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      ‘The world is watching’: 1968 protests set stage for Democratic convention

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      Sean Wilentz was in the convention hall when someone handed out copies of a news wire report. “I remember the first line,” he says. “It said, ‘The lid blew off of this convention city tonight.’” The article went on to describe chaos and bloodshed in Chicago as police clashed with protesters against the Vietnam war.Just 17 at the time, Wilentz and a couple of friends raced to the scene in downtown Chicago. “It was horrible. The cops were angry and didn’t like the kids and the kids were angry and didn’t like the cops. I saw a motorcycle cop go on a sidewalk and pin a kid against the wall. I was very scared.”View image in fullscreenMore than half a century has passed since a police riot scarred the Democratic national convention of 1968. On Monday Democrats return to Chicago with a spring in their step as they prepare to anoint Kamala Harris their presidential candidate. Yet some comparisons with the events of 56 years ago are irresistible.Just as in 1968, a would-be assassin has sought to change the course of political history. Just as in 1968, an incumbent president has stepped aside and a vice-president will gain the Democratic nomination without winning a single primary vote. And just as in 1968, protesters will gather to demonstrate their anger over US involvement in an unpopular war.Democrats are praying that the similarities end there. When the teargas cleared in Chicago, Hubert Humphrey, a self-styled “happy warrior”, emerged as the standard-bearer of a bitterly divided party. He went on to lose the election to Richard Nixon who, like fellow Republican Donald Trump, pushed a “law and order” message to exploit white voters’ fears and prejudices.View image in fullscreenMuch has changed since Trump secured the Republican nomination at the party’s own convention in Milwaukee last month. With 81-year-old Joe Biden fading in opinion polls, the Democratic campaign had come to resemble a death march. But his decision to quit the race and throw his weight behind Harris triggered an explosion of relief, self-belief and surging enthusiasm.Next week’s Democratic convention will put the capstone on the dramatic turnaround. Harris and running mate Tim Walz, who have been drawing huge crowds at rallies and millions of dollars in donations, will be formally nominated and deliver the most important speeches of their careers – probably resulting in a further polling bump.But the carefully stage-managed event – also featuring Biden, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and A-list celebrities – could yet go off script. Thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters are expected to gather outside to demand that the US end military aid to Israel amid the ongoing war in Gaza, where the death toll has surpassed 40,000, according to the healthy ministry there.The March on the DNC, a coalition of more than 200 organisations from all over the US, plans to hold demonstrations on Monday and Thursday, the days when Biden and Harris are due to speak. Its website brands the president “Genocide Joe Biden” and warns: “Democratic party leadership switching out their presidential nominee does not wash the blood of over 50,000 Palestinians off their hands.”Although a sprawling security plan has been drawn up by federal, state and city governments, some activists have vowed a replay of 1968, when years of unrest over the American misadventure in Vietnam came to a head in Chicago. Then, as now, students took up the anti-war cause with campus protests, including at Columbia University in New York, where Hamilton Hall was occupied in both 1968 and 2024.View image in fullscreenThere was already political uncertainty after President Lyndon B Johnson closed a speech about the Vietnam war with the stunning announcement that he would not seek another term. Biden has similarly dropped out of the election race, albeit later in the cycle and for very different reasons.America was further shaken by the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr and Robert Kennedy, who was running for the Democratic nomination, and by cities burning in protest at racial injustice. Last month Trump narrowly survived an attempt on his life at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania but one of his supporters was killed.Wilentz, now 73 and a history professor at Princeton University, recalled: “The thing about Chicago: this is the culmination of a crisis that had been building in American politics for five or six years and it was also feeding off the civil rights movement. There was a real feeling of desperation, that this disaster is going to continue. The politics were very fraught and furious and one was not necessarily thinking strategically.”In late August more than 10,000 protesters opposing the Vietnam war and assorted other causes held huge demonstrations near the convention site. Some threw red paint to simulate blood and occupied major roads to block traffic. The official response was brutal with widespread use of teargas, beatings and arrests by the police and national guard. The carnage was broadcast live on television and demonstrators chanted: “The whole world is watching.”View image in fullscreenEyewitness Taylor Pensoneau, 83, who was reporting for the St Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper, recalled: “The protesters were doing a lot to taunt the Chicago police. They were throwing bottles and stones at the police and they were calling them pigs and confronting them. It was a very incendiary situation.“It seemed inevitable that at some point the Chicago police were going to respond and eventually they did in a very forceful manner, swinging billy clubs and pushing protesters to the ground. A lot of people were getting hurt. It was a riot.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThere was even mayhem inside the convention hall, including assaults on journalists. Supporters of anti-war candidates such as senator Eugene McCarthy clashed with supporters of Humphrey, who won the nomination with the backing of party elites and dared not defy Johnson over the war until much later.At first glance Humphrey appears to have little in common with Harris. But there is tonal echo. Humphrey had “The Happy Warrior” painted on his plane and, when first declaring his candidacy, remarked: “Here we are the way politics ought to be in America, the politics of happiness, politics of purpose, politics of joy.” Terms such as “happy warriors” and “politics of joy” have been widely applied to Harris and Walz.Such an upbeat approach could come over as tone deaf as children are dying in Gaza, according to Norman Solomon, national director of the progressive group RootsAction. He said: “I was 17 in 1968 and I remember it was like, what are you talking about, the politics of joy? Maybe you’re happy but the administration that you’re part of continues to massacre people on a large scale in Vietnam.“Harris is on an upswing with Walz and in terms of defeating Trump that’s good but the disconnect with people in Dearborn [home of the biggest Arab American community] or people who will be in the streets in Chicago next week is pretty severe. She’s talking politics of joy and Congress is voting the billions more for weapons. The US keeps helping to kill people in Gaza and she dispatches her national security adviser to say she’s absolutely against an arms embargo. It’s almost split screen.”Harris’s acceptance speech on Thursday night will be watched closely for clues that, unlike Humphrey at the convention, she is ready to put some clear daylight between herself and Biden, an ardent Zionist, on the Gaza issue. That could be crucial in persuading Arab American, Muslim and young voters to give her the benefit of the doubt.James Zogby, the founder and president of the Arab American Institute in Washington, said: “She was the first one to call for a ceasefire. She was the first one to call for Palestinian self-determination. She was the first one to use very powerful language about the devastation of Gaza and the suffering of the people there.“She’s been about as clear as you could be that there is a difference in her outlook on this. I’m not going to let you in on all of them but there are indications we’re getting that they do want to turn corners here. They’ve opened a door already in terms of language and policy will follow.”Zogby also doubts that there will be any repeat of the mayhem inside the 1968 convention hall. Of more than 4,000 delegates, only 30 are “uncommitted”, representing a grassroots voter coalition that has opposed Biden’s Gaza policy. This is “nowhere near what you would require to have any kind of floor demonstration”, he said.View image in fullscreen“If there’s a disruption, it would be a handful of people in sea of other delegates. It would not be 1968. Outside, on the other hand, is a different story because, even though many of the groups demonstrating intend to keep it civil and constructive, anytime you get something that large, it develops a dynamic all of its own.”The parallels with 1968 are undoubtedly striking. But the difference may prove more important. The Vietnam war and its draft affected far more Americans than the current conflict in Gaza. Few analysts believe that Gaza will have as much electoral significance, except perhaps in Michigan. Nixon would become embroiled in the Watergate scandal but did not threaten democracy as Trump does.Wilentz commented: “1968 was a very different time than anything I’ve ever seen in this country. There’s certain similarities between this year and that year in the sense that you have events happening very quickly and they seem traumatic. But nothing in comparison to what 68 felt like.” More

