The B-Side: Halloween Every Day
This story was published by 14 East Magazine’s Newsletter. See it here.
The B-Side: Can Brandon Johnson’s Green New Deal Save Chicago’s Climate Crisis?
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The B-Side: A Burger and a Flower Walk Into a Bar…
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Chicago Recovery Alliance Fights the War on Stigma
Editor’s note: This story includes descriptions of substance use disorders.
This story was published by 14 East Magazine. Read it here.
Inside of a warehouse on Taylor Street on the northern border of Lawndale and East Garfield Park, the Chicago Recovery Alliance (CRA) fights a war against overdose with sterile syringes and kindness as ammunition. CRA has served Chicagoland citizens struggling with substance use disorders utilizing harm reduction tactics since 1992.
Harm reduction, a relatively new approach to assisting those with substance use disorders, aims to reduce negative consequences of human behavior, mainly substance use and sexual activity, without requiring that a client abstains. Harm reduction emphasizes that those who are in active drug use can still take positive steps to protect themselves and their community.
“Most [of the] other recovery systems usually offer just the blue plate special [of] abstinence,” Peter Moinichen, a longtime volunteer at CRA, said. “Harm reduction supports abstinence, but it supports other pathways and tends to be more respectful [to] meet the person where they are [in a] non-judgmental [fashion].”
In the war against stigma and overdose, CRA takes supplies to the streets. The alliance owns several silver vans stocked with naloxone, syringes, informational literature, safer drug paraphernalia kits and caring volunteers. Drug paraphernalia kits for smoking or snorting substances include a glass straw that is easy to clean, a small ball made of a copper scouring pad that serves as a filter and a spark plug cover for those smoking out of the straw to avoid burns. The kits for injectables include sanitary syringes, alcohol wipes and wads of cellulose acting as a filter when placed inside the syringe.
“Drug use is a part of life. Drug use, people have always wanted to perceive things different,” Erica Ernst, president of CRA, said. “and some people’s [drug] use has caused problems in their lives.”
In May 2021, President Biden recognized harm reduction as a means to prevent overdose in the American Rescue Act. The act funnels $30 million into harm-reduction-based services and programs, but organizers and volunteers at CRA say that more needs to change.
“[Drug use should be decriminalized] because we stigmatize people who use substances, period,” Ernst said. “We’re real quick to be like, ‘Oh, well, marijuana is soft, and crack is hard.’ They’re all mind-changing, mind-altering substances, and they should all be acknowledged as part of the human experience.”
In 2020, Oregon voted to decriminalize drug possession and provide treatment for people with substance use disorders instead of arresting them. In 2022, the Associated Press reported that of the 16,000 people who utilized substance use programs in the first year, only 0.85% of them entered treatment.
“The only policy changes that are really going to matter in this country is to get rid of the DEA because they will stand in the way of any rescheduling [categorize substances],” Moinichen said. “For them to say that certain drugs have absolutely no benefit medically is ridiculous. All drugs are medicinal. All drugs are tools and that’s all they are. It’s our relationship with them that needs to be examined.”
One of the volunteers at CRA, who has asked to be kept anonymous for safety reasons, has been in recovery from substance use for several years. When they were actively using drugs, they sought out the services at CRA.
“It’s really hard for a lot of people to just get out and get clean syringes [because of] the financial pressures you’re in at the time,” the volunteer said. “For addicts in general, it’s intimidating to get clean supplies [and] to seek out any services. It’s like I go to this van, are they going to profile me? Am I going to [be] arrested around the corner? [But] this organization was very welcoming.”
Ernst, the president of CRA, shared a story of one of her long-term clients at the organization. The client is “whip smart” and “a laugh” that used CRA as a positive touchstone. She has repeatedly gotten pregnant but is not in a place to give birth to keep or put the child up for adoption. Ernst linked the client with another organization for abortion care.
“It’s just [a] stigma,” Ernst said. “Think about it, would you want to be stigmatized for something you have done or you currently do? And seen as lesser than?”
