Gregory Royal Pratt
Born: Chicago, Illinois
Connection to Illinois: A native Chicagoan, Pratt grew up in Chicago's Little Village neighborhood. He is a graduate of the University of Illinois Chicago. A reporter for the Chicago Tribune, he has been a finalist for the Livingston and earned recognition from the National Headliner Awards, the Lisagors, and Scripps Howard. Biography: Gregory Royal Pratt covered every day of Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s term and was deeply sourced in City Hall, as well as in the other offices of local, state, and national politics that shaped the mayor’s administration. Pratt has won several national awards for his political reporting and is a regular commentator about the city on local and national media, including appearances on CNN and NPR. His investigative reporting has spurred reforms in local government and helped exonerate two men.
Awards:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregoryroyalpratt/
Web: https://royalpratt.com/
WorldCat: http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=Gregory++Royal++Pratt
Selected Titles
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The City Is Up for Grabs: How Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot Led and Lost a City in Crisis ISBN: 1641605995 OCLC: 1385449549 Chicago Review Press 2024 Chicago is a world-class city, but it is also a city in crisis. Crime is up, schools have repeatedly shut down due to conflict between City Hall and the powerful teachers’ union, and COVID-19 only deepened the entrenched poverty, institutional racism, and endless tug of war between the city’s haves and have nots. For four years, the person at the center of this storm was Lori Lightfoot. A groundbreaking figure—the first Black, gay woman to be elected mayor of a major city and only the second female mayor of Chicago—she knew the city was at a critical turning point when she took office in 2019. But the once-in-a-lifetime challenges she ended up facing were beyond anything she or anyone else saw coming. Chicago Tribune reporter Gregory Royal Pratt offers the first comprehensive behind-the-scenes look at the tumultuous single term of Mayor Lightfoot and the chaos that roiled the city and City Hall as she fought to live up to her promises to change the city’s culture of corruption and villainy, reform its long-troubled police department, and make Chicago the safest big city in America. Some of Chicago’s problems can be explained by forces greater than the mayor: national polarization, long-standing cultural and racial tensions, our plague years. But some are the result of Lightfoot’s poor leadership at City Hall, a story that hasn’t been told in full—until now. |