Protests following the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police continue in Chicago where the demand to end racist policing and CPD impunity for crimes committed under color of law is long standing. This recording of the first three speakers at a rally to pressure elected officials to listen to the people, took place out side Chicago's City Hall where the Mayor was holding a virtual Council meeting; one of the items to be submitted, the CPAC Ordinance, would historically change the power dynamics, enabling community control over how their community would be policed.
A forty car caravan nosily circled city hall during the rally. Historic changes are under way that the mayor and some aldermen are trying to block. Chicago has a sordid history of unaccountable police protected by a corrupt system for which past and current elected public officials are responsible. I spoke briefly with a torture survivor who was framed at sixteen for murder and sentenced to natural life in prison. After 28 years his conviction was overturned in 2009 after his case was taken up by activists from CAARPR. He comments on a new community commission on police use of force that the Mayor has made him a part of, along with Arewa Winters whose great nephew, Pierre Loury, was killed by Chicago police.
But more aldermen are feeling the heat. They are lifting ideas from CPAC to talk about the alternative ordinance, GAPA, that they and the Mayor have been trying to ram through as a solution to the policing crisis. But GAPA, for all its simulacra of reform, fails to transfer real power to the community to empower it to control the conditions of its own safety. Health clinics, good schools, resources for children and adults, access to wellness care and good housing and nutrition are what makes a community safer, not more cops with guns is the message that the Mayor, like minded aldermen and Chicago financial and real estate elites are refusing to hear.
Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression https://www.facebook.com/caarpr/
Stoppolicecrimes.com
The Chicago Torture Justice Center https://chicagotorturejustice.org/
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