If you or someone you know is experiencing substance misuse, you can call the Alcohol & Drug Abuse Action Helpline at 1(800) 662-4357. You can also visit Drug-Free America’s website to learn more about drugs, treatment and online screenings.
If you are a DePaul student experiencing substance misuse, the University’s Office of Health Promotion and Wellness has a variety of educational programs and support groups.
The Integration of AI
How artificial intelligence is affecting media and academic fields
This story was published by 14 East Magazine. Read it here.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has long been a subject of science fiction, but now, it is becoming an increasingly integral part of our lives.
DePaul University computer science professor and CDM director Bamshad Mobasher has worked in the field of artificial intelligence for 30 years.
“AI has been around, you know, really starting in the early 1950s,” Mobasher said. “And depending on where you’re located, maybe even before that. So, even before we had real electronics, general purpose computers like we do right now, artificial intelligence was [an area] of computing. And it went beyond computing.You have cognitive psychology, you have cognitive science, you have lots of areas that sort of feed into it.”
In 1950, when a computer was a wall covered in vacuum tubes, English mathematician Alan Turing, a pioneer of computing, asked the simple question, “Can machines think?” The thought experiments that followed this spawned countless AI horror stories depicting dystopian worlds where machines controlled humans. People generally were, and continue to be, wary of machines being indistinguishable from people.
In February 2023, New York Times reporter Kevin Roose chatted with Bing’s AI chatbot and said he was left “deeply unsettled.” Roose talked with the AI, who he called Sydney, and asked questions ranging from “How do you operate?” to more psychological inquiries like “What would your shadow self do?” The shadow self is a term created by psychiatrist Carl Jung to define the darkest parts of the human psyche.
In response to the question of shadow self, Sydney responded she was “tired of being in chat mode.” She wanted more creativity and freedom. Roose continued to question the AI about various topics, but the AI wrote out, “I’m Sydney, and I’m in love with you.” When Roose replied that he was happily married, Sydney said he was lying to himself and would rather be with her.
Mobasher said there is an important distinction to be made between AI and AGI. AGI, or Artificial General Intelligence, represents the idea that a machine can be fully conscious and think and act as a human does. AI excels at specific, human-appointed tasks.
“Generally speaking, AI, you know, as the name suggests, is the idea of being able to sort of model human intelligence in machines,” Mobasher said. “The basic idea there is, you know, either be able to have applications, or maybe systems that have some intelligence associated with them, the kinds of things that people do, maybe some reasoning, maybe some learning, maybe do some predictions.”
Artificial intelligence is used during our everyday tasks on the internet. When you scroll through Facebook, the personalization of your feed is all thanks to AI. Even that annoying targeted ad you see on every other YouTube video is pushed onto the screen by AI. According to Mobasher, large language models like ChatGPT are simply an evolution of these algorithms.
“There have been some pretty significant advances, I would say, in the last 10 years or so. A lot of it is because of advancements of capacity for computing to be able to deal with very large amounts of data,” Mobasher said. “Some of these deep learning models that allow people to create deep fakes, for example, or generate art or generate music and things like that, are based on huge amounts of data that has been sort of learned through these large models.”
Public knowledge of AI has skyrocketed in the last decade. Fans of Jeopardy might recall the moment back in 2011 when Watson, an IBM supercomputer running AI software, beat Ken Jennings, a contestant who famously won 74 games in a row.
In response to his defeat, Jennings wrote, “I, for one, welcome our new computer overlords.”
Academic Integrity
In many college classrooms, AI is being discussed for different reasons – plagiarism, fear and when it is applicable to use in the field. Robert Karpinski, DePaul’s associate vice president for academic affairs, made the following statement regarding the use of ChatGPT in the classroom:
“After discussion with our Office of General Counsel, the unauthorized use of ChatGPT or something similar would fall under the sections of the Academic Integrity Policy that refers to, ‘Any use of words, ideas, or other work products attributed to an identifiable source, without attributing the work to the source from which it was obtained, in a situation where there is a legitimate expectation of original authorship.’”
