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      Progressives tout string of wins across US as template for Democrats

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      Progressives in the midwest had three reasons to celebrate on Tuesday. In Wisconsin, the liberal judge Janet Protasiewicz delivered a resounding victory in the state supreme court race, flipping control of the court for the first time in 15 years. In Chicago, the progressive mayoral candidate Brandon Johnson prevailed over Paul Vallas, a more conservative Democrat who ran on a tough-on-crime message. And in St Louis, progressives won a majority of seats on the board of aldermen, the lawmaking body for the city.As they took their victory lap, progressives made clear that they viewed the wins as merely the beginning of a broader trend in America’s elections.“It’s a multicultural, multi-generational movement that has literally captured the imagination of not just the city of Chicago but the rest of the world,” Johnson said in his victory speech. “Let’s take this bold progressive movement around these United States of America.”Several lessons can be learned from Tuesday’s results, progressive leaders say. They hope their victories send a message to Democratic party leaders about the enduring resonance of abortion access, the popularity of progressives’ message and the importance of long-term grassroots organizing. The wins also come at a vital moment for progressives, who have criticized Joe Biden’s recent move toward the political center on issues such as energy and crime.“We’re building a project all across this country, and that project is ascendant,” said Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families party. “It’s both a culmination of years of organizing, and it’s a validation of the popular appeal of that project.”Abortion as ‘a winning issue for Democrats’Reproductive rights appeared to weigh heavily on the minds of Wisconsin voters as they went to the polls on Tuesday. Wisconsin has an abortion ban dating back to 1849 on the books, and anti-abortion advocates have argued that the policy should be enforced following the US supreme court’s reversal of Roe v Wade last summer.The question of enforcing the 1849 ban is expected to soon come before the state supreme court, and the policy seems likely to be thrown out following Protasiewicz’s win.“We think that there’s a very great chance now that we’ll be able to get this ban off the books and restore access to folks in Wisconsin,” said Ryan Stitzlein, senior national political director of the reproductive rights group Naral. “This is life-changing for folks.”Protasiewicz made the end of Roe a central focus of her campaign, emphasizing her personal support for legal abortion access and attacking her opponent, conservative Dan Kelly, over his past work for the anti-abortion group Wisconsin Right to Life.“I don’t think you can overstate the importance of abortion in this race. Judge Janet led with her support for reproductive freedom,” Stitzlein said.Protasiewicz defeated Kelly by 11 points. The result was extraordinary for the battleground state of Wisconsin, which Biden won by less than one point in 2020. Four years earlier, Donald Trump carried the state with 47.2% of the vote compared with Hillary Clinton’s 46.5%.To Stitzlein, Protasiewicz’s decisive win should dispel any lingering questions over whether abortion access continues to resonate with voters nearly a year after Roe was overturned. Before the 2022 elections, some Democratic strategists suggested abortion would not sufficiently move the needle with midterm voters, but progressive activists firmly rejected that reasoning.“I actually feel strongly that the longer these bans are in place, the more energy and more anger that’s going to be out there because there’s going to be more people that are affected by it,” Stitzlein said. “This is a winning issue for Democrats, for folks that support abortion access because support for abortion access is not partisan, as was demonstrated on Tuesday.”‘Not an overnight coalition’For progressive organizers in Chicago and St Louis, the victories on Tuesday were years in the making.When Johnson turned his attention to the mayoral race in Chicago, he drew crucial support from his longtime progressive allies. He received hefty assistance from the Chicago Teachers Union, where he has worked for the past 10 years as the organization pushed for progressive reform. And when Johnson ran for the Cook county board of commissioners in 2018, he received an endorsement from the United Working Families, an affiliate of the Working Families party.“Brandon is not an overnight sensation; the coalition that he built is not an overnight coalition,” Mitchell said. “This was a coalition that had been measured and patient and consistent over years, slowly aggregating the power to be able to seize the victory on Tuesday.”A similar story unfolded in St Louis on Tuesday. The progressive mayor, Tishaura Jones, and the board of aldermen president, Megan Green, endorsed a slate of candidates who were able to flip three seats on the board. Green, who became board president last year, served as a convention delegate for Bernie Sanders during his 2016 presidential campaign.“It’s something that’s seven, eight years in the making,” said Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of the progressive group Our Revolution. “We’re seeing the fruit of organizing over multiple election cycles.”Our Revolution made 100,000 phone calls and sent 130,000 texts to supporters in St Louis as part of its organizing efforts there, and the group contacted each of its 90,000 Chicago members an average of three times in connection to the mayoral race. The victory in Chicago was particularly meaningful for progressive groups like Our Revolution given that Johnson was outspent nearly two to one on television advertising.“The fact that we were able to out-organize big money with people power, I think, is significant because that usually does not happen,” Geevarghese said. “I think it really speaks to the growing sophistication of the progressive movement as a political force.”‘Another existential election’ on the horizonAs Democrats look ahead to 2024, when they will attempt to maintain control of the White House and the Senate while flipping control of the House, progressives say there are some important takeaways to learn from Tuesday’s results.“There’s something poetic about the victories in Chicago and Wisconsin taking place because there is a through line there,” he said, “both around what people want – which is responsive government, which is an expansion of their freedoms – and also what the opposition was saying.”Mitchell saw “fearmongering” being deployed as a weapon in both Wisconsin and Chicago, particularly around the issue of crime. Vallas, Johnson’s opponent in the mayoral race, received the endorsement of the Fraternal Order of Police and pledged to “make Chicago the safest city in America”, as he attacked Johnson over his past support for the defund the police movement. In the end, Johnson won the race thanks in part to the support of voters living on the city’s South and West sides, which report some of the highest levels of violent crime.Geevarghese argued that Johnson’s win should prompt some reflection for prominent Democrats, including Biden, who seem fearful of attacks over being “soft on crime”. Progressives expressed dismay last month after Biden signed a Republican bill overturning recent changes to the criminal code of Washington DC.“We were able to talk about a broader vision of community safety, which is having good schools, which is having investment in mental health, which is making sure there’s good jobs,” Geevarghese said of Johnson’s win.Even before the 2024 elections, progressives will have additional opportunities to demonstrate the effectiveness of their message. Philadelphia will hold its mayoral race in November, and every state legislative seat in Virginia will also be up for grabs this fall. Virginia’s Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, has called for a 15-week abortion ban.“I think 2024 is an opportunity for us to learn from this coalition that we built and hopefully replicate it in other places, in other states,” Mitchell said. “We’re going to be faced with another existential election on the federal level in not too much time.” More

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      ‘Black labor v white wealth’: can a progressive win Chicago’s mayoral election?

