Searching for my inner civil self in these difficult times

Protests rocked Chicago following the Laquan McDonald shooting and the cover-up that followed. 

Responding to liberal critics of incivility, I'm trying to get back in touch with my inner civil self. Not like all those "McCarthyites" on the Vineyard who are shunning poor Alan Dershowitz or that mean old bartender in D.C. who flipped off Trump's racist-in-chief, Stephen Miller. Miller got so upset, he tossed his sushi. What a waste.

I'm now looking for common ground with political foes like Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Gov. Rauner. I'm even offering to mediate the rift that broke out between the two over Saturday's anti-violence protest on the Dan Ryan which ended with each telling the other to "shut down" their Twitter accounts.

It was a peaceful protest. Delete your account. https://t.co/QoKyIHmuQj

— Mayor Rahm Emanuel (@ChicagosMayor) July 7, 2018

C'mon fellas. remember, you're long-time business partners. Rahm, Bruce even donated thousands to your campaign warchest. You both gonna let a little expressway disruption get in the way of millions in profits?

Remember, you two will always have Montana. 

My message to both of you: Remember, there will always be Montana and that thousand-dollar bottle of Napa Valley wine you two shared.

Believe it or not, I've also found some common ground with Rahm's former police superintendent, Garry McCarthy, who is now his number-one, great-white-hope opponent in the mayor's race.

McCarthy, who was Rahm's top cop during the Laquan McDonald killing and cover-up by Chicago cops, now says, he opposes spending $95M on a new police & fire academy.

So do I, but for different reasons.

Here's the part I agree with:

“This police academy is a shiny object that Rahm Emanuel can point to and say, `I’m all about police reform.’ It’s for political purposes — not functional purposes,“ McCarthy said.

 “I could find much better ways to spend that money that would have a much greater impact on what’s happening in Chicago. … I’d use that $95 million to put social services and mental health centers back in communities that need them the most.”

Here's where I don't:

McCarthy contends that there is no new training needed and that CPD is doing a fine job. He was at odds with the Justice Department's report which came out in 2015, when Emanuel was forced by a judge’s order to release video of white Officer Jason Van Dyke shooting Laquan McDonald, a black teen, 16 times. The report found CPD’s training to be sorely lacking.

That dispute forced Rahm to throw his top cop under the bus. Hunger for revenge appears to be what drove McCarthy to enter the race. He will likely draw votes from largely-white wards on the northwest and southwest sides where lots of cops and firefighters live.

I of course, don't agree that CPD is doing a fine job. I don't even buy the "few bad apples" theory which would also, by the way, make a new training academy unnecessary.

The ongoing shooting of unarmed black men, women a children by mainly white Chicago cops is part of an institutionalized culture of entrenched racism within the department which is, at worst cultivated and encouraged and at best, tolerated by the mayor, department heads like McCarthy, and the FOP.

In other words, this isn't really a "training problem", but one calling for more radical solutions which need come directly from the communities most impacted by police misconduct.

It's not that I'm against a sparkling new police training academy in principle. It's just not high on my priority list, given the current state of public school buildings and other city infrastructure needs.

I don't think any of the mayoral candidates have real handle on the problem. But I am intrigued by the idea of a gay, progressive African-American woman like Lori Lightfoot, who Rahm appointed president of the Chicago Police Board, giving the mayor and McCarthy a run for their money in the most recent polls.  According to those polls, taken in April, 62% of those surveyed want someone, anyone besides Rahm as mayor.

I'm with the 62%. I would sooner vote for Pigasus ('68 reference there) than for either McCarthy or Rahm. Still searching for my civil side on those two.

Will this finally be the end of the line for Rahm? One can only hope.

Rahm's pal David Axelrod hints that Rahm may not run. 

Despite the many millions in his campaign warchest, there are signs that Mayor 1% is vulnerable in the upcoming election and possibly won't even make it to a runoff. Some of his closest friends and advisors are even dropping hints that Rahm Emanuel may choose not to run again, depending on how bad things look over the coming months.

I doubt it.

Sun-Times political reporter Fran Spielman says this about Rahm's chances:

The political deck appears to be so stacked against Emanuel, some political observers wonder why he’s running and whether he will finish first, second or even third.

 He has imposed a nearly $2 billion avalanche of tax increases to solve a pension crisis his predecessor left behind.