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      Exonerated Central Park Five councillor to speak at Democratic convention – report

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      Yusef Salaam, a New York City councillor who was wrongly jailed for a notorious rape in the city’s Central Park, has reportedly been invited to address next week’s Democratic national convention in Chicago in a move that could highlight Donald Trump’s key role in the case and history of racially charged rhetoric.Salaam was one of the “Central Park Five”, a group of Black and Hispanic teenagers who were convicted of attacking and raping Trisha Meili, a 28-year-old investment banker, while she was jogging in April 1989.He could be joined at the convention by other members of the group, according to Semafor, which broke the story but said Salaam’s appearance had yet to be confirmed.Salaam served seven years but was later exonerated and released along with the other four after a convicted serial rapist and murderer, Matias Reyes, admitted to the crime, a confession confirmed by DNA evidence.The case became a major cause célèbre, largely due to an intervention by Trump, then an up-and-coming property magnate, who took out full-page adverts in four New York papers calling for the return of the death penalty at a time when the crime had captured media attention.The five defendants, who were all minors, had already been arrested, paraded in public and had their names and addresses published when Trump took out the advert.In a style that was to become familiar in his social media posts of a later era, the advert – carrying Trump’s signature – blared in block capitals: “Bring back the death penalty and bring back our police!”Trump, who did not specifically call for the execution of the five defendants, wrote: “I want to hate these murderers and I always will. I am not looking to psychoanalyse or understand them, I am looking to punish them.”In a 2016 interview with the Guardian, Salaam said Trump’s high-profile intervention had been a major factor in the teens’ wrongful convictions.“He was the fire starter,” Salaam said. “Common citizens were being manipulated and swayed into believing that we were guilty.”Trump has declined to apologise for his perceived role in the wrongful convictions. After the men were awarded $41m in damages in a civil case in 2014, Trump wrote an article for the New York Daily News calling the award “the heist of the century”.He took a similarly hard line while he was president, telling journalists at the White House in 2019 that “you have people on both sides of that. They admitted their guilt.”He added: “If you look at some of the prosecutors, they think that the city never should have settled that case, so we’ll leave it at that.”His comments were triggered by the release of a four-part Netflix dramatisation of the case, When They See Us, directed by Ava DuVernay, which Kamala Harris – then a Democratic senator and presidential hopeful, and now vice-president and Trump’s opponent in the forthcoming presidential election – urged him to watch.Salaam won election as a Democrat representing New York’s Harlem district in November last year.Months before, Salaam trolled Trump after the former president was indicted by a Manhattan court on 34 felony charges – on which he was subsequently convicted – for document falsification relating to the payment of hush money to an adult film actor.“For those asking about my statement on the indictment of Donald Trump – who never said sorry for calling for my execution – here it is: Karma,” Salaam posted on X, then known as Twitter, in February 2023.Salaam’s proposed convention appearance follows attempts by Trump to focus on Harris’s racial identity. Two weeks ago, Trump falsely told the National Association of Black Journalists that the vice-president, who has mixed heritage, had only recently identified as Black after previously emphasising her Indian ethnicity.It also comes after the Republican nominee has been making efforts to woo Black voters. Mike Tyson, the former world heavyweight boxing champion and a prominent Trump supporter, told Semafor that the Central Park Five case played to an image of the former president as racist among Black celebrities.“The only thing they can say is that he’s a racist. Central Park Five,” he said. “Other than that, they can’t bring up anything else.” More