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      Brandon Johnson was in his element at Kenwood Academy high school.The bespectacled former social studies teacher and candidate for Chicago mayor sat at a table next to his opponent, former Chicago public schools CEO Paul Vallas, during a recent afternoon debate. In an exhausting series of mayoral debates, Johnson had a home field advantage at Kenwood, where his son attends school.Johnson is a member of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) and its former deputy political director. The CTU has thrown its support behind Johnson while Chicago’s cop union, the Fraternal Order of Police, has endorsed the tough-on-crime Vallas. The moderators at Kenwood opened with a question about whether the mayoral race was a proxy war between the Fraternal Order of Police and CTU.Johnson, who now serves as a Cook county commissioner, has joked in the past that he didn’t become a pastor like his father or sister because they weren’t unionized. But it’s clear that his family’s work in the church has shaped his commanding presence in secular spaces – as it did that day.“This is about Black labor versus white wealth. That’s what this battle is about,” Johnson responded. “This is about providing community access to the very public accommodations which Black people fought for, especially after emancipation. It’s what the descendants of slaves in this room are fighting for: public education, public transportation, affordable housing, healthcare and access to jobs.”The Chicago mayoral election is one of the most heated city battles in the country and could serve as a litmus test for police reform policies at a time when the topic of crime and public safety is central to both voters and politicians. Recent mayoral races in the liberal strongholds of New York City and Los Angeles have produced mixed results. In New York, ex-cop Eric Adams claimed victory with a centrist message while the reform-minded former congresswoman Karen Bass won the Los Angeles mayoral race on a progressive platform, though some Black Lives Matter activists criticized her recent decision to reappoint a controversial chief of police.In 2019, Chicagoans had elected Lori Lightfoot based on her message of transparency and reform. Instead, her tenure was marred by a botched police raid as well as drawn-out battles with both the CTU and the FOP.Turnout for the February primary was sluggish, with less than 33% of Chicago voters casting a ballot. Much of the recent mayoral primary map in February broke down along racial barriers: in the primaries García took Hispanic voters on the West Side, Black voters on the South and West sides remained loyal to the sitting mayor, Lori Lightfoot, while Vallas won over white voters in north-west Chicago. Johnson, meanwhile, commanded white progressives on the North Side.But Johnson’s progressive policies on dealing with crime, which fired up his base in the primary, could leave him vulnerable in the general election. Vallas has seized upon Johnson’s past support of the defund the police movement and Democrats across the country are closely watching to see if that could prove Johnson’s undoing.A finely tuned machineJohnson likes to boast that he started his campaign polling at just 2.3%. But he carries himself like a veteran politician, not an underdog. Johnson is charming, if guarded, and his affable middle school teacher demeanor turns pugnacious in debates and in spin rooms with reporters.With the help of progressive campaign operatives with Bernie Sanders on their résumés, Johnson is now a finely tuned machine picking up support from both leftist and moderate Democrats. He has been anointed by kingmakers like the South Carolina congressman Jim Clyburn, who memorably turned around the prospects of Joe Biden during the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, and Congressman Danny Davis, the Illinois representative whose protege and former chief of staff lost his county commissioner seat to Johnson in 2018.He also nabbed the endorsement of the renowned political activist the Rev Jesse Jackson, who delivered a speech with Johnson from his Rainbow Push Coalition headquarters in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood earlier this month. It’s clear that Johnson would like to model himself after Jackson. He’s taken pains to characterize his campaign as a continuation of the civil rights movement, repeatedly noting that the 4 April runoff election marks the date of Martin Luther King Jr’s assassination.When asked by the Guardian which historical or political figure Johnson might liken himself to behind the scenes at the event, Jackson threw up his arms gesturing at himself.“I’m just saying,” Johnson said with a laugh, looking at Jackson. “There is no President Barack Obama without Reverend Jesse Jackson. He changed the rules of the game. There’s a lot of history of progressive ideology and liberation from the city of Chicago.”Johnson also regularly hosted a radio show in Chicago helmed by Santita Jackson, the reverend’s daughter. It’s on that show that one can find a more honest expression of Johnson’s progressive views than on the campaign trail. It was where he made remarks about the defund police movement as an “actual, real political goal”.Johnson has since walked back that statement, saying: “It was a political goal. I never said it was mine.” He recently reversed plans to reduce the city’s nearly $2bn police budget, telling an audience of Chicago business leaders he wouldn’t “reduce the CPD budget by one penny”.‘Turning stress into action’Several prominent figures, including Jackson and late Chicago Teachers Union president Karen Lewis have used the phrase “educational apartheid” to describe the dearth of resources and school closures in Chicago’s Black and brown neighborhoods. Johnson also shared those beliefs with his mentor and colleague, Tara Stamps, who shaped his early career as an educator.Stamps said she met Johnson in 2007 when she interviewed him for his first job in education as a middle school social studies teacher at Jenner elementary, a school serving mostly Black students from the embattled Cabrini-Green housing projects. She described the then 31-year-old Johnson as chubbier with long dreadlocks, a warm personality and a great smile.The apartheid message was not lost on Johnson’s students either, who connected their experiences in CPS with the history of Soweto, Johnson said in a July episode of the Santita Jackson Show. After reading an excerpt from Nelson Mandela’s autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, they wrote a play called Black to the Future and collaborated with their art teacher to transform their classroom’s doorway into Mandela’s prison.Johnson and Stamps felt that charter schools were exacerbating segregation. Now, that philosophy underpins his campaign against Vallas, whom he has attacked for promoting charter schools.“These are ideas that Brandon and I shared early,” Stamps said. “We understood the history of Chicago public schools and at the time when we were working together, it did feel like it was an apartheid system because you have a school system that was just separating children based on who was able to receive the best public education, who would not receive the best public education and who then would go to charters.”A conversation with a civil rights-era organizer led Johnson further. During an October 2012 forum with the socialist organization Solidarity, Johnson spoke about meeting Grady Jordan, a former CPS teacher and founder of the Teacher’s Union Black Caucus who marched in the October 1963 “Freedom Day” protests against segregation in CPS. Over greens and soul food one day at a West Side diner, Jordan called on Johnson to take up his fight.“Black teachers fought hard, this is a direct retaliation to what we built in the 60s and the 70s,” Johnson recalled Jordan saying. “They’re trying to kill you. What are you going to do about it, son?”Chicago’s mayor had taken over the public school system in 1995, giving the administration power over school construction and union negotiations. In 2000, Black teachers made up 40% of CPS educators. By 2018, that number declined by nearly half to 21% of teachers, while Black students made up 37% of the student population, Chalkbeat Chicago reported.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“It shook me, like being awakened from a nightmare,” Johnson said during the 2012 forum. “Towards the end of the summer, after having dealt with that conversation, I began to pay attention to these leftists left in charge of this union, and I mean that as a compliment.”Johnson in turn helped form the activist mindset of other young teachers like Asif Wilson. The two met around 2009 when Wilson, now an assistant professor in curriculum and instruction at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, was a new teacher in CPS. They protested against school closures in 2013 and participated in a hunger strike to reopen Dyett high school.