Racism, Equity, Gender, Diversity
Below are several of Bob’s albums related to Racism, Equity, Gender, Diversity.
Come Alive on October 5
October 5 2016: The original "Come Alive October 5" was an historic voter registration drive that swept the first African American Mayor of Chicago into office. The 2016 event was designed to reignite the multi-racial progressive movement that Harold Washington represented. The emphasis was on the need for revolutionary change through the ballot box.
Former WGN newscaster Merri Dee was the emcee. Speakers included Tuskegee AL Mayor Johnny Ford, historian Timuel Black, Attorney Thomas N. Todd, Cook County Clerk David Orr and hip hop artist Rhymefest. There was also women’s panel moderated by Bronzeville Children's Museum founder Peggy Montes that discussed the gains that women made during the Washington years. Jazz singer Maggie Brown provided a powerful musical interlude.
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The Austin 5K Run/Walk
The Second Annual Austin 5K Run/Walk drew over 200 participants to this West Side Chicago neighborhood. One of the main sponsors of the event was the Austin African American Business Networking Association, Inc.
The Austin community has been subjected to disinvestment and racial segregation and is experiencing the social problems that accompany them. Austin has been plagued by a rash of shootings in recent weeks.Organizers wanted to present the community in a positive light and showcase a business revitalization project entitled "Soul City Corridor”.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel ran in the race and was greeted politely despite his record of school closings and City Hall's general neglect of the Austin community. Local politicians heaped praise on the the Mayor, perhaps hoping that flattery might bring more public investment into a community that desperately needs it.
As I live a 15 minute bike ride from Austin and often visit friends there, I decided to participate as a walker in the event and take some pictures along the way.
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Indigenous Liberation on Turtle Island
Support the struggle of First Nations for sovereignty and liberation.
November 12, 2016: Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). Led by Chicagoland indigenous organizations, people assembled at Federal Plaza to hear speeches and create a community snake dance against the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). They were joined by a marchers from an anti-Trump protest. The DAPL is often called the "Black Snake”.
The pipeline will run across approximately 1,172 miles of land from North Dakota to Illinois. The DAPL will transfer crude oil, through the Oglala Aquifer, as well as, under the Big Sioux, Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. The pipeline will run through the traditional lands of the Standing Rock Sioux endangering water and sacred sites.
Energy Transfer Partners has 100% completion of the Dakota Access Pipeline in Illinois, and South Dakota. Resistance in North Dakota and Iowa are our last lines of defense against DAPL.
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Slutwalk Chicago 2016
At Slutwalk Chicago 2016 people marched, protested, sat-in,chanted, laughed, cried, sang, and spoke out about the realities of living inside rape culture and how to build a community to fight it!
August 20, 2016: Slutwalk Chicago 2016 is a rally, march and speakout where people marched, protested, sat-in, chanted, laughed, cried, sang, and spoke out about the realities of living inside rape culture and how to build a community to fight it!
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50th Anniversary of Dr. King's Chicago March for Housing
August 6 2016: Chicagoans celebrated the 50th anniversary of Dr. King's march for open housing in Chicago. Dr. King led the march into the racially segregated Marquette Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side. The marchers were met with violence from a white mob. Dr. King was hit by a rock.
The 2016 march, organized primarily by faith groups, followed the same route, for a spirited rally and a music festival. There is now a monument to Dr. King and the civil rights movement in the Marquette Park neighborhood, which once featured an American Nazi Party office, and was a dangerous place for Black people to even visit.
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The Oak Park to Forest Park IL March Against Racism
A racial dispute at a Forest Park IL bar leads local residents to organize a march against racism and discrimination in Chicago's suburbs.
July 16, 2016: March against racism through Oak Park and Forest Park IL Although the incident that triggered the July 16 march was a racial dispute in a Forest Park bar, participants in the protest were clearly motivated by broader concerns and were also responding to the nationwide movement against racism spearheaded by Black Lives Matter.
Organized by Oak Park High School (OPRF) teacher Anthony Clark with help from other OPRF teachers, the march from Oak Park to the bordering town of Forest Park targeted suburban racism and discrimination. At the rally, participants shared their personal experiences with suburban racial bigotry.
Clark had earlier circulated an anti-discrimination pledge which he had asked a number of local businesses to sign. While some did willingly, others said they did not want to take a position and others were openly hostile. Clark hopes to expand the campaign into a movement that deals with the commonplace racism that plagues Chicago suburban communities.
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The People's Convention
The People’s Convention brought together organizers, artists, national progressive voices and community leaders who are driving bold and transformative social change initiatives–to learn, to strategize, and develop a shared agenda for justice. I was there as a member of the Chicago community organization, Action Now.
Sponsored by the Center for Popular Democracy, the convention was held on July 8-9 in Pittsburgh PA. After the convention, participants celebrated with a block party in front of the August Wilson Center for African American Culture.
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Black Lives Matter in Chicago: 2016
September 4 2016: Black Lives Matter Women of Faith led a Chicago rally and march for peace, racial equality, justice, freedom, jobs, education, economic development, and an end to gun violence and police brutality
Reforming the Chicago Police Department
With a long record of assault, torture, murder, and false accusations, even Mayor Emanuel agrees that an overhaul of the Chicago Police Department (CPD) is needed.Yet his solutions fall far short of actual community control of police and are largely window dressing.
Chicagoans who want genuine reform of the police are proposing an elected board called the Chicago Police Accountability Council (CPAC). They have been circulating a petition and holding numerous public meetings. Their efforts have been endorsed by community, labor and activist organizations.