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      Trump repeats lies and attacks Kamala Harris’s racial identity at panel of Black journalists

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      During a contentious and chaotic panel hosted by the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) on Wednesday, Donald Trump parroted disinformation about immigration and abortion, questioned Kamala Harris’s race and accused a panel moderator, Rachel Scott – the senior congressional correspondent for ABC News – of being “rude” and presenting a “nasty question” when she asked him: “Why should Black voters trust you?”The appearance – which received backlash earlier this week from Black journalists citing the former president’s anti-Black, anti-journalist and anti-democracy history – received a mix of jeers, laughter and interruptions from attendees as Trump evaded several questions asked by moderators.On multiple occasions, audience members at the annual convention in Chicago attempted to fact-check Trump in real time, including when he falsely claimed that Harris did not pass her bar exam to be a lawyer, and when he defended pardoning people who were convicted for their actions on January 6.Trump arrived more than an hour late to the panel, which was moderated by Scott; Harris Faulkner, the Fox News television host; and Kadia Goba, the Semafor politics reporter. According to HuffPost, Trump demanded that NABJ organizers not go through with live fact-checking during the discussion, and was in a “standoff” with organizers before the event took place. A live fact-check of Trump’s comments was still featured as planned.The conversation opened with Scott asking why Black voters should trust Trump given his repeated, inflammatory comments about Black people.“Well, first of all, I don’t think I’ve ever been asked a question in such a horrible manner,” Trump said, before asking whether Scott was with “fake news network” ABC News. (When he levied a later attack on Scott, one audience member shouted back in her defense.)Trump added: “I think it’s disgraceful that I came here in good spirit. I love the Black population of this country. I’ve done so much for the Black population of this country … I think it’s a very rude introduction.“He continued: “I have been the best president for the Black population since Abraham Lincoln,” which received a mix of boos and applause.Despite promoting his attendance at NABJ on Wednesday morning, by the afternoon panel Trump was claiming to have been invited under false pretenses. The former president said he had been told that Harris would be present at the convention and was instructed to attend in-person. (A source close to the Harris campaign said on Tuesday that she was unable to attend due to the ongoing search for her running mate and the funeral of the representative Sheila Lee Jackson. )Throughout the panel conversation, Trump relied on many of his previous talking points with Black voters.He repeated the unsubstantiated claim that undocumented immigrants were planning on taking “Black jobs”, an assertion that many have condemned as racist.When asked by Scott to clarify what Black jobs were, Trump replied: “Anybody that has a job – that’s what it is. They’re taking the employment away from Black people.”Scott then asked Trump about Republicans claiming that Harris is a diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) replacement for Joe Biden.In response, Trump claimed that Harris suddenly “became a Black woman” and had previously only been identifying with her Indian heritage. “Is she Indian or is she Black?” Trump said, as the audience audibly gasped. “I respect either one but she obviously doesn’t because she was Indian all the way and then all of sudden she became a Black woman.”Scott replied that Trump’s assertion was untrue, that Harris has always identified as Black, and that she attended Howard University, a historically Black college in Washington DC.Reaction to the panel was mixed among journalists in the room.At least two Black attendees sporting Trump hats frequently cheered for the former president, especially as he reiterated that he faced “political persecution” after being convicted of 34 felonies.Others were critical. “Ultimately, the conversation was a non-starter,” said Michael Liptrot, South Side weekly reporter. “The moderators did their best to lead a productive conversation and dive deeper and, ultimately, attempts to flip the question led to a stalemate in many ways.”Laura Washington, a political analyst at ABC 7 in Chicago, said Trump “came out very hostile” from the very beginning of the panel: “That was a very difficult thing for the [moderators] to manage because he didn’t answer the questions and was sort of trying to turn their questions back on them and make them the bad women in the room.”Still, Liptrot and Washington agreed that the panel should have taken place, noting the NABJ tradition of inviting Democratic and Republican presidential candidates and the need to hold Trump accountable.Jasmine Harris, the Black media director for Kamala Harris’s campaign, hit back at Trump’s NABJ remarks in a statement, emphasizing the former president’s lies and attacks on members of the press.“Not only does Donald Trump have a history of demeaning NABJ members and honorees who remain pillars of the Black press, he also has a history of attacking the media and working against the vital role the press play in our democracy,” Harris said.“We know that Donald Trump is going to lie about his record and the real harm he’s caused Black communities at NABJ – and he must be called out,” she added.Members of the Biden administration were also critical of Trump’s attack on Harris’s racial identity. Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, called Trump’s remarks “repulsive” and “insulting” during a Wednesday White House briefing.“I think it’s insulting for anybody. It doesn’t matter if it’s a former leader, a former president, it is insulting,” she said. “She is the vice-president of the United States. Kamala Harris. We have to put some respect on her name. Period.” More

