You think the first half of 2020 was unpredictable?
Well, just wait until the second half.
The first six months of 2020 have been, shall we say, a lot: a whipsaw presidential primary, a worldwide pandemic, economic collapse and massive, sometimes violent protests over police brutality and racial injustice.
If little of that was predictable, imagine how volatile the next six months might be.
While COVID-19 cases are decreasing in Illinois, a sharp contrast to other areas of the country, nearly all plans for major events remain subject to change. But as it stands, schools will return to in-person instruction, some safety net benefits related to the pandemic will cease and the Chicago Bears will start their season by playing the Detroit Lions at noon on Sept. 13.
That’s the plan, anyway. As 2020 has amply demonstrated, who knows how things will actually shake out? Efforts to defund police departments could gain momentum — demonstrators have already made that demand in
Chicago, Evanston, Aurora and elsewhere — or fizzle. An effective COVID-19 vaccine could be available by the end of the year, or it could slide well into 2021.
Even something as straightforward as a parade is complicated.
The Columbus Day parade in Chicago is scheduled for Oct. 12, and Lissa Druss of the Joint Civic Committee of Italian Americans, the organization that puts on the popular event, said the group intends to carry though if the parade can be done safely. She was less worried about a possible escalation of protests against Christopher Columbus, even though the city recently covered statues of the controversial explorer and colonizer to protect them from vandalism.
She noted, however, that the fate of the parade “is really not up to us. It’s up to the city to determine what’s going to happen.”
Officials with the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, meanwhile, said the city won’t issue permits for events that fall before Labor Day, and that no decisions have been made for events later in the year.
With such a caveat in mind, here’s are some things to look forward to in the second half of 2020:
Back to school
Gov. J.B. Pritzker this week encouraged K-12 schools, closed since midMarch, to resume in-person instruction in the fall, albeit with masks, social distancing and a prohibition on more than 50 people gathering in one space. But the final details will be left to the state’s 852 school districts, few of which have settled on specifics.
Barrington District 220 earlier this month floated two alternatives: one a full return to school buildings, the second a model in which elementary students come back, but high school students spend some days in class, others learning remotely. If the pandemic worsened to the point where Pritzker declares a reversion to phase three, students would go back to distance learning.
But the latest plan, which still awaits final approval, eliminates the second option.
“(Superintendent Brian) Harris has directed the team to focus all efforts on bringing students back in phase four, with the option of distance learning for students and staff who are not willing to return under the guidelines we will be providing,” a district spokeswoman said.
Many of the state’s colleges and universities also plan to bring students back to campus in the fall, though some in academia have warned that could be dangerous: Writing in Inside Higher Ed last month, two professors called large universities “essentially cruise ships on steroids, as far as an acute respiratory pathogen like the new coronavirus is concerned.”
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign officials say the success of their planned campus reopening depends upon people taking the proper precautions.
“We cannot overstate that our own personal behavior will determine in a large part our access to all the good that our campus offers,” Chancellor Robert Jones and Provost Andreas Cangellaris recently wrote in a message to faculty, students and staff. ” ... (As) we prepare to resume oncampus operations in the fall, we count on the unfaltering vigilance of everyone in our community.”
Safety net ends
The business shutdowns created by COVID-19 have led to mass unemployment — last measured at 15.4% in the Chicago area — that has been partially softened by government measures, including a ban on evictions and an extra $600 added to weekly unemployment checks.
But for the moment, those benefits come with an expiration date. The enhanced unemployment checks, which some employers have blamed for keeping workers on the sideline even when their companies reopen, are set to end by July 31.
Congressional Democrats
have passed a bill to extend the bonus into 2021, with Rep. Robin Kelly of Matteson calling it “an emergency investment in our communities during these tough times,” but the effort has stalled in the Republican-controlled Senate.
Meanwhile, Pritzker plans to continue forbidding evictions through July 31, even though some landlords are suing to overturn the ban. Whenever evictions resume, Mark Swartz, executive director for the Chicago-based Lawyers’ Committee for Better Housing, said the backlog of cases, combined with the spike expected to come with high unemployment, could jam the court system.
That, in turn, could harm renters who aren’t familiar with the legal process meant to safeguard their rights, or with the government programs meant to help keep them in their homes.
