By Destiny Spruill and Jacob Buckner

Chicago, IL – Two factors have made public safety a lynchpin issue in the upcoming mayoral election between Brandon Johnson, former teacher supported by the Chicago Teacher’s Union, and Paul Vallas, former CEO of Chicago Public Schools, backed by the Fraternal Order of the Police (FOP). First is the rise in the crime rate in the city in recent years. The second, and principal, reason is the law-and-order backlash that followed the historic protests of the George Floyd Rebellion.

Groups like the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (CAARPR) are fighting to make sure that the city’s supposed concern for public safety prioritizes police accountability for its Black, Latino, indigenous and working-class residents. These residents face the highest rates of incarceration and violent police raids and have been the most likely to face the full force of the police state.

You can’t discuss public safety without discussing the struggle for community control of the police – a struggle for democratic rights.

“This mayoral election is historic. It is the first time in four decades that we’ve had a truly progressive candidate for mayor – Brandon Johnson. For the first time in history, the people of Chicago have a real choice between the old reactionary, recycling of the status quo and taking a progressive road towards advancing the democratic right of the people,” says Frank Chapman, the executive director of the National Alliance Against Racist Political Repression (NAARPR).

The movement for community control of the police in Chicago began over 50 years ago. CAARPR played a leading role in the 1970s and starting 11 years ago has led it through its Civilian Police Accountability Council (CPAC) campaign. They believe that electing Brandon Johnson is an important piece in the broader struggle for police accountability. Understanding the history of CAARPR’s CPAC movement is crucial in assessing the needs of Chicago’s most vulnerable populations. It is also crucial in evaluating how we can chart the way forward.

CAARPR and its struggle for community control of police in Chicago

By 1968, the first citywide attempt at community control was started by the Black Panther Party (BPP), which initiated a number of programs that demanded to transform the power structure of the police and its effect on the lives of Black Chicagoans. The Panthers believed that community control of the police was a political necessity for Black community members to decide for themselves how public safety would be implemented. Their demands were clear: violent police officers must be held accountable through community boards, the people must decide the funding of the Chicago Police Department (CPD), and the power of supervising and administering the police department must be transferred to the citizens of Chicago. The National Alliance Against Racist Political Repression (NAARPR) took up these demands and created a model to bring these demands to legislation.

Starting in 2012, CAARPR, the Chicago branch of NAARPR, provided a model based on the principle set forth by the Panthers, and on legislation that had been developed by the National Alliance in the 1970s. Decades later, the need for this movement continued as racist policing in Chicago increased as a result of the heightened power of the CPD. In 2012, 22-year-old Rekia Boyd was murdered by an off-duty police detective named Dante Servin. Following community protests, the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression began a ten-year process of building a movement to pass an ordinance that would create community-controlled police boards in all 22 Chicago police districts. This movement became known as the Civilian Police Accountability Council (CPAC) campaign.

CAARPR spent the next years in working-class neighborhoods most affected by police violence and spoke to survivors and community members about their public safety needs. These efforts continued from the murder of Laquan McDonald in 2014 to the murder of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor in 2020. When George Floyd was murdered, the National Alliance Against Racist Political Repression called for a national day of protest on May 30. In Chicago, 20,000 marched or car caravanned into the Chicago Loop. In the following weeks, over 100,000 marched in Chicago. Every protest called for “CPAC now!”

The campaign collected over 60,000 signatures with an average of 1000 signatures in 38 wards. Their efforts proved that victory is only possible with the leadership and experience of the community. This mass movement created the conditions for passing legislation.

By 2021, CAARPR had the support of 19 of the 50 city council members. A competing police accountability legislation, the Grassroots Alliance for Police Accountability (GAPA), had the support of 26 of the 50 city council members. Council members of the Socialist Caucus of Chicago told GAPA that they would not cast a vote to support their legislation unless they came to an agreement with the CPAC legislation proposed by CAARPR. After then-mayor Lori Lightfoot refused GAPA’s demand to include control of police policy in their legislation, negotiations between CAARPR and GAPA began, and a compromise was reached two months later.

The Empowering Communities for Public Safety (ECPS) ordinance was passed in the city council and officially created two bodies for police accountability: the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability (CCPSA) and the police district councils, for which there were elections in February. These bodies have the following powers: Directly investigating crimes of police violence; determining Chicago Police Department policy; hiring and firing the Chief Administrator of the Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA); holding hearings about police superintendents; and recommending preventative, proactive, community-based and evidence-based solutions to violence.

These District Councils and the CCPSA go beyond stopping vicious and racist police officers, they hold a model for community members directly affected by racist police violence to see justice and build a regenerative model to change public safety.

Many of the candidates for these boards had never run for public office – they are motivated by their own experiences with police violence. Cynthia McFadden, for example, ran for the board because she was inspired by her father who fled the South due to extreme violence only to be murdered by Chicago police the day of his arrival. Coston Plummer was motivated by his older brother who was forced by Chicago police to falsely confess to a murder when he was just 15 years old. These candidates believe that ECPS represents the will of communities impacted by police violence to finally experience justice.

On February 28, 2023, for the first time in history, residents of Chicago had the opportunity to vote for these boards – resulting in 39 of 66 district councilors being elected from the movement for police accountability. CAARPR, alongside their partners in their community, expanded this grassroots campaign and made it possible to succeed.

From CPAC to ECPS to Brandon Johnson

“The terms of this election were set by the murder of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Across the U.S., 26 million people called for justice – including Brandon Johnson. Brandon Johnson has received the support of the Chicago Alliance because he alone included police accountability and working with ECPS in his platform and campaign. Paul Vallas received support from the FOP to maintain injustice. On February 28, the Black community voted against the FOP and for justice through democratic control of the police in the district council elections,” says Joe Iosbaker, cochair of the Labor Committee of CAARPR.

During a mayoral forum on public safety at the UIC Forum on March 14, Paul Vallas put forth his vision of police accountability by saying, “Community policing fundamentally means, you have beat officers on every beat. So every single beat is covered by a patrol car, manned with officers. Officers know the community, and are known by name and by badge number, by the community.” Vallas has seized on rising concerns for public safety – which have steadily grown as the city of Chicago experiences more violence and believes the only way forward is to increase police presence and grant them more control over the city. Chicago’s FOP, an organization that is nationally known for its hostility towards Black and brown people, threw its support behind Paul Vallas. He welcomed its endorsement and thanked “Chicago’s finest, men and women of the FOP who sacrifice their lives to make our city safer. Reducing crime and making Chicago safer are my top priorities.”

Brandon Johnson has built his public safety platform with the intention of addressing the “root causes of violence and poverty.” Johnson’s campaign for Chicago mayor is not only about the use of community control boards, but about creating an overall model of safety which positions the needs of the community at its center. Johnson argues that public safety is not only about stopping police violence but about investing in generative initiatives such as mental health care and housing.

Johnson believes these measures will prevent systemic violence from attacking Chicago communities. One of his initiatives involves getting rid of the racist “Gang Database,” which currently “labels more than 280,000 people – 95% people of color as gang members without requiring evidence of gang affiliation or informing them of their listing.” The Gang Database has been used to profile and surveil Black neighborhoods, resulting in heightened Black and Latino arrests. Johnson also supports the Anjanette Young Ordinance, which will stop no-knock warrants. He believes in collaborating with the democratically elected District Councils to manage police accountability and decide the Chicago Police Department's policy.

Each of Johnson's initiatives interconnects with the overall needs of the community, including mental health. Within mental health initiatives, Johnston aims to Launch Crisis Response Teams with non-police personnel, reopen all 14 mental health centers, and expand the 988 mental health crisis hotline to 24 hours.

The fight for Brandon Johnson is the fight for justice for the Black and Latino community In Chicago

The mayoral election between Brandon Johnson and Paul Vallas will decide if the city continues the struggle for a public safety plan that includes Black and Latino Chicagoans and its working-class neighborhoods. The grassroots work of the last ten years – the struggle for democratic control of the police – could be upheld through Brandon Johnson’s leadership. For ten years, Chicagoans have fought for police accountability, affirmative mental health treatment, and housing for all community members. Many believe Brandon Johnson’s candidacy represents the work that Black Chicagoans have put toward a movement to see their own collective needs met against systemic violence.

Throughout the ten-year CPAC campaign, CAARPR created a grassroots movement that won a historic ordinance to hold the police accountable. CAARPR responds to the calls for public safety this way: “Black and brown communities are over-policed and under-protected. There’s a reason that 70% of violent crimes in our neighborhoods go unsolved. No one trusts the police. And why would they? After generations of police crimes, like the reign of torturer Jon Burge!” In the words of Frank Chapman, “We want to hold the police accountable for what they do, and what they don’t do.”

CAARPR’s current task is to uphold the advances made by the district council elections through the election of Brandon Johnson, but they will carry forth the mission toward real police accountability, in partnership with the local community, well beyond this mayoral election. We will continue to look to them as leaders in our struggle against state-sanctioned violence.

#ChicagoIL #InJusticeSystem #OppressedNationalities #US #PeoplesStruggles #AfricanAmerican #PoliceBrutality #RacismInTheCriminalJusticeSystem #Antiracism #PoliticalRepression #Elections #ChicagoAllianceAgainstRacistAndPoliticalRepression #CommunityControlOfThePolice #BrandonJohnson

Fight Back News Service is circulating the following statement from Executive Director Frank Chapman of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, on the results of the Police District Council elections in Chicago.