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      ‘It puts everyone in a really bad position’: Black journalists react to Trump joining NABJ panel

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      On Monday night, the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) announced that Donald Trump will participate in a panel discussion at the organization’s annual convention in Chicago, which starts on Wednesday.The announcement, which said that the Q&A would “concentrate on the most pressing issues facing the Black community”, was met with swift online backlash from some Black journalists. They decried the decision to invite a presidential candidate who has lambasted Black journalists, led a movement to squash diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and who is responsible for increased anti-journalistic sentiment, including the popularization of the term “fake news” to describe factual, but potentially unflattering, reporting.Tiffany Walden, a co-founder and editor-in-chief of The TRiiBE, a digital platform that focuses on Black Chicago, told the Guardian that NABJ’s decision was “irresponsible”.“We’ve watched Trump threaten to send the feds here when he was in office,” Walden said. “We’ve watched him use Chicago as a dog whistle in all of his campaign’s materials during his first run for office. He talked about Chicago having top gang thugs. So this puts the city of Chicago and its residents in a very vulnerable position. It also puts Black journalists in a very vulnerable position at a convention that’s supposed to be a safe space for them.”Ameshia Cross, a political analyst, echoed this sentiment on X: “The same Trump that attacked Black journalists from the stump. The same Trump who is attacking DEI, can’t get ahead of his own racism and sexism. And the guy who wants to dissolve journalism as we know it, that’s who is speaking at #NABJ24 w/ record attendance. C’mon yall.”Another journalist, Carron J Phillips, called the move “the single dumbest and worst decision in NABJ history”.The outcry led to the NABJ president, Ken Lemon, and others defending the decision, saying that Black reporters should have the opportunity to question a political candidate.“Every year, every presidential election cycle, we invite the presidential candidates to come,” Lemon said to NABJ student journalists on Tuesday. “We extend that to anyone who is a nominee and in this case we have two presumptive nominees. We invited both of them … This is an important hour. We have people whose lives are depending on what happens in November … This is a great opportunity for us to vet the candidate right here on our ground.”Kamala Harris is scheduled to speak elsewhere on Wednesday, when Trump will be at NABJ, but her confirmation to attend this year’s convention, which lasts through Sunday, is “pending”, according to NABJ.Tia Mitchell, the chair of NABJ’s political journalism taskforce and a Washington correspondent at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, wrote on X: “I helped make this call. And it’s in line with invitations NABJ has sent to every presidential candidate for decades. But continue to go off on your feed. I’ll continue to work to create opportunities for journalists to interview the potential next President.” (Mitchell, NABJ and NABJ’s Chicago chapter did not respond to requests for comment.)Wednesday’s panel will be moderated by Rachel Scott, a senior congressional correspondent for ABC News; Harris Faulkner, who anchors The Faulkner Focus and Outnumbered for Fox News; and Kadia Goba, a politics reporter for Semafor.“As journalists, we can never be afraid to tackle someone like Trump,” Jemele Hill, a contributing reporter for the Atlantic, wrote on X. “The reality is that he is running for president and needs to be treated as such. Being questioned by journalists is part of the job, and especially important in the company of Black journalists. Mainstream media keeps trying to convince us that he actually is gaining support among Black people. Let’s see if it’s true.”But the journalist Matthew Wright pushed back on the notion that there was anything productive in questioning Trump.“What does that serve?” Wright said to the Guardian. “We literally just watched him talk to Laura Ingraham [who] was trying to get him to answer different questions, but he practically played evasive of action even then. If a super conservative white woman can’t get straight answers out of him, what makes you think that three black women are going to get them?”In a statement about the NABJ appearance, Trump’s campaign wrote: “President Trump accomplished more for Black Americans than any other president in recent history.” Some journalists used this statement as evidence that NABJ’s decision to platform the former president was harmful, and would lead to further perpetuation of falsehoods.“This is the way 45 is touting his appearance before @nabj this week. Was this what you wanted [Tia Mitchell]? He is already lying and he isn’t even in Chicago yet. This is your legacy,” April Reign, a media strategist, wrote on X.The timing of the panel announcement – less than 48 hours before the convention’s start – also drew concern from NABJ members.Shamira Ibrahim, a culture writer, told the Guardian that she was shocked by the decision.“It puts everyone in a really bad position,” Ibrahim said. “You already paid your convention fees, you already paid for a hotel that’s likely not refundable at this point, flights are likely difficult to get replaced. Even if you have a moral opposition to it or an ethical opposition to it, you’re kind of already stuck in whatever plan you made.”NABJ’s annual convention has allowed Black journalists a space to fellowship and gather safely since the organization’s founding in 1975, with some reporters likening it to a family reunion. Inviting Trump, Ibrahim said, undermined that sense of community.“NABJ is primarily not just a place for journalists to get opportunities to interview politicians, but also a place for Black journalists to network, to have open conversations about things that are happening in the industry, to attend panels, and really get a sense of how to shift in a very, very volatile, fragile space,” she continued.“Inviting someone who, one, has made targeted attacks on Black journalists, two, has actively been responsible in defunding programs that help build Black journalists, and three, has publicly attacked the Black press flies in the face of any sort of fidelity convention.”On Tuesday afternoon, a coalition of organizations, including Chicago Alliance Against Racist & Political Repression and Anti-War Committee Chicago, announced plans to rally outside the convention to “tell Trump he’s not welcome in Chicago”. More