He’s caught in a vice between police reform advocates demanding a say in a consent decree outlining federal court oversight of the Chicago Police Department and police officers who accuse him of “turning his back” on them at a time when he needs those officers to fight violent crime aggressively.

African-American voters who elected him in 2011, then re-elected him even after he closed a record 50 public schools, are unlikely to trust him again after his handling of the Laquan McDonald shooting video.

And the trial of Jason Van Dyke, the white Chicago Police officer accused of firing the 16 shots that killed the 17-year-old McDonald is likely to be held in the run-up to the mayoral election now just nine months away.

Victor Reyes, a former Daley political consultant, thinks Rahm will make it, but...

To go into the runoff with the wind at his back, Reyes said Emanuel needs more than 50 percent of the white vote, 40 percent of the Latino vote and 35 percent of the black vote. 

The more Latino votes he gets, the more black votes he can stand to lose. 

“It’s very tough. It’ll be his hardest election. His path is narrow. But I think he’ll get it,” Reyes said.

“His fundraising advantage is No. 1. Incumbency is No. 2. And no Latino in the race is No. 3 . . . They don’t have money. They don’t have name recognition. It’s a younger community. And there’s not a lot of unity.”

Then there's Rahm's political advisor, David Axelrod who drops this on us...

Although Emanuel is raising money at a frenzied pace and positioning himself to run for re-election, he has not yet formally declared his candidacy for a third-term.

“Until someone says that they’re running there’s always a chance they may not,” Axelrod said.

“I don’t think he’s under any pressure to decide that today, tomorrow or in the next few weeks as long as he does the things that preserve the option, such as raising the money. My counsel to him would be, there’s no rush on this. Take a gut check at the appropriate time and make sure this is what you want to do.”

I heard the same, off-the-record, from a Rahm confidant a few weeks ago.

For more Chicago mayor-race chatter, observation, and speculation, tune in Friday at 11 a.m. CDT, to Hitting Left with the Klonsky Brothers, streaming live at http://www.lumpenradio.com/ with in-studio guest, political mover and shaker, Amara Enyia.

Then, just when people were starting to forget about Rahm's disastrous school closings, out comes a new damaging report from the University of Chicago showing that CPS closing of 50 schools, mostly in the city's African-American community, led to academic setbacks for the affected students.

“Academic outcomes were neutral at best and negative in some instances,” according to the 88-page report.

As one observer tweeted:

The mayor with overwhelming City Council approval, closed 6 of 12 mental health clinics and 50 public schools, claiming they can’t afford them ($803 million combined cost). But they suddenly found $95 million for a new police academy. 

To top it all off, CPS Inspector General Nicholas Schuler, whose investigation led the FBI to Barbara Byrd-Bennett, yesterday came out with a new report showing that Rahm's hand-picked school board appointee Deborah Quazzo was complicit in BBB's illegal kickback schemes.

The Sun-Times reports that Rahm's former school chief accepted lavish meals at some of the city’s priciest restaurants from a CPS vendor whose investors included Quazzo. 

Quazzo violated the school system’s ethics code by talking up her companies’ products to CPS principals and introducing them to company representatives — which she at first denied to Schuler she’d done but acknowledged after being shown emails proving that.

We'll see how much this blows back on the mayor or gives impetus to the push for an elected school board. 

S-T columnist Laura Washington, predicts a long, hot summer for the mayor.

This summer will host sizzling court trials involving allegations of deadly police misconduct. There’s plenty of hot water there, and Emanuel is stuck in the deep end of the pool.

How will Emanuel handle the heat? Some political insiders speculate that if his poll numbers don’t turn up soon, he may call it quits, and decline to run for a third term.

I expect he will keep his cool and carry on. Alas, his controlled, bloodless style may be part of the problem.

Another indicator of summer problems for the mayor is the potential for a rise in gun violence. Last weekend saw at least eight Chicagoans killed and 30 wounded in street shootings.

It's still early but no Latino candidate in the race certainly helps Rahm's chances. Right now it looks to me like Lori Lightfoot has the best chance of pulling away from Rahm's other eight contenders. She has strong fund-raising capabilities, creds in the police reform scene, and a strong team behind her. 

Paul Vallas and Garry McCarthy, the great white hopes in the race, have already cut a deal between themselves for one to support the other if one of them is more likely to win, thereby keeping a black candidate out of the runoff. But there's always the possibility that between them, they could pull enough white votes from the northwest and southwest sides to move Rahm into third place in the primary. 

Lots of ifs there, I know.