On the 28th of February, for the first time in the history of this country, the people of Chicago elected Police District Councils in 22 police districts to serve as community representatives with the power to hold police accountable for what they do and don’t do.

We have been fighting for years to create the democratic option to say who polices our communities and how they are policed, and now it is a reality. This past Tuesday, we won a decisive majority in the Police District Councils. In each district, representatives could be elected to three seats. We won all three seats in 7 districts and 2 of the 3 seats in 6 districts, meaning the people’s movement won a total of 13 districts across the city outright. We were overjoyed to see that as our candidates won in 13 districts across the city, Brandon Johnson secured his spot in the run-off election for mayor, another historic accomplishment of the progressive people’s movement.

Winning this majority in the District Councils required continuous struggle. The Fraternal Order of Police sought to get candidates elected who would distort and undermine the purpose of the District Councils as stated in the law. Those attempts failed.

We supported these District Council candidates in every way possible. Through months of work on the ground, we were able to get 71 candidates on the ballot in 21 districts across the city. The Fraternal Order of Police only managed to get 17 candidates on the ballot. And of those 17, only 8 of their candidates were elected. They hold a majority in only three districts, and there is not one district where they hold all three seats.

In short, we knocked the FOP out. And we did it with people. Our candidates were grassroots people who had no campaign office, no big donors, and no independent field operations. All they had was the movement, the support of their communities, the support of the ECPS coalition and the Brandon Johnson campaign. The working class and oppressed people in the Black and brown communities who make up the newly elected District Councils won their votes door by door and block by block.

This decisive victory for the people of Chicago represents the culmination of decades of continuous struggle in the fight to stop police crimes and bring about community control of the police. From fighting for CPAC to passing ECPS to implementing it, we mobilized hundreds of thousands of working-class and oppressed people moved by the demand for justice.

This struggle, sparked by the murders of Rekia Boyd and Laquan McDonald, has been guided from its outset by survivors of police crimes and their loved ones. Our people, through self-organization, have, by way of legislative fiat, enhanced their capacity to hold the police accountable for the crimes they commit against us. Fundamentally, this is a great step forward, and moves us in the direction of community control of the police. Now, in this moment following the Black-led rebellion that put 25 million people in the streets, we can rightly claim that we are the blossom bloomed from the seeds of this rebellion.

It’s only through the power of the people that we can end the police tyranny in Black and brown communities and bring about justice for the people. These councils are a tool to consolidate that power. People across this city should celebrate this victory, knowing it will bring us that much closer to the city we deserve.

All Power to the People!

#ChicagoIL #PoliceBrutality #ChicagoAllianceAgainstRacistAndPoliticalRepression

Chicago, IL – 300 Chicagoans braced against the cold night, January 30, to protest the brutal police slayings of Tyre Nichols, Keenan Anderson and Manuel “Tortuguita” Teron. The eight-degree weather did not deter the crowd as they clustered together to stand in solidarity with protests that have broken out across the country in the wake of the release of the video footage that depicted multiple officers beating Nichols to death.

Frank Chapman, field organizer of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (CAARPR), made it clear that there is an answer to the people’s cries for justice. “We’ve got a solution in Chicago; February 28 is the solution.” On February 28, Chicagoans will be voting for the first time ever to elect civilians to District Councilor positions, which is seen by many as a step in the fight towards gaining community control over the police.

The rally was called by CAARPR with support from organizations such as Southsiders Organized for Unity and Liberation (SOUL), Rainbow PUSH, Good Kids/Mad City, and United States Palestinian Community Network (USPCN). Referring to the district council elections, Nick Seuss from USPCN, told the crowd that, “The first step is to take power from the police and give it to the people.”

Bishop Tavis Grant from the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition reminded the crowd, “We’ve got a democratic option: vote.” This point could not be more true with the February 28 elections for District Councilors quickly approaching for Chicagoans.

12th Police District Council candidate, William “The Kid” Guerrero, drew parallels to what happened in Memphis to what goes on in Chicago: “This is for Adam Toledo, Tortuguita, and Tyre Nichols.”

After a brief march and chanting, “I believe that we will win!” and “Who keeps us safe? We keep us safe!” the group disbanded. Overall, one of the messages that rang loudest Monday night was first said by 15th District Council candidate Arewa Karen Winters, who quoted Assata Shakur: “We have nothing to lose but our chains!”

#ChicagoIL #OppressedNationalities #PeoplesStruggles #AfricanAmerican #PoliceBrutality #Antiracism #PoliticalRepression #ChicagoAllianceAgainstRacistAndPoliticalRepression #CommunityControlOfThePolice #TyreNichols

Chicago, IL – 200 people filled up the main hall of the Chicago Teachers Union headquarters on January 22 for a political forum in preparation for the local police District Council elections. There were over 50 District Council candidates in attendance, and other participants included alderpersons, union leaders and community organizers. Over 40 people of various ages, genders, and nationalities spoke at the forum, and they were all united behind the need to use the February 28 elections to create a base of power from which the working and oppressed people of Chicago can hold the police accountable.

“These candidates are running because it's time to hold these police accountable for the crimes they commit against our communities,” declared Frank Chapman, field organizer of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (CAARPR). Many of the District Council candidates present shared their experiences of being impacted by police crimes.

“I'm running because it's personal,” said Kiisha Smith, 10th District Council candidate. Smith described her experiences being harassed and assaulted by Chicago police officers who also targeted her children. “My family asks me ‘are you ready for this fight?’ and I say I've been fighting my whole life so why not do it the right way?”

“We have seen at the hands of the police extreme violence against the residents of Chicago, who have suffered unforgivable losses which, more often than not, our young people fall victim to,” said William “The Kid” Guerrero, 12th District candidate. At 21 years old, Guerrero is running to represent the city’s youth. He began his remarks by highlighting other young candidates, including Anthony Michael Tamez, Ashley Vargas, Saul Arellano and Jacob Arena.

“It's messed up that 15, 16, 17-year olds think it's normal for the police to smack them around. For the first time in forever we're gonna hold them accountable,” said Service Employees International Union Healthcare Illinois and Indiana (SEIU HCII) member and 2nd District candidate Coston Plummer. In 1991, detectives working under Jon Burge tortured Plummer’s brother, 15-year-old Johnny Plummer, into confessing to a crime he didn’t commit. The legal system has kept Johnny Plummer incarcerated since.

Other District Council candidates shared stories about how they, their families, and their communities have been harmed by police crimes, including Cherli Montgomery, Simeon Henderson, Jim Blissett III, Dion McGill, Anthony David Bryant, Michelle Page, Ponchita Moore, David Boykin, Julia Kline, Julio Miramontes, Meredith Hammer, Brenda Waters, Angelica Green, Josh D’Antonio, Monserrat Ayala, Krystal Peters, Elena Thompson, Cynthia McFadden, Letina Brady Pettis, and many more.

All the candidates spoke about their previous organizing work and their drive to hold the police accountable.

Many speakers also mentioned the amount of money Chicago spends on police while neglecting healthcare and other vital services. The CPD is set to receive nearly $2 billion in the 2023 budget.

“Police misconduct settlements alone are costing the city more and more every year” said 2nd District Council candidate Alexander Perez, who cited the $67 million Chicago spent on police legal costs in 2021.

Participants in the forum connected the plague of police violence and the CPD’s bloated budget to the lack of democratic control over the police. “Whatever powers that be that make the rules that affect our communities without giving us a seat at the table, we need to change that also. The community needs a seat at the table,” Coston Plummer said.

“We need to change the way our city functions and this election in February will be a referendum on that,” said Jeff Howard, executive vice president of Service Employees International Union Local 73.

“We're on the cusp of a historic moment. Not only because of the District Councils but also because we're gonna have an elected school board, so the two largest city agencies will be democratically governed,” said CTU Vice President Jackson Potter. CTU, SEIU Local 73 and SEIU HCII are among a number of unions that were crucial to the passage of the Empowering Communities for Public Safety (ECPS) ordinance in 2021. Both labor leaders who spoke at the forum pledged the support of their unions for pro-accountability candidates.

Aldermanic candidates also spoke at the forum. “This is what democracy looks like!” chanted Desmon Yancy, 5th Ward aldermanic candidate and member of the ECPS coalition.

20th Ward Alderwoman Jeanette Taylor drew from her own organizing experience to comment on the struggle ahead: “Nothing has ever come easy for us. We've had to fight for everything and this won't be no different.”

In opposition to the candidates who are running for accountability are candidates supported by the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP). The FOP has a long history of negotiating city contracts that defend the police from being held accountable, with terms such as the deletion of misconduct records after two years, which resulted in Jason Van Dyke, the officer who killed Laquan McDonald, having none of his prior crimes reflected on his record.

“On February 28 it won't be the FOP candidates who win. It's going to be true representatives of the people,” said 35th Ward Alderman Carlos Ramirez Rosa. Rosa and other speakers stressed the need for volunteers to mobilize voters in Black, brown and working-class communities in order to ensure that candidates fighting for accountability beat those supported by the FOP.

“What we heard tonight was the genuine voice of the people who want change,” said Frank Chapman as he concluded the forum by calling on everyone to get involved in canvassing for District Council candidates. Chapman pointed out that people from Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Louisiana, Florida, Washington DC and other places around the country are planning to volunteer in the District Council elections in Chicago because they recognize the importance of the elections in the struggle for community control of the police.

