https://www.wbez.org/stories/activists-call-on-chicago-leaders-to-defund-police-in-the-citys-next-budget/632b2b36-771f-445c-b262-7fff7b520680
Community and labor groups are taking aim at Chicago’s municipal budget, demanding that the city defund the police by 75% and invest in neighborhoods instead.
Activists rallied outside City Hall Tuesday demanding that Chicago shift more than $1 billion away from the Police Department and steer it towards education, health care and social services.
Amisha Patel, executive director of Grassroots Collaborative, one of the groups in the coalition, said Tuesday’s event — titled “Black to the Future” — was a kickoff to their campaign around Chicago’s budget talks this fall.
https://actionnetwork.org/groups/grassroots-collaborative
GC started in Chicago – our 11 member organizations and their 125,000 members, along with an effective and diverse set of ally organizations across movements, create transformative change to win fully funded resources for our public schools, social services, and affordable housing that working families depend on.
By convening coalitions in Chicago and Peoria, we bring the power of strategic alignment and shared ideology to win transformative change in Illinois. Our aspirational campaigns link Black and Latinx displacement, criminalization and corporate greed within a Rights framework, raising up and activating those most affected by systemic oppression. We aim to build powerful, rooted institutions which can serve as instruments for change, as well as create opportunities for those looking for ways to become agents of change in their home organizations and communities.
Looters taxi service
https://grassrootscollaborative.org/2020/05/31/what-we-saw-in-the-streets-of-chicago-last-night/
Last night, we drove downtown to provide rides to young people who were trapped, due to Mayor Lightfoot’s sudden declaration of a curfew, and lock down of the loop.
As we drove down Roosevelt to get to the South Loop to get to the safe space where youth had gathered for safety and safe transport, I passed hundreds of other young people, Black and Brown walking and sometimes running to get away from downtown. I saw young Black and Brown people who had gathered to express their outrage and pain at yet another Black life stolen by this country and it’s white supremacy
And as we crossed the bridge near the fancy outdoor mall/condo complex near Roosevelt and Clark, I looked at the broken windows of chain stores, I saw the outraged and yet vulnerable young people trying to get out, and then across the river I saw the site of what will become “the 78”, yet another new playground/village for the wealthiest and whitest of Chicago. It’s too much.