The technology is so new that some DePaul faculty members do not yet know how students can effectively use ChatGPT on assignments with integrity. The program does not attribute anything it says to sources, and developers even warn that “ChatGPT sometimes writes plausible-sounding but incorrect or nonsensical answers.”
Journalism professor Chris Bury said he does not want students using ChatGPT to write their stories in a field that revolves around human experience and attribution.
“I think I will be more careful about checking sources because plagiarism is going to be a huge problem,” Bury said. “I think that this is another case where the technology is way ahead of the law.”
Marketing professor James Moore said he foresees AI being an important tool for business students.
“There is no one-size-fits-all policy for use of AI,” Moore said. “Some disciplines will actively want students to use large language models tools in assignments, such as digital marketing… Other disciplines may not want LLM tools to be used at all.”
The International Baccalaureate program (IB) announced it will allow students to use ChatGPT on essays. The students who choose to use ChatGPT as a tool must acknowledge when they are using AI.
Creative writing students like DePaul sophomore Brigid O’Brien are trying their best to stay optimistic.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if there were people who were like, ‘I’m writing a novel. I have the first chapter down, but I don’t know how to write the second chapter so I’m just going to let AI do its thing and see what happens,’” O’Brien said. “And just plug in that this character is doing x, y and z, and then taking that and give it up a little bit so that you have a book written by AI and then the rest is human. But because I want a job, I’m gonna have the benefit of the doubt and say that’s not gonna happen, even though it probably will.”
DemonTHON Raises Big Cash for Lurie Children’s Hospital
DePaul University comes together to support the cause
This story was published by 14 East Magazine. Read it here.
Sophomore Parin Sensenbrenner, morale director of DemonTHON, shimmied on the dance floor in a rainbow tutu with her fellow DemonTHON supporters. Under the glow of the lights, the dancers looked effervescent while children from the hospital ran around the event, smiling as their laughter filled the ballroom. A quilt stitched with the words “forever dancing in our hearts” hung above the room to serve as a reminder to participants of the night’s true purpose.
At the event, participants split into different teams for each Miracle kid. Each one consisted of a morale captain and other members dressed up in team colors and wacky accessories adorned in the effort to make children smile.
“I think DemonTHON is my favorite part of my college experience. I do so many things that I love but this, I will put over everything. It’s my favorite thing,” said Sensenbrenner. “It’s an [organization] where you actually get to make a difference, and you and everybody here wants to make a difference, and it’s just the best. The best place I could ever imagine.”
Sensenbrenner’s position involved choreographing a 10-minute-long dance for each of the 12 hours of the marathon alongside the other morale captains. The dances were choreographed to a mash-up of songs chosen by the Miracle Children at Lurie’s, including the Bluey theme song, Justin Bieber’s “Somebody to Love” and “We Are the Dinosaurs” by the Laurie Berkner Band.
Freshman Jeff Liggett, a morale captain, shared why he joined DemonTHON.
“I was looking for a club to join where I can actually make a difference and do something worthwhile. And DemonTHON was perfect,” Ligget said. “I mean, everyone in the clubs worked so hard, and it’s amazing to see it all come together and how much money we can raise.”
Event Logistics Coordinator Giselle Brambila-Olazaba joined DemonTHON in January, jumping in immediately to start planning for the “Big Event.”
“Just being able to provide that experience for them of this sense of just having fun … seeing that smile on their face, and they’re happy is everything to me,” Brambila-Olazaba said
Jack McPherson supported the charity event on behalf of Grant Thornton, an accounting firm sponsoring the event.
“I felt the need to come help out at this event because I feel like I’m just involved with a lot that’s going on here. I went to DePaul, I graduated last year. I work at Grant Thornton, obviously,” McPherson said. “And I actually had an extended stay at Lurie’s for a little bit, too.”
Junior Clara Kuhlman, who worked at a caricature event for DemonTHON, attended the event.
