It’s ugly in Chicago. Between the police brutality that gunned down a Black teenager who stood several feet from the nearest officer to the police destroying evidence of Officer Jason Van Dyke’s crime to State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez refusing to see that there’s been any wrongdoing to Mayor Rahm Emanuel covering it all up during an election year when he barely retained his seat, many of us are FED UP. And we’re no less fed up with the shoppers and merchants on Black Friday who refused to see the link between their business-as-usual and our protests. To people who don’t see any connection between Chicago corruption and their purchase of an iPhone here it is: Rahm Emanuel hates anything that endangers Chicago’s image or revenue. Interfering with your desire to shop in Chicago gets his attention like nothing else. Every time I read about someone plaintively wondering why protesters targeting their shopping day, I hear the denial that their actions have anything to do with racism and corruption.
Of course Rahm doesn’t want an independent federal investigation into his police department. He’s screwed up and he’s scared. There’s no way he would have won re-election last spring if we had known about Laquan McDonald’s murder and the destruction of evidence. It should have been Mayor Jesús García overseeing the arrest of Officer Van Dyke and an investigation into all this bullshit. Now we know how hard Emanuel must have been sweating when he had to face a runoff in order to stay mayor. It’s time now for Rahm to go.
But as disgusted as I am, I’m proud of the Chicagoans who have demonstrated and made clear that we aren’t going to put up with this level of abuse, violence and corruption any more. Black Lives Matter has become a sophisticated organization that knows how to hit where it hurts: the city’s wallet. Now we have to get rid of State’s Attorney Alvarez and Mayor Emanuel. They must have realized by now that their days are numbered.