#ChicagoIL #PoliceBrutality #ChicagoAllianceAgainstRacistAndPoliticalRepression #EmpoweringCommunitiesForPublicSafetyECPS

In the last week or so, I've read thousands of words on Charlene’s passing and becoming part of the pantheon of revolutionaries who have gone before her.

A lot of things have been said about her particular political contributions: her rise to leadership in the Communist Party; her being the first Black woman to run for president; and the tremendous contributions she made in defense of democracy and the freeing of hundreds of political prisoners during the 1970s and 80s. But I'm afraid that what has been written so far, as deserving and fitting as it is, misses one very critical point about Charlene's life and her legacy. I would say she was first among those in the 20th century – along with Angela Davis, Henry Winston and William Patterson, also Black communists – who created one of the most powerful and inspiring movements in the campaign to “Free Angela Davis and All Political Prisoners.”

It is amazing to think of what that movement accomplished: in over 60 different countries and over 1000 cities in the United States, the call went out to free all political prisoners at the time. The call included those who had gone to jail for political reasons, but also those who had gone to jail for other reasons – in the main, being trapped in ghettos and the constant cycles of crime – but who later on became political prisoners by their fight for their rights as human beings while they were in prison, like the Attica brothers and George Jackson. Like myself.

I was languishing in a dungeon called the Missouri State Pen and fighting an uphill battle to overturn a sentence of life plus 50 years when the National Alliance was founded by Charlene, Angela, Anne Braden, and 700 other brave souls in Chicago in 1973. In 1976, I came home from prison because of the Alliance, and in 1981 I was granted an executive clemency by the governor of Missouri because of the unspeakable power of the movement led by Charlene Mitchell. Charlene organized and fought not only for Angela Davis, but she also helped to free many more from the hellholes of America’s prisons.

Because of the accomplishments of the movement she led, I believe Charlene’s legacy has a far deeper meaning for Black liberation than what is expressed in anything I’ve read thus far.

This is the legacy that I want to bring attention to. This is the legacy which I think has fueled more than anything else the fires that we still see burning in the struggle for Black liberation to date. This fueled the fires of the George Floyd and Breonna Taylor rebellion. The fact that the Alliance was engaged in this rebellion in a leadership role is no small tribute to Charlene's historic leadership in the founding of this organization almost 50 years ago. The Chicago Alliance winning the enactment of the ordinance Empowering Communities for Public Safety is a tribute to her, as well.

That's the legacy that she left us. She left us a legacy of struggle. She used to say, “Organization plus unity plus struggle equals victory.” We still have that in our literature. And every time we put that in our literature, we honor Charlene Mitchell because she's the one that gave us that.

She said, “Lead our people not in their frustration, but lead them out of it.” Every time we organize the fight to free a political prisoner; every time we organize a fight against police crimes and police brutality and murder; every time we work with families who have lost loved ones; with families who still have loved ones that are languishing in prison; every time we do this here and now, we pay tribute to Charlene Mitchell, who started this fight for us almost five decades ago.

Charlene was the architect and the strategic leader of the most massive defense campaign in history – defending the Black Liberation movement, the democratic rights of workers and oppressed people, and the rights of revolutionaries, be they communists, the nationally oppressed, or both.

We in the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression dip our banners of struggle saluting Charlene Alexander Mitchell while we proudly continue as the torch carriers of her living legacy.

Frank Chapman is the executive director of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression.

#ChicagoIL #Remembrances #ChicagoAllianceAgainstRacistAndPoliticalRepression #BlackLivesMatter

Chicago, IL – Kenya Franklin recalls her nephew’s unjust beating by Chicago police in 2000. “It made me fear for my son’s life.”

With this experience, Franklin was petitioning at polling locations in Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood on election day, November 8. She wants to get on the ballot in the upcoming municipal elections in February as a candidate for the Police District Council.

District Councils, created by the Empowering Communities for Public Safety (ECPS) ordinance and the movement to stop police crimes, are made of three elected community members in each of Chicago’s 22 police districts. These councils have the power to make decisions and create initiatives around policing and public safety in their neighborhoods and serve as another place for residents to go when they have issues with the police.

The November 8 Illinois General Elections were an essential day for potential candidates to collect signatures to make the ballot in February. In an effort to gain popular support from residents on the South and West Sides for their local district council candidates, the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression office in Woodlawn dispersed volunteers for 30 potential district council members covering polling locations in 12 police districts.

Potential candidates petitioned at polling locations across Chicago for ECPS’s first District Council election. Franklin shared her sentiments on the importance of ECPS and her decision to run for district council. “I would like the citizens to have a voice regarding misconduct and the overall relationship between law enforcement and civilians.” Many of those who showed up to the polls on the 8th were also in favor of police accountability for their neighborhood, and over 180 registered voters signed on in support of Kenya Franklin’s candidacy.

Since the passing of the ordinance by the people in July 2021, this is the second major event following the first meetings of the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability, also created by ECPS. The commission will bring together the efforts of the District Councils and will direct the policies and accountability structure for the Chicago Police Department. Despite public pressure, the current Interim Commission is still in a period of struggling for their agreed budget.

Moving forward, once district council members receive the required signatures, they will begin to campaign for their neighbors’ votes. The district council will act in connection to the citywide commission and residents from across all 22 districts, establishing democratically structured decision-making and public safety at a local level.

#ChicagoIL #ChicagoAllianceAgainstRacistAndPoliticalRepression #EmpoweringCommunitiesForPublicSafetyECPS

Chicago, IL – The November 8 midterm election is important around the country, as the seemingly formidable reactionary wave in electoral politics continues. In general, the task in most states is to defeat the most reactionary and backwards candidates.

In Illinois, we can make some gains, passing the Workers’ Rights Amendment. In Chicago, we have progressive candidates like Delia Ramirez for Congress, and Anthony Joel Quezada for 8th District Cook County Commissioner.

But the leading edge of the struggle to defend democratic rights is the movement for police accountability. In Chicago, election day is an opportunity for grassroots activists to get petitions for the municipal elections in February. There are over 100 people running for the newly created position of councilor in the 22 police districts. These district councils will be the front line for holding the Chicago Police Department accountable, to help determine who polices in Black and Latino communities, and how those communities are policed.

Each candidate needs a minimum number of signatures of voters registered in the police district where they live. Because 80% of the people running have never run for office before, many candidates for district council will be at the polling places in their community to ask for their signature to get them on the ballot.

These district councilors will nominate people to sit on a citywide Commission for Public Safety. The councilors have some powers; the commission has more, including the power to hire and fire the head of the body that investigates the thousands of complaints received every year against cops. It will also have the power to rewrite the police rule book, to eliminate foot chases, eliminate raids of homes where doors are kicked in, and end stop-and-frisk and other racist practices.

Frank Chapman, field organizer for the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, says about this election day, “Here is an unprecedented opportunity for us to strike a blow for democracy by doing all that we can do to get people on the ballot.”

Former Black Panther Lovie Bernard runs for District Council

In the 4th Police District on the far South Side of Chicago, Lovie Bernard is circulating petitions. Lovie was prompted to run by Alderman Greg Mitchell, one of the members of the Black Caucus of the City Council, which was key to the passage of the legislation Empowering Communities for Public Safety that brought about the district council elections. Alderman Mitchell suggested her to run because she has been an organizer in his election campaigns for many years.

The borders of the 4th District are 75th Street on the north; Lake Michigan on the east; and it includes Ford Motors’ Chicago Assembly, their oldest continuously operated Ford plant in the country.

As a teen, Lovie joined the Black Panther Party (BPP) in Chicago. She lived on the West Side at that time, just a few blocks from the Panther Party office. She attended meetings and rallies with Fred Hampton, chairman of the Illinois party. She remembers being in the Episcopal Church of the Epiphany on the Near West Side at Ashland and Adams where the Panthers would hold rallies, and remembers the Young Lords being there as well.

She remembers the night that the Chicago police killed Fred Hampton in a 4 a.m. raid. She went to his apartment that morning when Defense Minister Bobby Rush and the other Panthers opened it up so the community could see that Fred and Panther member Mark Clark had been assassinated. She also remembers attending the funeral.

Her family moved back to the South Side after Fred was killed.

If you search “Lovie Bernard Black Panther Party Chicago,” you’ll see a Getty Images photo of her. The caption reads: “At the opening of the Black Panther Party's Spurgeon Jake Winters Free People's Medical Center (at 3850 West 16th Street), the clinic's first patient, Lovie Bernard (left), is examined by nurse Florence Watson, Chicago, Illinois, January 4, 1970.”

The clinic was named for Panther Jake Winters, a Panther who was killed in a shootout with the Chicago police a few weeks before Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were assassinated.

Community control of the police

Black Panther Party chairman Bobby Seale coined the term community control of the police to describe the aim of the Panthers in their campaign to police the police. After the laws in California changed and didn’t allow armed patrols, the Panthers changed tactics. The party in Chicago developed a campaign in the 1970s to get community control of the Chicago Police Department through a petition drive to have it as a binding referendum.

When asked why she is running to hold the police accountable, Lovie Bernard shared an incident that came to mind. She was in the car with Alderman Mitchell, and a police car rolled up on her and the alderman. The cops started to give the alderman the business. Mitchell informed them, “I am the alderman of this ward.” The cops stopped harassing him, and apologized for their treatment of him, but Lovie said to them, “How you gonna harass the alderman?”