“That brought us together not only to think about what does it mean to be a teacher in the context of school closure and to protect myself, protect my students, protect my families, and be there for each other, but then what does it also mean to organize and understand the contours and the context of school closure, as well as neoliberal assaults on Black and brown families?” Wilson said.“He was helping me to understand as a union representative, but also then turning the anger, the frustration, the stress into action.”That activism morphed into political power with the Chicago Teachers Union, whose endorsement helped vault Johnson ahead of Congressman Jesús “Chuy” García, a progressive rival who was once considered a frontrunner in the primaries.‘They want to feel safe’While education has shaped much of Johnson’s career, it’s the city’s urgent desire for public safety that could decide this election.Residents in Little Village, a Mexican enclave on the West Side where Johnson held a recent rally, are concerned about gentrification and rising property taxes, but crime remains top of mind, said Enrique Mendoza, a Johnson supporter. Local street vendors have called for more police patrols after repeated attacks from armed robbers. That could give Vallas, who has claimed that hundreds of police officers will return to Chicago’s depleted force under his watch, an advantage. García still won Hispanic voters on the West Side during the primary, but the runner-up in many of those wards was Vallas, not Johnson.“The older generations, it doesn’t matter if they’re Latino, what race they are, they want to feel safe,” said Mendoza. “Their immediate go-to is always police, right? They want the person with the plan who’s catering to those needs.”Public safety is also front and center in Johnson’s own neighborhood. Originally from Elgin, a town just west of Chicago, Johnson has made the Austin neighborhood on Chicago’s West Side his home with his wife and three children. His son attends Kenwood, 14 miles from Austin, since he plays the violin and there are no high schools on the West Side offering orchestra, according to Johnson.Austin represents a microcosm of the issues facing many Black Chicagoans. The exodus of Black residents from Chicago is evident in the neighborhood, which has seen a 32% drop over the last 20 years. Despite being the second most populous community in the city, the area is a food desert with little access to grocery stores selling fresh produce. The life expectancy of residents living just over the border in the suburb of Oak Park is 10 years longer. As Johnson himself has noted throughout the mayoral race, Austin is also plagued by community violence.“It seems like, especially for Blacks in Austin, that it’s only a matter of time before we’re ‘extinct’,” said Vernon Cole, owner of the Austin shoe shine and repair shop, Shine King. Cole supported Lightfoot in the primaries but now has a sign for Johnson, one of his loyal customers, in his window.When asked whether he could see a Chicago where police and teachers come together, Johnson rattled off a list of his supporters. They included childcare workers, crossing guards, teachers, county government workers and transportation operators.“Do we know if there are police officers not voting for me?” he asked when questioned about support from police officers.“Working people have surrounded this candidacy because they know that I express and represent their values because they are our values,” Johnson said. “I’m not here if we’re not united.”‘There’s enough for everyone’At Shine King, customer the Rev Michael Stinson said he was just hoping for a unified Chicago. A pastor on the West Side, Stinson sees the city’s divisions as a major challenge for the next mayor.“I don’t know how far we’re going to make it with the police being against the teachers, it’s just not a world-class city,” Stinson said. “We need more programs and jobs to occupy our youth and children. I’m a preacher, so just getting back to God in my sense.”Whether or not Johnson can use his own religious zeal and charisma to motivate voters to get to the polls will become the deciding factor on 4 April.“Let me tell you what’s going to happen: we’re going to a place that is full of milk and honey,” he said at a March event. “The Black labor that has built the wealth of white folks, we get to distribute that any way we please.“And the way we’re going to do it, we’re going to make sure whether you live in Jefferson Park or Morgan Park, whether you live in Garfield Park or whether you live in Humboldt Park, there’s enough for everyone in the city of Chicago.” More

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      The politics of crime: what Chicago’s mayoral race reveals about the US

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      The politics of crime: what Chicago’s mayoral race reveals about the USElection could serve as a bellwether for how voters think about public safety as they choose between duelling approachesThere are few issues besides keeping a clean alley that most Chicagoans agree on. Yet, last week, a majority of the city’s voters ousted the incumbent mayor, Lori Lightfoot, in the city’s mayoral primary.With just under 17% of the vote, Lightfoot became the first mayor to fail to advance to the runoff election since Jane Byrne lost the 1983 primary. But the recent election was not a stunning rebuke of Lightfoot, who commanded third place with a loyal base of mostly Black voters on the city’s South and West Sides, but a demand for a radically different approach toward combating crime amid pandemic recovery, with one candidate focused on law and order and the other hoping to boost the social safety net.In Wisconsin’s supreme court race, a super-rich beer family calls the shotsRead moreIn one month, the general election could serve as a bellwether for how Democratic voters across the nation think about crime – a topic that became deeply politicized during an uptick in violence after the onset of Covid-19 and the widespread call for police reform after George Floyd’s murder. Chicago is the third largest city in the US, and its nearly 3 million residents are deeply segregated and break down into almost equal thirds white, Black and Hispanic. What may appear on the surface to be a reliable Democratic stronghold actually encompasses a wide spectrum of moderate liberals, progressives and even some Trump supporters, the latter concentrated among cops, firefighters and other public workers living on the far Northwest Side.At a time when places like New York City and Washington DC are reassessing their approach to public safety issues and rebuilding their communities, Chicago’s election in April could inform how some of the biggest cities move forward.When Lightfoot ascended to power in 2019, the political outsider made history as the first Black, openly gay mayor of Chicago and dominated all 50 of the city’s wards with the optimistic message that she would “bring in the light”.But Lightfoot’s campaign promises of transparency foundered once she took office, particularly when it came to public safety. After Chicago police wrongfully raided the home of a Black woman, Anjanette Young, in 2019 and forced her to stand naked until a female officer arrived, Lightfoot claimed she knew nothing about the incident until local news broke the story. Her own lawyers tried to prevent the local TV station from airing the video of the botched raid and Lightfoot herself later admitted that she was aware of the raid before the news broke. When five alderwomen introduced an ordinance in 2021 banning no-knock raids – building on the momentum of the Breonna Taylor case – Lightfoot opposed the bill and argued it could hamper the police’s ability to respond quickly.At the same time, Lightfoot engaged in a legal battle with the city’s cop union, the Fraternal Order of Police, over a vaccine mandate for public workers. Police expressed their frustration over burnout and multiple canceled days off by literally turning their backs on Lightfoot in 2021.In February’s primary, Lightfoot attempted to thread the needle by marketing herself as a moderate candidate. But many voters bolted in one of two other directions: to the most progressive and conservative options. Paul Vallas and Brandon Johnson, the Cook county commissioner, going head-to-head on 4 April represent dueling philosophies of criminal justice.Vallas, the former CEO of Chicago public schools who came in ninth place in his last run for mayor in 2019, ripped a page from the Republican playbook with a law-and-order message. On election night, he placed crime at the forefront of his campaign, declaring public safety a “civil right”. He also received an endorsement from the Fraternal Order of Police, along with its Trump-supporting president, John Catanzara, and has pledged to fill Chicago’s 1,700 police vacancies.Johnson’s résumé as a former teacher and Chicago Teachers Union deputy political director puts him at immediate odds with Vallas, whom critics say set the stage for the closure of 50 Chicago public schools predominantly in Black and Brown neighborhoods under former mayor Rahm Emanuel. Johnson’s progressive approach toward criminal justice would include a mental health hotline and eliminating no-knock warrants. He also committed to ending the city’s contract with ShotSpotter, which the city’s own inspector general found “rarely leads to evidence of a gun-related crime”. In a televised debate, both Lightfoot and Vallas supported keeping the acoustic gunshot detection tool used by police.Johnson and Vallas agree on some policy issues including changing the Chicago police department’s patrol plan to allocate more police officers during high crime hours. Both have vouched for boosting the number of detectives so that CPD can solve more murders, though Johnson has dodged the question of whether he would reduce CPD’s nearly $2bn budget. But on most issues they represent very different directions for the city.