This reads like an editorial. I mean I get it, but for real.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/politics ... story.html

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Some of these projects are mind-blowing:

The plan includes nearly $1.5 million for an AIDS Garden to memorialize Chicago’s fight against HIV and AIDS.

The spending bill also provides $200,000 for Another Chance Church in the Roseland neighborhood.

Included in the bill is $50 million for grants to be doled out by the Illinois Arts Council, which is chaired by Shirley Madigan, the speaker’s wife.

The plan was hastily put together, and it’s not yet clear where all the money will be spent. The 362-page bill contains lines with lump sums worth hundreds of millions of dollars that don’t list specific projects

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The plan includes nearly $1.5 million for an AIDS Garden to memorialize Chicago’s fight against HIV and AIDS.

“The AIDS Garden is a community project that creates beauty in a historic space at the Belmont Rocks, where the gay community would gather in the early days of Chicago’s LGBT movement and the AIDS epidemic,” said sponsoring Democratic Rep. Sara Feigenholtz. “To the larger community who lived through this struggle — ‘the Rocks’ are a sacred space. Enshrining it in history at a garden surrounded in beauty designed to reflect the history of this movement is important.”

back in my day (late 90s til maybe the early early 2000s) the Belmont rocks were where ravers/partygoers/etc went for afterhours after their rave/type-event (as a good # of us were under 21 so places like the continental or the (blue) note weren't an option beyond the whole "alcohol isn't necessarily our drug of choice tonight" thing) so you'd hope wayland showed up with the nitrous tank (as he often did) and laugh when he fell off the actual rocks after doing a balloon. I had no idea that the site was sacred LGBTQWTFBBQ ground nor that it was a historic location during the AIDS epidemic. Maybe that's what gave those kids the idea to go there circa 3-5am in the first place?

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