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      Marian Shields Robinson, mother of Michelle Obama, dies at 86

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      Marian Shields Robinson, the mother of Michelle Obama, who moved with the first family to the White House when son-in-law Barack Obama was elected president, has died. She was 86.Robinson’s death was announced in an online tribute by Michelle Obama, and included details of the time Robinson spent living in the White House, as an informal first grandmother to the Obama children.“There was and will be only one Marian Robinson,” the statement said. “In our sadness, we are lifted up by the extraordinary gift of her life.”She was a widow and lifelong Chicago resident when she moved to the executive mansion in 2009 to help care for granddaughters Malia and Sasha. In her early 70s, Robinson initially resisted the idea of starting over in Washington, and Michelle Obama had to enlist her brother, Craig, to help persuade their mother to move.“There were many good and valid reasons that Michelle raised with me, not the least of which was the opportunity to continue spending time with my granddaughters, Malia and Sasha, and to assist in giving them a sense of normalcy that is a priority for both of their parents, as has been from the time Barack began his political career,” Robinson wrote in the foreword to A Game of Character, a memoir by her son, formerly the head men’s basketball coach at Oregon State University.“My feeling, however, was that I could visit periodically without actually moving in and still be there for the girls,” she said.Robinson wrote that her son understood why she wanted to stay in Chicago but still used a line of reasoning on her that she often used on him and his sister. He asked her to see the move as a chance to grow and try something new. As a compromise, she agreed to move, at least temporarily.Granddaughters Malia and Sasha were just 10 and seven when the White House became home in 2009. In Chicago, Robinson had become almost a surrogate parent to the girls during the 2008 presidential campaign. She retired from her job as a bank secretary to help shuttle them around.At the White House, Robinson provided a reassuring presence for the girls as their parents settled into their new roles, and her lack of Secret Service protection made it possible for her to accompany them to and from school daily without fanfare.“I would not be who I am today without the steady hand and unconditional love of my mother, Marian Shields Robinson,” Michelle Obama wrote in her 2018 memoir, Becoming.Robinson gave a few media interviews but never to White House press. Aides guarded her privacy, and, as a result, she enjoyed a level of anonymity openly envied by the president and first lady.View image in fullscreenThe Obama family reflected on Robinson’s time living at the White House in their tribute to her: “The trappings and glamour of the White House were never a great fit for Marian Robinson. ‘Just show me how to work the washing machine and I’m good,’ she’d say. Rather than hobnobbing with Oscar winners or Nobel laureates, she preferred spending her time upstairs with a TV tray, in the room outside her bedroom with big windows that looked out at the Washington Monument. The only guest she made a point of asking to meet was the Pope. Over those eight years, she made great friends with the ushers and butlers, the folks who make the White House a home. She’d often sneak outside the gates to buy greeting cards at CVS, and sometimes another customer might recognize her. ‘You look like Michelle’s mother,’ they’d say. She’d smile and reply, ‘Oh, I get that a lot.’”White House residency also opened up the world to Robinson, who had been a widow for nearly 20 years when she moved to a room on the third floor, one floor above the first family. She had never traveled outside the US until she moved to Washington.Her first flight out of the country was aboard Air Force One in 2009 when the Obamas visited France. She joined the Obamas on a trip to Russia, Italy and Ghana later that year, during which she got to meet Pope Benedict, tour Rome’s ancient Colosseum and view a former slave-holding compound on the African coast. She also accompanied her daughter and granddaughters on two overseas trips without the president: to South Africa and Botswana in 2011, and China in 2014.Craig Robinson wrote in the memoir that he and his parents had doubted whether his sister’s relationship with Barack Obama would last, though Fraser Robinson III and his wife thought the young lawyer was a worthy suitor for their daughter, also a lawyer. Without explanation, Craig Robinson said his mother gave the relationship six months.Barack and Michelle Obama were married on 3 October 1992.One of seven children, Marian Lois Shields Robinson was born in Chicago on 30 July 1937. She attended two years of teaching college, married in 1960 and, as a stay-at-home mom, stressed the importance of education to her children. Both were educated at Ivy League schools, each with a bachelor’s degree from Princeton. Michelle Obama also has a law degree from Harvard.Fraser Robinson was a pump operator for the Chicago Water Department. He died in 1991.Associated Press contributed to this report More

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      Chicago police investigated over alleged sexual misconduct with asylum seekers