“What we have in this runoff is the tale of two cities in Chicago,” said Constance Mixon, a political science professor and director of the urban studies program at Elmhurst University. “It is a tale of progressives and Brandon Johnson, but it’s also a tale of more conservative voters, particularly in white ethnic neighborhoods on the far north-west and south-west sides of the city … Paul Vallas’s message of crime resonated with them.”Like other cities across the US, violent crime escalated during the pandemic in Chicago. While homicides had been on a steady decline since 2016, they shot up from 500 in 2019 to 776 in 2020. Homicides dropped in 2022, but still rival the rate Chicago saw in the 1990s.“Things like theft and burglary have been trending down for the last two or three decades and the last couple of years is no different. Even overall violence hasn’t increased that much,” said David Olson, a criminal justice professor and co-director of Loyola University’s Center for Criminal Justice Research. “The challenge politically are the crimes that have increased are the ones that are the most serious and the most visible in terms of coverage by the media and attention by people. And rightfully so, given the fact that homicide is the most serious offense.”For years, crime had disproportionately affected Black and Brown communities on the South and West Sides of the city. But since the pandemic started it has increased in those areas, as well as predominantly white and wealthy neighborhoods – spurring fresh outrage and new attention to the issue. Carjackings in Lincoln Square, robberies on the Gold Coast, and kidnappings in Wrigleyville have rattled residents and dominated local headlines.“Wealthier, whiter parts of the city have been safer for many, many years and the violence has persisted on the South and West sides in plain sight without the kind of attention and response that the issue is getting now,” said Roseanna Ander, founding executive director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab and the University of Chicago Education Lab. Leaders should recognize that public safety strategies should look at persistent problems throughout the entire city, rather than making one part of Chicago safer at the expense of other parts of the city, Ander added.While the post-pandemic rise in crime has frustrated white Chicagoans, Black Chicagoans who have long dealt with the city’s crime problems have left in droves over the past decade. Recent census data showed Chicago’s Black population has dropped by nearly 10% since 2010. Political strategist Delmarie Cobb attributes that exodus to two factors: crime and schools.She asked the police to help her husband. They killed him insteadRead more“Those two issues are front and center for Black people, whereas white people may just be experiencing crime for the first time, but they’re OK with the schools,” Cobb said. “With the tough-on-crime candidates, they’re often who get all the attention and support because those people who are experiencing crime for the first time at this level, they want somebody who can do it quickly.”How the two mayoral candidates communicate their message on crime to Black voters will prove crucial. In the primary, Johnson garnered support from white progressives on the North Side but in order to beat Vallas, he’ll have to court Hispanics on the West Side who voted for his progressive rival, Congressman Jesús G “Chuy” García, and Black voters who backed Lightfoot on the South Side. Vallas is already trying to shore up support from Black politicians, racking up key endorsements from the former Illinois secretary of state Jesse White and Lightfoot’s ally Alderman Walter Burnett. Toni Preckwinkle, Lightfoot’s rival in the 2019 election, and US congressman Danny Davis, who represents much of the South and West Sides, endorsed Johnson.Johnson may have trouble taking the middle road in the general election. Though his policies on criminal justice reform fired up a progressive base in the primary, Johnson has tried to distance himself from past comments on defunding the police. When it comes to filling police vacancies, Johnson told Block Club Chicago that hiring more officers wouldn’t solve the city’s crime problem, instead saying that funding could be reallocated by shifting officers’ roles and hiring additional emergency service responders.During one primary debate, Lightfoot questioned how Johnson would boost the number of detectives without increasing the police budget.“He says he wants to promote detectives,” Lightfoot said. “When you promote detectives then you’ve got to backfill the patrol officers and if he’s not willing to commit to not defunding the police, he’s gonna have less officers on the street and our communities are gonna be less safe.”It is possible that Johnson could reallocate funding rather than increasing CPD’s budget, counters Craig Futterman, a clinical professor of law at the University of Chicago Law School and director of the school’s Civil Rights and Police Accountability Project.“Within a fixed budget, you can put less of your officers in the kind of stop-and-frisk mode, street policing mode and more in investigating mode,” he said. “That’s not necessarily going to cost you more money.”For Vallas, the endorsement from the Fraternal Order of Police will either become his winning advantage or his achilles heel. The group welcomed Florida’s conservative governor Ron DeSantis for a speech in February while its president, Catanzara, has landed in the news for defending January 6 rioters and comparing Lightfoot’s vaccine mandate to the Nazi Germany.More than the endorsements, however, voters may choose based on their visceral feelings about what’s needed to reduce crime, Olson said.“For a lot of people, their gut feeling is, well, if we just had more police, that would address the problem, and it’s more complicated than that,” he said.“So if one candidate presents this blunt: ‘We just need more police’, that may swing some folks. If another approaches with: ‘We’ve got to address the root causes, this is a long-term problem that needs a long-term solution’, that might resonate because they see that as perhaps being a more realistic understanding.”TopicsChicagoUS crimeUS policingUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Chicago mayor faces backlash for asking students to work on campaign for credit

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      Chicago mayor faces backlash for asking students to work on campaign for creditLori Lightfoot’s office asked teachers to encourage their students to submit résumés in exchange for ‘class credit’ Chicago’s mayor, Lori Lightfoot, is facing criticism after her office attempted to recruit students with school credit to help with her re-election campaign.Emails encouraging students to volunteer were sent to several Chicago Public School (CPS) teachers’ work emails from Megan Crane, who identifies herself as Lightfoot’s deputy campaign manager on LinkedIn.According to screenshots that circulated on social media late on Wednesday, Lightfoot’s office asked teachers to encourage their students to submit their résumés for an externship program for those “interested in campaign politics and eager to gain experience in the field”.Those who join the externship would be expected to contribute 12 hours a week in exchange for “class credit”, WTTW first reported.The email further elaborated that Lightfoot’s office was seeking “enthusiastic, curious and hard-working young people eager to help Mayor Lightfoot win this spring”.Many were quick to call out Lightfoot’s office for the recruitment attempts.