JUSTICE
“The most important thing that I've learned over this time is that no matter what the dream is or the goal is, is to always go for it. Fight for it.” wrong within my community that needs to be changed. Poverty, gun violence, antiBlackness, police brutality, COVID-19. It's a lot of things going on. And then especially when the looting started, people were like only talking about the looting and I'm like, it's bigger fish to fry than just be worried about the looting that's happening. We don't really care too much of that because merchandise can be replaced. Black lives cannot be replaced. Brown lives cannot be replaced. Lives period cannot be replaced. CS: Activism is needed in my community because it will help bridge the disparities that people don't even know about. When I learned about the gang database, I was like, wow, this is something used against us. There's a whole database of suspected gang members. There's no actual proof behind all of this especially since a lot of Black people don't know if or when they're put on a gang database. That's something that we need to know about. And once we learn about these things and we know about these things, it will create outrage and that's what's needed. We need to be upset that things like this are in place. We need to be upset that things like this can hold us back. And once we get that outrage, activism happens. MB: Youth and Black and Brown people in the city of Chicago, if we all come together on one accord, despite the racial problems that people might have with one another, put that all to the side, because at the end of the day, we're better united. CS: Those disparities can be faced if everybody works together. MB: The most important thing that I've learned over this time is that no matter what the dream is or the goal is, is to always go for it. Fight for it. With this whole defund CPD, we're still working. We're still going to put that work forth to go out there and stop what we think is wrong because we don't want cops in our schools and the school to prison pipeline is real and people
just need to wake up. That's one thing that I've definitely learned. MB: Another thing that I've learned is to always save money, because you never know when the rainy day is going to come and due to the coronavirus stay-at-home order, it was a lot of people that was misplaced and a lot of people are still misplaced even after the stupid government assistance that they were giving out because that wasn't enough and it's not enough. It never will be enough. That's temporary money that will be gone within the next few weeks. People deserve so much better than what we're getting. And that's just the truth. CS: I've learned that I'm a human. I'm young. I am motivated, but I also have emotions. Being on the front lines of protests, constantly having to scream at people to get your point across, it hurts, especially when you see slow progress. I've just decided that the activism is worth it for me. And I think that anybody who is in that field, anybody really, but this is really to my young Black activists, we're human. We need to regenerate too. CS: Thank y'all for listening to me talk. Young Black queen, South Side of Chicago, I'm going to do great things. You're going to hear my name somewhere and it's not just going to be to eulogize me. It's going to be because I'm going to grow up and do big things. I'm going to fix this community. I'm going to fix as many communities as I can. Y'all just going to have to watch out for me and the rest of the youth. We coming strong. Period. ¬ Erisa Apantaku (@erisa_apantaku) is the executive producer of South Side Weekly Radio. She recently helped produce a piece on COVID-19 in Cook County Jail. Adeshina Emmanuel (@Public_Ade) is an editor at Injustice Watch, a non-partisan, not-for-profit, multimedia journalism organization.
Opinion: For roving CPD units, the third time will not be the charm
Superintendent Brown’s latest plan to curb gang violence has already been proven to fail. BY EMMA PEREZ & MAIRA KHWAJA
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hicago Police Superintendent David Brown recently announced plans to create a permanent, “anti-gang” mobile unit as a response to ongoing gun violence this summer. He faces a daunting challenge as new police chief: 2020 has already seen 353 homicides, compared to 254 during the same period last year— an increase of thirty-nine percent, CPD statistics show. To staff a new citywide unit, CPD will deplete the “gang, gun, and saturation” units of each of the department’s five Police Areas and assign them to a centralized unit. But his new plan to address the gun violence crisis is a failure of imagination and a denial of a violent history. The history of past roving units weighs heavily on the proposed new division of CPD. CPD Former Supt. Garry McCarthy disbanded the mobile strike force—the most recent iteration of a roving unit— in 2011, and its predecessor, the Special Operations Section (SOS), was likewise disbanded in 2007 after evidence of abusive policing and corruption surfaced. Supt. Brown tried to distinguish the proposed unit from previous ones by emphasizing police officers’ expected role in the community,
such as mentoring young people or helping senior citizens. As a means to overcome the strategy’s violent history, this reassurance is empty—particularly to those who have suffered the trauma of being “jumped out” on or “shaken down” by specialized law enforcement. Simply put: roving, anti-gang units encourage officers to use their power and subjective judgement to the fullest extent, exacerbating abuse with impunity. According to Supt. Brown, adding a community-oriented component would make this plan “not your father’s citywide unit.” He’s right; it would make it worse. First, a plan that puts children and police officers together in a community service or mentoring setting, increasing the interactions between them, only serves to further criminalize children and mocks the notion of community policing. In our work with the Invisible Institute’s Youth/Police Project, we have learned from multiple generations of students that cops-and-kids programs carry an undercurrent of deceit and uneven power dynamics. Where kids might see an officer not wearing a badge and uniform, playing basketball or chess, as an off-duty cop who can’t get them in JULY 22, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 5