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      The Chicago police department is under investigation for allegations of sexual misconduct with recently arrived asylum seekers who are living in several police precincts across the city.One case features an officer who allegedly impregnated an 18-year-old.The investigation follows a report that a police officer had “sexual contact with an unidentified underage female migrant, and indicated [that] several other unidentified officers … may also have engaged in similar misconduct”, Andrea Kersten, chief administrator of civilian office of police accountability (Copa), the city agency that investigates police misconduct, said at a summer press conference.Chicago has received 14,000 asylum seekers since August 2022. More than 7,000 are currently being accommodated in citywide shelters but almost 2,000 are living on the floors of police precincts in almost every law enforcement district of the city.People are also sleeping rough at Chicago’s O’Hare and Midway airports, and more arrive daily, some bussed there by Texas authorities who refused to liaise with the Democratic-led cities where they dispatch people who have crossed the US-Mexico border and have applied for asylum.Investigations are ongoing and began in July after claims from a city employee working at one police precinct prompted city officials to quickly move asylum seekers to another location, but then things got murky when Copa announced that officials had not identified any asylum seekers claiming to be victims of sexual misconduct by police officers. The agency said the investigation would continue and, since then, there have been no public updates.The Guardian requested comment from the mayor’s office and Copa but received no response.The Illinois Democratic congressman Jesús “Chuy” Garcia, who has joined calls for the Biden administration to expand work permits and provide more federal resources, said in a statement: “Our migrant neighbors came to Chicago seeking safety and stability. Police officers are sworn to protect our communities, not engage in illegal sexual conduct with teenagers and others in their care. This alleged behavior is completely unacceptable. I expect the city’s investigation to be timely, thorough, transparent, and lead to accountability for all who are found guilty.”As Chicago has struggled to quickly find temporary housing for thousands, asylum seekers have been obliged to bed down in police precinct lobbies, where reports vary from station to station on the quality of living conditions and what reception families have had from the cops working there.One single mother, Nelli Reina, arrived in Chicago from Colombia in early September, after being bussed from the southern border with her 14-month-old-son.“More than anything, I’m worried about the cold, because we sleep on the cold floor,” she told the Guardian in Spanish last week at precinct 12 on the Near West Side, while she waits for a shelter place.At many precincts, bedding and belongings are stacked up by the windows during the day to clear walkways, and often piled outside.As winter beckons, the new mayor, Brandon Johnson, a progressive, had talked about about erecting heated tents and shortly after that signed a $29m contract with a private security firm to install them, particularly for asylum seekers staying at police precincts and the airports, Crain’s Chicago Business and the Chicago Tribune reported.The company, GardaWorld Federal Services, already has a state contract with Illinois but is a highly controversial choice because of its role in heavily criticized migrant detention and relocations programs in other states, the Tribune further reported.Reina said: “I don’t know how much longer I’ll be here. It’s the first time I’m in this country and I don’t know the matter of the cold and all that, of the snow. So we are praying and asking God to get us out of here soon.”As she spoke, she and others opened up a trash bag filled with children’s clothes that a community volunteer had just dropped off.Reina told the Guardian that just a few days ago, her son ended up at the hospital.“He hadn’t eaten and he started to asphyxiate and cough a lot,” she said. “When we arrived at the hospital, they put him on a machine for asphyxiation, and they put me outside for dehydration.” Reina is diabetic and her blood sugar levels frequently drop due to lack of proper nutrition. She has been asking city employees if she can be transferred to a shelter, where she thought at least her son would have a warm bed to sleep in and could eat better, she said.Chicago’s response to the increase in arriving migrants is shared by various city departments and partner organizations, the office of emergency management said. The office did not give details about how and why migrants end up at police precincts and what protocols and procedures are in place.Diana Alpizar, director of career pathways at the Instituto del Progreso Latino, a non-profit organization in Chicago that provides education opportunities to immigrants, has been coordinating volunteer efforts at one police station, with some city funding.She was sorting socks, towels, diapers and other basics at her office for newly arrived families, which she put in bags ready for distribution.For asylum seekers staying at the precinct, Alpizar said: “The rule is to stay outside after 10am while the inside is cleaned and disinfected and people can come back inside when it’s time for bed.”In her opinion, the staff is “indifferent” and not “sympathizing”, she said. Police officers declined to talk to the Guardian.Precinct 12 is currently housing 10 to 15 families. There is one bathroom with a single toilet, sink and mirror, which the migrants are not supposed to use. Some started going to a splash pad for kids in a nearby public park to clean themselves, but Maria Bolivar, another woman sleeping at the precinct, said that the water playground was then closed and she believes the water supply was “locked” to stop migrants using it. Bolivar came to the US with her children aged nine and 11 from Venezuela.She said she fills up cups with water to pour on herself and her children to clean them. Then she dries off with a towel and said she also dries the floor and cleans thoroughly so that the staff doesn’t notice any mess.Another Venezuelan, Yannis Soto, said: “We are in a place that we have to keep clean so that people don’t speak ill of us.”A volunteer at another precinct said the asylum seekers she helps are desperate to work and fend for themselves while their applications go through the legal system, and one told her she meticulously cleans the police bathroom to “make sure it’s neat so they don’t close the doors on us”.On Wednesday, the Biden administration, under pressure from some senior Democrats in Washington, state governors and city mayors, said it would grant temporary legal status to hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan asylum seekers already in the US, quickly making them eligible to work.A local church provides food most days. City shelters, meanwhile, provide three meals a day, and Alpizar said the situation is more stable as asylum seekers are connected to a case manager to assist them with their immigration applications, and also to social services and possible housing.But people have reported problems at shelters too, however, including two women who told local news outlet Block Club Chicago that they were not given enough food and some of it was moldy. They also reported cold showers and strict rules preventing volunteers bringing supplies to them.Alpizar said that once at a shelter, asylum seekers begin working with a case manager who takes on their immigration cases. But not everyone will qualify for asylum. Some get permission to stay and work, some will get deported or end up living a precarious, undocumented life. “They get lost in the shadows,” she said.Meanwhile, Reina received blankets for her son and clothes from the volunteers. She’s waiting for news about a shelter. “They took my name down and gave me and my baby a number: 214. I don’t really know what my luck will be,” she said. More