“Looks like desperate times call for desperate measures,” tweeted the Illinois representative and Chicago mayoral candidate Jesús García.Mayoral candidate Brandon Johnson wrote on Twitter that Lightfoot’s actions were “outrageous, desperate, & downright unethical”.Former Chicago inspector general Joe Ferguson also called the initiative “deeply, deeply problematic”.The solicitation of volunteers using the CPS email system is specifically discouraged in an ethics guideline published by CPS, though Lightfoot’s campaign claimed to have used emails made publicly available, reported the Chicago Tribune.Shortly after the email was publicized, Lightfoot’s campaign sent out several follow-up statements about the emails.In one statement, Lightfoot’s campaign wrote that staff would “cease contact with CPS employees” out of an “abundance of caution”, reported the Tribune.Less than two hours after that statement, Lightfoot’s campaign announced that contacting “any city of Chicago, or other sister agency employees, including CPS employees, even through publicly available sources” would be “off limits”.In light of the controversy, a spokesperson from CPS told the Tribune that the school district does not “coordinate with any political candidates or campaigns”, highlighting that teacher emails are publicly available.But leadership from the Chicago Teachers Union called the recruitment efforts “unethical and wrong”, noting concern that teachers who decline to participate in volunteer efforts or do not encourage their students to do so could face retaliation.“This is the same mayor who promised to clean up corruption and make good ethics an anchor in her administration. This latest scheme shows she’s a rank hypocrite on ethics issues – including her attempt to use our schools and students as her campaign tools,” wrote union leaders in a statement, reported WGN 9, a local news affiliate.The Chicago board of ethics told WGN that they were aware of the emails and planned to discuss it at the next board meeting, currently scheduled for 23 January.The Chicago mayoral election will be held on 28 February.TopicsChicagoUS educationUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      'A man without morals': Chicago mayor chides Texas governor for expelling migrants – video

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      Chicago’s mayor, Lori Lightfoot, criticised Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, accusing him of cruelty and racism for expelling dozens of migrants from Texas by bus. ‘With these continued political stunts, Governor Abbott has confirmed, what unfortunately many of us had already known – that he is a man without any morals, humanity or shame,’ said Lightfoot at a press conference on Thursday. Seventy-nine Venezuelans arrived at Chicago’s Union Station late on Wednesday, officials said. ‘Last night, we showed our mettle, the best of who we are,’ Lightfoot continued, praising the city’s effort to welcome the new arrivals.

      ‘They are human beings’: Chicago mayor welcomes migrants bussed by Texas More

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      ‘They are human beings’: Chicago mayor welcomes migrants bussed by Texas

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      ‘They are human beings’: Chicago mayor welcomes migrants bussed by TexasLori Lightfoot offers ‘open arms’ as Governor Greg Abbott escalates political stunt of sending asylum seekers to Democratic-led cities01:37The mayor of Chicago, Lori Lightfoot, has vowed to welcome immigrants bussed to the city from the Mexican border, as the hard-right governor of Texas opened a third front in his confrontation with the Biden administration and Democratic sanctuary cities.Lightfoot delivered a defiant speech on Thursday in which she accused Governor Greg Abbott of cruelty and racism, and pledged to respond to the Texan’s controversial scheme by greeting the released migrants with open arms.Pentagon rejects DC request for national guard help with migrants bussed to cityRead moreChicago received its first busloads of 79 migrants, in this case Venezuelans, on Wednesday night.They were dispatched by Abbott, who has already sent about 9,000 people who crossed the US-Mexico border without documents giving them entry to the US to Washington DC and New York City.The move is a point-scoring stunt designed to level blame for chaotic conditions on the southern border at the White House and Democratic-controlled cities.The Republican governor of Arizona, Doug Ducey, is pursuing a similar ruse albeit on a smaller scale.At a press conference, Lightfoot said she could not “fully make up for the cruelty that our new neighbours have experienced”. But she said: “We have and we will continue to welcome them with open arms. I refuse to turn our back on them at a time when they need support the most.”01:37She said that in opening up a new Chicago front, Abbott had shown himself to be a “cheap politician” and “a man without any morals, humanity or shame”. The migrants he was loading on to buses and carting across a strange country were “moms and dads, young children, elders who deserve our respect and dignity. They’re not cargo. They are not chattel. They are human beings.”Among the 75 arrivals to Chicago were seven infants, and a total of 20 children and teens, according to local authorities. They were met at the bus with an offering of food, clothes, a shower and shelter.Chicago is now bracing itself for the arrival of further busloads of migrants after the city became the third target of Abbott’s political gambit.It began in April when he initially targeted the nation’s capital, forcing Washington officials to scramble for ways to house the asylum seekers.The move was immediately controversial, inviting criticism even from fellow Republicans – some within the Texas assembly. The bussing was then expanded to New York earlier this month.Abbott has appeared on the conservative Fox News TV network presenting his ploy as a way of exposing the hypocrisy of Democratic leaders in northern “sanctuary cities”.He appeared on rightwinger Sean Hannity’s Fox News show at the time the New York scheme began and said: “These liberal leaders up in the north-east think, ‘That border crisis created by Joe Biden, that’s fine as long as Texas has to deal with it.’ But as soon as they have to deal with the real consequences of Biden’s border-caused crisis, they are up in arms.”The Democratic mayor of New York, Eric Adams, has counter-attacked by accusing the Texas governor of inhumanity. Migrants were having to endure bus rides lasting almost two days with restricted breaks and food.“I think that Governor Abbott, what he’s doing is just so inhumane,” Adams said.New York’s immigration commissioner, Manuel Castro, this week lamented the bussing as a “rightwing political extremist crisis”. He said Abbott was fomenting “anti-immigrant and anti-Latino hate, which impacts all of us whether we arrived here today or decades ago”.Under basic US immigration regulations, migrants passing through Mexico and crossing the border into the US who do not have documentation are released from custody after processing. They can move around the country while awaiting court decisions on their asylum applications.One of the paradoxical aspects of Abbott’s aggressive stance is that it is creating an additional burden on Texas taxpayers. The cost of travelling from the border state to another part of the US normally falls entirely on the migrants themselves, but under the bussing scheme the travel is provided free.Abbott has said the bus rides are voluntary for migrants, but that is also in dispute. They are often aiming to reach much closer destinations in the south-west, to join relatives, but do not have the money to get there and are offered the rides to northern cities and, apparently without liaison with those cities’ leaders, aid and prospects upon arrival.CNN used freedom of information powers to extract information from the Texas division of emergency management that showed that it has already spent more than $12m. The money went to Wynne Transportation, which provides the buses.Migrants arriving in Chicago will not be asked about their immigration status, and their information will not be shared with federal authorities or law enforcement, under city rules. They will be able to apply for a full range of public services.TopicsChicagoMigrationUS immigrationTexasUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Highland Park shooting death toll rises to seven with 46 injured – as it happened

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      Americans grappled with another wave of gun violence that left seven people dead after a shooting in a Chicago suburb while two new polls paint a grim picture of Americans’ views of President Joe Biden, his handling of the economy, and the country’s institutions in general.Here’s a rundown of what’s happened today:
      A Chicago Sun-Times journalist wrote a harrowing account of the mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois, that killed seven during an Independence Day parade.
