The Doctor of Common Sense
A group of Chicago youth staged a “die-in’ at City Hall to demand that the city defund police and fund marginalized communities instead. The youth, all members of #NoCopAcademy, also announced that the organization is suing Mayor Rahm Emanuel for withholding critical emails regarding construction of the proposed $95 million building for a Police and Fire training center in West Garfield Park.
“Rahm supports schools and resources for cops, not for Black and Brown kids,” their mission reads. “We demand a redirecting of this $95 million into Chicago’s most marginalized communities instead. Real community safety comes from fully-funded schools and mental health centers, robust after-school and job-training programs, and social and economic justice. We want investment in our communities, not expanded resources for police.”
Today, members of the #NoCopAcademy — a movement led by Black youth in Chicago but fueled and organized by a group of multiracial youth— took over Chicago’s City Hall, 121 N. LaSalle Dr., to demand that the mayor invests in black and brown communities and resources for the youth.
The young protestors first disrupted the Chicago City Council meeting and then staged a “die-in” in the City Hall lobby. The group set up cardboard tombstones with the names of people killed in police shootings, like Laquan McDonald, an unarmed Black teen fatallyshot by Chicago cop Jason Van Dyke. The tombstones also had the names of schools, mental health facilities, and social service institutions that have been shut down by the city due to lack of funding.
Chanting “16 shots and a cover up!” at Chicago City Hall #NoCopAcademy
“16 shots and a cover-up!” the group chanted as police arrived at the lobby, a twitter video shows.
The youth argue that Chicago already spends $1.5 billion on police every year, an approximately $4 million every day.
“We spend 300% more on the CPD as a city than we do on the Departments of Public Health, Family and Support Services, Transportation, and Planning and Development (which handles affordable housing). This plan is being praised as a development opportunity to help local residents around the proposed site, but when Rahm closed 50 schools in 2013, six were in this neighborhood,” their mission reads.
West Garfield Park is a predominantly Black neighborhood and it was in September 2017 that community leaders decided to take matters into their own hands by creating the #NoCopAcademy Movement, wrote Juanita Tennyson for Teen Vogue. The group of teens met with City Council members, held press conferences, canvassed and door knocked on the West Side to raise awareness of the project.
Maria Mora, described as a lead organizer and canvasser with #NoCopAcademy spoke before City Council and said that the group had surveyed 500 residents of West Garfield Park and communities nearby about the project.
“88% are opposed,” she said. Mora added that the majority agreed that building a police academy was not the “best deal for a $95 million investment” in the neighborhood, and 7% need more information.
Listen. Listen listen listen! Maria has been leading canvassing on the west side asking neighbors of proposed cop academy what they think. She breaks down the results of the 500 people surveyed so far here and it’s
She added that most people agreed that the investment in the West Side should be in community safety, schools, community spaces, mental health clinics, substance abuse clinics, homelessness and to reclaiming abandoned spaces.
During a Council meeting in November 2017, Chance the Rapper spoke out against Rahm’s plan and shortly after took it to social media, making #NoCopAcademy a trending topic.
Today, the Grammy-winning South Side rap artist sent his support to the youth at City Hall through a tweet.
“Students in Chicago are staging a SIT IN at City Hall right now. I ask that you stop by and show them that you are in SUPPORT of their REVOLUTION. Bring food if you can, these children are fighting for our future kids as well as themselves #NoCopAcademy121 N LASALLE ST,” he tweeted.
Students in Chicago are staging a SIT IN at City Hall right now. I ask that you stop by and show them that you are in SUPPORT of their REVOLUTION. Bring food if you can, these children are fighting for our future kids as well as themselves #NoCopAcademy
121 N LASALLE ST
In that November meeting, the aldermen voted 48-1 for the new police academy and Emanuel defended the project at his post-meeting news conference, reported Chicago Tribune.
“All the aldermen on the West Side voted for this because they understand — they have felt forgotten from the type of public investments that can spur economic growth,” Emanuel said. “It will have its own value of safety for the entire city. It will have its own value of safety… to the West Side. And it will be an investment in the kind of economic activity we want to see.”
Ald. Emma Mitts (37th) in charge of the West Garfield Park area said that the academy would provide a way for the department to try to fix some of the training inadequacies and, that way, address the pattern of constitutional violations by police against residents. She added that the training center could be an anchor for economic development and give residents a sense of safety in a part of the city that has been beset by poverty and violence for decades, according to the Chicago Tribune.
The only aldermen to vote no was Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa (35th) who in the midst of today’s action in City Hall tweeted a series of photos of an introduction of an ordinance for a “Chicago Civilian Oversight Commission.”
“#LaquanMcDonald, #RekiaBoyd, the victims of police violence deserve TRUE civilian oversight & accountability. This ordinance from Mayor’s Public Safety Committee Chair is a joke and an insult to the victims of police violence and every Chicagoan fighting for justice in policing.”
I got off work early for spring break and headed directly to City Hall where #NoCopAcademy organizers and supporters have taken over the lobby since around noon.
