In September 1965 a dozen or so members of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s southern field staff moved into the West Side Christian Parish’s Project House in the heart of Chicago’s Near West Side, joining other volunteers already living there. Black and white, male and female, most of them still in their early twenties, they had already been tested by civil rights struggles in the South.
“Some people feel like it’s not enough, but it’s symbolic,” said Armando Robles, one of the New Era worker-owners and a leader of the occupation and ensuing efforts. “It’s a huge victory.”
Maybe they can get away with it, but it certainly seems worthwhile putting up a fight to stop them.
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The consequences of the shooting of Laquan McDonald - Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan said she wrote to U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch asking the federal Justice Department to conduct a civil rights investigation into the Police Department's "use of force, including deadly force; "I write to you with urgency," Madigan writes in the letter to Lynch. "Trust in the Chicago Police Department is broken, especially in communities of color in the City of Chicago."
Chi-Raq begins with a devastating overture, Pray 4 My City, with the lyrics printed directly on the screen, impossible to ignore. 'I don’t live in Chicago, I live in Chi-Raq,' it concludes, using the controversial nickname given to the city where gun deaths outnumber those in America’s foreign wars. Narrator Dolmedes, Samuel L Jackson, explains that communities under siege aren’t a new phenomenon, and explains how previous authors wrote about such tales.
Chi-Raq is an angry midlife masterpiece that, like previous Spike Lee films, sucks the viewer into a cinematographic vortex that is as challenging as the mad realities is confronts. For a full review, click here.
The lack of sound in the recording and the perfunctory way the officers moved and behaved made a horrifying act seem normal. Mayor Rahm Emanuel keeps implying that this incident is a one-off situation. But that’s wrong.
After dashboard-camera footage of the shooting of Laquan McDonald was released, protesters took to the streets of Chicago.
The Chicago Teachers Union has formally told its membership to start saving money for what could be "a protracted strike."
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