#ChicagoIL #PeoplesStruggles #PoliceBrutality #ChicagoAllianceAgainstRacistAndPoliticalRepression #CommunityControlOfThePolice #EmpoweringCommunitiesForPublicSafetyECPS

Chicago, IL – The Empowering Communities for Public Safety (ECPS) Coalition held a press conference on Tuesday morning, August 30, in response to Mayor Lightfoot's Monday appointment of the citywide Interim Commission for Public Safety. According to the ECPS ordinance, the commission should have been appointed in January. The coalition held a press conference on July 20 demanding that the mayor end the delays and appoint the Interim Commission. With the appointments made, the coalition set its eyes towards the local District Council elections coming up in February 2023.

“This ordinance is a step towards giving the people the democratic right to decide who policies their communities and how their communities are policed,” said Frank Chapman, field organizer of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (CAARPR) and executive director of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (NAARPR).

The commission's powers include the ability to set policies and goals for the Chicago Police Department and the Civilian Office of Police Accountability; the mandate to give votes of no confidence to the superintendent, and input into the CPD budget. The seven newly appointed commissioners are Anthony Driver, Oswaldo Gomez, Rev. Dr. Beth Brown, Yvette Loizon, Cliff Nellis, Remel Terry and Isaac Troncoso.

“Four of the seven commissioners were involved in the work to bring about police oversight,” said Alderman Carlos Ramirez Rosa, a longtime advocate of community control of the police. Notably absent from the commission is former alderman and Vrdolyak 29 member Patrick O Connor, whose nomination to the commission was denounced by the ECPS Coalition.

The Interim Commission will be in place until the end of 2023, when it will be replaced by a permanent commission nominated by the local District Councils. Petitioning to get on the ballot for District Council elections in February 2023 started on Tuesday and the petitioning window is open until November 30. There are three council positions in each of the city's 22 police districts, and candidates will need at least 0.5% of the registered voters in their district to sign their petition in order to get on the ballot.

“District Council members will serve four-year terms and take on key roles to implementing this ordinance. They will be the eyes and ears of the community,” explained Jackie Baldwin, a leader in the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs. Baldwin continued, “this is the time that we need people to step up and run for one of these 66 positions, make sure you are registered, and most importantly, be prepared to vote in February.”

“On April 11, 2016, my 16-year-young nephew, Pierre Loury, was shot and killed by the Chicago Police Department, and on April 12, 2016, I became active as an organizer and freedom fighter because I wanted and needed change,” said Arewa Karen Winters, founder of the 411 Movement for Pierre Loury and former cochair of the police use of force working group, before she announced her candidacy for council member of the 15th District in the Austin neighborhood.

Winters is one of many candidates who have been directly impacted by police violence, and the ECPS Coalition has already started helping these candidates with education, training and support in the petitioning process. While the coalition is not endorsing any particular candidates, it is assisting candidates who are committed to fighting for community control of the police. Winters went on to say, “The District Council positions will afford us the chance to not only speak truth to power, but power to power.”

#ChicagoIL #ChicagoAllianceAgainstRacistAndPoliticalRepression #EmpoweringCommunitiesForPublicSafetyECPS

Fight Back News Service is circulating the following statement from the Campaign to Free Incarcerated Survivors of Police Torture (CFIST) of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression.

The Campaign to Free Incarcerated Survivors of Police Torture (CFIST) of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression hails the announcement by the Cook County State’s Attorney Office in the cases of David Colon, Johnny Flores, Nelson Gonzalez, Marilyn Mulero and Jaime Rios —previously released – and Carlos Andino, Alfredo Gonzalez and Louis Robinson, still imprisoned. All are survivors of framed up, wrongful convictions at the hands of disgraced Det. Reynaldo Guevara.

In the same breath, we condemn the ongoing racist attacks by the Fraternal Order of the Police, and reactionary politicians – both Democrats and Republicans – who refuse to reckon with Chicago’s history of police misconduct or the ongoing torture of incarcerated people behind prison walls.

When Kim Foxx ran for State’s Attorney in 2016, she said Cook County was the “wrongful conviction capital of the US.” She was referring to the dark history of Chicago police detectives torturing people of color to gain false confessions.

Since taking office in 2017, she had vacated 24 of Guevara’s wrongful convictions; 212 of Sgt. Ronald Watts; and approximately 80 of other known torture cops.

With this announcement, and potentially three more Guevara survivors in the coming days, the total number of exonerated survivors of Guevara and his gang would reach 35 cases.

But, as the State’s Attorney’s Office knows, these cases are only the tip of the iceberg.

We call on the State’s Attorney’s Office (SAO) to take additional measures to bring justice to the people of Chicago who have long suffered the crimes of the Chicago Police Department. Since October of last year, we have organized 1000s of people to demand that police officers with established records of torturing suspects, false confessions, perjury, and subornation of perjury no longer be called as witnesses for the prosecution; and that convictions for all those framed, tortured and wrongfully convicted, particularly in cases involving detectives where an established pattern of torture, forced confession and wrongful convictions hold, are vacated.

We have used the examples of torture cops like Kenneth Boudreau, John Halloran, and James O’Brien to make our arguments. In recent weeks, several cases involving this trio were either thrown out, or a new trial was ordered. The judges referred to these cops having an established pattern of coercing suspects and having no credibility as witnesses. These rulings amplify our arguments, and directly reflect the campaign’s demands which are supported by our extensively researched report on Chicago police torture which can be found here:

https://www.caarpr.org/torture-report

Cook County Judge Obbish said Guevara “has now eliminated the possibility of being considered a credible witness in any proceeding” due to the evidence against him and his refusal to testify. This is a judgment that is now being applied to other torturer cops such as Boudreau, Halloran and O' Brien.

Hundreds of wrongfully convicted individuals remain behind bars for crimes they did not commit. The State’s Attorney must build on today’s action and accelerate the process of bringing all these survivors home.

#ChicagoIL #ChicagoAllianceAgainstRacistAndPoliticalRepression

Chicago, IL – The families of a group of wrongfully convicted Black men – Michael Minnifield, Isaiah Brady, Omarr Parks, Chaz Thrailkill and Kenyatta Brown – who are incarcerated in Menard prison held a rally of over 100 people on Monday, August 1 outside the ABC TV headquarters in Chicago.

Demands expressed at the rally included the transfer of the wrongfully convicted men out of Menard, an independent investigation of the prison so abusive guards can be held accountable, a limit to the use of solitary confinement, and ultimately for Menard prison to be shut down.

The rally was organized by the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (CAARPR) and supported by the Chicago Torture Justice Center (CTJC), Justice for Nick Lee, and the Rainbow PUSH coalition.

“Illinois Department of Corrections Director Rob Jeffreys and Governor JB Pritzker have the power of the pen to change the conditions in these prisons” said Roni Thrailkill, mother of Chaz Thrailkill, who was sentenced to 30 years in Menard. Some protesters carried posters reading, “Rob Jeffreys has blood on his hands.” Others wrote those words in chalk on the sidewalk. Those words referred to the people who have been killed by the inhumane conditions and practices in Menard and other Illinois prisons.

“My husband died in jail,” said Cassandra Greer, whose husband, Nickolas Lee, was one of the first lives lost to COVID-19 in Cook County Jail, “I don't want these mothers to go through what I went through.”

Angel Gill spoke about the unsanitary conditions in which her brother, Michael Minnifield, has been living in Menard, where prisoners are denied food, water and showers while living with mold, feces and insects in their cells. Minnifield has been assaulted by guards who also threatened his life and tortured him with a year in solitary confinement.

“I don't lock my dog in a cage for more than eight hours.” Said Darlisa Kendall, mother of wrongfully-convicted Isaiah Brady. “They're locking these men up 24 hours a day for years at a time!” Darlisa and other protesters voiced their support of HB 3564, or the Anthony Gay bill, which would limit the use of solitary confinement to ten days within a 180-day period. Extended solitary confinement, which is defined as torture by the United Nations, is a weapon used by prison guards against prisoners who speak up against the cruel conditions and treatment.

Speakers at the rally pointed to the systemic nature of the human rights abuses committed in Menard. “The same damn judge [Vincent M Gaughan] who sentenced Jason Van Dyke to 81 months for killing Laquan McDonald gave my brother 54 years for a crime he did not commit!” exclaimed Angel Gill.

“Menard is at the top of our list to be shut down, but we won't stop there. All prisons need to be investigated,” declared Jasmine Smith, leader of the campaign to get justice for the 18 survivors framed by corrupt cop Brian P. Forberg. “For too long our loved ones have been treated like animals in these prisons. We demand answers and change. No justice, no peace!”

The families and activists who organized the rally identified it as only the beginning of a movement to shut down Menard and the racist prison system. “We're here building a movement because we don't have to accept injustice,” said CAARPR Field Organizer Frank Chapman, “We're not responsible for the oppression that's inflicted on us every day. What are we responsible for? We're responsible for our liberation!”

#ChicagoIL #ChicagoAllianceAgainstRacistAndPoliticalRepression #ChicagoTortureJusticeCenter #RainbowPUSHCoalition

Chicago, IL – A series of victories was won in the past month by the movement to free survivors of torture and wrongful conviction at the hands of Chicago Police Department. Clayborn Smith, Marcellous Pittman, Juan Hernandez, Rosendo Hernandez, Arthur Almendarez, John Galvan, Eruby Abrego, Jeremiah Cain, David Gecht and David Colon have all had historic judgments in their cases.

