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The Afro-American, December 12, 2015 - December 12, 2015
December 12, 2015 - December 18, 2015, The Afro-American
Chicago
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could be made public. But his contrition did little to ease the anger in the streets. Hours after the speech, protesters overflowed an intersection in front of City Hall, then marched through the financial district and blocked a major intersection for a short time as police directed traffic around them. Officers guarded the doors to the Chicago Board of Trade as demonstrators approached. Outside City Hall, retired schoolteacher Audrey Davis carried a sign reading, “Mayor Emanuel is morally corrupt!” Calling the speech “politically expedient,” Davis said, “I don’t want to hear anything from him except, ‘I tender my resignation.’” Davis, who is Black, said she fears for her 25-year-old grandson when he comes home from college. “Each time he comes home, my heart is in my throat in case he meets up with a racist cop,” Davis said.
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“We shouldn’t have to live like this.” Since the video emerged, Emanuel has scrambled to contain the crisis. He fired his police superintendent after days of insisting the chief had his support. He also reversed course on whether the Justice Department should launch a civil-rights investigation, saying he would welcome it only after presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and other top Democrats endorsed the idea. In news conferences, he has appeared worn down, fumbling answers to reporters’ questions or avoiding them entirely by walking away, with cameras rolling. Emanuel has repeatedly said he will not step down, and the next election — should he seek another term — isn’t until 2019. Chicago has no statute or process in place for a mayor to be recalled, and most of the cries for Emanuel to resign have come from grassroots
activists and residents, not from the city’s political powerbrokers. The most likely impact will come in the form of pushback from aldermen, who have long been considered a rubber stamp for the mayor’s initiatives, said political consultant Delmarie Cobb. She said the Black community “has been awakened,” and Emanuel can expect a tougher re-election if he tries again. “He definitely won’t run unopposed, and it will be a viable candidate,” said Cobb, who is black. The mayor won re-election in April by a healthy margin, but only after suffering the embarrassment of not getting a majority in a five-candidate February election, forcing the first mayoral runoff in decades. At the time, he pledged to listen more and to “bridge the gaps between the things that divide us.” In the months that followed, his public schools
Sanders
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a Black America problem,” observed Bryant. “It was so important for us that the Senator did not just hear statistics and testimony without seeing the face of a community that is urgent need of assistance.” In a closed roundtable discussion that lasted nearly an hour and in a news conference afterward, Sanders discussed a wide range of issues, including banking practices, access to higher education, the re-entry of formerly incarcerated men and women, obstacles to neighborhood development and police brutality. His proposals included police reform; free tuition to public colleges and universities; creation of 13 million “decentpaying jobs”; raising the minimum wage to $15; and trade policies that entice corporate America to reinvest in this country. He would also create jobs for 1 million teenagers. “It makes a lot more sense to me to be getting kids jobs rather than seeing them hang out on street corners and end up in jail,” Sanders said. During the news conference after the closed meeting, a reporter asked Sanders to comment on terrorism. But Sanders said he was in Baltimore to discuss other matters. “Obviously ISIS and terrorism are a huge national issue, and we’ve got to address that,” he told reporters. “But so is poverty,
“If the community is going to be stronger, if the country is going to be stronger, then we have to place a greater emphasis on and attentiveness to the community of the disenfranchised and the disadvantaged; and it appeared to me that he feels that and that he gets that.” –The Rev. Donte Hickman so is unemployment, so is education, so is health care, so is the need to protect working families. And I will continue to talk about those issues.” The Rev. Donte Hickman of Southern Baptist Church in East Baltimore, found the Vermont senator “very impressive.” “If the community is going to be stronger, if the country is going to be stronger, then we have to place a greater emphasis on and attentiveness to the community of the disenfranchised and the disadvantaged; and it appeared to me that he feels that and that he gets that.” Bryant said that it is too soon to talk about endorsements and noted that Sen. Rand Paul, a Republican candidate, and former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner, are expected to meet with black ministers and civic leaders in coming days. As for Sanders, Bryant said: “He spoke a very strong argument and raised a very high standard for those who come behind him.”
CEO, who oversaw closings of about 50 schools that angered many residents, was indicted on corruption charges. Emanuel also pushed through the largest tax increase in city history to deal with a budget crisis. His administration has warned of massive mid-year layoffs in the public schools, and is in the midst of rocky contract negotiations with the Chicago Teachers Union. This week, union members are voting on whether to authorize a strike. They could hit the picket lines as early as March. After the video was made public, other flashpoints kept coming. Footage was released of another police shooting — this one deemed justified by prosecutors — and of another man who died in police custody. A review by the city’s quasi-independent police watchdog agency showed that of 409 shootings involving police since 2007, the agency found only two with credible allegations against an officer. Police reports from the McDonald shooting included officer accounts that differed dramatically from the video. In his speech, Emanuel noted the problems are ones that have plagued Chicago for decades, and that there are no simple solutions. “We have to be honest with ourselves about this issue. Each time when we confronted it in the past, Chicago only went far enough to clear our consciences so we could move on,” he said. “This time will and must be different.”
said. “His stories spoke to me and they moved me to do something. The passion for this project was so strong that each person that got involved in the film became very, very deeply committed to it.” Charles Floyd Johnson served as the film’s producer. Prominent participants in the project included former UN Ambassador Andrew Young, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver III (D-Mo.), D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) and Juanita Abernathy, the wife of civil rights icon Rev. Ralph Abernathy. The film is supported by the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation and the National Association of Black Journalist. It covers Lewis’s early life in rural Alabama, his involvement in the Civil Rights Movement as a college student and chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, his post-civil rights era career as the director of the Voter Education Project, an Atlanta city council member’ and member of the U.S. House of Representatives. The film also goes into detail about the strategies for the sit-in demonstrations at segregated lunch counters in Nashville, Tennessee, his participation in the Freedom Rides of the early 1960s in which he was beaten by White mobs and police officers while traveling in the deep South, the 1963 March on Washington where he was the youngest speaker on the program, and the Selma, Alabama march on March 7, 1965, where he and other participants were beaten by state troopers for
advocating for voting rights for Blacks. The motion picture shares Lewis’ surprise victory over Julian Bond in the 1986 Democratic Party primary for the congressional seat he presently holds. The film also talks about Lewis’ support for the Affordable Care Act, immigration reform, gay rights, and his fight for those in poverty. Lewis attended the screening of the film along with U.S. Reps. G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.), who serves as chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, and Karen Bass (D-Calif.). Butterfield said the movie inspired him. “John Lewis is an absolute living legend,” he said. “He is a champion of human rights and an agent for change. I have traveled with him around the world and he is recognized everywhere he goes.” Lewis spoke briefly, saying that the film production team “did a superb job.” He said that the film brought back memories on why he got involved in the Civil Rights Movement. “I remember growing up where you had those ‘Colored’ and ‘White’ signs and I kept asking my mother why they were there,” he said. “My mother said that was the way it is and advised me not to get into trouble. I didn’t listen and I got into good trouble. “There are forces that truly want to take us back,” he said, “ . . . if you see something that’s not right, you have an obligation to speak up and speak out.”