The Great Divide: COVID-19 and race in Chicago

We examine how the pandemic’s effect on Black and Latino communities exposes deep racial inequities in a divided city.

In the United States, Chicago’s Black and Latino residents are far more likely to die from COVID-19 than their white counterparts. It is a pattern seen across the country.

 

Trump sends 'surge' of feds to Chicago and other US cities

US President Donald Trump is sending a 'surge' of federal agents to multiple US cities, including Chicago, in an alleged crackdown on crime. The move comes after federal officers were controversially sent to the city of Portland to target protesters demanding racial justice.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Trump Invading Chicago

‘Good luck. The mayors are getting it done.’ — Watch Mayor Lori Lightfoot slam President Trump for having federal agents invade Chicago.

Trump Announces A Further Expansion Of His Dictatorial Use Of DHS

Because Donald Trump want's to seen as the law & order occupier of the oval office he's decided to send officers form the Department of Homeland Security (Which was created to help prevent terrorists attacks in the U.S. following the attacks on September 11, 2001.) to Chicago and Albuquerque New Mexico. All in an effort to quell violent demonstrations and attacks on federal buildings and statues. Especially those celebrating the Confederate States of America. Because you know, "history."

These surges of federal law enforcement into these cities is just part of a political stunt to portray Democratic mayors and governors as soft on crime and to film these actions for use in future campaign adverts.     


Trump and Barr pin rise in violence on calls to defund police, but offer no evidence
Donald Trump and US Attorney General Bill Barr justified a "surge" of federal law enforcement into US cities that have demonstrated against police brutality, including Chicago, on a spike in violent crime, claiming that violence is a "direct result" of calls from protesters for police reforms.

Following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, "what we have seen then is a significant increase in violent crime in many cities, and this rise is a direct result of the attack on the police forces and the weakening of police forces," Barr said.

But no police forces have been weakened following protests, and amid several crisis – including widespread unemployment and a public health emergency and the overwhelming stress from a pandemic that has killed thousands of people and sickened countless others thus far – the president and his chief law enforcement official offered no evidence that connected protests to violent crime.

Because Donald Trump admires authoritarian like Vladimir Putin,  Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Kim-Jong un this his way of auditioning for membership in the dictators club. 

Communities of color see alarming rates of COVID-19 cases

Data gathered by some cities and states show African Americans have been disproportionately affected by coronavirus. In Chicago, black people make up nearly 70% of all deaths.

Videos From Donald Trump's Chicago Campaign Event

As scenes of fighting and protest play out in the wake of a cancelled Donald Trump rally in Chicago, Rachel Maddow reviews the incremental escalation to incitement of violence at Trump political events.



Donald Trump Rally in Chicago 3/11/2016--Celebration After Announcement of Cancellation

Video of Laquan McDonald's Killing Released as Chicago Braces for Protest

Chicago authorities pleaded for calm Tuesday as they released a "disturbing" dashcam video of the moment a cop shot Chicago 17-year-old Laquan McDonald 16 times last year.

Chicago police Officer Jason Van Dyke, 37, turned himself in Tuesday morning and was ordered held without bond on a charge of first-degree murder in the death of Laquan in October 2014.

"Anyone who is there to uphold the law cannot act as though they are above the law," Mayor Rahm Emanuel said at a news conference late Tuesday afternoon. "Jason Van Dyke does not represent the police department."

'I sat in that place for three days, man': Chicagoans detail abusive confinement inside police 'black site'

• Four black men recall prolonged shackling and off-the-books interrogation
• Lawyers: ‘majority of abuse’ at Homan Square focuses on minority Americans
• Black Lives Matter movement backs protests amid pressure for federal inquiry

Four black Chicagoans have now come forward to the Guardian detailing off-the-books ordeals at the facility, including another who describes being detained in “a big cage” with his wrists cuffed to a bench so he couldn’t move.

Brock Terry, 31, says police took him to Homan Square in 2011, after finding him with five and a half pounds of marijuana, and describes being held for three entire days without public notice, booking or a lawyer.
“I sat in that place for three days, man – with no talking, no calls to nobody,” Terry told the Guardian on Friday. His friends and family could not find him: “They call police stations, I’m not there, I’m not there.”
“I was kept there. I didn’t speak to a lawyer or anything,” he continued. “I didn’t interact with nobody for three days. And then when I do see the light of day, I go straight to another police station, go straight there to county and be processed.”
Terry detailed being handcuffed in one room at Homan Square by one wrist to a “little circular thing behind the bench”, echoing the accounts of the two Nato protesters interviewed by the Guardian, though Terry said he did not have his ankles cuffed together.

The current mayor and former Chief of Staff to President Obama Rahm Emanuel whose currently running for a second term had this to say;

 Mayor Rahm Emanuel, currently facing a heated runoff for re-election, said on Thursday night it was “not true” that the police maintain a facility lawyers have compared to a CIA “black site”.

"It's not true." All those people interviewed separately are lying about what happened  to them while incarcerated at Homan square. 

'Gestapo' tactics at US police 'black site' ring alarm from Chicago to Washington

• Shocked politicians and rights groups call for inquiries into Homan Square
• Rahm Emanuel faces questions as top supporters examine ‘outrageous’ abuse

The US Department of Justice and embattled mayor Rahm Emanuel are under mounting pressure to investigate allegations of what one politician called “CIA or Gestapo tactics” at a secretive Chicago police facility exposed by the Guardian.

Politicians and civil-rights groups across the US expressed shock upon hearing descriptions of off-the-books interrogation at Homan Square, the Chicago warehouse that multiple lawyers and one shackled-up protester likened to a US counter-terrorist black site in a Guardian investigation published this week.

As three more people came forward detailing their stories of being “held hostage” and “strapped” inside Homan Square without access to an attorney or an official public record of their detention by Chicago police, officials and activists said the allegations merited further inquiry and risked aggravating wounds over community policing and race that have reached as high as the White House.

The Disappeared: How Chicago Cops Interrogate Americans At Black Site

I don't think this is just happening in Chicago -- I'd be surprised if it's not going on in most major cities, albeit less formally than this. And it's been going on for a while, so it's not something we can blame on Rahm Emanuel. But it does says we're living in a police state, no…