The graffiti has garnered extra attention from police in the past few weeks because of its frequency. Evanston police even recruited a crime analyst to monitor the case. more ›

Chicagoist Photos Flickr pool contributor Elliot "Bluelliot" Mandel sent this photo earlier in the week. more ›

Windy City Times is reporting that tires to more than 30 floats were slashed or punctured in the lot of one of the parades major float maker's in the Back of the Yards neighborhood. more ›

Charges will not be filed against four Iowa men who filmmaker Usama Alshaibi said beat him, in what he contended was a hate crime. The report from Jefferson County Attorney Tim Dille actually lays a lot of the blame for what happened on March 6 on Alshaibi. more ›

Mother-turned-activist-turned-author Judy Shepard will be in town tomorrow, Thursday, evening as the featured keynote speaker of H.E.A.L. Ourselves: Opening Eyes, Closing Wounds at the Center on Halsted in Lakeview. Shepard, thrust into the national media spotlight after her then-21-year-old son Matthew was brutally murdered because he was gay in 1998, has since become an outspoken advocate of hate crime legislation. more ›

A member of the Youth Pride Center (YPC), an LGBT-geared Hyde Park youth support center, was attacked earlier this month as he left a Green Line train stop. It is the fourth anti-gay attack on a member of the South Side center in as many weeks, and the 17th this year according to a report from the Windy City Times. more ›

Hate crime charges could be coming in the burning of nine year old Joshua Judkins, according to authorities investigating the case. Joshua, who suffered second- and third-degree burns over 20 percent of his body, was visiting his mother in Hammond when the incident happened. He was playing with three older boys he had just met when they allegedly threw alcohol on him and set him on fire. But Joshua is black and the three boys involved are white, leading Joshua's father to call for hate crime charges. Elijah Judkins said, "This is not nothing that just happened by chance. This was a hate crime." Police say the boys claimed the burning was accidental. Authorities also say Joshua isn't well enough yet to give an official statement. [CBS 2 via WBBM-AM] more ›

With how nasty the race for Dennis Hastert's vacant seat has gotten recently, you'd think a couple of high school girls were running the campaigns leading up to tomorrow's special election for Dennis Hastert's seat in Illinois 14th Congressional District. more ›

So far this week Chicagoist had an argument with our siblings over baseball, endured a date with a guy who isn't even registered to vote, forgot to set our alarm clock, thus making us late for a big meeting at work, fell down some stairs, and accidentally threw our favorite cashmere sweater into the dryer. And it's only Wednesday! Sigh. Even with all of that, our week is still not going as poorly as Governor... more ›

After over a week of silence, Governor Blagojevich has finally said something about the controversy involving Claudette Marie Johnson, a Nation of Islam member who last year was appointed to serve on the Illinois Commission on Discrimination and Hate Crimes (CDHC). Johnson has refused to condemn comments made by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan bashing Jews and gays. Blago refused to remove Johnson from her post, and five members of the CDHC have resigned... more ›

Governor Blagojevich’s rising political fortunes may take quite a hit as the controversy regarding his appointment of a Nation of Islam higher-up to his Commission on Discrimination and Hate Crimes (CDHC) rages on. Blago appointed Claudette Marie Johnson, the minister of protocol for the Nation of Islam, to the CDHC with last August. Little attention was given to the appointment until late last month when Johnson, also known as Sister Claudette Muhammad, invited other members... more ›