It’s 3:30 p.m. on a Saturday in Chicago, and I’m perched on an antique taupe couch surrounded by guitars, piles of records, violins, a black and red piano, and an elaborate stereo system. The space looks as if it hasn’t been touched since the 1970s – probably because it hasn’t.

Guitar repairist Geoff Benge resides in this preserved 1970s apartment. The floor is patterned with turquoise, royal blue and orange circles, and the walls are paneled white and brown. Around the corner there is a glass table with wooden chairs adjacent to a narrow kitchen with overhead cabinets.

The 2024 Democratic National Convention came to a close last week after delegates cast their votes, the Obamas took the mic and Kamala Harris officially accepted the presidential nomination. During those four days, thousands of protesters gathered at Union Park with handmade signs and banners calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and a withdrawal of U.S. military aid to Israel. “This is our Vietnam,” said one of the speakers, who kicked off the final march before Harris took the stage at th...

Last year in Yorkville, Illinois, a parent wrote a complaint about one of the books in the school curriculum: Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson, which focuses on two Black men who’ve been wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death by the U.S. incarceration system. After one parental complaint, the Yorkville Community District 115 School Board removed the book from the curriculum, claiming that it was “too controversial.”

What happened in Yorkville is no longer uncommon.