Can Lightfoot be the one?

Former Police Board President Lori Lightfoot is expected to officially announce today that she's joining a long list of candidates, including several other African-American candidates and progressives, running for Mayor of Chicago.

According to Politico's Natasha Korecki, Lightfoot has already brought on a powerhouse support team including:

Media Consultants - Snyder Pickerill Media Group. Ken Snyder and Terrie Pickerill are Chicago-based national political strategists who did work with the likes of U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle.

The group also handled three major mayoral races: Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney, Nashville Mayor Megan Barry and St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson.

Pollster - Jason McGrath, of GBA Strategies, who's done work with Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx, U.S. Rep. Robin Kelly and U.S. Rep. Cheri Bustos.

Finance Director - Gina Natale worked as Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan's finance director from 2010-2014 and recently worked for the League of Conservation Voters in Washington D.C.

Direct Mail - Adnaan Muslim of Deliver Strategies - Longtime lead SEIU Local 1 consultant on aldermanic campaigns. Firm's most recently worked on successful primaries for Jesus Chuy García, Alma Anaya, Bridget Degnan, and Aaron Ortiz. And for other successful mayoral campaigns including mayors Keisha Lance Bottoms, Toni Harp, Sly James, Michael Nutter and Stephane Miner.

I'll leave it to you to parse the connections here to high-powered city Democrats. But the point is, Lightfoot isn't stepping lightly into this battle. While neither she nor any of the other candidates can match the size of Mayor Rahm Emanuel's war chest dollar-for-dollar, she apparently can raise enough to be respectable in that area and possibly find a pathway to victory.

Lightfoot, the only openly gay candidate in the race, says she's running a campaign based on the need for economic justice and police reform.

According to the Tribune:

Although she could struggle to find a base of support, Lightfoot indicated she plans to run as a progressive, a lane occupied in the 2015 campaign by Cook County Commissioner Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, who pushed Emanuel into the city’s first mayoral runoff election. Lightfoot said she’ll work to promote neighborhood redevelopment, rebuild neighborhood schools and back Democratic governor nominee J.B. Pritzker’s push for a graduated income tax.

She notes that a recent study showed that on the West Side, the life expectancy plummets to 69 years, compared with 85 years for someone living in the Loop, seven “L” stops away. She lauded a group called West Side United, which she said came up with a plan to “significantly improve the quality of life and the life expectancy in those neighborhoods.”

In a Sun-Times interview, she came out against Rahm's planned $95M police academy, which she calls "an edifice to policing in the middle of one of the most economically distressed neighborhoods in our city."

She's also critical of the way the mayor has closed all the high schools in Englewood as well as National Teachers Academy (NTA), and blames Emanuel for hiring Barbara Byrd-Bennett as schools CEO without doing the diligence to know her track record as a "crook...trying to line her personal pocket."

If she pursues this line of attack, she will need a strategy that directs blows not only at the mayor, but at Paul Vallas as well. Vallas, Mayor Daley's former schools CEO, has a similar track record of school closings and replacing closed public schools with privately-run charters. He also is the former partner of Gary Solomon, Byrd-Bennett's accomplice. Going after Vallas as well as Rahm and former top-cop Garry McCarthy will be a necessary piece of campaign strategy for Team Lightfoot if they are to get her into a runoff with the mayor.

The big question remains: Can Lightfoot be the candidate who can finally rally enough unified support from progressives, unions, and within black and Latino communities to elevate herself from the pack and give Rahm a run for his money? Definitely possible.

 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

We'll be talking about the upcoming mayor's race and more Chicago politics tomorrow on Hitting Left with another potential mayoral candidate, Ra Joy.  Tune in at 11am CT on WLPN 105.5 FM Streaming at www.lumpenradio.com. Download the app Podcast on iTunes.

Where's the progressive coalition in Chicago's race for mayor?

Who will get the anti-Rahm vote?

The thing I worry about is that the Chicago mayor's race will be an expensive governor's race redux without a progressive/left coalition ready or willing to back an anti-machine candidate strong enough to take advantage of Rahm Emanuel's obvious vulnerabilities and at least make it to a runoff.

The Sanders-left seemed to have gone underground leading up to the gov's race, leaving us with tweedle-dee, tweedle-dum and tweedle-Pritzker to choose from. One unimaginable scenario in the mayor's race has the unions and community groups rallying behind Rahm or Vallas as the winnable lesser of evils.