Vigils for Orlando In Oak Park and Chicago
June 12 2016: A Chicago vigil for the shooting victims at the gay bar in Orlando FL. People gathered at the corner of Roscoe and Halsted in Chicago's Lakeview neighborhood. Here they listened to some brief speeches and prayers, talked quietly among themselves or simply stood in meditation as they contemplated the horror of yet another mass shooting.
June 15 2016: People gathered in Oak Park's Scoville Park to remember the victims of the Orlando shootings. Organized by local religious and political leaders, the vigil drew several hundred people to the park.
From Blues to Bluegrass: The Young Patriots
The concert was a fundraiser that featured musicians Jake La Botz and Jon Langford. It was an effort to help re-establish the Young Patriot Organization the 21st Century.
February 9, 2016: Benefit concert for the Young Patriots Organization at the Hideaway in Chicago with Jake La Botz and Jon Langford. The fundraiser was to help re-establish the Young Patriot Organization in the 21st Century.
The Young Patriots were a group of poor southern migrants in 1960's Chicago who were part of a revolutionary alliance with the Young Lords Organization (a Puerto Rican group) and the Black Panther Party (a Black organization). Together they formed the original Rainbow Coalition. Soon afterward Rising Up Angry, a working class white Chicago organization also joined.
The Young Patriots were a group of poor southern migrants in 1960’s Chicago who helped organize a revolutionary alliance with the Young Lords Organization (a Puerto Rican group) and the Black Panther Party (a Black organization). Along with Rising Up Angry, a working class white organization, that alliance became the Rainbow Coalition.
Together they became the Rainbow Coalition. a multi-racial movement dedicated to addressing racism, poverty, police violence and community displacement in their respective areas of Chicago. They openly challenged capitalism and adopted a socialist agenda.
In addition to their political work, the Rainbow Coalition members established health clinics, free breakfast for children programs, legal assistance for victims of police violence and other social service work.
The Coalition met with extreme government repression which included assassinations, imprisonment and daily police harassment. In December of 1969 police broke into apartment of popular Black Panther leader Fred Hampton and assassinated him along with Black Panther Mark Clark.
Both the federal government in Washington and the city government of Chicago could not tolerate the Rainbow Coalition’s efforts to cross lines of racism and segregation to work for revolutionary social change.
Vigil for Gun Violence Victims
Vigil for Quintonio LeGrier and Bettie Jones: Killed by the Chicago police. Stop police murder in Chicago
December 27, 2015: Vigil for Quintonio LeGrier and Bettie Jones, shot to death by a Chicago Cop. Quintonio LeGrier had a baseball bat and was pounding on his father's door in a domestic dispute. The police arrived and shot Quintonio LeGrier, as well as Bettie Jones, who had answered her door trying to help. Quintonio Jones was a college student and Bettie Jones was a mother of 5 and a member of Action Now. Action Now is a community group of which I am a member.
The student movement against racism
November 14, 2015: Chicagoans gathered at the State Office building in solidarity with with the student movement against racism
This fall at the University of Missouri (Mizzou) students demonstrated against campus racism, 30 football players refused to play and at one student staged a hunger strike. The students demanded the resignation of the school president in response to rising racial tension triggered by racist slurs and other insults directed towards the university's marginalized student population, particularly its Black students.
There have been similar protests led by Black students at colleges and universities across the nation. Students all across the nation know that what happened at Mizzou is not a isolated incident, it is the status quo at many universities and colleges.
Int’l Association of Chiefs of Police Conference, Chicago
In the past few years there has been a tremendous upsurge in awareness around extrajudicial killings of Black people and other people of color by police. This has been marked by mass protests, mobilizations, and urban rebellions.
October 24, 2015: People had a unique opportunity to take this movement to the next level by directly confronting an organization that is at the forefront of the criminalization and police killings of Black people in this country: the International Association of Chiefs of Police or IACP.
The IACP is a 100-plus year old organization that bills itself as a group that help spearhead breakthrough technologies and philosophies used by police departments across the globe. According to the IACP, one of their main goals is to “encourage adherence of all police officers to high professional standards of performance and conduct.” They have failed miserably at this goal when it comes to policing in Black communities.
(Text adapted from the protest Facebook page.)
They Don't Care About Us
March Against Police Murder and Mass Incarceration
October 1, 2015: Black and Brown people are systematically targeted, harassed, and criminalized by the
Chicago Police Department (CPD).They are struggling. They are dying. They are fighting back. Students and teachers from Chicago's Village Leadership Academy organized a musical march connected to the murder of Rekia Boyd and the criminalization of young Black and Brown people.
They remixed and updated Michael Jackson's historic “They Don't Care About Us” music video. The recent recommendation by the Independent Police Review Authority (IPRA )to fire Dante Servin, the CPD officer who murdered our young sister, Rekia Boyd, is only the first of three steps to actually get him fired. We must keep up the pressure and continue to demand #Justice4Rekia. (Text adapted from the Facebook event page)
Chicago Puerto Rican Parade
June 19, 2015: A Just Chicago: The Education Our Students Deserve. The Chicago Puerto Rican Peoples' Parade. We marched with the Chicago Teachers Union contingent
Solidarity with Charleston
June 17, 2015: Enough Is Enough. End White Supremacy Now. Chicagoans gather to honor those killed in Charleston. Words were spoken and then flowers were offered to the river in tribute.
Chicago Feminism In Action: 2015-2016
August 20,2016: Slutwalk Chicago 2016: A Rally. A March. A Speakout
At Slutwalk Chicago 2016 people marched, protested, sat-in, chanted, laughed, cried, sang, and spoke out about the realities of living inside rape culture and how to build a community to fight it.
