Spiritus Ranae

An Open Letter to Representative Aarón Ortíz
1st District, Illinois House of Representatives

Dear Representative Ortíz,

I am writing to you today as a resident and constituent in Chicago, to express my strong support for passing comprehensive data center oversight during the upcoming Fall Veto Session—specifically the framework established in the POWER Act (HB 5513 / SB 4016). Data centers and AI infrastructure are expanding at a rapid pace across Illinois. While technological growth brings economic opportunity, unmitigated expansion threatens our electric grid, our environment, and our pocketbooks. Without state guardrails, everyday residents and small businesses risk shouldering the massive grid expansion costs required by hyper-scale operators. As my representative, I urge you to support a legislative package in the Veto Session that establishes these essential principles:

1. Protect Ratepayers: Establish a dedicated electricity rate class so data center operators pay for their own transmission and grid upgrades rather than passing those costs onto residential power bills.
2. Require "Bring Your Own Clean Energy": Mandate that data centers procure new, local zero-emission power (solar, wind, and storage) to match their demand, rather than relying on fossil fuels like natural gas microgrids or extending the life of aging power plants.
3. Protect Local Water & Aquifers: Implement strict state EPA permitting and daily usage reporting to ensure water-intensive cooling systems do not deplete or strain our local municipal water tables.
4. Enforce Interruptible Power Rules: Ensure that during extreme weather or grid stress, data centers without dedicated clean power can be temporarily curtailed so residential heating and cooling remain uninterrupted.

Until these commonsense guardrails are signed into law, I also fully support Governor Pritzker’s pause on expanding state tax credits under the Data Center Investment Program. Taxpayer subsidies should not be granted without clear accountability for local environmental and grid impacts. As a voter in your district, I want to see Illinois lead in clean technology—but not at the expense of our energy reliability, clean air, or monthly utility bills. I hope I can count on your vote to pass the POWER Act framework this fall. Thank you for your time, service, and leadership on behalf of our community.

Sincerely, Tony Adams

Take Action: Live in Illinois? Find your state representative and senator using the Illinois General Assembly District Lookup Tool and urge them to support data center safeguards during the Fall Veto Session.

Dear President Chiang,

Congratulations on becoming the eighteenth president of Northwestern University. You arrive with a formidable record—a scholar’s rigor and a builder’s instinct. But more importantly for the moment we find ourselves in, you come with a reputation for a genuine commitment to free expression. That reputation is exactly why I am writing to you now, before the ordinary demands of a new presidency settle over everything else. There is unfinished business here. It predates you, but it is now yours, and how you handle it will likely say more about your tenure than any inaugural address ever could.

I’m talking about the settlement your predecessor's administration struck with the federal government last November: seventy-five million dollars, paid out through 2028, to end a civil-rights investigation and unfreeze federal funding. As part of that deal, Northwestern agreed to throw out the 2024 agreement it reached with the students who occupied Deering Meadow. Whatever its imperfections, that original agreement represented something vital: the university actually talking to its own students instead of just policing them. In its place, we got new restrictions on protests and mandatory training built to the specifications of the administration that froze our funding in the first place.

I understand the pragmatic defense. Interim President Bienen said it plainly: litigation would have cost time and money the university simply couldn't risk losing. I don't doubt the financial calculation was sincere. But let's be clear about what actually happened. When Northwestern tore up its own agreement with its own students under direct financial duress—from a government explicit about wanting universities to constrain pro-Palestinian speech—it taught everyone a devastating lesson. It told students, faculty, and watching universities that the price of political speech the government dislikes is calculable, and that Northwestern will pay it rather than hold the line.

That isn't a technical compliance matter. It's a wound to the very purpose of a university. It has exacted a real, ongoing cost from this school's learning and spirit.

President Chiang, no one expects you to relitigate a deal you didn't sign or reopen a massive funding fight in your first year. What I am asking for is much narrower: refuse to let this settlement be the final word.

That could mean a genuine, faculty-led review of the disciplinary actions taken against students in the run-up to the deal, with a real path to reconsideration where the underlying conduct was peaceful protest, not harassment. It could mean building durable legal infrastructure—a standing free expression fund, or independent counsel for students facing retaliation for lawful speech—so the next president isn’t negotiating from a position of total exposure. And it could mean simply stating, in your own voice, that complying with a settlement is not the same as endorsing its logic. A university can ensure student safety without deciding that the cheapest way to handle political controversy is to selectively restrict free speech.

You’ve said you see championing free expression as central to what makes a university work. I am asking you to test that conviction against the hardest case available, not the easiest one. Don't let your presidency be defined by refighting a battle already lost—define it by making sure Northwestern never again decides that the cheapest way out of a funding fight is handing over its students' right to dissent.

Welcome to Evanston. I hope you'll rise to the moment.

With respect and genuine hope for your presidency,

A Northwestern MA

The following is a Letter to the Editor of the Chicago Tribune in response to a call issued by ActiveTrans telling us that the Trib is looking for letters on bike lanes with a deadline of... you guessed it! Tomorrow!

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Chicago needs a connected, city-wide network of bike lanes and safe pedestrian crossings, and we won't get one as long as every mile of it depends on a single alderman's mood.

Right now, aldermanic prerogative means each of the city's 50 wards decides on its own whether to build, expand, or block this infrastructure. Wealthier, whiter North Side wards are on their fourth or fifth round of bike lane upgrades. Much of the South and West Side remains a dangerous void, with arterial streets that have no safe way to cross town on foot or by bike at all. This matters for two reasons.

First, arterial infrastructure doesn't just serve the people who live in that neighborhood. It serves commuters, delivery workers, students, and visitors crossing the whole city, whether they're walking or biking. A bike lane or a safer crosswalk on Western or Archer is citywide infrastructure, not a neighborhood amenity, and treating it as one alderman's call guarantees a patchwork network that fails everyone trying to get across town safely.

Second, ward-by-ward control has turned bike lanes into a political weapon. As lanes finally arrive, slowly, in long-underinvested communities, opportunistic challengers are using them as a wedge issue against sitting aldermen. In the 12th Ward, a candidate using MAGA-style politics is campaigning against bike infrastructure to chip away at a popular progressive incumbent. Much of this opposition leans on small business owners worried about losing a handful of parking spots. I understand the anxiety, but it's a shame to see local businesses pitted against pedestrian and cyclist safety, especially when studies show they help local business thrive.

Also, the climate dimension is more urgent by the day. At a moment when the Trump administration is actively rolling back sustainability, cities have to pick up the slack. A real network for pedestrians and cyclists is one of the cheapest, fastest ways Chicago can cut emissions and car dependency, but only if we build it as a system rather than 50 disconnected fragments.

Past reform efforts made headway on permits and licensing, but stalled on zoning. I don't expect this Council to give up power over street infrastructure either. That's exactly why this needs saying: a real network requires a citywide plan, not 50 separate referendums on whether any alderman feels like building it.

Chicago can't walk or bike its way into the future one ward at a time.