In the case of Clayborn Smith, a decision by the Illinois Appellate Court authored by Justice Cynthia Cobbs reversed the decision of Circuit Court Judge Alfredo Maldonado, finding that Detectives Kenneth Boudreau, John Halloran and James O’Brien had tortured Clayborn Smith into his confession. They granted him a new trial.

In turn, Judge Maldonado found, in the case of Marcellous Pittman, that his tortured confession at the hands of Halloran and O’Brien was inadmissible. Marcellous Pittman also had the charges against him dropped by the state's attorney's office. Within the written decisions by each of these judges, it was laid out plainly that these detectives with a history of torture are not credible and should not be called as witnesses.

Justice Cynthia Cobbs in the Clayborn Smith case stated in her decision “the defendant has produced sufficient evidence of a pattern of physical abuse by the detectives in question” referring to Detectives Boudreau, Halloran, and O’Brien. And Judge Roberto Maldonado stated in his decision in the Marcellous Pittman case that his ruling called into question the credibility of Halloran and O’Brien’s denials.

These decisions come after years of campaigning by the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (CAARPR)’s Campaign to Free Incarcerated Survivors of Police Torture, Mothers Activating Movements for Abolition and Solidarity (MAMAS), and the Chicago Torture Justice Center to free survivors of police torture and wrongful convictions and hold torturing officers accountable.

In October 2021, CAARPR began to pressure the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office (CCSAO) to take action on 409 cases of torture and wrongful conviction, detailed in a comprehensive report that can be found on the Chicago Alliance website.

CAARPR presented the CCSAO with nine demands. These included that their office move to vacate convictions for all those framed, tortured and wrongfully convicted, especially in cases involving detectives with a pattern and practice of torture; that cases involving Jon Burge’s Midnight Crew, of which Boudreau, Halloran, and O’brien were a part, be reviewed and the related convictions vacated; and that the CCSAO publicly state that they will cease calling detectives with established records of torture as witnesses. These recent rulings directly reflect the campaign’s demands.

Another demand of this campaign was for the CCSAO to “Provide information on the status of their promised comprehensive review of Guevara’s cases. Rapidly complete the review and vacate all convictions in which Detectives Reynaldo Guevara, Joseph Miedzianowski, or Ronald Watts were involved.”

Reynaldo Guevara is a former homicide detective who secured dozens of convictions by framing mostly Puerto Rican and Black young people. According to the report, “Over 50 individuals have accused him of coercing confessions through physical or psychological torture or through manipulating witnesses to obtain convictions. Many of them were juveniles at the time of their arrest.”

Cook County Judge Obbish said Guevara “has now eliminated the possibility of being considered a credible witness in any proceeding” due to the evidence against him and his refusal to testify. This is a judgment that is now being applied to other torturer cops such as Boudreau, Halloran and O' Brien.

The leading force behind the effort to free survivors of Detective Guevara has been the organization Innocent Demand Justice(IDJ), which is led by Guevara survivors themselves as well as family members like Esther Hernandez, who has been fighting for the freedom of her two sons, Juan “Poochie” Hernandez and Rosendo Hernandez since their wrongful imprisonment in 1997.

Alongside MAMAS, CAARPR and CTJC, IDJ mobilized rallies for court dates, hosted phone zaps, pressured elected officials, met with the state’s attorney's office, researched Guevara thoroughly, and spoke out in the media. These organizations demanded justice for all of Guevara’s victims, meaning immediate release, charges against Guevara, and reparations for those tortured.

On Friday July 15, the Hernandez brothers were released with all charges dropped against them. This came as part of a wave of exonerations of Guevara survivors, including Eruby Abrego, Jeremiah Cain, David Colon and David Gecht. The release of these survivors, and the decision by the state’s attorney’s office to not re-try them for these baseless charges, are a result of the movement to free torture survivors and the wrongfully convicted.

Esther Hernandez, responding to her sons’ release, saying “I can’t even explain how I feel right now, I’m so joyful.” She added, “As I come to these other cases, I see them come home, I’m like ‘Oh my God, our day is coming.’ I get happy every time I see somebody come out, an innocent man coming out of prison.”

In addition to survivors of Boudreau, Halloran, O’Brien and Guevara being released, two survivors of Detectives Victor Switski and John Hanrahan were released the following day. John Galvan and Arthur Almendarez were wrongfully convicted in 1986, after Hanrahan and Switski tortured them into signing confession statements to a crime they didn’t commit. The detectives told them that they would be able to go home after signing these confessions. They made many attempts to file motions for their witness confessions to be suppressed and quash the arrest. They were sentenced for life without parole with Galvan being sent to Stateville and Almendarez to Hill prisons. New evidence emerged of police coercion, and after 35 years, their case was finally vacated by a Cook County judge.

Detectives Hanrahan and Switski were also mentioned in CAARPR’s CFIST Report on the Pattern and Practice of Torture within the Chicago Police Department. The CFIST report not only clearly demonstrates a long pattern of abuse by crooked officers, but how innocent lives will continue to be lost and harmed, the victims and their families.

“This long pattern of abuse will not stop unless community control of the police is established and all wrongfully convicted prisoners are given immediate release,” said Kobi Guillory, at a rally outside the Cook County Jail in response to this wave of decisions. These victories in the Campaign to Free Incarcerated Survivors of Police Torture and Wrongful Conviction are a sign that the powers that be are responding to the demands of the survivors, families and activists who continue the fight for justice.

#ChicagoIL #ChicagoAllianceAgainstRacistAndPoliticalRepression

Chicago, IL – Kobi Guillory will be the first feature guest on our new podcast Fight Back! Radio. Guillory is the co-chair of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression and an executive board member of the National Alliance. Guillory was amongst the most visible leaders in the streets of Chicago in the aftermath of the police murder of Laquan McDonald by Jason Van Dyke.

In the interview, Guillory goes beyond one police murder and breaks down the systemic issues that have led to repeated police murder and police torture. He shows respect for the movement elders as he talks about the history of the battle for community control of the police.

“I am honored to be the first guest on this podcast. Fight Back! has always lifted up our victories, now using their podcast we can speak more directly working-class fighters,” Guillory said.

The podcast also digs into some of the strategy and tactics employed in Chicago to win community control of the police. Guillory talk about when compromises were made and when they were not, and what went into the thinking of the Alliance.

Fight Back! Radio release a new one hour episode every two weeks. It is available on all major podcast platforms including Apple, Spotify, You Tube, Pandora, Google and many more. Check out this episode with Kobi Guillory and subscribe to Fight Back! Radio.

#ChicagoIL #PeoplesStruggles #AfricanAmerican #PoliceBrutality #ChicagoAllianceAgainstRacistAndPoliticalRepression #Podcasts #FightBackRadio #KobiGuillory

Chicago, IL – Since 2018, Anthony Gay has become a symbol of the struggle against wrongful convictions in Illinois.

As a teen in 1994 in Rock Island, he was sentenced to seven years on a parole violation. He was driving his car without a license and was on parole for a robbery in which he stole a dollar and a hat. The system made him plead guilty for that charge which got him probation.

His mental health deteriorated in prison, and minor infractions got him repeated additional sentences totaling 90 years. He spent 22 of those 24 years in solitary confinement, including some time in Tamms supermax prison. Solitary confinement in turn caused him to do self-harm – cutting himself.

He also began to read law books, and in 2018 he argued that he was incorrectly sentenced to serve those sentences consecutively. He convinced a local state’s attorney the sentences should have been served concurrently.

Racist system retaliates

This year, Rock Island police brought Gay to federal court on a bogus weapon charge. Gay explained, “The police robbed me and jumped on me, and I reported what the police did to me. In retaliation, the police targeted me, arrested me twice in one day, lied and said I had a firearm on me. After they secured state charges against me, they went to the federal government with the intentions of getting me sentenced as an armed career criminal. So, I was federally indicted.”

In federal court in April, he represented himself against the prosecution and got a hung jury.

Gay continued, “They had three expert witnesses testify. They had two U.S. attorneys, and I still got a hung jury.”

Now the federal prosecutors are preparing to put him on trial again starting on Monday, May 16.

Frank Chapman of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, who attended a pre-trial hearing for Gay on May 9 in Peoria, said, “I’ve never heard of somebody representing themselves and getting a hung jury in a federal trial. He’s outlawyering the prosecutors!”

Chapman addressed one other development in the Anthony Gay story that helps to explain why the feds are coming down on him. “Anthony also politicized himself in prison. He read George Jackson, Angela Davis and Malcolm X. He joined the movement!”

CAARPR took a busload of supporters to the pre-trial hearing in Peoria and will continue to show up in court in his defense.

#ChicagoIL #PeoplesStruggles #ChicagoAllianceAgainstRacistAndPoliticalRepression #AnthonyGay

Chicago, IL – Almost two years after the rebellion that swept the country after the murder of George Floyd, people continue to come forward demanding an end to racist policing and mass incarceration. Despite the law-and-order backlash occurring in Illinois, a group of families from the Woodlawn neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side are fighting for justice for their loved ones in Menard Penitentiary and other prisons in the Illinois Department of Corrections.