      Biden awarded the Medal of Honor to four army veterans who fought in Vietnam.
      The head of Planned Parenthood talked to the Guardian about how the group will continue working to help women get abortions.
      Inflation and the overall cost of living remains Americans’ top concern, according to a poll released today that casts doubt on Democrats’ hopes that concerns about abortion and gun access will reverse Biden’s poor approval ratings.
      But if Biden is unpopular, he’s not alone. Americans’ confidence in almost all of their institutions has declined compared with last year, according to a different poll.
      Local authorities also announced the names of three more victims which had not been known yet. The identity of the seventh – and so far last – victim has not been released. The three new names are: Katherine Goldstein, 88 Irina McCarthy, 35 Kevin McCarthy, 37At a press conference police have detailed two previous incidents involving the alleged shooter Robert Crimo. The first happened in April, 2019 when police got a report from Crimo’s family that he had attempted suicide. The second occurred in September, 2019 when there was a report that Crimo had been making threats that he wanted to “kill everyone” and had a collection of knives.Police visited where Crimo was living and confiscated a collection of 16 knives, a dagger and a sword. The New York Times has some heartbreaking details on the third victim to be identified. The paper reports: Steve Straus, 88.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}A father of two, grandfather of four and a financial adviser who, at 88, still took the train every day from his Highland Park home to his office at a brokerage firm in Chicago, Steve Straus “should not have had to die this way,” his niece, Cynthia Straus, said in a phone interview.
      “He was an honorable man who worked his whole life and looked out for his family and gave everyone the best he had,” Ms Straus said. “He was kind and gentle and had huge intelligence and humor and wit.”
      He was devoted to his wife, she said, and intensely close with his brother, and extremely health conscious: “He exercised as if he were 50.”Biden has no plans yet to visit Highland Park, Illinois, site of Monday’s mass shooting that killed seven people, his press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters.“We don’t have any plans right now to go to Chicago”, the city of which Highland Park is a suburb, Jean-Pierre said. However vice-president Kamala Harris is scheduled to be in the city later today to to address the National Education Association, “and she will speak to the devastation that we that we all saw with our own eyes yesterday in Highland Park”, according to Jean-Pierre.Biden will travel to Cleveland, Ohio on Wednesday for a speech regarding the economy.White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is holding the daily press briefing, and reiterated the Biden administration’s efforts to get WNBA star Brittney Griner released from prison in Russia.“We believe she was wrongfully detained. We believe she needs to come home, she should be home,” Jean-Pierre said, adding that Griner’s wife spoke with national security advisor Jake Sullivan over the weekend, their second phone call in the past 10 days.Griner wrote a letter to Biden asking him to push for her release, which Jean-Pierre said the president had read. “He takes this to heart, he takes this job very seriously, especially when it comes to bringing home US nationals who are wrongfully detained,” Jean-Pierre said.This post has been updated to clarify that Griner’s wife, not Griner herself, spoke to Jake Sullivan.’I’m terrified I might be here forever’: Brittney Griner appeals to Biden in letterRead morePresident Biden has ordered flags flown at half-staff across the United States and its embassies abroad until the end of the day on July 9 in memory of the people killed at the mass shooting in Highland Park.Biden had previously ordered flags flown at half-staff in May after the shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas that killed 19 children and two teachers.A seventh person has died following the July 4 shooting at an Independence Day parade in Highland Park, Illinois, NBC Chicago reports.The death brings the toll of wounded in the shooting to 46, according to the broadcaster. Police have said the man suspected of carrying out the attack planned it for weeks and dressed as a woman in order to conceal his identity.Mississippi’s restrictions on abortion were at the center of the supreme court’s ruling last month overturning Roe v. Wade, but the litigation isn’t finished in the state.The Associated Press reports that Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the plaintiff in the supreme court case, is suing to stop a law that would ban almost all abortions in the state:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} The law — which state lawmakers passed before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 1973 ruling that allowed abortions nationwide — is set to take effect Thursday.
      The Jackson Women’s Health Organization sought a temporary restraining order that would allow it to remain open, at least while the lawsuit remains in court.
      The closely watched lawsuit is part of a flurry of activity that has occurred nationwide since the Supreme Court ruled. Conservative states have moved to halt or limit abortions while others have sought to ensure abortion rights, all as some women try to obtain the medical procedure against the changing legal landscape.
