Welcome to Chicago 312: 3 Headlines. 1 Big Question. 2 Red Flags. Every Wednesday. Subscribe here.

What To Know This Week: From River North to McKinley Park, from ICE raids to rat mutations: this week was a masterclass in how real victories get buried under bad narratives, bad policy, and bad-faith panic.

Let’s get into it.

3 Headlines:

1. Damen Silos To Be Demolished

Block Club: The Damen Silos are coming down—and with them, another chance at public vision for the South Branch.

Late last week, the city issued five demolition permits for the iconic riverfront silos in McKinley Park, just days after a so-called “environmental safety plan” was announced. But to many on the Southwest Side, the plan rings hollow. The site was sold to MAT Limited—the same company behind the MAT Asphalt plant, a notorious neighborhood polluter. And now they get the silos, too.

Residents had pushed to reimagine the site as a community festival space—a second Salt Shed for the South Side, with green space and river access. Instead, they’re getting six months of demolition and more air pollution monitors.

Why It Matters: Even with better leadership in Buildings—Hopkins took real lessons from Crawford—this demolition shows how powerless city agencies can be once private land deals are locked in. The structural problem remains. You can have a thoughtful commissioner and still end up with a known polluter getting a sweetheart deal on public land and a community-led reuse proposal getting ignored…

2. Federal Budget Fallout

Sun-Times: Last week, Donald Trump signed a brutal tax and policy bill that slashes $1.2 trillion from Medicaid and SNAP. Over 500,000 Illinoisans are expected to lose health coverage. Another 400,000+ could be kicked off food assistance. In Englewood, moms like Natasha McClendon—who already stretch SNAP and work part-time at CPS—are terrified they’ll lose everything for missing a work requirement.

Food pantries are overwhelmed — The Greater Chicago Food Depository says demand is higher than at any point in the pandemic.

Safety net hospitals are on life support — Roseland CEO Tim Egan didn’t mince words: “This will mean death to safety net hospitals and our patients, plain and simple.”

Immigrant families are afraid to apply — Organizers report a sharp drop in program enrollments due to fear of retaliation or deportation.

Why It Matters: These cuts punish the people doing the most to survive—single parents, immigrants, disabled folks, low-wage workers. The plan is cruelty, and the result will be death. Not metaphorically. Literally. But you know this! But fear is not the end of the story. The last time they tried to shred the safety net, organizers stopped the worst of it. Now, we’re past prevention—and the only option is to fight like hell for what’s left. I don’t have an answer but today, I’m looking to the wine moms…

3. Why Did CPD Aid an ICE Raid?

From City Bureau’s Newswire: On June 4, federal agents detained at least 10 people during a South Loop immigration raid after luring them in with fake “check-in” texts. It was a trap. But the trap didn’t just come from ICE. Chicago police showed up too. They didn’t make arrests—but they did set up a perimeter and enabled the operation, a violation of both the Illinois TRUST Act and Chicago’s Welcoming City Ordinance. CPD claims they were only there for “public safety.” But who, exactly, was the public they were protecting? The ICE agents doing the detaining? The surveillance systems feeding them names?

As Nina Sedeño of the Latino Policy Forum put it: “Why were they there? Who or what were they protecting?”

This week City Council’s Committee on Immigrant and Refugee Rights passed a measure demanding a full accounting of who knew what, when, including every record from CPD, OEMC, and the Mayor’s Office.

Why It Matters: If CPD can quietly assist ICE today, they can do it again tomorrow.

1 Big Question: Why Zohran Videos Worked…

Zohran Mamdani Videos Are the New "Joe Rogan for the Left.” I know, as well as you do that. It was not the videos but a variety of other variables that made him successful, from field to Cuomo being awful. But you have to admit that the videos sure helped — and bluntly, they were better edited, scripted, and produced, for, I believe, cheaper, than most of the productions I’ve seen.

His videos, very quickly put, landed because:

• They respect the viewer.

• They are extremely well made (by producers who, based on this Rachel Karten interview, were happy to do this work, had autonomy, and, it’s not unlikely, vastly undercharged)

• They gave people space to be charismatic as themselves about things they actually cared about,

• They’re not trying to explain something for real — they’re showing WHY something is messed up and sharing what can be done to fix it in a hopeful way.

That’s why they work. People SHOULD copy this model, which is why I am aggressively DMing so many of you “make more videos” or “wow what do you think of this video” + talking about short form content constantly on social media instead of doing something productive.

But here’s the problem emerging.

It’s way too easy to copy Zohran Mamdani videos badly.

