Portside

If you say you’re on the freedom side, then that means you will join us in asking the rich to pay their fair share; calling on the city and state to stop the attacks on public and higher education; in asking the banks to end their predatory deals that strip vital dollars from our schools; in fighting for stronger neighborhoods and job creation, and access to health care and not just health insurance.

If you are not severely and wholeheartedly dealing with racism, you are not going to get to the bottom of this issue . . . CPD's own data gives validity to the widely held belief the police have no regard for the sanctity of life when it comes to people of color . . . at every step of the way, the police oversight system is riddled with legal and practical barriers to accountability.

The Sun-Times previously has reported that, over the past seven years, the police have spied on anti-Olympics protesters, the Service Employees International Union, critics of the visiting Chinese premier, the Occupy movement and NATO Summit demonstrators. Following nationwide protests over the shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, the police here monitored black demonstrators and kept logs of events led by the Rev. Jesse Jackson and other groups.

Like Chicago Public Schools, CHA is under complete mayoral control. Emanuel appoints the board of directors and designates its president, and he appoints the chief executive. Under Emanuel, CHA has become an ongoing scandal, with construction of new units slowing to a near standstill.

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.

Reader Comments: Donald Trump - Anti-Muslim policies are steeped in racism, anti-communism and fascism; Chicago - CITYWIDE WALK OUT PART 2!! Rahm Emanuel & Anita Alvarez Must Resign - Friday, Dec. 18; End of Jewish History?; The Wal-Mart Effect; Kohler strike; Barbara Ehrenreich, working class, race, class, and privilege; Lincoln Brigade; Climate Change and Oil Wars; Cuba; The Big Short; Multicultural trip to Cuba; No Tidbits for next three weeks

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."