If it weren’t for thousands marching in the streets every day since Memorial Day, this week would’ve marked exactly 90 days that I’ve been quarantined in my apartment on Chicago’s Southwest side.

“It is up to us to make sure that the society we build on the other side of this virus is a society that makes the resolution of racial and economic injustice the number one priority. To care is to change social life at the roots.” Deep Time Chicago is a collective of Chicago-based artists and thinkers committed to creating opportunities for Chicago area residents to grapple with the crucial question of global ecological change. Today they present an urgent and necessary message urging against white silence.

Protests demand visuals. Eric Von Haynes of Flatlands Press  talks about collaborating with artists all over the city to make prints for the movement demonstrating in support of Black and Brown unity and defunding the police.

We need to fight for, defend, and protect our black and indigenous communities. We have to wield power collectively, and we have to work toward our collective liberation. This is the only way we can rebuild our trust, our neighborhoods, our cities, our nation. This is the only way we will survive.

The opening of farmers markets in Chicago reminds me of opening day for your favorite baseball team. It launches Chicagoans out of the miserable winter and into the celebration of summer.

Nicole Marroquin’s image-making, writing, and activism brings us a necessary and urgent look back at student protests in 1968 and a look forward at what we are working toward.

“The Chicago police officer who murdered Fred Hampton in 1969 was a 'school resource officer' at Carter H. Harrison High School in Chicago in 1968. His name was James “Gloves” Davis, and I was told in an interview with a witness, he threw a girl down a flight of stairs to intimidate her, because her sister was organizing protests.”

The theft highlights the double workings of an institution that actively protects and shelters its commodities while offering the human community only withdrawal, isolation, and a PSA that says: cover your own selves.

Since the onslaught of COVID-19, small organizations all over Chicago started working to mitigate harm caused by the virus. Mutual aid funds, resource lists, and food pantries began to crop up all over the city.

Anthony Romero, Josh Rios, and Matthew Joynt have compiled a collection of recordings from rehearsals, improvisations, and experiments in sonic insurgency as a fundraiser for mutual aid groups in Boston & Chicago

I haven't thought about the pandemic very much. I live in it; masked, mindful. The surge of vital energy mounting in the streets is a salve

We are pleased to announce the launch of the Community Kitchen, a new initiative by the some of the folks who put together Quarantine Times! The Community Kitchen is a food service program providing complementary box lunches to in-need residents, families and health care workers in Chicago.

Photographer, Oscar Arriola, captures photos on May 31, 2020, the day after demonstrations in downtown Chicago.

Quarantine Day 68-73 in the life of artist, Grant Reynolds.

Anger and destruction catches attention; how it makes noise and how it commands by force, redirects authority, releases restlessness, and much more. Simultaneously, the destruction triggered numerous intensities in many. Resentment cultivated thoughts of “enough is enough” and temptation to part take in this invalidation. Still, a part of me knew that chaos wasn’t what I had hoped to occur. Nevertheless, it’s today’s reality.

Join the Smart Museum of Art on June 3 at noon (CDT) via Lumpen Radio's Twitch stream for a conversation with three MacArthur Fellows who are collaborating on projects that confront environmental pollution and their disproportionate impact on disinvested communities. 

This is one wacky game show. That keeps running through my head. Something one of my best friends has been saying to me for about 5 years now. It's true, and being alive during a worldwide pandemic has definitely given me perspective on that statement

Artist Ahniya Butler finds inspiration and meaning in the unproductivity of the quarantine.