Chicago, IL – This week, Chicago saw elections for mayor and city council in which almost all the candidates ran on platforms opposing outgoing Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Progressive victories were won in a number of wards across the city, including by Maria Hadden, a young, Black, queer woman who unseated Joe Moore in the far Northside Rogers Park neighborhood. Moore had been a progressive 25 years ago but is now a staunch ally of the mayor and a defender of big money developers. Hadden was recently a board member of Black Youth Project 100, and hers was a major win for progressives in the first round of elections.

The other big victory on Tuesday was the reelection of Carlos Ramirez Rosa. Targeted for defeat by the allies of mayor, Rosa has been the lone militant voice in the council since his election in 2015. He championed the issue of police accountability, which he highlighted one week before election day in a video he posted online, appealing for community activists to rally in his defense.

“I’m proud of the work our movement has accomplished over the past several years, fighting for community control of the police and a civilian police accountability council (CPAC). Our movement is growing in strength. Big developers, Rahm Emanuel supporters, are spending tens of thousands of dollars in a bid to unseat me,” said Rosa

His appeal worked: Rosa won comfortably, with 60% of the vote.

McCarthy, Alvarez, Emanuel: Three down

Just before Thanksgiving 2015, Rahm Emanuel was exposed for covering up the brutal police killing of Laquan McDonald. Having been elected that spring largely on the vote of Chicago’s Black community, Rahm’s approval ratings descended into single digits following the public broadcast of the video of racist cop Jason Van Dyke shooting the unarmed McDonald 16 times. There were weeks of protests with thousands of people calling for Rahm to resign. He threw his police superintendent, Garry McCarthy, under the bus, firing him after the video came out; and then voters turned against Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez, who was soundly defeated in her bid for another term. After her loss, protesters chanted, “Two down, one to go!”

Over the next year, the corporate media and mainstream Democratic Party officials proclaimed that Rahm had been rehabilitated. He began amassing a war chest for his 2019 reelection bid. Then the day before Van Dyke’s trial was to begin, Rahm announced that he was not going to run. Three down.

Affordable housing, public education and police accountability

Even before Rahm’s announcement, a surge of young activists, mainly Black and Latino, were already preparing to get on the ballot to run for city council. Many of them had cut their teeth fighting against gentrification and Rahm’s corrupt use of Tax Increment Financing (TIF) districts; supporting the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU); or organizing and leading the Black Lives Matter protests that began in 2014.

Then, after Rahm’s withdrawal, 14 people, none of whom are truly reformers, filled up the ballot for mayor. The result of the election is an historic first: the two remaining candidates are Black women. Lori Lightfoot, a former head of the Chicago Police Board, came out one percent ahead of Toni Preckwinkle, president of the Cook County Board. Lightfoot was aided by an endorsement from the Chicago Sun Times, which referred to her as “progressive.”

However, Jazmine Salas, co-chair of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, wrote on Twitter the day before the election, “Lori Lightfoot is not a progressive!” and repeated the line multiple times in the tweet. The movement resisting police terror in the city remembers Lightfoot’s role on the Police Board, providing cover for the killer cops who murdered Rekia Boyd and “Ronnieman” Johnson.

For the Chicago Teachers Union, which endorsed Preckwinkle, this first round of the mayoral election was a victory because all those who favored the privatization of public education were defeated, including Paul Vallas, Gerry Chico and Bill Daley.

Excitement for April 2 runoff

In the election night watch parties, and on social media, the excitement in the movement was all about the races for city council. Matt Ginsberg-Jaeckle, a well-known community activist, posted on Facebook Tuesday night, “Chicago! We just made history!! Elders, correct me if I’m wrong, but this must be the biggest sweep of openly left movement candidates ever in this city, or at least in recent history, right?” He pointed to the fact that Jeanette Taylor in the 20th Ward, Rossana Rodriguez Sanchez in the 33rd Ward, and Byron Sigcho-Lopez in the 25th Ward all had the most votes in their respective races. In Chicago, election law states that if a candidate does not win at least 50% of the vote in a mayoral or city council race, the top two vote-getters battle it out in a runoff. Taylor, Rodriguez Sanchez and Sigcho-Lopez seem to be the favorites for April 2 victories.