      If Chancery Judge Debbra K. Halford grants the clinic’s request to block the new Mississippi law from taking effect, the decision could be quickly appealed to the state Supreme Court.Twenty-six states are expected to outlaw abortion entirely following the supreme court’s decision, and according to the Guttmacher Institute, six states have already done so.Maryland’s governor announced today that his state will change its requirements for licensing concealed weapons in response to last month’s ruling by the supreme court expanding Americans’ ability to possess a gun outside their homes.In light of a recent Supreme Court ruling and to ensure compliance with the Constitution, I am directing the Maryland State Police to suspend utilization of the ‘good and substantial reason’ standard when reviewing applications for Wear and Carry Permits.My full statement: pic.twitter.com/0wi1dzD8Aw— Governor Larry Hogan (@GovLarryHogan) July 5, 2022
      As its term came to a close in June, the court’s conservative majority overturned a New York law that had placed strict limits on carrying a firearm outside the home, which affected states with similar laws on their books, including Maryland.New York’s governor Kathy Hochul last week signed legislation designed to counter the supreme court’s ruling by prohibiting the carrying of weapons in certain locations such as bars and restaurants that serve alcohol, schools, government buildings and airports, as well as requiring owners to consent to people carrying guns on their property.US supreme court overturns New York handgun law in bitter blow to gun-control pushRead moreIn other January 6 news, Adam Kinzinger, one of only two Republicans sitting on the House committee investigating the insurrection, has released a compilation of threatening and profane phone calls his office has received.Threats of violence over politics has increased heavily in the last few years. But the darkness has reached new lows. My new interns made this compilation of recent calls they’ve received while serving in my DC office.WARNING: this video contains foul & graphic language. pic.twitter.com/yQJvvAHBVV— Adam Kinzinger (@RepKinzinger) July 5, 2022
      Last year, Kinzinger announced he would retire from Congress, where he’s served since 2011.A Georgia grand jury investigating Donald Trump’s attempts to subvert the 2020 election result in the state has issued subpoenas to a number of the former president’s attorneys and allies, including senator Lindsey Graham.The special grand jury empaneled in Fulton county, where the capital and largest city Atlanta lies, issued the subpoenas today, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} In addition to Giuliani, among those being summoned are John Eastman, Cleta Mitchell, Kenneth Chesbro and Jenna Ellis, all of whom advised Trump on strategies for overturning Democrat Joe Biden’s wins in Georgia and other swing states.
      The grand jury also subpoenaed South Carolina U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of Trump’s top allies in the U.S. Senate, and attorney and podcast host Jacki Pick Deason.
      The subpoenas, were filed July 5 and signed off by Fulton Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, who is overseeing the special grand jury. Unlike subpoenas issued to Georgians, the summons were required to receive McBurney’s blessing since they are for people who reside outside the state.Viewers of the January 6 committee’s hearings will remember Eastman, the lawyer who, according to testimony from witnesses before the lawmakers, worked with Trump on his plot to undermine the results of the 2020 election. Eastman is among those who asked Trump for a pardon before he left office.At the press conference, investigators said the suspect Robert E Crimo III, 21, had legally bought the rifle allegedly used in the shootings and recovered at the scene – a high-powered rifle styled after an AR-15 – along with at least one more, as well as some pistols.The attack had evidently been planned for weeks, said Covelli, though investigators had not been tipped off to the social media videos posted by the suspect before the shooting.Authorities have still not said what charges Crimo faces, though another press conference is scheduled for later today.All six people killed were adults, Covelli said, and more than 30 others went to hospitals with bullet wounds.Covelli said there is no indication targets were picked out based on race, religion or any other federally protected status.The suspect in the 4 July shootings in Highland Park pre-planned the attack for several weeks, according to officials, and wore “women’s clothing” in what investigators said they believed was an effort to conceal his identity.According to Chris Covelli, the leader of a police taskforce investigating major crimes in the Illinois county that includes Highland Park, local officers recognized the suspect in surveillance footage they reviewed after the shooting, which helped them track him down. The suspect has prominent facial tattoos. Details continue to emerge about the mass shooting in a Chicago suburb yesterday, while two new polls paint a grim picture of Americans’ views of President Joe Biden, his handling of the economy, and the country’s institutions in general.Here’s a rundown of what’s happened so far today:
      A Chicago Sun-Times journalist wrote a harrowing account of the mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois, that killed six during an Independence Day parade.
      Biden awarded the Medal of Honor to four army veterans who fought in Vietnam.
      The head of Planned Parenthood talked to the Guardian about how the group will continue working to help women get abortions.
      Inflation and the overall cost of living remains Americans’ top concern, according to a poll released today that casts doubt on Democrats’ hopes that concerns about abortion and gun access will reverse Biden’s poor approval ratings.
      But if Biden is unpopular, he’s not alone. Americans’ confidence in almost all of their institutions has declined compared with last year, according to a different poll.
      High inflation is just one reason why economists are worrying that the United States is poised to enter a recession.But if the economy does contract, The Wall Street Journal reports that it may not look like more recent downturns such as at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic or the global financial crisis. One key difference is that waves of layoffs that accompanied those downturns may not occur.From their article exploring the “very strange” situation the world’s largest economy finds itself in:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} Today, something highly unusual is happening. Economic output fell in the first quarter and signs suggest it did so again in the second. Yet the job market showed little sign of faltering during the first half of the year. The jobless rate fell from 4% last December to 3.6% in May.
      It is the latest strange twist in the odd trajectory of the pandemic economy, and a riddle for those contemplating a recession. If the U.S. is in or near one, it doesn’t yet look like any other on record.
      Analysts sometimes talked about “jobless recoveries” after past recessions, in which economic output rose but employers kept shedding workers. The first half of 2022 was the mirror image—a “jobful” downturn, in which output fell and companies kept hiring. Whether it will spiral into a fuller and deeper recession isn’t known, though a growing number of economists believe it will.