The expensive part of the race was already assured when perennial candidate Willie Wilson gave his own campaign $100K, thus erasing all state-imposed fundraising limits. Not that there was any doubt, but now MRE and his growing field of challengers will be able to raise unlimited amounts of money. Of course, this favors Rahm and big-money candidates like Paul Vallas and Garry McCarthy just as it favored billionaires J.B. Pritzker and Bruce Rauner in the gov primary.

Natasha Korecki writes in Politico:

This time, as viable candidates line up to challenge Mayor Rahm Emanuel in 2019 and slice up vote totals, there’s a prevailing theory: a runoff election already looks like an inevitability. Emanuel is sure to be one of the two top candidates who make it to the second round. 

So then the question really becomes this: who in the field (announced and unannounced) can take out the mayor in a one-to-one matchup? Three years ago, Garcia spent the opening weeks of the runoff on the road working to raise more money. The cash-flush Emanuel pounced to quickly quell Garcia’s momentum with oppo research dumps and subsequent negative TV ads. 

The political dynamics have dramatically changed for the mayor in this post-Laquan McDonald era. But if Emanuel squeaks into a run-off and is still the better-funded incumbent to beat, who is best suited to exploit his vulnerabilities, particularly within the African American community?

The growing list of candidates will badly divide the anti-Rahm votes, leaving him in position to win the opening round with only 30% of the votes. The word is that Vallas and McCarthy have already cut a deal, assuring that the one with the least votes will back the other in a runoff election.

Troy on Chicago Tonight

My choice so far, but campaign long-shot, Troy LaRaviere, did a nice job telling Chicago Tonight's Phil Ponce why he wanted the job.

As always, Troy was sharp on ed issues.

He spoke out against the privatization of school janitorial services, charter schools and the lack of sufficient funding for special education. He was especially critical of the use of what he said were excessive standardized tests to judge school and student performance.

 He also made it clear that the pension issue couldn't be resolved without a progressive tax and revenue system that didn't put the entire burden on the poor while ignoring those "who have more money than they can spend in their lifetime".

But aside from being able to garner black and Latino community support, unite the progressive movement (including the CTU, SEIU and other unions) behind his campaign and raise a hefty number of millions in his war chest (he told Ponce, he hasn't started fundraising yet), Troy's team needs to develop a solid campaign strategy. He's got to convince the unions and other potential backers that he can run with the big dogs. He's also got to take on more than Rahm, but Vallas/McCarthy as well, if he is even to make it into a runoff. The danger is that Vallas, the least vetted of the candidates, will skate unscathed into second place.

Troy has been a two-time guest on Hitting Left. Here's a podcast of an earlier appearance.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES: The search for truth

Dana Milbank on the death of a border patrol agent

Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it. -- Washington Post 

Porter’s ex-wife, Jennifer Willoughby

"Truth exists" whether Trump "accepts it or not". -- CNN

Tad O’Malley, conservative conspiracy theorist in the X-Files

“Truth is fluid and alterable.” -- The Verge

 Gary Younge

...before radical history can be embraced by the establishment it must be washed clean of whatever ideology made it effective. Radical change is most likely to come from below, be fiercely resisted by entrenched interests from above and achieved through confrontation. -- Guardian

On FOX Chicago, reporter Mike Flannery asks former Chicago top cop Garry McCarthy about the LaQuan McDonald shooting death and officer Jason Van Dyke's culpability. McCarthy, a Trump supporter and pal of neo-fascist Rudy Giuliani, is making noises about running for mayor.

Here's an excerpt of that interview. 

Mike Flannery: Many Chicagoans look at that (video of Jason Van Dyke shooting Laquan McDonald) and they see a murder. Do you?

Garry McCarthy: Um. He's gonna have a hard time, Jason Van Dyke, explaining why he did what he did. That's the bottom line. He gets his due process just like anybody else. But it's gonna be really difficult to make a case. There are cases -

Flannery: Do you see a murder?

McCarthy: You know (long pause)

Flannery: Why are you reluctant to say that?

'Let children read whatever they want and then talk about it with them.'
- Judy Blume, who celebrates a landmark birthday today. Happy birthday!#MondayMotivation pic.twitter.com/6QkZ2YERcL

— Waterstones (@Waterstones) February 12, 2018

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Yesterday's protest: On State Street, that great street...

