On December 18, hundreds gathered in downtown Chicago in order to demand the resignation, arrest and indictment of Mayor Rahm Emmanuel and State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez, both of whom have been implicated in covering up the murder of Laquan McDonald by white cop Jason Van Dyke in October of last year. Beginning with a rally at Daley Plaza, protesters quickly took the streets, marching for hours and shutting down major intersections and shopping malls while shouting “16 Shots and a cover-up!”
The march overtook Michigan Avenue, moving north and shutting down one of the busiest shopping districts during one of the busiest shopping times of the year. Access to Water Tower Place was blockaded as protesters declared that there would be no more profits until their demands were met.
As the evening wore on, the march moved farther north to the Gold Coast neighborhood, occupying space in one of the most expensive and exclusive areas of the city. Organizers explained the significance of taking the march directly to the homes of Chicago’s elite, to force them to confront the city’s violence in their own communities the same way that so many of Chicago’s Black community must face it in theirs. They stated that they would continue to bring their grievances to their oppressors directly in this manner, until they were finally addressed.
Friday’s march was only the latest in a series of protests and actions that have been undertaken in the past weeks to demand justice for all victims of police brutality and murder. The spark which has ignited this latest round of protest is the release three weeks ago of the video of the recording of the murder of Laquan MacDonald. For over a year the State’s Attorney’s office had the video. Not only did they decline to press charges, they failed to offer any credible explanation for their inaction. It’s also now clear that the Mayor’s office knew of the video’s existence and strongly supported keeping it firmly buried. Eventually it took a judge issuing a court order for its release to finally be made public.
The reasons why Emmanuel’s office wanted the tape kept secret are clear to anyone who watches it. At the time, Emmanuel was running in a tight re-election campaign against progressive challenger Chuy Garcia, forcing the Mayor’s race into a run-off for the first time in Chicago electoral history. Now, a significant number of voters say that if they had known about the tape, they would not have re-elected Emmanuel. Since the video’s release, Emmanuel’s approval rating has dropped to 18 percent and more than half of Chicago residents believe he should resign. Public anger is now so strong that legislation is being introduced at the state level in order to make a recall of the Mayor possible. As these details have come to light, coupled with the brutal facts of the video itself which show Laquan McDonald being shot 16 times without any kind of provocation or warning, they have galvanized the city against Emmanuel and the Chicago Police Department.
While these latest videos and revelations are damning, they are sadly well in line with what activists in Chicago (and more broadly, across the nation) have been documenting for years. For Chicago, like for so many other U.S. cities, police murder and brutality is not a new phenomenon, but a common reality. People in Chicago have no choice but to be acutely aware of this fact. Rekia Boyd’s murderer, Dante Servin has still not faced justice, nor has the city admitted to any wrongdoing in the death of Ronald “Ronnieman” Johnson, another young Black man whose last moments captured on video contradict the “official” police narrative of a “threat.” The Chicago Police Department still operates its “black site” in Homan Square where countless young Black and Brown people are detained and tortured.
As must be noted, and as activists continue to emphasize, these are not isolated tragedies, but the terrible grace notes of a systematic oppression that builds prisons instead of schools, that would rather invest in more cops than more healthcare, and that treats Black life as a disposable commodity, less important than the re-election of a rich politician.
In a speech last Wednesday, the Mayor offered platitudes about “respect” and communication while welcoming a Federal Department of Justice inquiry. The ostensibly public meeting was actually only open to invited guests of the Mayor; the public corralled into a soundproofed gallery with limited seating above the floor (protesters did nonetheless display a banner for a brief time against the glass demanding the Mayor’s arrest). While his sincerity rang hollow with activists, and there is little faith in the ability of the Department of Justice to enact any kind of systemic reform, it was seen as a sign of the movement’s strength that the mayor was forced at all to address the very issue he’s tried so hard to cover up.
But in a stunning rejection of the substance of the Mayor’s comments, more than a thousand people gathered that day at noon to demand the Mayor’s immediate resignation, along with that of Alvarez. For over five hours, spirited chants of “Rahm Resign!” and “CPD! KKK! How many kids did you kill today?” were heard throughout downtown. Many students and employees walked out of their jobs and classrooms, with a large and vocal contingent of high school students joining the march. Police proved powerless then to corral protesters as they broke through police lines and shut down shopping districts.
These ongoing protests show no signs of stopping, and are being led by the Black youth of the city who are most intimately aware of the problems, not only of police violence, but the economic motivations that keep them in place. There is momentum building, not only to jail corrupt politicians like Emanuel and Alvarez (though that remains a key demand), but to overturn the entire economic and social order that sees the loss of Black life as an acceptable cost of doing business. With the establishment on the defensive, there is more than ever a need to continue fighting in the streets, to push the gains won, and to fight for a world where Black lives matter.