Salas summed up the results for the campaign for a Civilian Police Accountability Council (CPAC), stating, “11 CPAC supporters won outright for city council seats; 14 CPAC supporters are in runoffs, and two wards have runoffs between two CPAC supporters. This means the new city council will have at least 13 members committed to CPAC and possibly 23.”

Frank Chapman of the Alliance commented, “This is definitely a progressive change in the political realignment of Chicago driven by our movement. There were movement people, CPAC people, working in the elections all over Chicago. We made an impact. Now let us quickly measure that impact, sum up what we have accomplished, and triumphantly continue to make progress.

“Our struggle, as we have proven in these elections, is much more than the figment of someone's imagination, a sacredly guarded utopian dream. Our struggle engages our people in the dirt and blood of political battles that must be fought to advance the struggle for our freedom.”

#ChicagoIL #PeoplesStruggles #PoliceBrutality #RahmEmanuel #Elections #CPAC

Chicago, IL – 300 people came out to rally for justice for Laquan McDonald, Sept. 5, at the courthouse at 26th and California to mark the opening of the first-degree murder trial of police officer Jason Van Dyke.

Speakers at the rally included Alderman Carlos Rosa; Rev. Otis Moss III of Trinity United Church of Christ; Esther Hernandez of Innocent Demand Justice and mother of Juan and Rosendo, wrongfully imprisoned by disgraced Detective Reynoldo Guevara; and Armanda Shackleford, mother of torture victim Gerald Reed.

The mother of Antonio Porter, another torture victim, held her cell phone to the microphone so Porter could address the crowd from inside Stateville prison. Maria Hernandez of Black Lives Matter; Muhammad Sankari of the Arab American Action Network; and Frank Chapman of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression spoke. Jazmine Salas of the Alliance emceed the opening rally. The uncle of Steven Rosenthal, killed two weeks ago in North Lawndale, also spoke.

Many speakers celebrated the Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s previous day’s announcement that he is not running for reelection. Everyone agreed that the movement against police crimes, and especially the protests after the release of the video of the murder of Laquan McDonald were the main reason for Rahm’s decision. Joe Iosbaker of Freedom Road Socialist Organization asked, “Who defeated Rahm?” Shouts of “The people!” and “We did!” came roaring back.

The celebratory mood resulted in a note of confidence for justice for Laquan, and for community control of the police. Alderman Rosa said, “We know we could get a new mayor, but still have a racist police system.” “So when we win that civilian police accountability council, we will have the mechanism to ensure that the community has control over the police,” he added, “We will have the power to hold killer cops accountable for their crimes!”

There were solidarity rallies in New York City, Salt Lake City, Minneapolis and Jacksonville, Florida, as well as campuses in Arlington, Texas; Tallahassee and Tampa, Florida; a banner drop in San Francisco and a statement sent from the Dallas NAACP.

Trial judge breaks agreement, disrespects community and McDonald Family

Brian Ragsdale, a Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression leader, was one of the few community members who were allowed into the courtroom. When he emerged, he spoke to the rally. “Only about 13 of us found seats in the court room. And we had to give up some seats so the McDonald family could sit. They had to sit in the back of the courtroom, instead of in the front row as normally happens for a victim’s family.”

Several of the organizations will return to the court on Thursday morning, Sept. 6. Van Dyke has a hearing then where the judge is considering revoking his bail because he violated the court’s gag order not to speak about the case, giving interviews to two TV and media outlets.

Then the movement will come out again when the court reconvenes on Monday, Sept. 10 at 9 a.m.

#Chicago #AfricanAmerican #RahmEmanuel #Antiracism #LaquanMcDonald #JasonVanDyke

Chicago, IL – City council allies of Mayor Rahm Emanuel held a hearing in the South Side neighborhood of Roseland Tuesday night, May 15, to consider several pieces of legislation on police accountability. They attempted to use a rigged process to smother the voices of the mainly Black movement for community control of the police. For six years, the movement has supported legislation to create an elected, civilian police accountability council (CPAC).

In a clear display of the intention of the hearing organizers to intimidate the activists, especially those who are victims of police crimes or their family members, Corliss High School had a large contingent of armed Chicago police present, as well as bouncers who are used to keep order in city council. They established a line behind Alderman Ariel Reboyras, sponsor of the hearing; and staff persons from the Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA), the body created by Emanuel after the storm of protests that followed the release of the video of the police murder of Laquan McDonald.