Rahm Emanuel

"I own the problem of police brutality, and I'll fix it." -- Chicago Tribune

BGA Pres. Andy Shaw

It’s been quite a firestorm, and it’s scorching Emanuel and Alvarez. But it’s unconscionable that so few others been held accountable, and so little has changed, after more than half a century of well-documented police misconduct that’s taken too many lives, wasted too many tax dollars, sown too much mistrust, and inflicted too much pain on our entire city. -- Toxic Chicago cop culture dates back decades

Ando should be indicted, not just fired.

Lorenzo Davis

,,, a former Chicago police commander and top IPRA investigator, has claimed he was fired this year for resisting [IPRA head, Scott] Ando’s orders to justify police shootings. Davis’ lawyer told the Sun-Times last week that Chatman’s shooting was the video that led to Davis’ ouster. Davis himself called Chatman’s death a “murder” — one that was officially justified in an IPRA report. -- Sun-Times

John Kass

The strongman also protects his power through routine purges of those close to him, lest they be tempted. Even slavish, abject loyalty can't protect them. -- Tribune

Ald. Pat O’Connor, the mayor’s City Council floor leader has no clue.

“They’re mad at him, but I’m not exactly sure I know why they’re mad at him." -- Sun-Times

Michael Davis, Retired African-American police officer

“We don't need mayors and the so-called Independent Police Review Authority covering up for these guys and this panel the mayor created is more of the same.” -- NBC News

Mark Brown snarks Rahm's critics

Some people aren’t going to be satisfied until there is an actual riot. -- Sun-Times

A Sinking ship

I watched an old film, "The Shipping News" the other night. I liked it, mainly because it's set on the wild, stormy, Newfoundland coast and stars Kevin Spacey, one of my favorites. One scene that grabbed me, had newsman Quoyle, played by Spacey, an inexperienced sailor out in an unworthy boat in rough waters, bailing furiously while the sea overtakes and sinks his sorry craft... (I'll stop here, in case you haven't see it).

That image stays with me as I'm following (and telling) the story of the equally unworthy craft, the leaky Rahm Emanuel regime in the midst of another stormy scandal. Only Rahm (a terrible actor) is in the sinking boat with a crew of thieves and scalawags. Among them, his indicted schools chief Barbara Byrd-Bennett, police Supt. Garry McCarthy and State's Atty. Anita Alvarez. As the story unfolds, Rahm is faced with the choice of throwing some of the dead weight overboard or going down with the ship.

But no matter how hard he bails, it's the rotting, fabric of the regime that's sinking him. And each of his hand-picked crew that gets tossed, only reveals the depths of the problem.

Rahm didn't hire Alvarez. Like him, she was elected and therefore not so easy to dump, even after her betraying of the public trust in her mishandling of the 16-shot, racist police execution of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald. So many questions still remain. But she pretty much sealed her fate last week when she stood before the media and assured the public that cops hadn't erased the tapes from the Burger King cameras, showing officer Van Dyke pumping more than a dozen rounds into the bleeding body of McDonald. The tape may well not have been erased. I can't imagine the missing 86-minutes could show anything more damning they the mysteriously-soundless video that Alvarez and Rahm were finally forced to release.

But anything is possible with this group of scoundrels. Case in point: The city is sitting on another damning video of a cop shooting an unarmed black man, Ronald Johnson. This seems to be Rahm/Alvarez M.O.

Yesterday, reporter Carol Marin showed actual pictures of  street cops sitting at the BK computer going through the tapes. Why?

Alvarez may be forced to resign before my choice, Kim Foxx, gets a shot at her in the upcoming election. I would rather see her go out that way so that Foxx is the people's choice. But either way, it's all good.

McCarthy swears he's staying and that Rahm "has my back". He obviously doesn't know Rahm very well. Ask Byrd-Bennett.

He's toast.

Black Friday Protest: '16 Shots. Stop the cover-up!'

When Black Friday comes
I'll stand down by the door
And catch the grey men when they
Dive from the fourteenth floor -Steely Dan

The first recorded use of the term “Black Friday” was applied not to holiday shopping madness, but to financial crisis: specifically, the crash of the U.S. gold market on September 24, 1869. Two notoriously ruthless Wall Street financiers, Jay Gould and Jim Fisk, worked together to buy up as much as they could of the nation’s gold, hoping to drive the price sky-high and sell it for astonishing profits. On that Friday in September, the conspiracy finally unraveled, sending the stock market into free-fall and bankrupting everyone from Wall Street barons to farmers.

