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‘Breonna Taylor grant’ to help West Siders become first responders,
Vol. 35 No. 4
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January 27, 2021
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austinweeklynews.com
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Also serving Garfield Park
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W t Sid West Side clergy l go tto Washington, PAGE 3
West Side leaders call for an end to ‘racist’ police raids Demands made during Jan. 15 hearing convened by Congressman Davis By MICHAEL ROMAIN Editor
During a virtual hearing convened by Congressman Danny K. Davis on Jan. 16, community leaders from across the West Side called on the Chicago Police Department to end police raids. Rev. Marshall Hatch, the pastor of the New Mt. Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Church in West Garfield Park and a co-chairman of the Leaders Network, a faith-based social justice organization, cited recent data conducted by a local TV station that showed the racial disparity in police raids. According to the data, of the 6,800 police home invasions conducted between 2016 and 2019, nearly half took place in just six of the city’s 77 community areas: Englewood, Austin, North Lawndale, Garfield Park, Humboldt Park and Back of the Yards. “Seventy-two percent of these raids were purported to be searches for illegal drugs, but drugs were found in less than 5 percent of the cases,” Hatch said at the beginning of the hearing. “In these communities where we’ve had food deserts, opportunity deserts … we also have constitutional and privacy rights deserts,” Hatch added. Davis convened the hearing alongside Wisconsin Congresswoman Gwen Moore, who addressed the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which See POLICE RAIDS on page 9
COLIN BOYLE/Block Club Chicago
REAL TALK: Gino Laurent of the Roseland neighborhood holds a sign on May 30, 2020 as protests occurred downtown Chicago for the second day and night in a row following George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis. Now, West Side leaders are planning “uncomfortable conversations” around race in America.
Pastor to host ‘Uncomfortable Conversations’ on race
Rev. Michael Eaddy to host 4-part series during Black History Month By PASCAL SABINO Block Club Chicago
West Side leaders are planning a series of community conversations about race so Chicagoans of different backgrounds
can find common ground and begin rooting out systemic racism. The four-part event series, Uncomfortable Conversations, will look at how systemic racism impacts Black people. It will be convened by Michael Eaddy, president of the People’s Community Development Association of Chicago. The virtual event series starts 5 p.m. Tuesday. Discussions planned for Feb. 9, Feb. 23 and March 9 will build on topics explored in the previous conversation.
“The problems are not new. They’ve always been here,” Eaddy said. But the George Floyd protests, the coronavirus pandemic, and the insurrection at the Capitol have brought racial disparities and the need for reconciliation to the forefront, he said. Healing the racial divide begins with recognizing racism is not a thing of the See UNCOMFORTABLE CONVERSATIONS on page 6