Protesting racist policing has a long history in Chicago whose police department is under a Federal Consent Decree for its racist practices that city officials have condoned for decades by refusing to stop. Racial profiling, shooting, false arrest, torture, political assassination, false witness and intimidation mostly directed at black and brown communities.
The 16 shot murder of Laquan McDonald by patrolman Jason Van Dyke and the attempted coverup by former Mayor Rahm Emanuel and States Attorney Anita Alverez united the community to remove them in a black lead campaign for justice and going forward community control of policing (CPAC).
Yet following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis massive protest erupted across the city and drew people from across the the usual divides, so outraged were they that they could not remain silent. Major protest shut down the city on Saturday and lead to a curfew, the shut down of all public transportation serving the downtown district as well as the exits from the freeways, while police responded from one location to another with the results increasing the demonstrators resolve that "enough was enough". Subsequent and spontaneous calls for a demonstration would bring 400 or more people to intersections to "shut things down". The business district was choked, while Cook County Jail at 26th and California was ringed by car caravans demanding of Sheriff Dart that prisoners be released before they died from Covid-19.
On June 3rd, Wednesday a car caravan, called by the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, greeted Mayor Lightfoot in her north-side neighborhood at 7am. In the afternoon a car caravan was called to protest police brutality and demand community control of the police at the 35th and S. Michigan Ave police station in the heart of the historically black community Bronzville. People were gathering at 35th and King Drive for the caravan to start. They speak about what brought them out and of what they had seen.
Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression caarpr.org