Today's Black Friday protest called by Rev. Jesse Jackson, CTU Pres. Karen Lewis and other ministers and community-based organizations, targeted ongoing police violence and the cover-up by political leaders of the brutal killing of a black teenager by killer cop Van Dyke, who pumped 16 shots in the body Laquan McDonald. 

Several thousand of us marched up Michigan Ave., rallied at the Water Tower, and disrupted business as usual on this, the busiest shopping day of the year. Our slogans called for the removal of those complicit in the cover-up and the delaying the release of the video and the charging of Van Dyke for 13 months -- Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Police Supt. Garry McCarthy, and States Atty. Anita Alvarez.

Be sure to read this commentary posted on NBC News by Temple Univ. Prof. Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve. who's the author of the forthcoming book, "Crook County: Racism and Injustice in America's Criminal Courts." Van Cleve's point is that this is a matter of institutionalized racism, not a case of a few bad apples.

She writes:

...they are merely the figureheads of an entire criminal court system fueled by racism. A court system where the death of another black boy barely makes anyone stand up and take notice and staying quiet about the police officers involved in the shooting is considered a professional courtesy amongst peers.

Mom from Ohio explains to son why protesters are on Mag Mile: "they shot a man 16 times.." #LaquanMcDonald https://t.co/dtBNDpfntn

— DNAinfo.com Chicago (@DNAinfoCHI) November 27, 2015

Protests (not 'riots') rock Chicago. Rahm covers his ass. Calls to fire McCarthy, dump Alvarez.

Toast, I hope.

It's time for Chicago's top-cop and the state's attorney to be gone.

Anticipating a wave of protest following release of their surpressed video, the Mayor and Police Supt. Garry McCarthy put on a long dog-and-pony show at yesterday's press conference, covering their own asses and doing their best to distance themselves from killer cop Jason Van Dyke.

Moments before releasing the sensationalized dash-cam video showing white Chicago police officer Van Dyke pumping 16 shots into the body of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, Rahm and McCarthy stood up before the cameras claiming,

“Jason Van Dyke does not represent the police department...” 

The statement came in response to a question from Brandon Smith, the courageous journalist who had sued the city and forced the release of the video. It's hard to believe that Team Rahm could be this stupid and petty, but they actually blocked Smith from entering the press conference. He had to wait out in the hall while a local CBS News reporter asked a question about the wider culture of corruption in the police department on his behalf.

________________________________

Malcolm London, a 22-year-old poet/organizer with the Black Youth Project 100, was grabbed off the street at last night's protest and charged with felony aggravated battery to a police officer after allegedly punching one officer. Police said the officer was treated for non-life-threatening injuries. According to the Chicago Tribune, those charges were dropped Wednesday afternoon.

__________________________________

As for that culture:

How about a quarter-million stop-and-frisks in the black community during a three-month period in 2014?

The Better Government Association reports that 300 people were shot by Chicago police between 2010 and 2014. Seventy of those individuals were killed. More people were killed by police in Chicago than any other of the largest U.S. cities.

More obfuscation:

Democrat super-flack David Axelrod sounds sincere when he asks on Twitter:

Why did it take a year to indict a CPD officer who shot a kid 16 times? Would it have happened today if judge hadn't ordered video release?

Chicago protest

But Axelrod is feigning naivete here. He knows full well who's behind justice-delayed for the McDonald family. It's his pal/client Rahm Emanuel, Supt. McCarthy and States Atty. Anita Alvarez, who all sat on the video for more than a year, releasing it only after a judge ordered them to do so.

Alvarez is especially complicit here, even charging Van Dyke one day before the video release, presumably to try and head off protests (riots). She badly mishandled the trial of Dante Servin, the detective who shot black 22-year-old Rekia Boyd in 2012, who she charged with involuntary manslaughter. But a judge threw that charge out in April, saying Servin should have been charged with murder. He hasn't been.

Need any more reasons to vote for Kim Foxx?

In my humble opinion, McCarthy is already toast. Sneed, who has a pipeline to the mayor's office, is already naming possible replacements and usually when that happens, time to pack your bags.

Chicago teachers show strong, united, and ready to strike if needed

What a great night! Thousands of Chicago teachers and community activists packed Grant Park last night in a show of strength and unity reminiscent of the days leading up to the 2012 teacher strike. Check out DNAInfo for best tweeted pics from last night.