Over-explaining, under-resourcing, running away from risk, and then wondering why it doesn’t work. Or just being the worst like this developer.

Short form content cannot fix problems of distrust, the incentive to obfuscate things that don't actually need to be complicated, low capacity, weird delegation, no clear theory of change, weird internal and external politics, or a general lack of respect for the people you’re talking to. Or bad policy.

In fact, part of the success of those videos is something I suspect is true about all digital strategy, naïve as it may sound – – even if we reject the outrage machine of the right, we live in a inescapably vibes based media ecosystem. Our content reflects the energy and the tone of the team making it.

I wrote an article a few years ago called explainers don’t explain things. It needs editing that I’ll never do, but the tldr is that the pop journalism style of explainers doesn’t hit when there are fundamental unnamed truths around power and self interest in terms of why certain things operate the way they do.

I think that applies to explainer making too — it SUCKS to put so much energy and time into something that doesn’t hit (and there’s no shortcut for this kind of content, though a rant for a different time is how distribution comes into play).

But here’s the good news: I think making short form video often reveals a lot of problems + challenges in a way that is genuinely restorative. It gives space to address who decides what (in theory and in actual practice), it disincentivizes bad process, helps identify gaps in messaging and understand both internally and for members, and the time intensive + skilled nature of churning those things out means having to move fast and respectfully or losing your team.

And let’s be real: making videos if you don't do it already, especially of a high quality, is way harder, requires new skills, more of a team, and better planning.

So, as everyone tries to adapt "Zohran videos" it's so easy for all of this to become a race to the bottom.

What am I missing? What else is needed to make this strategy feel viable in Chicago? What have you learned from trying it already?

2 Red Flags Stressing Me Out Today:

1. The River North Shooting Was Tragic. A Curfew Response Is Dangerous.

On Saturday night, just after 1:30 a.m., eighteen people were shot in River North, one of the worst mass shootings in Chicago’s recent memory. Four people were killed—including 23-year-old Alaysia Foster, struck by a bullet near the corner of Orleans and Erie. There was substantial press coverage of this, particularly because it happened a short walk from the CTA Red Line, at a launch party for drill rapper Mello Buckzz and in… River North.

The River North mass shooting came at the end of what city officials were preparing to frame as a win. Homicides in April were the lowest since 1962. Violent crime dropped more than 20% in the first quarter of 2025. This Fourth of July weekend was quieter than most in recent memory.

The mayor has a plan: the People’s Plan for Community Safety. It focuses on housing, youth employment, mental health, and community-based response. It’s a non-carceral safety agenda that centers youth jobs, mental health, housing, and trauma care.That plan is part of why homicides are down. But the city keeps failing to show it—visibly, emotionally, narratively. And so voters don’t connect the dots.

Then, in the absence of a story, there’s the one that we drift closer to by default.

It feel strange to connect this to the snap curfew, but it’s already happening. That curfew wouldn’t have prevented the kind of mass shooting we just witnessed. When real violence occurs, we can’t respond with policies that pave the road for something darker. This event can’t be part of the story of why Chicago Police deserve unilateral authority.

2. Rat-volution

Popular Mechanics: Turns out Chicago’s chipmunks are eating so many processed snacks they’re literally mutating. No, really. A new Field Museum study found that our city’s rodents are adapting to urban sprawl in real time: flatter skulls, shorter teeth, bigger bodies. Why? Because high-calorie garbage is easier to chew than acorns, and human noise pollution is so loud that voles are growing smaller inner ears to cope.

Researchers used 125 years of specimens to track how industrialization—and our trash—have reshaped their biology. Chipmunks are getting bigger off Doritos. Voles are flattening out to dodge engine noise. And both are now visibly different from their rural cousins.

Why It Matters: I have no takeaway on this one, sorry. But clearly Pizza Rat is a winner.

See you next Wednesday.

Other rants from me this week include: trying to figure out why distribution is often a non-starter in Chicago (when it matters so much in 2025).

Coming Soon: more candidate Q+As, a real breakdown of what’s happening with the CTA, and, if the race in IL-09 keeps getting weirder, another Ranked Choice Voting explainer. It MIGHT explain things, but no guarantees.

🌟 Help keep Chicago 312 going. This newsletter runs on the energy of people who read it, forward it, yell at me after they read it, and send me every Maria Pappas media appearance. You’re the real MVPs. Good luck out there.

_{All typos are intentional 4D chess.}

PS — Alder Burnett is leaving?! Whoever replaces him will never beat his quotes about The Old Way…