At a protest in front of the State of Illinois Building in Chicago, Attorney Alan Mills of the Uptown People’s Law Center said that the oldest parts of Menard were built in the 1800s. “People have baked to death in their cells, and frozen to death in the healthcare unit! People are beaten regularly at Menard.”

Organizations in the protest included Saving Our Loved Ones (SOLO), Mothers for Justice, the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (CAARPR), and Southside Together Organizing for Power.

75 people rallied and then marched around City Hall and the State of Illinois Building chanting, “Shut down Menard,” “Free Isaiah Brady, free them all” and “Free Michael Minniefield, free them all!”

The action focused on the cases of four men in Menard: Isaiah Brady, Michael Minnifield, Kenyatta Brown and Chaz Thrailkill. The guards are so violent that the immediate demand is that these men must be moved out of Menard to save their lives.

Darlisa Kendall of Mothers for Justice, spoke about her son, Isaiah Brady. “My son got a murder conviction for an accident. He received 50 years.” Speaking to the mostly Black and Latino families in the crowd, she said, “Why do our children always get the longest sentences?” She shared her experience with the abusive treatment of Isaiah, “I saw him two weeks after the beatings he took from these guards, and I could not even recognize my son!”

The families vowed to continue to fight until all those responsible for these torturous conditions are held accountable, solitary confinement is dismantled and Menard prison is shut down.

To achieve an end to solitary confinement, the organizers support the passage of the Isolated Confinement Restriction Act (HB 3564), also known as the Anthony Gay bill, named for a man who endured 22 years in solitary.

The protest was held on March 23 in honor of organizer Adolfo Davis of SOLO, who said the protest was held on the second anniversary of his release from prison after 29 years. He was sentenced at the age of 14. Davis said the protest was being held, “To hold the IDOC [Illinois Department of Corrections] and Menard prison accountable for beating and killing our loved ones!”

Talking about the significance of this action, Frank Chapman, Field Organizer for CAARPR, pointed out that “Illinois is the only state that has a prison for people with mental illness. In other states, those inmates are placed in a hospital.” He added, “Our movement is working with these families to develop a strategy including legal action, hiring a private investigator, taking legislative action, pressuring politicians, and organizing more families to add their voices to the demands for justice.”

#ChicagoIL #PeoplesStruggles #PoliceBrutality #ChicagoAllianceAgainstRacistAndPoliticalRepression

Chicago, IL – A delegation of activists demanding Justice for Laquan McDonald met with an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Chicago’s Federal Building. They presented a letter signed by 38 organizations and unions, as well as five elected officials, demanding federal charges against killer cop Jason Van Dyke.

A statement released before the protest explained, “VanDyke was given a ‘slap on the wrist’ by the Cook County Criminal Court after being convicted of McDonald’s murder and 16 counts of aggravated assault and is being released from prison after less than 3 ½ years, when Black and brown and other working-class Chicagoans are given sentences up to life in prison without possibility of parole for crimes far less serious.”

The delegation included Frank Chapman of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression CAARPR), Rev. Jesse Jackson of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, and Father Michael Pfleger of St. Sabina’s Church.

The delegation also presented copies of 49 complaints filed with the U.S. Attorney’s office in 2016 from families that had their loved ones killed or brutalized and tortured by the Chicago Police Department. To date, no meaningful action from the DOJ have been taken to deliver justice for these families.

The demand for charges has the support from the national president of the NAACP, Derrick Johnson, as well as the two U.S. senators from Illinois, Richard Durbin and Tammy Duckworth. In the recent past, federal charges were brought against the three accomplice cops involved with the murder of George Floyd, and the three white vigilantes who killed Ahmaud Arbery.

Nine protesters were arrested inside the federal building and charged with misdemeanor civil contempt, including William Calloway, a community activist who was involved in winning the release of the video of the murder of Laquan McDonald in 2015; the uncle of Jacob Blake, who was shot seven times in the back by a cop in Kenosha, Wisconsin in 2020; and Ja’Mal Green, community activist. Also arrested was Kina Collins, community activist and candidate for Congress. Laquan’s grandmother, Tracie Hunter, was with the group that was arrested; however, she was not charged.

A crowd of about 100 protested outside the building . Chicago police officers displayed their typical vicious treatment of the Black Lives Matter movement. Shasta Jones of CAARPR was at the protest and said, “A cop threatened to sic a huge German shepherd dog on me and an older Black woman.” According to Jones, the cop said, “I’ll let this fucking dog go if you don’t move!” The dog growled, and Shasta and others around her had to run into traffic to get away.

#ChicagoIL #PeoplesStruggles #PoliceBrutality #ChicagoAllianceAgainstRacistAndPoliticalRepression #LaquanMcDonald

Chicago, IL – On Sunday evening, September 12, a group of concerned Chicagoans and their dogs gathered at North Avenue Beach for a Pooch Walk to reclaim the space where a Chicago Police Department (CPD) officer attacked African American woman Nikkita Brown while she was walking her dog on August 28 at 12:12 a.m.

The cop, who has had 24 misconduct allegations against him, approached Brown under the pretense of her being in the park after it closed, despite there being several white people still present in the park. When she began to film him, the officer moved toward her. She asked him to keep a social distance, which he refused, then as Brown was walking away, he grabbed her, knocking her phone out of her hands and her shoes off her feet. Ms. Brown stood firm and remained upright, despite the officer’s attempts to wrestle her to the ground.

Brown decided to pursue disciplinary action and charges against the officer involved, helping bring light to the violence against women perpetrated by CPD, an aspect of the police terror plaguing Black and other nationally oppressed communities.

Sunday’s action was organized by the Women’s All Points Bulletin (WAPB) and co-sponsored by the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (CAARPR), Justice for Families, and the 411 Movement for Pierre Loury.

Brown and her loved ones came to join the crowd of more than 20 people and their dogs, which included several survivors of police sexual violence and their supporters.

Trina Townsend, a board member of WAPB, and a survivor of sexual assault by CPD stated, “We as survivors, we all feel when another sister goes through a traumatic experience like that. How can I heal if things like this keep happening? I'm here to support Nikkita and all women, especially all Black and brown women. We have to be able to feel safe, to be able to walk anywhere without the fear of the police doing something to us. I support Nikkita all the way.”

Crista Noel, a founder of WAPB, put the situation in the context of the police’s pattern of abuse against women, saying, “We have Miracle Boyd that the CPD popped in her mouth and broke her teeth. We have Mia Wright where they snatched her out of the car and put a knee on her neck at the Brickyard Mall. We’ve got Alexis Wilson that was shot to death by some cops over a bad order at Baba’s restaurant. We just have too many occurrences that are happening against women and it’s like a run by the police on women. And we want this to stop.”

The WAPB listed out the demands of the action in a press statement: “We demand that the City of Chicago quickly resolve the lawsuits in the Anjanette Young case and the Nikkita Brown case, as well as quickly investigate and terminate police involved in these incidents and others under their purview. Additionally, we demand that Cook County consider an Oversight Agency for incidents of police violence outside of the city but within its borders, as well as a State agency to escalate complaints to and for review, investigation, and auditing.”

The officer who attacked Ms. Brown has been placed on administrative duties, pending an investigation by the Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA). Individuals and organizations have been gathering outside of COPA headquarters since the incident went public on September 1 to pressure COPA to act swiftly and decisively to strip this predatory cop of his police powers and charge him with assault. The WAPB and CAARPR are mobilizing people to participate in public comment at the upcoming police board meeting on Thursday, September 23 at 7 p.m.

Another survivor of CPD violence, Erica Kadel, said that the assault of Nikkita Brown “can't go without a response, not only in the form of the courts convicting the cop who assaulted this woman and her dog. But also, the response of the community in support of Ms. Brown and making sure that we're showing her and showing other people that we can make spaces safe for each other.” The Pooch Walk showed that communities across Chicago are ready to stand with Ms. Brown as she seeks justice and accountability.

COPA, the superintendent, and the Police Board are all part of the unjust police accountability system in Chicago. The Empowering Communities for Public Safety (ECPS) ordinance that the movement against police crimes in Chicago fought to pass, is designed to change the power relations of this system. When ECPS is fully implemented, those targeted by police terror, like Brown, will have a structure through which to seek justice in the form of local district councils and a city-wide Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability. The Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability is a citywide commission nominated by locally-elected District Council members in each police district with the power to hire and fire the head of COPA and review its operations.

The Community Commission will also have the power to review and oversee the operations of the superintendent and Police Board, the bodies with the power to fire CPD officers. The movement is also fighting to pass an ordinance that will get a referendum on the ballot to increase the powers of this commission. These expanded powers would include the ability to hire and fire the superintendent and members of the Police Board. The WAPB expressed support for the ECPS referendum in a press statement.

Jazmine Salas, an organizer with CAARPR stated, “The fact of the matter is the Chicago police, not only are they responsible for murdering countless dozens of folks from the city, they’re also responsible for sexual assault, they’re also responsible for abusing and mistreatment of women. And that is unacceptable and must end today.”

#ChicagoIL #PeoplesStruggles #PoliceBrutality #ChicagoAllianceAgainstRacistAndPoliticalRepression #WomensAllPointsBulletin

Chicago, IL – The Chicago movement against racist policing made history July 21 with the passage of the most progressive police accountability legislation in the country. The ordinance, named Empowering Communities for Public Safety (EPCS), was passed by the Chicago City Council on a 36-13 vote.