COPA has most of the same personnel as its predecessor, IPRA, which between 2007 and 2014 investigated the 400 cases of police shootings of civilians, and found only one of them to be unjustified. Also helping to host the hearing were members of the rubber-stamp Police Board, which for years has refused to fire officers shown to have brutalized or murdered civilians.

The movement refuses to accept Mayor Emanuel’s control of any new system of police accountability, because he covered up the video showing police officer Jason Van Dyke shooting McDonald 16 times in order to get himself reelected.

Frank Chapman of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression described the process that the mayor’s surrogate, Ariel Reboyras, tried to impose. “There was no speakers list to sign. You were issued an arbitrary ticket number to be matched to a table you would sit at.” Chapman explained that this ‘Café Conference’ model “was designed to make sure that CPAC and the demand for community control of the police would be muted and submerged in a manipulated discussion of the positives and negatives of the respective ordinances.”

Nataki Rhodes, co-chair of the Alliance, demanded that there be a panel of people presenting the various ordinances, and that the audience be allowed to respond and pose questions to the panelists. The facilitator, a consultant hired by the Chicago Police Department, complained in the face of the angry audience that she and others had “sacrificed their time” to be there. Most of the crowd clearly turned against the organizers.

A retired member of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), wrote on a big piece of paper, “We reject this process!” Kam Howard, a longtime activist in the Black community, held up the sign for the room to see, to a wave of applause from most in the room. After he did that, Rod Wilson, director of the Hope Center, stood up with a sign with the same message.

Later, Armanda Shackleford from the Alliance spoke about the torture and imprisonment of her son, Gerald Reed, a wrongfully convicted victim of the Jon Burge gang of disgraced former cops. Fighting to hold back tears, she demanded CPAC in order to win justice and see her son released from prison.

After that, the aldermen gave up. They later admitted to the press that their hearing was a failure, but said they will come up with another method for their remaining four hearings.

At the end of the hearing, Cosette Hampton, co-chair of the Black Youth Project 100, added her voice to that of the Alliance and other groups, announcing plans to show up at the remaining hearings, to resist the attempts to manufacture public support for new legislation leaving power over the police in the hands of the mayor.

#ChicagoIL #PoliceBrutality #RahmEmanuel #CPAC

SEIU Local 73 is a public sector union in Illinois and Northern Indiana representing 28,000 workers. It has a proud history of fighting for its members, including recent strikes that took place at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Prominent members of Local 73 include Artemio Arreola, the janitor who played a leading role in the mega-marches for immigrant rights that started in Chicago in 2006. Local 73 was also among the first major unions in Chicago to come out in support of community control of the police, backing legislation to create an elected, civilian police accountability council (CPAC).

Unfortunately, in recent years, the local has become best known as the union that backed Mayor Rahm Emanuel even when he had become discredited in front of the city after his role in the cover-up of the murder of Laquan McDonald. 17-year-old Laquan McDonald was shot 16 times by the racist murderer, Chicago Police Officer Jason Van Dyke, in October 2014. Rahm made sure the video of the killing wasn’t revealed until after he was safely re-elected in April 2015.

Deals with the mayor

The legacy of Local 73’s support for Emanuel began when the Chicago Teachers Union drew a line in the sand with the mayor. The CTU had elected a reform leadership in 2010. When Emanuel became mayor in 2011, he declared an agenda of austerity for the people of the city, attacking social services and public education. The CTU, in a model of class struggle unionism, took him head on.

Local 73 continued to back Emanuel, undercutting the CTU and other public sector unions. In 2014 when Emanuel announced his re-election plan, Local 73’s Brandon offered a $25,000 contribution to Emanuel. According to Joe Iosbaker, rank-and-file member of the local and co-chair of the Joint Bargaining Committee at the University of Illinois at Chicago, “Secretary Treasurer Brandon did that without any democratic discussion with the membership of Local 73.” Iosbaker also pointed out, “President Boardman should have refused to sign the check, but she didn’t.”

When SEIU in Illinois debated endorsements for mayor in the 2015 elections, Brandon was outspoken in support of Emanuel as well. The contribution and Brandon’s advocacy for Emanuel were all over the news.

