By Danny Postel

It was Monday morning, April 26, at a little computer repair shop and internet café on the corner of Touhy and California, that I learned of Fred Halliday’s death. Just one building south of that computer repair shop is one of Rogers park’s best kept secrets, a Middle Eastern tea house and restaurant called Venus, which is my home away from home. I have very fond memories of an evening with Fred in the autumn of 2005 that started out at Venus and ended in Edgewater.

I had organized a pair of events for Fred in Chicago that November. Fred, who lived in London (he taught international relations at the London School of Economics), didn’t voyage across the Atlantic often, finding it increasingly burdensome with time. So when he told me he’d be speaking at the Middle East Studies Association’s annual conference that fall in Washington, I jumped on the opportunity to have him in Chicago. I persuaded John Mearsheimer to have Fred lecture at the University of Chicago (not a hard sell – Mearsheimer had never met Fred but respected his work was eager to have him on campus).

By Chris Drew

One moment I'm an artist selling art-patches for $1, the next Chicago Police Officers are leading me in hand-cuffs to a burgundy sedan to whisk me off to jail. Two days later, I'm trying to get out of Cook County lockup held on a first-class felony charge, just one step down from murder. How did this happen?

I've been organizing artists to show their art in locations around Uptown, Edgewater, Lakeview and Ravenswood communities for twenty years. For fifteen years I've taught artists the basics of screen printing for free. When the Iraq war came I began printing opinion patches on 100 percent cotton fabric and offering them to the public with a safety pin for immediate use. I started my blog in July of 2006 – Street Artist Adventures – the Free Speech Artists' Movement.