Tony Sarabia
WBEZ’s Tony Sarabia talks with people who came out later in life about how that affected their closest relationships.
Some colleagues you know for a year, or five, or ten. But when you’ve spent 28 years with an organization, a decade is just the start. Morning Shift host Tony Sarabia has known Morning Edition anchor Lisa Labuz for just about 20 years, All Things Considered anchor Melba Lara for 26 years, and both WBEZ program director Heidi Goldfein and Worldview host Jerome McDonnell for his full 28 years with the station. Enter the WBEZ lifers. One last time, Tony trades stories with some of his best friends and colleagues about life in radio and how both the station and they have changed over the years.
Morning Shift host Tony Sarabia recently spoke with Orr, 74, about his decades in local politics, his humbling eight days as the city’s boss, his work to support LGBTQ rights and his plans for the future.
Mayoral candidate Bill Daley has proposed a commuter tax. A UIC professor explains the basics of the tax and how it would work.
Soccer moms. White evangelicals, Latinos, Millennials. Those groups will no doubt be looked at more closely in the days and months following tomorrow’s midterm elections to help pundits, journalists and pollsters make sense of the results. Another group that’s been lumped into the stew over the years are Catholics. They’re often referred to as a swing vote in U.S. national elections. But just as with those other groups, Catholics are not monolithic. And over the decades there has been a widening gap in liberal and conservative Catholics with the latter group becoming more entrenched after the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade abortion ruling. Steven P. Millies, Catholic expert and author of Good Intentions: A History of Catholic Voters’ Road from Roe to Trump, sits down with the Morning Shift to talk about the past, present and possible future of Catholics’ role in U.S. electoral politics.
The Chicago Reader has had its share of ups and downs since its founding in 1971. Now in its latest effort to right its ship, the current owners of the publication have turned to the co-founder of another longtime Chicago alternative newspaper to take over as publisher. Tracy Baim helped create the LGBTQ-focused Windy City Times in 1985, when the Reader was a four-section publication with annual revenues nearing $6 million. The media landscape has transformed greatly since those days and Baim says her goal is to make the Reader solvent and relevant, increasing both its readership and revenues. Morning Shift talks with Baim about her plans to achieve that goal. We also take a look at her long career at the Windy City Times and some of the notable moments in LGBTQ history since that paper’s founding 33 years ago.
What do these things have in common: the birth of the Republican Party, the creation of the state income tax, environmental conservation and dark money politics? Wisconsin. For decades, the Badger State was seen as a beacon of progressivism even when Republicans were in charge, but somewhere along the way that changed and now the state is a deep red. So how and when did it happen and what does it say about the direction politics is heading in this country? Wisconsin native Dan Kaufman set out to connect the dots in his new book The Fall of Wisconsin. GUEST: Dan Kaufman, author of the book The Fall of Wisconsin: The Conservative Conquest of a Progressive Bastion and the Future of American Politics
For more than 40 years Val Camilletti welcomed kids and adults to her record store, Val’s Halla. Sadly, that came to and end when she died early Tuesday morning at the age of 78. According to one of her closest friends, Val died in hospice, two years after being diagnosed with breast cancer. We all have our own memories of Val and her store.
Chicago performer Brigid Murphy was sitting in Nashville’s famed Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge more than 30 years ago when an idea popped into her head. It was there she decided to create an alter ego that’s equal parts Dolly Parton, Flo from the TV show “Alice” and performer Ethel Merman: Millie May Smith. Since that epiphany, Murphy has had a three decades-plus run with “Milly’s Orchid Show,” a modern vaudeville show which had its first show in the old Lounge Ax club in Lincoln Park. The show is a mix of jugglers, fire eaters, dancers, singers and storytellers with Milly Mae at the center of it all. Murphy scaled back her work when she was diagnosed with cancer in 1993, but she brought Milly’s Orchid Show back to the stage just two years later. Now, she’s putting the final touches on the latest incarnation,“Milly’s Summer Extravaganza.” Brigid Murphy joins the Morning Shift to tell us what the audience can expect with this show, how the Milly has evolved over the years and how she’s the one responsible for bringing Blue Man Group to Chicago.
Organized religion, from Catholicism to Islam, is facing tough times. Whether it’s being used as a political weapon, a perch to abuse power or to justify aggression and intolerance, religion — especially in the U.S. — is seen as a hostile force. Chicago author and Columbia College philosophy professor Stephen Asma has always been skeptical of religion. But in his new book, “Why We Need Religion”, Asma argues that even though many view religion as irrational, that irrationality may be its source of positive power. He also posits that religion, unlike science, helps people manage a range of emotion such as rage and sorrow.
Last summer, Chicago joined major cities across the country by taking part in Vision Zero, a program aimed at boosting transportation safety for drivers, cyclists and pedestrians. However one year after implementing the program, traffic fatalities have risen in Chicago. Every Monday throughout this summer, the Morning Shift is examining the issue of traffic fatalities and pedestrian and cyclist deaths. We’re looking at best practices, comparing Chicago to other cities around the country and taking your comments and questions live on the air. Kyle Whitehead, a spokesman for the Active Transportation Alliance, talks about new safety measures the organization is pushing for.
Longtime president Karen Lewis of the Chicago Teachers Union--a Goliath of a union in an already strong union city--announced late last week that she will be stepping down from her position amid health concerns. Lewis is moving aside for new leadership, 8 years after first being elected as union leader. Longtime member and president Karen Lewis of the Chicago Teachers Union—a Goliath of a union in an already strong union city—announced late last week that she will be stepping down from her position amid health concerns. Lewis is moving aside for new leadership, eight years after first being elected as union leader. She led the union during a particularly splintered time, and went on to lead the CTU on a 10-day strike in September 2012, the first teachers strike in 25 years. Lewis has a reputation as being a tough negotiator. One of those who sat across the table from Lewis in contract negotiations during her tenure was Jim Franczek, the longtime labor attorney for Chicago Public Schools. Despite being Lewis’s one-time adversary, Franczek says he has nothing but respect for the outgoing CTU president. He stopped by the Morning Shift to talk about Karen Lewis’s legacy, and the future of the CTU without her at the helm.
The nation’s high court last week put off ruling on a case that originated here in Illinois. Janus versus American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) is a U.S. labor law case that centers on the right ofpublic employee unions to collect fees from non-union members for the service of collective bargaining. Morning Shift talks to Steve Schwinn, Constitutional Law Professor at Chicago’s John Marshall Law School, for more details on the case including the backstory and it implications.
Wilmette grade-schooler Nate Butkus says he was born with a passion for science. When he was 5 years old, he created a science podcast with the help of his dad. Nate’s first guest was his mom. Now, Nate is 8 years old, and his The Show About Science podcast gets thousands of listeners per episode. It even caught the attention of Ellen Degeneres, who had Nate on her show a couple of years ago. Nate’s podcast has covered everything from coral reef restoration and genome editing to how sugar affects the brain. His dad, Eric, is Nate’s producer, helping him find guests for the ideas and interests that swirl around Nate’s head. Morning Shift sits down with the soon-to-be third-grader to hear more about his love of all things science and what he thinks he’ll want to be when he grows up.