In an incident even more directly going against the interests of Local 73 members, in 2015 Brandon joined an effort by Emanuel to diminish the benefits of retired and current Local 73 members. This was revealed in charges brought by Boardman against Brandon in July, 2016.

Brandon runs to the defense of Rahm

In an interview with Boardman, Fight Back! learned the full extent of Brandon’s support for the mayor. Even after Emanuel was exposed for covering up the murder of Laquan McDonald, Brandon continued to offer backing to his mayor. In early December 2015, Boardman explained, “Matt requested vacation days to go meet with the mayor. He called me from the mayor’s office to say he was thinking of appearing with Rahm in a press conference to show his support.” Her next words? “Are you an idiot? Our members want Emanuel out of office!” As a result, Brandon decided not to appear in the press conference.

In August of 2015, the Local 73 executive board and general membership meetings both endorsed a proposal to support community control of the Chicago police department. Because of the crisis of police crimes against civilians in Chicago, Local 73 had backed the CPAC legislation to hold the police accountable. Union members agreed to support CPAC to take power to supervise the police out of the hands of the mayor.

According to Joe Iosbaker, “Calling for community control of the police is because we don’t believe that the mayor has our interests at heart. But in December, when the people of Chicago woke up to the lies they were told by Emanuel, at that very moment Brandon rushes to provide him support. This is a betrayal of the members who elected him.”

#ChicagoIL #SEIULocal73 #RahmEmanuel #MaryKayHenry

Fight Back News Service is circulating following June 1 statement by Frank Chapman, Field Organizer, Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (CAARPR).

Mayor Rahm Emanuel,

Because you have declared that you will be introducing legislation to the City Council on June 22, 2016 we, who have been fighting for community control of the police here in Chicago, would like to inform you that we totally reject your attempts to hoodwink us into thinking your proclaimed concerns for police accountability are genuine. We will be at City Hall on June 22nd, making sure that our voices will be heard, demanding that our proposed ordinance creating an all elected Civilian Police Accountability Council (CPAC) be enacted.

Here are two statements you made that we would like to address:

1. On May 13, 2016 you stated that, 'While much work still remains, we will continue to make significant strides on the road to reform. To fully fix Chicago's police accountability system, we must be thoughtful and bold and have the courage to call out and address the root causes that have eroded trust between police and Chicago's communities and some of Chicago's residents.”

Before we have that discussion, Mayor Emanuel, you need to deal with your own malfeasance while in office, for example, your complicity in the murder of Laquan McDonald and your refusal to intervene in the name of justice in the cases of Flint Farmer, Ronald Ronnieman Johnson, and numerous other cases where murders by Chicago police officers were video recorded. You could have used your executive authority long ago to move the Police Board to fire Dante Servin, the murderer of Rekia Boyd. You could presently use your executive authority to fire and press for charges against all those CPD officers who lied on their reports in the Laquan McDonald case. You could use the evidence from the over 100 videos about to be released to seek immediate prosecution of police crimes. Then you could do the most honorable of all things and resign as Mayor of Chicago. That's the kind of courage you need to have in this precise moment of history.

2. Also on May 13, 2016 you said, “We will be judged by whether our actions truly measure up to the demands of the moment. I am confident that by creating this new structure and committing to this comprehensive plan, Chicago will be better off because we are facing up to these difficult challenges and we are doing so together.”

You, Mr. Mayor, have already been judged by your actions, and the people want you to cease using your executive authority to cover up and excuse police crimes and to hand in your resignation. This is the only honorable thing you can do after 16 shots and a cover up. You should be a co-defendant of Jason Vandyke, the killer of Laquan McDonald. You are not a social reformer advancing the cause of justice for the people. You are a crime partner to all the police criminals at large in this city and we, the people, sooner or later, will bring you and your partners in crime to justice.

No Justice, No Peace!

#ChicaoIL #PeoplesStruggles #PoliceBrutality #RahmEmanuel #chicago #FrankChapman #CAARPR

Chicago, IL – In response to the announcement of over 1000 layoffs of teachers and staff, the Chicago Teachers Union rallied, marched and occupied the Bank of America (BoA) on LaSalle Street, Feb. 4.