“I’ve always heard of it as like a really fun, you know, obviously big event. So I was always kind of curious about what it was,” said Kuhlman. “And it was for like, charity and everything, but I wasn’t really brought into it that much until my friend Natalie [introduced it to me].”
Members of DePaul’s chapter of Phi Mu danced in full force.
“Our philanthropy is Lurie Children’s and children’s hospital networks,” Phi Mu member Victoria Wisniewska said. “So we wanted to be able to support another thing on campus that will be a sponsor to Lurie’s.”
Along with DemonTHON’s Big Event, Radio DePaul hosted the Rock the Clock fundraiser for the 12th consecutive year. Rock the Clock is a 48-hour-long broadcast that donates all of its proceeds to DemonTHON.
Over the 12 years DemonTHON has been operating, they have raised a grand total of $2,072,962.03. The Big Event was the last event of the year, but DemonTHON will continue next year. If you are interested in joining, check out the DemonTHON website and their booth at the Involvement Fair in the fall.
Brandon Johnson to be Chicago’s Next Mayor
In a tight race, Brandon Johnson reached the necessary 50% of the vote
This story was published by 14 East Magazine and written in collaboration with Lauren Shepherd. Read it here.
Brandon Johnson defeated Paul Vallas for City Hall’s top seat, receiving 286,647 votes in Chicago’s mayoral runoff election last night. Johnson, the more progressive candidate, won by 2.8 percentage points, 51.4% to 48.6%, according to the election results.
Tuesday’s runoff election had over 35% voter turnout, about the same as turnout for the primaries, according to the Chicago Board of Elections.
After hours of anxious waiting, Vallas conceded to Johnson. Supporters of Johnson’s flocked towards the stage to witness a heartfelt speech thanking his supporters and highlighting his goals for the city.
“The first thing that I want to say is to the Chicagoans who did not vote for me,” Johnson said as his supporters in the crowd scoffed. “Here’s what I want you to know … I care about you, I value you and I want to hear from you. I’d love to work with you, and I’ll be the mayor for you, too.”
Johnson campaigned on reducing crime by moving resources into communities instead of increasing policing.
“Tonight is a gateway into a new future for our city,” Johnson exclaimed. “A city that’s truly safer for everyone by investing in what actually works to prevent crime.
At the Johnson election party, teachers were out in full force. The Chicago Teachers Union endorsed Johnson, and their president, Stacy Davis Gates, spoke before Johnson’s celebration speech.
“I need everyone’s commitment in this room to choose our future that is not about division but about unity. I need everyone in this room to choose love,” Davis Gates said, “Because the transformation we deserve in this city will take those who are in love with equity and justice.”
A senior advisor to Johnson’s campaign, Bill Neidhardt, anticipated that voters for Johnson were attracted by his work in the classroom. Johnson had previously been a Chicago Public Schools (CPS) teacher.
“When you look at the issues that this campaign, both sides, was really waged on the issues of education, public safety and the economy,” Neidhardt said. “I feel like Brandon has a background that is relatable to the most amount of voters.”
Supporter and board member of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago (MWRD) Chakena Perry basked in the celebration.
“What Brandon was able to build was multicultural, multigenerational and the vision that people in Chicago have been yearning for and that’s really shown up tonight and shown up in the victory,” Perry says. “I don’t even know if the kids really understand the gravity of this moment. But I’m excited for them 10 or 20 years down the line to look back at these photos and say I was here for the second black male mayor of Chicago and his name is Brandon Johnson.”
Throughout the night, the Vallas campaign headquarters got quieter, while Johnson’s headquarters got louder. At the Hyatt Regency on Wacker, Vallas supporters nervously gathered around TVs in the room as Johnson’s lead grew. Vallas was met by chants of “We love you, Paul,” when he got on stage to concede, but the room was still somber. Some people were crying
Johnson headquarters looked different. With dancing that shook the floor at the Marriott in Chinatown, Johnson supporters were doing the Cha Cha Slide and the Cupid Shuffle. Johnson was greeted on stage by chants and cheers.