The Little Emperor is back after splitting town, as he usually does in times of crisis. He ran off to China. Remember, Rahm's the guy who said: "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." What he obviously meant was, when things get hot, get out of town and let underlings like Forrest Claypool or Garry McCarthy, or whoever, take the heat.

And if you're going to run and hide, this is the week to do it. Panicked by the CTU's militant show of strength and the black community's possible response to Wednesday's court-ordered release of the video showing officer Jason Van Dyke pumping 16 rounds into defenseless 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, the administration is in full retreat mode. They're dropping crumbs along with way to soften or divert the protests, and pausing every few steps to take pot-shots at the teachers union.

Karen Lewis: "If we strike, we do so to protect our children."

Today, the day before the video release, charges are expected to be brought against Van Dyke. Coincidence? Yesterday, top cop Garry McCarthy (is he still here?) called for the firing of Dante Servin, the cop who pumped 5 bullets into the skull of unarmed Rekia Boyd. Servin was never convicted on murder charges. So, in the face of growing protests and the video release, McCarthy ordered him fired for "poor judgement".

Claypool's response to the CTU rally was, duck/dodge/divert. He claims the CTU should be joining hands with him in Springfield to push Gov. Rauner and the legislature to bail out the debt-ridden and broke-on-purpose Chicago. He tells the Tribune:

"It's a sad day when the Chicago Teachers Union is not fighting with us in Springfield for equal funding for the most vulnerable and impoverished children in the state of Illinois," Claypool said.

Is that some kind of joke? It's been Claypool who has stalled contract talks with the union as a signal to Rauner that he and Rahm are willing to beat down the CTU in exchange for a bailout. He could have easily come to an agreement with the union, headed off another strike and set the conditions for a united effort in Springfield. Instead, he's ended serious talks and is threatening to fire thousands of teachers and staff (especially in special ed), blow-up class size, cut after-school programs and sports, and open more privately-run charters.

Helping the "most vulnerable and impoverished" -- right.

Black aldermen mutiny. Rahm rushes to McCarthy's defense.

Supt. McCarthy goes all Che Guevara on us.

"I know what needs to happen. It's clear to me as anything on earth. It's a systematic failure and the system has to change." -- ABC 7 

Yesterday's City Council budget hearings were like none I've seen since the 70s run-up to the election of Harold Washington, the city's first black mayor. The crisis is so deep that the mutiny has spread way beyond the few and the brave in the Progressive Caucus. Previously isolated rivulets of anger with Rahm/Rauner austerity, property taxes, education cuts, school closings, charter expansion and the gun violence epidemic appear to be flowing into one big river of anger around the budget hearings.

Roosevelt H.S. students hit the streets.

Students at three high schools attempted walkouts yesterday in protest of the budget cuts and in support of their teachers. Roosevelt students succeeded. Students at Schurz and Foreman were blocked by cops and CPS security. There's no prison-break manuals in Common Core.

A SmallTalk salute goes out to Roosevelt teacher Tim Meegan for supporting and inspiring his students. 40th Dist. Rep. candidate Harishi Patel (running in Deb Mell's former district) was also out there with the students.

Monday's Black Caucus presser calling on the mayor to dump Supt. Garry McCarthy, sent tremors up to the 5th floor of City Hall. It even included several formerly docile alders joining with the progressives in open revolt. The catalyst may have been the The Tribune's gross Oct. 1 editorial, Aldermen, own Chicago violence, which sounded to me like a McCarthy plant.

Rahm hit back at the Caucus in a show of white solidarity, with a statement of all-out support for his top-cop. He went so far as to second (first) McCarthy's pick of Dean Andrews as his chief of detectives. Andrews is currently under investigation for engineering the cover-up in the killing of David Koschman by Mayor Daley's nephew R.J.” Vanecko and has been named 114 times in Special Prosecutor Dan Webb's 162-page report on the case. None of that mattered when it came to circling the wagons around McCarthy in the face of the Black Caucus threat.

The Trib brazenly doubled-down on its racist diatribe in today's editorial, leaving no doubt that their accusations and venom were directed only at black aldermen and not all 50 as they previously claimed. Today, the Trib boasts that their "suggestions really got under the skin of aldermen, particularly those who live in the city's most violent wards" (more code language).

Black Caucus Chairman Ald. Rod Sawyer (6th), responds.

This charge that we blame the police is a fiction, nothing more.