“Where there’s even more people pushing an expedited process and pressures to resolve lots of cases, we just worry that people won’t have the ability to have their side heard,” he said.
Calls for police reform
The killing of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police in May set off civil unrest in Chicago and across the country, with activists, community members and even some politicians calling for large-scale police reform.
Demands for the defunding of local police departments have taken hold, with some calling for the shrinking of budgets, removing police from schools and reducing their footprint in the community.
So far this year, Americans have experienced a “massive shift in public opinion” as the public is increasingly supportive of the protests following Floyd’s death, said Yanilda María González, assistant professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
González, who studies police reform in Latin America and was previously an assistant professor at the University of Chicago, sees parallels between this moment and reform that happened in some Latin American countries in the 1990s after widespread outrage over police abuses.
“People are starting to think a lot bigger on police reform,” she said.
Typically cities have sought small-scale reforms after high-profile incidents of police violence, such as creating civilian review boards, use of body cameras and implicit bias training, she said. Now, polls are showing that people are more supportive of larger reforms that would involve rethinking the structure of police departments.
“This is really new in the U.S.,” González said.
As we move to the second half of 2020, “two opposing forces” are poised to face off on the issue, as police and their unions will likely mobilize against potential reform proposals that spring from the movement, according to González.
“The challenge for organizers will be how do you sustain this moment of consensus so that the resulting divisions don’t enable police pressure to let everyone go back to the previous status quo,” she said.
Post office election
Illinois is set to send about 5 million mail-in ballot applications to the state’s voters after the legislators passed a bill they said would help protect the public during the pandemic. It was an almost entirely Democratic measure; Republicans raised the specter of possible voter fraud.
The unprecedented effort will fall largely to county clerks, and it involves more than mail. The office of Cook County Clerk Karen Yarbrough has already prepared a lengthy to-do list, including rounding up personal protective equipment for workers who will serve voters at the polls and reorganizing polling places to eliminate nursing homes.
Will County Clerk Lauren Staley Ferry said her office plans to process up to four times as many mail-in ballots as the previous high, set during the 2016 election, while simultaneously ensuring that the county’s more than 200 polling places will be equipped with ample hand sanitizer and other protective gear. She’s also trying to expand the pool of election judges to include students as young as 16, who are at less risk than the elderly from the virus.
“It’s hard to predict what things will look like in November, so we are doing all we can to prepare for whatever it is we see that day,” she said.
Play ball. Or not.
As major sporting events stumble toward reopening next month, only one thing is certain among the city’s sports teams: The Chicago Bulls are taking a breather.
The Bulls are not among in the 22 NBA teams that will, supposedly, finish the season in a luxurious “bubble” at the Walt Disney World complex in Florida. Some players slated to take part have opted out, though, fearing for their health as COVID-19 cases soar in that state, and some epidemiologists are skeptical that the bubble will hold.
Closer to home, the Cubs and White Sox are set to begin truncated seasons in July, though it’s not clear whether fans will be permitted to be in the stands. The Bears and the rest of the NFL are still on track to play in the fall, but Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, recently said it’s impossible to know if conditions will be safe enough to permit football.
College football remains in question as well: Some teams returned for summer workouts only to suspend operations after players tested positive for COVID-19.
“I think everyone realizes the plan is written in pencil,” Pittsburgh athletic director Heather Lyke told the New York Times.
Entertainment drought?
In early March, producers of the latest James Bond movie, “No Time to Die,” announced they were moving its release date from the springtime to late November because of global theaters closed by COVID-19. The cinematic reshuffling soon became a stampede, with other big productions, including the latest “Fast and the Furious” entry and Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical “In the Heights,” pushed well into 2021.
With theaters just starting to open after a threemonth shutdown, Chris Johnson, CEO of the suburban chain Classic Cinemas, said while the schedule will be lighter than normal, plenty of big movies, including the live-action Disney film “Mulan” and “Tenet,” Christopher Nolan’s latest mind-bender, will still hit the screen this year.
Next year, he said, should be much more robust. Or so he hopes.
“It all depends on where we’re at from a virus standpoint,” he said. “The quicker it goes away, the quicker the movies will return. It could go the other way too.”