CPD Police Riot 7/17/20

Chicagoans know through experience what a police riot looks like — some would even say that CPD’s brutality at the 1968 Democratic National Convention is the origin of the term police riot as we know it today — and what happened at the youth-led Black and Indigenous solidarity rally to #DecolonizeZhigaagoong and #DefundCPD at the Christopher Columbus statue on July 17, 2020 can only be described as another police riot.

Protestors were indiscriminately hit with batons, tear gassed, pepper sprayed, punched, beaten, tackled, and arrested. Bikes were violently ripped from people’s hands, slammed on the ground and piled several feet high on Columbus Drive, probably to be destroyed or worse if they are used to charge more people with fabricated crimes. An eighteen-year old organizer with GoodKids MadCity, Miracle Boyd, was punched in the face and had her teeth knocked out for exercising her constitutional right to film police performing their duties in public. Reporters with press badges were assaulted, gassed, and hit with batons, as were photographers, videographers, medics, and legal observers with the National Lawyers Guild.

One Black Lives Matter Chicago organizer, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of police retaliation, recalled:

“The cops got really violent really quick… All of a sudden, I saw cops in the crowd, pushing people down and hitting people. Many of those people were femmes. When I tried to get in between a femme and a cop, I all of a sudden felt my eyes burning uncontrollably and realized I had been pepper sprayed. Several other protesters came to my aid to get the pepper spray out of my eyes and two of my friends made sure I got taken to the medical tent. While there, I saw that several other people suffered the same injuries as me and others had sustained significant head wounds… There was no reason for the cops to get that violent that quickly. The items thrown in their direction were not fatal. Their actions toward us were. The violence from police escalated after I was taken out, and I worried that they were going to kill some of my friends there. I have never felt more scared or more guilty in my life.”

Just after midnight on Friday night, policymakers, including state Representatives Robert Peters and Delia Ramirez and City Council members 25th Ward Alderman Byron Sigcho-Lopez and 20th Ward Alderwoman Jeanette Taylor, released a statement with United Working Families condemning Mayor Lori Lightfoot and CPD’s actions, acknowledging that policing is not the solution to the gun violence, and calling on their “colleagues of conscious” to join them in immediately defunding the Chicago Police Department. The next morning, UWF hosted a press conference with several organizers of Friday’s action and their representatives in state and local government.

Throughout the press conference, the organizers were grounded in their history and unwavering in their demands. Anthony Pochel Tamez, co-president of the Chi-Nations Youth Council, reminded everyone that the CPD was founded before the incorporation of the city to protect settler property and remove Indigenous people from what is now Chicago. Pochel Tamez commended Friday’s display of Black and Indigenous solidarity, and said, “What we have seen yesterday is the police have again chosen to uphold white supremacy by protecting a statue through acts of physical violence against Black and Indigenous youth. Yesterday reinforces the fact that the police do not see us as people but a threat… It’s time that we defund the Chicago Police Department and invest in our communities.”

Aislinn Pulley, of Black Lives Matter Chicago and the Chicago Torture Justice Center, criticized Mayor Lightfoot for failing to follow cities across the country who have divested from police and invested in community in the wake of the 2020 uprisings, even as CPD continues to miss over seventy percent of the consent decree deadlines and brutalize people to protect property. Pulley concluded with some of BLM Chicago’s demands, “We demand the defunding of CPD immediately, we demand all charges of all protestors be immediately dropped, we demand CPD out of CPS. And we will not stop fighting until we win.”

Following the planned speeches, Amika Tendaji of Black Lives Matter Chicago, in response to a familiar reporter question about “violent” protestors, poetically stated, “It is a peaceful thing to take down symbols of genocide. And so whoever those people are, whatever framework y’all wanna call them, the ‘outside agitators,’ like, I just saw them as artists delivering some beautiful art to this statue.”

Saturday afternoon, Lightfoot issued a statement condemning the protestors as “violent” for throwing various items at militarized police, defending themselves against violent police, and defacing the statue of a white supremacist colonizer. She did not mention the fact that all of this “violence” could have been prevented if the city had just taken the statue down a long time ago — even the city of Columbus, Ohio has recognized that monuments to genocide are unacceptable. As the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights tweeted, “Removing a symbol of White supremacy is an easy ask. Yet 40+ years after blue helmets beat protesters in Grant Park, we saw history repeat itself Friday. It’s disturbing, frustrating, and unacceptable under any circumstance.”