It is true that many in our communities have experienced difficult or unjust treatment at the hands of some police officers. Our city is paying huge settlements to victims of such treatment. The relationship can be an uneasy one. This is not some fantasy we made up. From disgraced former Chicago police Cmdr. Jon Burge to "black sites" to stop-and-frisk tactics, it is understandable that there is a breach of trust between the police and people of color and the poor in some of Chicago's most distressed neighborhoods.

I respectfully suggest that your editorial board stop sowing division and casting blame, and instead offer constructive support for our efforts to build a better city for all Chicagoans.

Tribune's disgusting editorial on gun violence. Did McCarthy's people plant it?

City Council Black Caucus chairman Ald. Roderick Sawyer (6th), at podium, and members on Monday call for the firing of Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy. | Rich Hein/Sun-Times

In August, you [aldermen] had more than 40 people shot on four consecutive weekends. In the deadliest September since 2002, you had 60 people killed. Aldermen, for too long you've avoided wearing a jacket for Chicago's mayhem. -- Tribune editorial

The Tribune's Oct. 1 editorial, Aldermen, own Chicago violence, strikes the same divisive tone as their previous ones calling for a "Mussolini-type dictator" to run the schools and for a "Katrina-like disaster" to hit Chicago.

This time though, they've actually outdone themselves, shifting blame for the dramatic rise in gun violence that has occurred during the Rahm/McCarthy years, onto black and Latino communities and their aldermen. It reads as a total ass-covering attempt for the mayor and police officials. And if you can read racist code language [substitute gang banger and terrorist for young black men] it becomes clear exactly which of the city's 50 alders the Tribune is aiming at.

The gangbangers sleep somewhere. Have you insisted that parents in your ward search their dwellings for guns?

The criminals understand that, if they don't act out too much, they can flourish in your neighborhoods because you — the supposed mayors of your 50 little cities — will not make life difficult for them, for their friends, for their parents. You could help identify the terrorists in your midst. You could organize your wards to help cops, instead of complaining about cops.

Is it just me, or does this one read like it came right out of Supt. Garry McCarthy's Office of Propaganda?

Remember, McCarthy is no stranger to juking politically-charged crime stats and trying to make it look like gun violence had suddenly and magically decreased under his watch.

From Chicago Magazine:

McCarthy called 2012’s homicide total a “tragic number” and vowed that things would be different in 2013. The mindset inside police headquarters, recalls one officer: “Whatever you gotta do, this can’t happen again.”

To help gauge each city’s overall crime level, the FBI tracks eight “index crimes.” From 1993 to 2010, Chicago’s annual total dropped by 47 percent. But from 2010 to 2013, it dropped a stunning 56 percent, or nearly 19 percent per year, according to data from the Chicago Police Department.

Garry McCarthy, who became police chief in May 2011, accomplished that huge reduction in part by changing how certain crimes are categorized. 

No one, of course, is "blaming the cops" for the gun violence epidemic, as the Trib editors charge. In fact, it's Rahm's critics like his election opponent, Chuy Garcia, who have pleaded with him to put more cops out in the neighborhoods. They've also hit Rahm for disbanding many of the city's community policing programs.

Rahm & McCarthy. They juked the crime stats. 

And as for the big dust up over the name of Spike Lee's film, Chiraq, it was basically the mayor and two of his city council yes-men, Will Burns and Anthony Beale, who were silly enough to tell Spike what to do. You can't blame the whole council for that.

And it's been Rahm who, after every high-profile shooting, comes out with media attacks directed at the black community and families for supposedly "not cooperating" with the cops. A quarter million stop-and-frisks of young African-Americans may have had something to do with that.  Trib of course, never mentions. 

But when all is said and done and election campaigns aside, more and better policing are only a small piece of the gun violence puzzle. With the collapse of community policing programs, cops role comes into play at the back end of things. There job has been directed at arresting the shooters and put them (or someone they think is them) in prison. 

So now you've got 2 million, most black and Latino males in prison -- the largest prison population in the world -- and Chicago gun violence shooting up again to record levels. 

The Tribune piece never mentions that the city is saturated with guns, crack and heroin. That there's large areas of concentrated poverty in racially segregate and isolated neighborhoods of the city where no jobs exist and where schools, clinics, and business stand boarded up.

That's a recipe for gun violence.

The Tribune's attempt to cover that up and blame the victims, rather than the real causes of gun violence deserves to be dissed. If indeed, this piece of crap journalism came from McCarthy's people, it's just another reason he needs to go.  There are plenty of others.