      Some companies, especially in the tech sector, have given indications that they’re pulling back on hiring, though across the broad economy the job market has rarely looked stronger.Also unpopular with Americans: the country’s institutions.Gallup has today released a poll showing a decline in confidence for most of the 16 institutions they track, in particular the supreme court and the presidency.Americans’ confidence in major U.S. institutions has dropped to the lowest point in Gallup’s more than 40-year trend. https://t.co/G2frb7HXxk pic.twitter.com/OyWfUwXmjp— GallupNews (@GallupNews) July 5, 2022
      In the yearly survey, confidence in the supreme court dropped 11 percentage points from 2021 to 25 percent, while the presidency suffered a 15 point decline to 23 percent. The least popular institution was Congress, in which only seven percent of respondent had confidence, down five points from last year. Just above them was television news, in which only 11 percent of Americans had confidence. Small businesses were the most popular institution of those surveyed, with 68 percent confidence, a decline of only two percentage points from last year. The military was up next with 64 percent confidence, followed by the police, with 45 percent confidence. More

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      ‘She doesn’t want the drama’: anger as Chicago mayor comes up short on police reform

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      On 20 May 2019, the freshly elected Chicago mayor, Lori Lightfoot, delivered her inauguration speech to a jubilant audience.It was imbued with promises of fundamental change – tailored care for blighted neighborhoods, solutions to government corruption and endemic violent crime, an ambitious agenda for tackling deep-rooted faults in the city.“For years they’ve said Chicago ain’t ready for reform. Well, get ready, because reform is here,” Lightfoot, Chicago’s first Black woman and openly gay mayor, and a former federal prosecutor, said.She pledged to reform the Chicago police department, promising to “continue the hard but essential work of forging partnerships between police officers and the community premised on mutual respect, accountability and a recognition that the destinies of police and community are inextricably intertwined”.Police reform seemed like a perfect task for Lightfoot given one of her prior roles of leading the city’s special taskforce on police accountability and reform.She issued a scathing report on the department in 2016, addressing broken trust between police and community and noting: “A painful but necessary reckoning is upon us.”It urged sweeping change and backed a “widely held belief the police have no regard for the sanctity of life when it comes to people of color”.But sweeping change awaits. Almost two years into office, Lightfoot is under fire, accused of back-pedaling on accountability and reform while botching some high-profile cases involving police killing or misconduct.There’s outrage over Chicago police earlier this month killing 13-year-old Adam Toledo after a chase that ended with the boy being shot dead after stopping and putting his hands up as ordered by the pursuing officer.Elizabeth Toledo, Adam’s mother, had not been notified about his death until two days after the shooting, leaving her to think her son was missing. Lightfoot choked up while admitting “we failed Adam”.He was one in a growing record of police killing children across America, with victims disproportionately being Black and Hispanic youth.But the Mapping Police Violence project found that between 2013 and 2021, Chicago police killed more under-18s than any other local law enforcement agency in the country – at least 12.And Lightfoot last December bungled the fallout from an incident that had happened before her mayorship, where Anjanette Young’s home was raided by police who had the wrong address, guns drawn, and she was handcuffed while naked.The mayor admitted she knew about the raid in 2019, contradicting previous claims otherwise, and the city also attempted to block the video release of the raid, Lightfoot later calling the attempt a “mistake”.Activists called for Lightfoot’s resignation in both instances, and all amid a surge in shootings within city communities.Progress on police reform is close to fruitless, leaving activists, many city council members, or aldermen, and Chicagoans distrustful.“I view her as not having fulfilled those campaign promises, because she hasn’t,” said Chicago’s first ward alderman Daniel La Spata, bluntly.Lightfoot succeeded Rahm Emanuel, whose mayorship was controversial on several fronts. Emanuel was accused of an attempted cover-up of the murder of Laquan McDonald, a Black 17-year-old, by Jason Van Dyke, a white officer.McDonald was shot 16 times by Van Dyke in 2014 as he was moving away from the police.Following McDonald’s death, a Department of Justice investigation into Chicago police delivered a blistering report that found an epidemic use of racist, excessive force as well as corruption among officers.The new mayor said in 2019: “I campaigned on change, you voted for change.”But is change coming?“When you’re replacing a mayor like Rahm Emanuel – who in many ways had to leave office because he covered up the murder of Laquan McDonald – and you look at the way that the murder of Adam Toledo has been handled, you begin to see a lot of similarities,” said the 35th ward alderman Carlos Ramirez-Rosa.For decades, rectifying Chicago’s broken policing system has remained a vital priority.The shooting death of Cedrick Chatman, 17, by officers in 2013, and the 2015 killing of 22-year-old Rekia Boyd made national headlines, as well as McDonald’s murder.And there was “Homan Square”, a notorious interrogation warehouse used by Chicago police, which ignited international outrage after the Guardian reported in 2015 on thousands of people being illegally detained and tortured by police into false confessions.Alongside more well-known travesties, there are also thousands upon thousands of allegations made against Chicago police, according to data from the Citizens Police Data Project, a tool created to publicize allegations of Chicago police abuse, with little result.Lightfoot promised to “implement civilian oversight of CPD”, according to her campaign platform on public safety. And she vowed to produce a civilian oversight board in her first 100 days of office, but it hasn’t happened.She had supported a plan for a local law to create such a board, generated by the Grassroots Alliance for Police Accountability (GAPA), until she backtracked in October last year.The mayor renounced her support of the GAPA ordinance after claiming activists were unwilling to compromise or “come forward with a proposal that solves … outstanding issues”.But Carlil Pittman, a youth organizer with Southwest Organizing Project, co-founder of the Goodkids Madcity advocacy and a representative of GAPA, described an unproductive environment, saying the mayor would lapse in communication with organizers, cancel public safety committee meetings and refuse to negotiate ordinance policy.“Her words were, ‘If you’re here to negotiate [that] policymaking power be in the hands of this community commission, we can stop this conversation now’. Her exact words? ‘I’m not giving up policymaking powers’,” Pittman told the Guardian.Alderman Rosa called Lightfoot “obstructionist” over civilian oversight of police.Lightfoot, instead, has repeatedly asserted that her own ordinance on civilian oversight is coming.In the meantime, a joint proposal called the empowering communities for public safety ordinance, created by GAPA and the Civilian Police Accountability Council that would lead to a referendum on creating an elected policing oversight body, has gained support among progressives, with many calling for the mayor to support it.Lightfoot has celebrated progress on transparency, including reforms in police union contracts and a creation of guidelines to release materials about police misconduct.However, a proposal requiring Chicago to publish closed complaints against the police dating back to 1994 received her public disapproval.“She doesn’t want any of the drama that comes with the acknowledgment that for years, for decades, [Chicago] police have been operating in a disturbing and disgusting way,” said Trina Reynolds-Tyler, a human rights organizer and the director of data at the Invisible Institute, a journalism production company on Chicago’s Southside focused on holding public bodies to account.In a recently passed $12.8bn budget, Lightfoot allocated $65m to housing and anti-homelessness efforts. She also included $20m in community mental health programs and $1m for a new program to pair police with mental health workers on some emergency calls.Amid calls for reorganization she reduced the police’s eye-popping $1.69bn budget by just $58.9m.Chicago’s population of 2.6 million makes it the third largest US city, but it has the second highest per capita spending on police after New York, according to US News & World Report, and the most officers per capita, according to the Injustice Watch journalism non-profit.Yet many Chicagoans feel underprotected. And the city is still far behind on goals set under yet another indictment of its track record, a court-ordered consent decree to overhaul policing.It was issued in February 2019 but also stemmed from the murder of McDonald, with legal action involving the state attorney general, Black Lives Matter Chicago and the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois.Last summer, in light of George Floyd’s murder by a white officer in Minneapolis, Lightfoot was part of a group of city mayors who promoted reform while rejecting defunding as a route to transformation.The Guardian contacted Lightfoot’s office about progress of her promised reforms, but they declined to comment.But while Lightfoot’s limited results may seem surprising, a look further back shows a pattern of sidestepping real reform, Reynolds-Tyler argued.In 2002, as chief administrator of the Chicago Office of Professional Standards (OPS), a weak and now defunct police oversight body, Lightfoot rarely managed to get any cases of police misconduct prosecuted, according to the Appeal non-profit site, and backed officers in some highly contentious cases.The outlook is grim, and yet the need for transformation is as great as ever.Alderman Ramirez-Rosa said: “The people of the city of Chicago are crying out for change as it relates to our broken policing system. We owe it to Anjanette Young, we owe it to Laquan McDonald, we owe it to Rekia Boyd, we owe it to Adam Toledo to pass police reform as a first step to ending racist policing.” More