By Elizabeth Tharakan When the St. Louis Reparations Commission presented its first proposal last week to begin to address systemic racial discrimination against Black residents of the city, it drew on pioneering reparations programs in California and in the Chicago suburb of Evanston, which has already disbursed more than $1 million in funds since its
Photojournalist Tiffany Blanchette was standing with a family after their house had burned down just east of Kankakee, Il when the family’s lost cat appeared. Blanchette captured the touching scene with her camera. For Blanchette, 33, this was a particularly rewarding moment in her early career as a photojournalist. Another such moment was when a
Missouri Gov. Mike Parson is trying again to restrict access to public information, making it harder and more costly for people to hold the government accountable through open records laws. Parson wants government agencies to have the authority to charge fees for the time their attorneys spend reviewing and responding to records requested by the
Police misconduct is a leading cause of wrongful convictions in the United States. Just over 2,900 people have been exonerated in the U.S. since 1989 according to data from the National Registry of Exonerations. That amounts to 25,900 lost years for those stuck behind bars. Over 37% of those cases involve police misconduct, and over
Reporter Kallie Cox has sat through more school board meetings, city council meetings and community forums for the Southern Illinoisan and Daily Egyptian newspapers than she can count. But the last time she attended a meeting in person was a year ago. At the forum, there was a whiteboard, and after the meeting was over,
