Chicago

Memorial Blockade: A Love Letter to Communities Resisting Police Violence

  • December 25, 2015
  • By:

Toting a number of large gift-wrapped packages, a group of 16 Chicagoans walked into a crosswalk in the city’s financial district on December 15. After strolling into a formation that stretched from one side of Congress Parkway to the other, at the mouth of the Eisenhower Expressway, they unwrapped the packages, revealing a set of lockboxes – blockade devices that attach protesters to one another as they attempt to hold space – and locked themselves together. The lockboxes were unusually ornate, with white lights and paper and cloth flowers woven throughout their surface area. Once a box connected each person…

The Power of Choice: Chicago’s Black Organizers Refuse a Meeting With Mayor Emanuel

  • November 25, 2015
  • By:

As the city of Chicago continued to await the release of a graphic police dashcam video, on Monday, with officials hinting that unprecedented charges against a Chicago police officer might be in the works, a coalition of young Black organizers announced that they were refusing a private meeting with Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Emanuel, scrambling in the face of a PR nightmare, had hoped to discuss the pending release of police dashcam footage of the death of Laquan McDonald with Black youth leaders. A refusal issued Monday morning, in a statement jointly issued by the grassroots groups Black Youth Project…

2 of 2
12