■ New apartments on Austin Boulevard PAGE 2
FREE Vol. 39 No. 37
September 17, 2025 ■ Also serving Garfield Park ■ austinweeklynews.com
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40 Acres is open, page 3
Catalyst West Side NAACP president: increases inTrump administration civil rights school therapy rollback effort is same fight, new day options for Decades of activism for Karl Brinson students By DEBORAH BAYLISS
Catalyst Circle Rock charter school partners with Thrive Counseling Center to help students, educators and administration to talk about mental health By JESSICA MORDACQ Staff Reporter
As the school year kicks off, students at Catalyst Circle Rock charter school will have a second year of in-school therapy available to them. Oak Park-based Thrive Counseling Center offers therapy, case management, psychiatrist and crisis services to clients. After providing on-site therapy services to about 15 Catalyst students once a week at the start of 2025, Thrive is adding another therapist and day of in-school services this school year to double the number of students served. The goal is to provide accessible mental health services for young people who may face barriers to care. See CATALYST SCHOOL on page 8
Contributing Reporter
The civil rights battles he witnessed in the late 1960s have set the stage for today’s challenges from the Trump administration, says the president of the Chicago Westside Branch NAACP. Karl Brinson moved to Chicago’s Austin Community as a child with his family when racial tensions were high as more Blacks moved to what had been an historically white area. This, he says, may have set the stage for his subsequent years of activism. “In my early life at age 19, I got involved with politics and was a political activist and then a community activist and then got involved with civil rights,” Brinson said. “I’ve always been a community activist.” The national NAACP achieved numerous significant victories in the fight for civil rights, including the Supreme Court case Brown vs. the Board of Education that declared segregation in public school unconstitutional. See KARL BRINSON on page 11
FILE
CIVIL RIGHTS BATTLE RENEWED: Karl Brinson, head of West Side NAACP, has been in the fight for civil rights since he was a teen.
SEPT. 26-27 / FREE LIVE MUSIC * CRAFT BEER & WINE * FAMILY FUN * LOCAL FOOD