the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Mar 30, 2015
Both candidates in the Chicago mayoral election talk about “distrust” between the police and the city’s black population. Big surprise! Black people have NO reason to trust the Chicago Police Department.
According to the American Civil Liberties Union, the Chicago police stopped and frisked people without arresting them more than 250,000 times over four months last summer. This is more than four times the rate in New York, when stop and frisk was at its peak!
As if that wasn’t bad enough, about 3/4ths of those stopped were black, even though black people make up only about 1/3 of Chicago’s population. Black people were even more likely to be stopped in white neighborhoods. And most of the time, the police not only had no reason, they couldn’t even make up an excuse about criminal activity to justify the harassment.
In other words, the basic policy of the Chicago Police Department is to hassle young black men by the hundreds of thousands. And, even though white people use and sell drugs at a higher rate, the cops send many more black people to jail for drug crimes. And it’s why, finally, the cops kills so many young black men on the street–it’s a direct consequence of their policy of targeting them for harassment and arrest.
Yes, there is “distrust” and “suspicion” of the police among black people in Chicago. For good reason!