttw
tonight talking about sundown towns.
Like I said, it’s not just Anna. We’ve got them all around the state — north shore suburbs, southwest suburbs included.
Here’s the tune-in link I just sent to my parents!
For
@propublica
’s Weekly Dispatch newsletter, I spoke with
@amycooter
about why she calls militias “nostalgia groups.” I asked readers to reflect on her answer and to write me back. getting some amazing replies. Be part of convos like these by signing up:
THIS IS HOW IT'S DONE. From my experience, many people in news/media think merely publishing a callout at all is enough to open the door to let real people inform your journalism. It's not. It's just a creak. Must read from
@otraletra
:
Asking if readers knew women who died or almost died in childbirth drew an outpouring that carries lessons for both traditional and engaged journalism:
The university announced today it is investing $889,188 in repatriation: “We are committed to repatriating all Native American ancestral remains and funerary belongings, sacred objects and objects of cultural patrimony to Native nations.”
@heraldleader
:
Number 6: University of Kentucky
Remains of ~4,500 Native Americans not returned and zero repatriations completed
@universityofky
said “we recognize the pain caused by past practices” and recently committed $800K to repatriation
It makes me proud to work at an organization that keeps finding ways to prioritize and fund local journalism.
Downstate upstate sidestate centerstate Illinois journalists, APPLY!
🔎Dear independent or newsroom-affiliated, investigative journalists of Illinois:
💵We want to give you money to report on issues critical to our state.
🌟Apply for up to $40,000. Here’s the link:
Hey, Illinois journalism college students interested in engagement who see see this tweet. Can you like this or signal to me in some way that you exist? Also, what’re you up to?
Hello this is Tilly, engagement cat
@ProPublicaIL
.
Are you or someone you know affected by *some people* who keep trying to get you off their computer in Illinois? Help us investigate.
I love breaking rules.
Especially ones journalists make up, like that you can’t closely collaborate with a source on a story, or that you can’t use low-fi unprofessional photos, or that all typos are unacceptable.
Thanks for the writeup,
@niemanstory
.
Today my dad asked me on the phone if I️, as a woman in media, have ever experienced sexual harassment or assault, and I’m really proud of him for asking. We had a really good conversation.
More news: This week, the TVA published a notice announcing it has made the remains of at least 4,871 Native American ancestors available for return. It plans to return every individual.
We're told they found about 1,500 remains previously unreported.
Number 8: Tennessee Valley Authority
Remains of at least 3,500 Native Americans not returned
@TVANews
said it’s committed to “partnering with federally recognized tribes as we work through the NAGPRA process.”
The coverage from
@MiamiHerald
about the Surfside building collapse has been heartbreaking and astounding. These reporters are doing such a good job. Been reading coverage constantly and no where else is comparable.
“People were supposed to go to sleep at night knowing their homes were structurally sound.”
The latest on shock, speculation and expert insight on how this possibly could have happened. w/
@Blaskey_S
,
@lrobertsonmiami
,
@jayhweaver
,
@harrisalexc
HEY.
💎
💡
💣
🎈
💚
We at
@ProPublicaIL
are looking for a reporting fellow. 1 year. Benefits. We do good work.
Apply now:
Pay no attention to the random emojis.
The University of Illinois maintains that
@nprillinois
reporters must share with them info received from victims of sexual assault on campus. The university has protected faculty abusers in the past.
These orgs:
@ACLUofIL
@BetterGov
@inbatweets
@rcfp
have pushed back.
Is anyone doing this in Chicago? Or anywhere in Illinois?
“The Mapping Prejudice Project is working to identify and map racial restrictions buried in historic Minneapolis property deeds.”