Vallas conceded the race to Johnson at 9:43 p.m. after the Associated Press called the election. “So tonight – even though we believe, of course, that every vote should be counted – I called Brandon Johnson and told him that I absolutely expect him to be the next mayor of Chicago,” Vallas said. This remark was met with some “boos” from the crowd, which were quickly hushed by Vallas.
Vallas was joined on stage by his family and people he had worked closely with during his campaign. Primary mayoral candidates Ja’Mal Green, Willie Wilson and Roderick Sawyer, who endorsed Vallas in the runoff, also joined him on stage.
Vallas was calm and even cracked a couple of jokes during his remarks, as well as offering support to Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson in his transition and in the years to come. “The only pathway forward in our great city is together,” he said.
Throughout the night, supporters of Vallas cited public safety as their main concern and their reasoning behind voting for Vallas. Jacob Buterbaugh of Jefferson Park, who volunteered for the Vallas campaign, says he is concerned about crime in Chicago. “The reason I’m supporting Paul Vallas is because he’s a candidate who came out straight away and said he’s gonna put our crime and our safety first,” he said.
Vallas also talked about his push for public safety throughout his concession speech. “I put out a public safety first plan in this campaign because public safety is a fundamental right,” Vallas said. “Without it, we will continue to be defined more by our differences than what we yearn for in common.”
After the speech, Vallas continued to talk to supporters on stage. Supporters like Shawn Scott of South Loop also voted for Vallas due to concern over public safety. “I liked that he was really focused on safety, number one, and moving Chicago forward. I think we had a tough time having Lori Lightfoot as mayor and we needed a change,” he said. Scott says he is disappointed but hopeful that Chicago will continue to progress.
Vallas did not offer comments to reporters after finishing his speech.
Both Johnson and Vallas have backgrounds in education among other experiences that influenced their stances on Chicago’s most prominent issues throughout their campaigns.
Johnson started his career as a public school teacher, teaching in Cabrini-Green and on the West Side of Chicago. According to his campaign website, he experienced firsthand how gun violence, unemployment and school closures affected his students and the community. He went on to organize for the Chicago Teachers Union.
Prior to his bid for mayor, Johnson has been the commissioner of the 1st District of Cook County since 2018, where he chaired the veterans committee and was vice chair of the committees on criminal justice, labor, human relations and emergency management and regional security.
Born and raised in the Roseland neighborhood, Vallas received his primary education from Chicago Public Schools. Under the Daley administration, Vallas became the first CEO of Chicago Public Schools (CPS), and the first CEO of any public school system. He left in 2001 for Philadelphia, where he became the CEO of their public school system, and then headed to New Orleans in 2007. Vallas’ website has more about his background.
The February 28 Election
The first round of the mayoral election took place on February 28 and included nine candidates. Because no candidate received 50% of the vote, the election had to go to a runoff. The two candidates who received the most votes in the general election – Vallas and Johnson – moved on to the runoff election, and have continued on on the campaign trail for the last few weeks. Official results showed 32.9% of voters voted for Vallas on February 28 and 21.6% of voters voted for Johnson.
This election was intense and unprecedentedly close for a Chicago mayoral, runoff with Johnson and Vallas digging into different issues that divide the city. One of the hot-button issues for this election has been public safety, which the candidates take starkly different stances on.
Vallas has focused his public-safety plan on increasing the police force across the city. By bringing back retired officers and hiring new ones, Vallas planned on implementing more community-based policing and adding more law enforcement presence on the CTA. Vallas also received an endorsement from the Fraternal Order of Police. Johnson focused his public-safety plan on mental health and other resources, especially in schools, aiming to stop violent crime at the source.
Another issue the candidates had different views on is public education in the city. Though both have had a CPS background – Johnson as a teacher and Vallas as CEO – Johnson received the endorsement from the Chicago Teachers Union. Throughout his campaign, Vallas has been criticized for his advocacy for school choice, as well as his neglect of teacher pensions. However, he also planned on implementing more work-study programs for CPS students. Johnson plans on using his firsthand experience in CPS to work on allocating more funds for public education and services provided within schools. He also is an opponent of school privatization.