While it is a positive step that Lightfoot also referred to the many reports of excessive force by police as “unacceptable,” it remains to be seen whether any officers will face actual repercussions as a result of their riot, or whether the mayor will change her mind and defund the police after this courageous democratic action, and the continued protests from Chicagoans. Elected officials should look to people like Miracle Boyd, who on Monday — after a weekend of death threats from white supremacists — called for the officer who sucker punched her to be removed from the force, and instead of being prosecuted, undergo a restorative justice process with her. Boyd also announced that she will donate $10,000 from her GoFundMe (which raised $80,000 in two days) to GKMC’s efforts to pass the Peacebook ordinance, which would reallocate two percent of the CPD budget to mental health services, schools and grocery stores on the South and West sides.

Harrowingly, CPD’s public relations response on Monday included statements from Superintendent Brown that for all future actions, police will now “assume that there may be mobs working with peaceful protesters to inflict violence.” Combined with Lightfoot’s reversal on her opposition to Department of Homeland Security officers being sent to Chicago, the police are more blatant than ever in their reactionary opposition to mass movements for racial justice. After reports of protestors being beaten, tear gassed, and kidnapped by unidentified federal police in Portland, “Welcoming federal agents to ‘help with violence’ is another way of saying brutalizing and disappearing poor Black people is okay — since CPD does that systemically already,” said author, educator, and artist Benji Hart.

Black Lives Matter Chicago, the Black Abolitionist Network, GoodKids MadCity, and a number of other organizations have already filed a lawsuit against the deployment of federal agents and CPD’s continued violations of the excessive force requirements of the consent decree. In addition, 31 elected officials and 24 community and labor organizations have released an open letter to Mayor Lightfoot and Sheriff Dart urging them not to cooperate with any federal law enforcement agencies.

The same day that the BLM lawsuit was filed, Lightfoot announced that the Columbus statue was being taken down. However, the day after the statue came down, Lightfoot said that the removal was only temporary. While it would be a grave mistake to try to put the statue back up, either way, Chicago organizers have proven time and again that they will not stop raising their voices and demands. Their inspiring and courageous direct actions will continue, as well as their collaborations with progressive policymakers like Ald.’s Taylor and Sigcho-Lopez, and State Representatives Peters and Ramirez. City Council should heed their call and remove all symbols of white supremacy, and defund the Chicago Police Department and Cook County Sheriff’s budgets to instead fund public monuments like the Chicago Torture Justice Memorial, as well as housing, healthcare, education, grassroots violence prevention organizations, public transit, legal aid, and many more things that Chicagoans deserve.

Ariel Atkins, BLM Chi’s lead organizer, made this clear in her speech to the crowd at Solidarity Street’s August First Defund CPD block party. The speech is reprinted here in full:

“A couple of weeks ago protestors were beaten bloody and tear gassed. And not just because of the capitalist obsession with property — specifically the statue of a white supremacist, colonizing rapist, not just because of the historical and inherent violence of the police force, and not just because our own Trump adjacent mayor, Lori Lightfoot’s refusal to hold police accountable for their violence, but because they were afraid.

I watched cops beat protestors and rip their bikes from their bruised hands, then throw those bikes at other protestors. I watched cops gas people directly in front of them. It was the bloodiest interaction a crowd has had with CPDin decades. But, we didn’t move. I watched thousands of strangers lock arms, protect each other, carry the injured, fight off cops though their eyes and skin burned. Though they couldn’t see through the blood from open head wounds. They refused to let them win.

That kind of brutality can only come from fear. It can only come from an overpaid gang realizing that their power is bought and paid for. It’s not real.

Our solidarity is incredible. They thought they killed the revolution when they killed Hampton and terrorized the movement through COINTELPRO. They thought they shut us down when they divested from our communities and replaced resources with police, prisons and jails. They fucking thought! What they killed was the belief that we had to sit and watch the world burn around us. That we would give up our futures willingly.

Since May 30th the protests haven’t stopped. We’ve been out here. Though we’ve been beaten. Though we’ve been gassed. Though Lightfoot and the FOP welcomed Trump’s secret police into our city. We’ve been fucking out here. We will fight for our future! And that future doesn’t include police! That future includes access to healthcare for EVERYONE. Housing for EVERYONE. Living wages for EVERYONE. LOVE AND CARE AND BELONGING FOR EVERYONE.

What matters most in this moment is our solidarity.

This is terrifying. It’s so fucking scary. There is nothing like the fear of knowing that secret police are snatching anyone who rejects their power. But you know what? There are people who have lived with that fear every day in this country. In this city! Chicago is the torture capital of the country. This is the city of Homan Square aka the house of screams.

The behavior we’ve faced is not new. It has always been there. And it will get worse. They cannot break us! I believe that we will win!

We will win our demand to Defund the CPD by 75%.

We will win the demand to remove them from our schools and campuses.

We will win housing for all! We will Decolonize Zhigaagoong!

We can and we will!

When we unite! When we fight in solidarity! We have all the fucking power.

And they know it. Do you know it?

Do you?

Will you stick together?

Will you fight for the person beside you?

Will you watch their back?”