ECPS had the support of the Socialist, Progressive Reform, Black, Latino, and Socialist Caucuses. Even Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who had repeatedly tried to stop the ordinance, came to support it in the end.

A press conference was held outside City Hall after the city council meeting adjourned, attended by eight alderpersons, as well as leaders of the coalition of community organizations and labor unions.

Anthony Driver, political staff of SEIU Healthcare Illinois/Indiana (HCII) said that, for the residents of the community, including the 90,000 members of HCII, “This will take Chicago from worst to best in the country when it comes to police accountability,” adding, “Eleven Black labor leaders came together to urge the Black Caucus to support ECPS.”

Driver shared, “Ten years ago, Officer Marco Proano killed a close friend of mine. The city council approved a settlement in his murder, but he was never held accountable. In fact, he was given a commendation by Police Superintendent Jody Weis two years later. Years later, that same officer fired into a car with Black teenagers, and he finally lost his job. During that whole process, I felt that I had no voice. Today, the Black and brown communities will have a voice, and our members will have a decisive voice in public safety.”

ECPS will result in elections for councils in police districts that will bring communities together to decide who polices in their neighborhoods and how they are to be policed. The next step for the coalition is to pass a sister ordinance which will present to voters in a binding referendum the choice to have direct elections of a commission which will have the power to hire and fired the superintendent of the police, among other powers.

#ChicagoIL #PeoplesStruggles #PoliceBrutality #ChicagoAllianceAgainstRacistAndPoliticalRepression #EmpoweringCommunitiesForPublicSafetyECPS

Fight Back News Service is circulating this July 21 statement from the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression.

The Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression celebrates the passage in City Council today of the historic Empowering Communities for Public Safety (ECPS) ordinance, which will give communities in Chicago more power over their police department than any city in the United States has ever seen. We salute and cherish this people’s victory and the truly mass movement that created this moment, through constant grassroots pressure and the unrelenting, iron will to fight for power for the oppressed – which is the first footfall on the path to justice. We extend the warm embrace of gratitude to all our allies in this struggle, who have never faltered at our side, and with whom we share this great day.

In a history-defining moment, ECPS was passed in City Council by a vote of 36-13 after a years-long and sometimes bitter struggle. Early this year, our campaign for an elected Civilian Police Accountability Council (CPAC) formed a united front with the Grassroots Alliance for Police Accountability (GAPA) out of the tactical imperative to defeat Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who has done nothing since taking office but stall and obstruct police reform and the people’s demand for justice and freedom from police abuse and tyranny. Left unchecked, Lightfoot would have set back the movement to end police crimes by years if not decades. We salute our coalition allies from GAPA for their steadfastness and solidarity in this struggle against the Mayor and their commitment to putting Chicago on the path to justice through community control of the police.

Today’s victory proves the correctness of our decision to form this united front, which has seen our alliance and our coalition swell to include over 100 organizations, 18 labor unions comprising nearly 200,000 members, some 26 houses of worship across the city – and today 36 aldermen who supported the fundamental right of communities to decide who polices us and how are communities are policed.

Speaking at a People’s Celebration outside City Hall immediately following today’s historic vote, Frank Chapman, Field Organizer for the Chicago Alliance and a long-time leader in the CPAC and ECPS campaigns said, “This is the only kind of coalition that could have won this fight. Now, we in the communities that have been abused and occupied by the police, now we have a voice in saying how we are policed and we’re going to keep that voice.”

In the final version voted on today, ECPS will create a Community Commission, nominated by elected residents, who will have the power to make and approve police department, police board, and police investigation policy in addition to the power to appoint the head of the police misconduct investigation agency (colloquially known as COPA) and to initiate the firing of the police superintendent. Because of the strength and breadth of our movement, Mayor Lightfoot was forced to come to the negotiating table and create a version of ECPS with our coalition that kept all of our fundamental priorities including that policymaking, and the appointment of the COPA chief, be in the hands of the community commission and with the people.

Jazmine Salas, co-chair of the Chicago Alliance said, “This victory belongs to the people of Chicago, who fought and struggled and bled for this. And it belongs to the victims of police murder and violence who we continue to fight for every day.”

While we celebrate today in the glow of victory, we are clear-eyed about the tasks that lay ahead. Those include passing the accompaniment bill to ECPS, an ordinance calling for a citywide referendum to allow the voters of Chicago to decide if they want to directly elect the members of the Community Commission established by ECPS and expand its powers to grant full community control of the police as originally envisioned by CPAC. And it includes campaigning and organizing to ensure that voters support their right to community control and turn out in decisive numbers to approve the referendum.

These are our tasks in the days and months ahead. As a movement, we are compelled to act by the people’s unrelenting demands for justice and we will not stop until we win the power the people deserve.

Victory to the courageous! All power to the people.

#ChicagoIL #PeoplesStruggles #PoliceBrutality #ChicagoAllianceAgainstRacistAndPoliticalRepression #EmpoweringCommunitiesForPublicSafetyECPS

Chicago, IL – On June 23, over 150 people from the movement to stop police crimes and end police impunity rallied outside of Chicago City Hall before the city council meeting. “This should have been a meeting where ECPS would be voted on, where we are turning the people’s ordinance into the law of this city,” Kobi Guillory, co-chair of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (CAARPR) explained, “but what happened on Friday is that certain alderpersons, acting at the behest of the mayor of this city, blocked our substitute ordinance from being put in, which stopped it from being voted on.”

ECPS stands for Empowering Communities for Public Safety, an ordinance that gives the people of Chicago a decisive say in what policing and public safety look like. At the Committee on Public Safety meeting on Friday, June 18, Alderman Chris Taliaferro, committee chair, together with reactionary members of the committee, and assisted by several white alderpeople representing North Side wards, used a series of parliamentary maneuvers to obstruct the introduction of a substitute ECPS ordinance. The substitute ordinance has enough support to pass through the committee to the full council.

Alderman Sposato, donning a “Defend the Police'' shirt, with a “God Bless America” background, was able, with the help of Taliaferro, and the support of his backwards colleagues, to move for the substitute ordinance to be tabled. This was met with disagreement by several alderpeople present in the meeting, but Taliaferro stood by his decision, and went so far as to compare constituents putting up posters on their alderperson’s office to white supremacists who participated in the D.C. Capitol riots.

“We all know in Chicago that the Public Safety committee is the most conservative committee in the city. It is done that way by design so things that bring justice don’t move forward,” said Alderman Andre Vasquez, one of several aldermanic supporters who spoke at Wednesday’s rally.

The pro-ECPS coalition made the tactical decision prior to the vote in this backwards committee to divide ECPS into two ordinances. The second ordinance would include the referendum which creates a more achievable pathway for full community control of the Chicago Police Department, and the ECPS coalition, including the aldermanic allies, are united in support of this approach. That ordinance would go separately through the Rules committee.

Lightfoot and her allies are on the defensive, pulling illegal and undemocratic maneuvers in attempts to thwart the people’s will. As Alderman Carlos Ramirez-Rosa said, this “sleight of hand came from the mayor’s office and a few of her white allies on the Public Safety committee because they know that ECPS has got the votes. ECPS has got the votes because people came together and demanded justice. ECPS has got the votes because the Black Caucus, the Latino Caucus, the Progressive Caucus, came together with 100-plus community organizations. This is a movement, and this movement will not stop until the people have community control of police, and we have justice, until we stop killer cops.”

Alderwoman Maria Hadden added, “We have people in city council who are so accustomed to passing on decisions, to letting other people think for them, to letting other people make decisions for them, to deferring to the mayor. They’re not listening to us. It’s almost as if they don’t know how to work in a functional democracy. I know that we are going to win.”

Elijah Gerald Reed, a survivor of Chicago Police Department torture, who was wrongfully locked up for 31 years, joined in the rally, along with his mother, Armanda Shackelford. He got to the heart of the matter, saying, “I wonder what I could have done 31 years ago. I could’ve been an alderman. I could’ve been a governor. I went to school. They took me from school and kidnapped me from my mama. It shouldn’t happen to no one else’s kids.”

Armanda Shackelford addressed Lori Lightfoot directly, saying, “Mayor Lightfoot, get up off your foot, and do your job. Too many men and women are still incarcerated that shouldn’t be there. And that’s what we’re fighting for. We’re fighting for their deliverance, and we need it now. Really, it shouldn’t have been allowed to go on in the city of Chicago, and this is a disgrace. Do the thing that’s right for once in your life, because you are so sorry. You are a sorry excuse for a human being, and to call yourself a mayor. A mayor to who, yourself? Because you’re not a mayor for us.”

Muhammad Sankari of the U.S. Palestinian Community Network, said, “We’ve been told so many lies by the mayor’s office. The biggest lie we were told was that Mayor Lightfoot’s campaign was a direct descendant of our leader and our fighter Harold Washington. Our coalition is the inheritor of Harold Washington’s legacy! And [North Side alderpersons] Silverstein and Tunney, and the mayor’s office are nothing but a reincarnation of Vrdolyak.”

Edward Vrdolyak was the most openly racist of the white aldermen in the Chicago Democratic Party that blocked the agenda of Mayor Harold Washington when he was first elected in 1983.

Eric A. Russell of the Tree of Life Justice League laid out, “We are here because there is a hunt. There is a hunt, and those of us who have been kissed by the sun, the Chicago police have put targets on our back. The police no longer serve and protect Black and brown people in Chicago. They pursue and execute us.”