Waves of union members, students and supporters from organized labor and the community filled the streets of the Loop as the march wound through the streets for several hours. At the start of the action, 16 teachers were arrested in the BoA lobby. Sarah Chambers was one of those arrested. When she was finally released at 11:30 p.m., she said, “We were there demanding that Bank of America renegotiate toxic swaps and return the money to the schools.”

Before the financial crash of 2008, the Chicago Public Schools borrowed a huge amount of money from a number of banks, with BoA among the largest. The bankers sold the loans on the false premise that they would save the schools money in the future if interest rates rose. In fact, the banks knew that a crisis was coming soon, and that interest rates would fall.

The CTU has confronted Mayor Rahm Emanuel on this matter, exposing that he won’t go to court to get relief from his banker cronies. Many other big cities have saved millions from such legal actions.

This is one of the examples that the teachers use to show that there is no need to lay off frontline workers in the schools, cut pensions or impose other attacks. As she headed home from jail, Chambers said, “CPS is broke on purpose. Rahm’s appointed Board of Ed is forcing their crisis on the backs of teachers and teacher assistants.”

The morning of the protest, the Chicago Tribune reported that Emanuel’s popularity had sunk even lower. 60% of likely voters supported the CTU, against 20% for Emanuel. With this level of solidarity, Chambers declared, “We will continue to fight back to protect our students.”

#ChicagoIL #BankOfAmerica #ChicagoTeachersUnion #RahmEmanuel #TeachersUnions

This video footage has sparked a national outrage directed rightfully at the crooked Chicago police department and corrupt Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who knew about this police crime and subsequent coverup for well over a year since the killing. In fact, the only reason State Attorney Anita Alvarez released the dashcam footage was due to a court order by a local judge. Had it not been for that court decision and dashcam video, killer cop Jason Van Dyke may never have been arrested and charged with first-degree murder. Since then, Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy has resigned due to massive protests by the people of Chicago.

The history of Chicago police department is filled with rampant racism, police crimes and corruption. Since 2007, there have been over 400 police shootings with $500 million paid out for settlements and litigation because of victims of Chicago police crimes since 2004. We can’t forget that in 1968 after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, Black residents rebelled, and Chicago Mayor Richard Daley ordering police to shoot Black protesters. Fred Hampton, the chair of the Illinois Black Panther Party, was assassinated in 1969 by the Chicago police department as he slept in the bed with his pregnant fiancée. This was followed by a police cover-up .

The past few years it was uncovered that from 1970s to the early 1990s, Chicago police department detective Jon Burge was a leader in an illegal police operation which oversaw around 200 Black men in police custodybeing tortured and beaten into giving false confessions for crimes they didn’t commit. It even came to the public’s attention recently that the Chicago Police Department ran a torture site called Holman Square, where citizens were ‘disappeared’ for hours and even days and beaten into confessions. Most of the victims tortured where African American.

Protesters in Chicago have been demanding justice for the victims of police crimes, and demanding police officers be held accountable, such as killer cop Dante Servin, who murdered 22-year-old African American Rekia Boyd on March 21, 2012. Servin was cleared of all charges after Boyd’s murder and is still employed by the Chicago police department. It is no wonder that the Chicago police continue in their murderous ways. The day after Christmas, two more African Americans – Bettie Jones and Quintonia Legrier – were shot and killed by the police.

We salute the protesters in Chicago, especially the Black youth who are hitting the streets daily to demand justice and liberation for the Black community. Protests have called for Mayor Rahm Emanuel and State Attorney Anita Alvarez to resign after their involvement in the massive cover-up and delaying of justice in the murder of McDonald.

Chicago is a very important city to the Black liberation movement. In the 1930s, the majority Black workers of the meatpacking industry organized into the United Meatpacking Workers. In the 1960s, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and others fought to desegregate housing. King chose Chicago to launch a new civil rights movement in the North after the Student Nonviolenct Coordinating Committee organized a public school boycott that saw 250,000 students and their families stay away form the public schools twice in the 1963 and 1964. This was the largest mass mobilization by the Black movement anywhere in the country up to that point.

The past few years, the Black Lives Matter Movement and the broader movement for Black liberation has grown in this country. At this point in time, the people of Chicago are in a prime position to give the movement against p