Red is the color of caution, of danger, of a body on the battlefield, bleeding out. So it was, in a sense, fitting to see buildings around Chicago lit in red Tuesday night to dramatize the hemorrhaging going on in America’s live events industry. Since the COVID-19 pandemic forced us away from one another in mid-March, almost none of the millions of people who put on plays, concerts, trade shows and other in-person happenings has been working.



The businesses that employ them have been in retrenchment mode. A talent drain, as folks scramble for other ways to make money, is imminent. And help from the federal government, these people say, is desperately needed. So the all-volunteer We Make Events / Red Alert project created a new kind of red light district, temporary and nationwide. In Chicago, they lit up buildings including the Vic Theatre and the peristyle in Millennium Park in hopes that supporters of the arts -- those of us eager to get off the couch and back into the world of shared experience -- will ask Congress to pass the RESTART Act. That, they say, would offer a bright white beacon of hope.