In closing the program, Frank Chapman, Field Organizer for CAARPR stated,, “So, how’s this gonna stop? It’s not gonna stop until we stop it. Ain’t nobody gonna free us but us. So, if you’re waiting on someone else to come and do it, stop waiting. Now is the time for us to begin that freedom, by us having control over who polices our communities and how our communities are policed. That’s the first step towards defunding the police. That’s the first step towards abolishing the police. That’s the first step towards abolishing this whole damn system that keeps us in bondage.”

#ChicagoIL #PeoplesStruggles #PoliceBrutality #ChicagoAllianceAgainstRacistAndPoliticalRepression #EmpoweringCommunitiesForPublicSafetyECPS

Chicago, IL – On May 24, two years after taking office, Mayor Lori Lightfoot introduced her legislation for civilian oversight of the Chicago Police Department (CPD). Ironically, her bill was written without input from the community.

Under the name, “Community Commission for Public Safety,” the civilians in Lightfoot’s bill are appointed by her. In short, it keeps all the power over the police in her hands.

Ted Pearson, longtime activist against police crimes with the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (CAARPR), describes her bill as “leaving the people with nothing but a guarantee that nothing will change. It will erect a new layer of toothless bureaucracy over the already ineffective ‘oversight’ of the Chicago Police Department and call it progress.”

With this Lightfoot guarantees the police will not be held accountable. The reason for police terror in Black and Latino communities is to enforce the system of racist national oppression that denies them full equality. In the words of Frank Chapman, Field Organizer for CAARPR, the only way to end the deadly system of police crimes is for the oppressed Black and Latino communities to assert, “our democratic right to determine who polices our communities and how they are policed.”

Lightfoot’s record of police impunity

There can be no hope for change in how the police treat the Black and Latino communities as Lightfoot has shown she won’t hold police accountable for their crimes.

She ran for mayor on her reputation as a police reformer after leading the investigation in 2016 of CPD following the murder of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald by Officer Jason Van Dyke in 2014. The horrific video of Van Dyke shooting the Black teen 16 times was covered up by Mayor Rahm Emanuel for over a year. Emanuel feared that the video would have cost him his reelection. He was right. When the protest movement finally forced the release of the video, Rahm’s career was over. He denied it until months before the 2019 elections but dropped out of running for a third term just days before the trial of Van Dyke took off.

In the 2016 report issued from Lightfoot’s investigation, she called for a body of community representatives to be over the police, “to honor the principles established by CPAC,” referring to the campaign led by CAARPR for an elected Civilian Police Accountability Council.

The principle behind CPAC is community control of the police. This is a fundamental break from the failures over a generation of civilian oversight bodies to have any impact on racist policing.

In her campaign for mayor, she said this body would be among her top priorities and would be implemented within 90 days of taking office. Lightfoot broke her pledge when she took office in 2019. Then a year later, when the rebellion broke out after the murder of George Floyd, and 20,000 people marched and caravanned into the Loop, Lightfoot unleashed the cops to brutalize protesters.

At the end of 2020, Lightfoot was exposed for covering up a 2019 racist police raid of the home of Anjanette Young, a Black social worker. When 15 cops kicked in Young’s door, they found her getting out of the shower, and handcuffed her, leaving her naked in the middle of the room while they searched the apartment. She was in that position for over 13 minutes while she repeatedly told them they had the wrong house.

In February of this year, the city revealed that Lightfoot gave $280 million of the federal pandemic relief funds to the Chicago Police Department. This is on top of the $1.7 billion in CPD’s annual budget, 40% of Chicago’s entire budget.

Then in April, the police murder of 13-year-old Adam Toledo highlighted that unlike most other major police forces in the U.S., Chicago has no policy limiting the use of foot chases. Shot in the chest after a foot chase, Toledo was complying with the order to raise his hands. 30% of all foot chases end with cops using force against a suspect.

Lightfoot’s failures to stop racist policing became undeniable.

Showdown in battle for community control of police

Early in 2021, Lightfoot betrayed the Grassroots Alliance for Police Accountability (GAPA), with whom she had partnered on a bill that was seen as a watered down version of CPAC. After repeated attempts to get GAPA to weaken their bill to the point where it would have zero ability to hold the police accountable, GAPA saw the writing on the wall: the mayor was not interested in a democratic approach to police accountability. They approached CAARPR about negotiating a joint ordinance, which became Empowering Communities for Public Safety (ECPS). The joint ordinance was introduced in the Public Safety Committee of the City Council on Friday, May 21.

When the alderpersons who had supported GAPA decided to unite forces with the mass movement against the crimes of the Chicago Police Department, it resulted in an ordinance that will place decisive power over CPD policy in the hands of the community through a commission chosen in an election process. 60% of Chicago is Black and Latino.

The commission established by ECPS would get to rewrite the police rule book, including the policies on use of force. It would also hire and fire the head of the agency that investigates police crimes. Finally, ECPS contains a referendum to give Chicagoans the choice for the direct election of the commission, and the power to hire and fire the superintendent of police.

Lightfoot is facing a defeat in the city council as a majority of alderpersons are supporting ECPS.

Major caucuses in Chicago city council unite for ECPS

CAARPR and GAPA began talks in January along with the chief sponsors of the two bills, Alderpersons Carlos Ramirez-Rosa and Leslie Hairston for CPAC, and Roderick Sawyer and Harry Osterman for GAPA. The negotiations took on a greater urgency in February when Lightfoot cancelled a planned meeting of the Public Safety Committee to stymie the progress being made between the two organizations. Roderick Sawyer received a call during the meeting, and when he announced Lightfoot’s interference, he said, “This is war.”

On February 19, the two groups issued a joint statement. CAARPR’s Frank Chapman said, “The mayor is interfering because she does not want to see any change that would diminish her power, and what we are doing is putting the power in the hands of the people because that is where the power belongs.”

In March, the two groups united on the language of the bill, and then went to work to get the majority of the city council to support the bill. The city council Socialist Caucus had been with CPAC since 2015; the Progressive Reform Caucus was at the negotiating table with GAPA and CPAC. The Latino Caucus came to support ECPS shortly after.

Then with the help of a united group of 11 Black labor leaders (from SEIU Health Care Illinois/Indiana, SEIU Local 73, CTU, Transit Workers Union Locals 241 and 308, American Postal Workers Union, and the National Alliance of Letter Carriers, the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, and the A. Phillip Randolph Institute), the Black Caucus joined the movement.

Class struggle behind the scenes

With the caucuses closing ranks, ECPS now has the support of a majority of the city council. This sets up a major confrontation between Lightfoot and the council, and the prospect of a veto by the mayor. Mayoral vetoes are rare in Chicago. The last one was 15 years ago. The alderpersons who played a leadership role in the negotiations, Carlos Ramirez Rosa and Roderick Sawyer, believe that they will gather enough council votes to override a veto by Lightfoot.

Looking at a deeper level, the level of conflict between Lightfoot and the city council is revealing the underlying material interests the different forces represent. Like most big city mayors, Lightfoot represents the major capitalist powers in Chicago: LaSalle Street banks, the Commodity Exchange, and investment firms; and the big real estate developers. Black and Latino alderpersons represent the petty bourgeoisie and bourgeoisie of the Black, Chicano/Mexicano and Puerto Rican nationalities – the small capitalists and professionals that are the dominant classes within those communities.

Lightfoot is a Black, queer woman, and gets racist treatment from the media. Also, she is attacked by the Fraternal Order of the Police and other racists, just as Barack Obama experienced in his two terms in the White House. But when the Black Lives Matter movement began the chant, “Who do you protect, who do you serve?” against CPD, everyone in this movement knew the answer. The police are there to defend the interests of the white ruling class. And the mayor provides cover for the cops.

The wards in the oppressed communities have been hit the hardest by COVID-19 and the economic crisis. On top of that, these areas – particularly Black neighborhoods – suffer the most from police occupation. All classes in the hood and the barrio are oppressed, including the professionals and small businesspeople from among whose ranks most alderpersons arise.

The constituents of the Black Caucus are crying out for relief from the pandemic, from the economic crisis and from police terror. And they want community control of the police, to determine who polices their communities and how they are policed. That’s why the Black Caucus broke with Lightfoot.

Showdown in city council between progress and ‘business as usual’

On Friday, May 21, the city council’s Public Safety Committee held its long delayed meeting to consider police accountability legislation. Lightfoot attempted to block the GAPA/CPAC ordinance being submitted as a substitute ordinance for the previous GAPA language. But on the 21st, Committee Chair Alderperson Chris Taliaferro announced that ECPS will be voted on in the June meeting. After Lightfoot’s bill was introduced, he announced her bill would be voted on as well.

Chicago is one of the cities with the worst problems of racist policing in the country. It is the only city to have apologized and paid reparations to victims of police torture. Kim Foxx, the current states attorney, has called Chicago “the wrongful conviction capital of the U.S.”

Now Chicago is poised to leap to having the strongest and most democratic police accountability system in the country. The decision is in the hands of the city council: will they stay united with the movement in the streets?

#ChicagoIl #ChicagoIL #PeoplesStruggles #PoliceBrutality #ChicagoAllianceAgainstRacistAndPoliticalRepression #EmpoweringCommunitiesForPublicSafetyECPS