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      This racist US housing policy that tried to fix poverty is a massive failure

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      For 20 or so years, the architects of public housing have clung tightly to what became conventional wisdom in the field: move residents of low-income neighborhoods out of public housing and into economically resourced neighborhoods.As the theory goes, middle-class and wealthy communities with high-quality schools, healthcare and public facilities could work “wonders” on the residents of low-income and mostly Black neighborhoods. This idea – which advocates call “mixed-income housing” and includes Section 8, among other programs – depends on the idea that people with low incomes, especially those who are Black, are somehow culturally deficient. They need to be immersed in “better” neighborhoods so they are no longer exposed to food deserts, street violence and a lack of employment opportunities.More often than not, this policy experiment fails. In Chicago, many residents who were moved into higher-income neighborhoods ended up living in Black, low-income neighborhoods within five years. Mixed-income housing policy initiatives have struggled for a variety of reasons, but mostly because they are rooted in racist notions of public housing as a breeding ground for Black dysfunction.It’s clear “compassionate relocation” has been a notoriously mixed bag. Sociologist Ann Owens found that mixed-income housing policy has had a minimal impact on concentrated poverty from 1977 to 2008. Another study examined the experiences of 4,600 families who participated in the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) program, which offered families subsidized vouchers for private rentals. Moving improved the educational prospects of younger children and the mental health of women (who wouldn’t feel better in housing not plagued by chronic plumbing or heating problems, pests and cramped living conditions?). But relocation had no effect on employment or income for people who moved as adults. Economic opportunity didn’t magically appear at a new address.By the 1990s, scholars and politicians had made a cottage industry out of claiming that grouping poor Black people in high-density residential communities causes poor quality of life in the form of struggling schools and other ills. If you subscribe to this view, you probably believe poverty spreads among people with lower incomes like a highly contagious virus.The US Department Housing and Urban Development (HUD) bought into this narrative and, with its Hope VI transformation plans, emphasized moving former public housing residents out of their old neighborhoods. The Chicago Housing Authority (CHA), one of the nation’s largest public housing systems, committed to this course of action in 1999.Soon Chicago began demolishing “severely distressed public housing”. Among them were high-rise public housing developments like the infamous Cabrini-Green complex, which became a national symbol of urban blight and failed housing policy; those ideas were imprinted on the American imagination when Cabrini-Green appeared as the location of the 1970s sitcom Good Times and as the nightmarish setting for the 1992 horror film Candyman.The real experts on how relocation is not all it’s cracked up to be are the very targets of resettlement. As a political scientist who studies public housing, I’ve interviewed dozens of women who lived in properties owned by the CHA, which has a 50-year-old track record of grossly mismanaged and dilapidated public housing.I attended a memorable 2011 CHA tenants association meeting where women questioned discriminatory drug-testing policies in mixed-income housing developments. A CHA official claimed, “We don’t have a drug policy.” Chaos erupted because the women knew otherwise. Developers who managed mixed-housing programs often did as they pleased and made their own policies, sometimes in violation of CHA or HUD rules. Later in the meeting, another official seemed to admit those enrolled in mixed-income programs were subjected to more drug testing than residents who paid full market value.That contradicted talking points from advocacy groups like the National Housing Conference. It has contended that “mixed-income communities provide a safer environment that offers a greater range of positive role models and exposure to more job leads for area residents”. Transplanted residents weren’t safer, but rather vulnerable to additional surveillance, potential interaction with law enforcement (sometimes when neighbors reported them for no reason) and a different kind of stress in their nice, new homes. White supremacy and class bias followed residents wherever they moved, if they could move. Many participants in voucher programs continue to have trouble finding landlords willing to accept them.Researchers who hew to the old, entrenched school of thought – that masses of poor Black people living together are the problem – don’t seem to grasp that kids who once lived in public housing may not be accepted in their new schools. Or that their parents don’t “fit in” enough to get a nearby job. Or that groceries and life essentials are often more expensive in wealthier areas. Or that families are often placed in suburbs far from any of the public housing or welfare offices, let alone public hospitals and other support systems.Robert Chaskin and Mark Joseph coined a term for the marginalization of relocated families: “Incorporated exclusion”. People considered “lucky” enough to “get out” deal with isolation from valuable community networks. Contrary to popular belief and social entitlement policy, such networks and social support do exist in public housing. Far from being the “welfare queens” of the Reagan era, residents work hard and frequently to support each other. They provide childcare or elder care, organize meals for each other and advise neighbors on how to deal with bureaucracy that ignores the crumbling state of public housing it’s supposed to maintain.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionYet mixed-income housing policy has shown little to no consideration of the importance of living near friends, family, church, schools and so on. Lack of easy access to community can also have detrimental effects on both community and individual health. By transferring residents all over metro Chicago, the CHA disrupted mutual aid mechanisms. Importantly, it also undermined tenants’ ability to organize and advocate for themselves.Because Black and poor Americans are presumed to be socially, culturally and spiritually broken, US poverty policy has never prioritized maintaining or protecting their communities. We don’t have enough meaningful public conversation about what redlining housing discrimination, systemic underdevelopment of places like Chicago’s South Side and police torture have done to low-income Black communities today.Housing policies forged in racism, sexism and classism do little but duplicate anti-Blackness and socioeconomic biases. Mixed-income housing policy attempts to shift the blame for what geographer Ruthie Wilson Gilmore calls “the organized government abandonment” of public housing stock and inner cities, de facto economic dead zones where white people and investment will not go.The problem is not high concentrations of Black, low-income people causing negative child and family outcomes. Rather, it’s that our government, businesses, schools and citizens discriminate against the working class, the poor and the unhoused. Members of the “underclass” – once a popular term in US poverty studies – are literally pushed out of sight and into public housing, low-performing schools and low-wage jobs.We deny them the rights to safe and secure housing, transportation and living-wage employment. White, middle-class and wealthy citizens refuse to frequent businesses or attend schools in high-poverty neighborhoods, and businesses are disincentivized to offer services in neighborhoods with high numbers of Black people.Assumptions about public housing residents have been built into the very foundations of public housing policy. It’s time to retire these damaging scripts – and eradicate them in policy because, as Fannie Lou Hamer said: “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.”Alex J. Moffett-Bateau PhD is from Detroit, Michigan, and is an assistant professor of political science at John Jay College in New York City More

