Opinion: Chicago rises again to be 'City of the Big Shoulders'

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Being an English major in college was going to come in handy someday. Eventually.

Three weeks ago, in issuing a sweeping injunction on the use of force by immigration agents in Operation Midway Blitz, U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis did something you rarely hear in even the most vaunted courtrooms in this country: She read a poem . In its entirety.

Carl Sandburg’s 1914 poem “Chicago” is a powerful, sweeping description of the city at the turn of the 20th century. Chicago’s oft-cited nickname, the “City of the Big Shoulders,” comes from it.

But it’s more than that.

Some 110 years later, Sandburg’s words are illustrative of the moxie this place has always had but only recently visibly reclaimed.

“Come and show me another city with lifted