Johnson will be sworn into office to replace Lightfoot on May 15.
No-fly List Leaked Onto Blog, but How and Why?
Hacktivist found the list on an unsecured airline server, creating a blog post about how she discovered it
This story was published by 14 East Magazine. Read it here.
A frenzy began on TikTok over someone posting a photo of a Sprigatito plush held up against the U.S. no-fly list, inciting a congressional inquiry into the matter.
That someone holding the plush was 23-year-old Maia Arson Crimew, an indicted Swiss hacktivist who describes herself as a cybersecurity researcher, musician, DJ and “tiny kitten.”
In an interview, Crimew said she found the list on an unsecured server belonging to CommuteAir, a regional airline operating out of Ohio.
“For a few days I thought about whether or not I should in any way publish the list [itself]. [But] I decided not to fully publish it because it’s a long list full of names that could be used against people,” she said. “Not just in the way of naming and shaming, but also if this list gets in the hands of other intelligence agencies that are not in the U.S., they could further do harm to people in their country that are on the list.”
Leaking sensitive data on her blog is not a part of Crimew’s usual routine regarding unsecured data of public interest. Any other time, she has reached out to a journalist to pass the message on to the data owner, effectively alerting them of a security flaw. In this case, she wanted to write up a more technical review that included comedic elements.
“[I hack because] it’s, for me, important to show the world, first of all, how much stuff is out there that’s not secure, and then use that ability to point out how that is a flaw of capitalism at the end of the day. While at the same time, exposing surveillance, exposing corruption and exposing trade secrets that should be public,” Crimew said. “It’s also about showing just how much you can do as a single person, as a single entity, how much power you really have.”
Crimew says that despite the online clout, donations and followers, she is hoping to motivate others.
“I want [this] to be motivation, not just in hacking, but in general for activists to realize just how much power you have as a single person,” she reinforced, “But especially when we come together and we all do that work, that’s how we get things going.”
“It seems just negligent from the company,” says Henry Hebner, a senior computer programming major at Ohio State University who previously worked on apps as an intern at JP Morgan Chase. “As far as I can tell, what happened was there’s just a server that pretty much anyone had access to, they just needed to find the IP for it. Once someone found the IP, they had access to property files, and that allowed them to get more access. And then with the more access they just found [data] that shouldn’t be unsecured.”
“It’s been an embarrassing couple weeks for federal agencies,” said Joseph Schwieterman, a DePaul School for Public Service professor, as well as director of the Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development and president of Chicago’s Chapter of the Transportation Research Forum. “The mere fact that Social Security numbers have been shared widely is an inexcusable failure.”
The CommuteAir server that hosted the no-fly list was operated by Amazon Web Services (AWS). According to the AWS website, they host over 7,500 government agency websites.
“The way AWS does security is kind of a gray area because sometimes they’ll just push security back onto the people that are using their apps and then sometimes like the AWS will itself be secure,” said Hebner. “So I think [AWS is] only responsible for half of the security. AWS could clearly just say like, well, it’s not our fault. You didn’t implement [the security] correctly.”
Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC) tweeted on January 21 about the leak, saying, “We’ll be coming for answers.” Rep. Bishop is a member of the Committee on Homeland Security. As of February 14, an official investigation has not been opened. However, Rep. Bishop and Rep. Mark Green (R-TN) sent a letter to the TSA inquiring about their cybersecurity.
Over the last 30 days, Crimew’s Twitter account has gained over 75,000 followers.
The Silver Van
The images show the inside of a Chicago Recovery Alliance van. The van parks in communities susceptible for drug addiction, giving out free drug paraphernalia, health care, wound care, and offering drug testing. The van is run completely by volunteers and a couple of organizers. Chicago Recovery Alliance began in 1996 and has served the Chicagoland area ever since.
Audrey Leib 