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      Progressives press Chicago mayor over pledge to end controversial policing tool

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      Progressives have vowed to hold the new Chicago mayor, Brandon Johnson, to his campaign pledge that as part of crime-control efforts in the city he will break with the controversial gunshot detection contractor ShotSpotter.Johnson gave the keynote speech this week at Netroots, the largest annual gathering of progressives in the country, taking place in Chicago, and amplified his campaign talk about a wider approach to safer streets.“Many people will make you believe that the only way in which you can have safe communities is by simply engaging in politics of old, by believing that the only answer to public safety is policing. That’s a failed strategy,” he told the gathering.However the progressive Democrat did not repeat his campaign trail commitments to pull the plug on ShotSpotter when the city’s current contract is up next year. For more than a decade, Chicago has used the company’s nearly 30-year-old gunshot detection system, deployed in high-crime areas and designed to direct police to shootings, but that in recent years has faced intense criticism for its methodology and the impact of its technology on communities of color.“He’s a rising star in progressive politics and we’re going to hold him accountable,” Granate Kim, campaign director at MPower Change, a Chicago-based Muslim digital advocacy organization, told a panel held at Netroots.Kim added that if Johnson did not break with ShotSpotter: “We would be very upset and take him to task nationally.”Johnson emerged as the unlikely winner from the left in the mayoral race in April, defeating former Chicago public schools CEO Paul Vallas, who had received an endorsement from the right-leaning police union. The two men had faced off after mayor Lori Lightfoot lost her bid for re-election.Johnson had said on his campaign website: “Chicago spends $9m a year on ShotSpotter despite clear evidence it is unreliable and overly susceptible to human error. This expensive technology played a pivotal role in the police killing of 13-year-old Adam Toledo.”Toledo, 13, was shot dead by police in 2021 after a chase and confrontation in which bodycam footage showed the boy with his hands in the air. The killing prompted protests in Chicago, and no charges were brought against the police.Amid criticism of the city’s procurement process as opaque, last fall, Lightfoot quietly extended the company’s contract to February 2024. Then in June, Johnson approved a $10m payment for ShotSpotter. A senior adviser in the mayor’s office blamed the authorization on an automated signature – but also did not commit to ending the contract next year.If Johnson continues the contract, the backlash from fellow progressives is likely to be swift.“We need Mayor Brandon Johnson to stand on his campaign promise of getting the contract canceled. It does not have to be that hard,” said Alyxandra Goodwin, a community organizer with Black Youth Project 100 in Chicago. Goodwin noted that the city’s upcoming budget season provided another opportunity to push the mayor and his allies to end the contract.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“We need the mayor to propose a budget that does not have money for gunshot detection. And now we need city council to approve the budget that doesn’t have money for gunshot detection,” Goodwin added.Shotspotter has been deployed in more than 120 cities including Boston, New York and Denver, according to the company, which recently rebranded as SoundThinking. Research from the University of Michigan and Chicago’s own office of inspector general have raised questions over its accuracy and efficiency.A recent investigation by the Guardian, the Lucy Parsons Labs and the Oregon Justice Research Center, shed light on how ShotSpotter circumvented the public procurement process in Portland.While the city mulls the renewal, it’s also facing a federal lawsuit from the MacArthur Justice Center at Northwestern University’s law school over Chicago police’s use of ShotSpotter. Lucy Parsons Labs, one of the plaintiffs in the class action suit, alleged that the deployment of ShotSpotter in predominantly Black and Brown neighborhoods infringes on civil liberties and breaks the fourth amendment, said Alejandro Ruizesparza, co-director for Lucy Parsons Labs.“We are using that racial justice lens in our litigation to look at how cities that have contracts with private entities use this technology in a way that is particularly harmful to people of color and also poor people,” Ruizesparza said. “Maybe these companies should be paying reparations every time they hurt Black and brown people. That would really hurt their profit margin.” More