Copyright © 2018, Chicago Tribune
http://www.chicagotribune.com/voiceit/ct-chicago-youth-stage-die-in-in-city-hall-20180328-story.html
CBS Local — A Georgia woman crashed her SUV into a telephone pole in an attempt to convince her children that god was real and would protect them.
Police in Norcross say that Bahari Shaquille Warren veered into oncoming traffic with her two children in the backseat and eventually hit a pole on the side of the road. Warren’s children, ages five and seven, claim their mother intentionally wrecked the car to prove her point.
“Her eyes (were) closed and she was saying, ‘blah, blah, blah, I love God,’” one of the woman’s daughters said, via the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “She wanted us to know that God is real.”
Local police also said the 25-year-old admitted to crashing on purpose after telling her kids to buckle their seat belts. The mother of two is now being held in the Gwinnett County jail and her children are living with their grandparents.
Neither of the children were injured in the crash however, Warren has been charged with two counts child cruelty for the March 21 incident.
Mother Crashed Into Pole To Prove To Her Kids God Is Real, Police Say
TWISTED TRADE
The case of ‘revenge rape’ involving two families has was uncovered by cops after they drew up documents agreeing to the depraved deal
A FAMILY allegedly let off their daughter’s rapist after a sick trade let the victim’s brother do the same to her attacker’s sister.
The twisted case of “revenge rape” involving two families has been uncovered by cops in Pakistan.
One man had been accused of raping a woman in Pir Mahal in the Toba Tek Singh district of Punjab province, on March 20.
The suspect’s family had approached the victim’s family for “pardon and reconciliation”, according to local news reports.
Staggeringly the victim’s family agreed to pardon the rapist, on the appalling condition that “her brother would commit the same act with the suspect’s sister”, dawn.com reports.
A meeting between the two families agreed to the terms, and the brother then allegedly had sex with the suspected rapist’s sister on March 21.
Cops found out about the case when the two families prepared legal documents agreeing not to press charges against each other.
Pir Mahal Police Sub-Inspector Shaukat Ali Javed saw the papers and reported the families to his superiors.
All 12 people at the meeting, including four women, one of which was the victim of the second rape, were arrested on Saturday.
The case has chilling similarities another incident in the southern city of Multan last July, where a village council ordered the “revenge rape” of a 16-year-old girl.
The girl’s brother had sexually assaulted a 12-year-old, and the attack was reportedly carried out in front of her parents and 40 members of the village council.
French authorities say the killing of an elderly Jewish woman in Paris is being investigated as an anti-Semitic murder. The woman, identified in French media as Mireille Knoll, was stabbed at least 11 times and her body was set on fire.
The Paris prosecutor’s office said Monday two suspects have been put in custody. It said it is asking investigating judges to charge the pair with premeditated murder of a vulnerable person for anti-Semitic motives.
The office also asked for the suspects to be jailed pending trial.
Leading Jewish group CRIF said the 85-year-old woman was slain last week in Paris’ eastern 11th district. The victim had reportedly escaped a round-up of Jews in Paris during World War II. The group says a neighbor who had previously made anti-Semitic statements was one of the people under arrest. They didn’t confirm reports that the man was Muslim.
CRIF asked for “utmost transparency in the ongoing investigation so that the reasons for this barbaric crime are known to everyone as soon as possible.”
The group plans a rally in her memory and support of her family on Wednesday.
The body was found the same day a gunmen killed several people in an attack on a supermarket in southern France.
A traffic stop on what appeared to be a brown UPS truck in Boulevard on Monday evening revealed 77 unauthorized immigrants stuffed shoulder-to-shoulder inside its hot cargo area.
Five children were found traveling among the overheated group of Mexican nationals, who admitted to being in the U.S. illegally, according to a criminal complaint filed Tuesday in San Diego federal court.
A California Highway Patrol officer pulled the truck over before 5 p.m. because the vehicle had no tags and was weaving on Old Highway 80, about a mile west of Tierra Del Sol Road.
A U.S. Border Patrol agent patrolling the area in an unmarked car passed by the vehicle stop and asked the officer if he’d like assistance.
When the agent approached the truck, he observed it was riding “extremely low” and had what appeared to be fresh paint on the rear. He could also smell body odor and what was described as the pungent smell of a soap commonly used in Mexico.
The truck’s driver, a U.S. citizen who had been placed in the CHP car, said the truck was his and gave permission to search.
When the agent opened the rear doors, he found dozens of people standing inside, sweating excessively, the complaint states.
In an interview with authorities, the driver, Shawn Lee Seiler, admitted to being a human smuggler who was expecting to transport 50 people that evening, the complaint says. He said he was surprised to learn there were 77 inside.
He told investigators he was to be paid $100 for each unauthorized immigrant he transported.
Seiler was arrested on a charge of transporting unauthorized immigrants for financial gain.
A UPS spokesman said the truck was not a real UPS vehicle, and the driver has never worked for the company.
Criminal charges were also lodged against two of the unauthorized immigrants after records checks found they had prior deportations — one on January 9 through San Ysidro and one on May 14, 2015, through El Paso.
The remaining people in the group are being held as material witnesses in the smuggling case.
http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/courts/sd-me-ups-smuggling-20180130-story.html