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Chicago activists end hunger strike against recycling plant but vow to continue fight

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Chicago activists end hunger strike against recycling plant but vow to continue fight

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Activists On Hunger Strike Against Metal Recycling Facility

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organizers and residents oppose metal shredder operating in Latino neighborhood already suffering from pollution

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On the 30th and last day of their hunger strike, activists from Chicago's Southeast Side held a vigil.

Mourning the health of the hunger strikers who have gone without food for a month, demonstrators clad in funeral attire carried a fake casket on Thursday through Logan Square, the North Side neighborhood where Mayor Lori Lightfoot lives. Southeast Side organizers and residents are demanding the city stop a metal shredder from operating in a Latino neighborhood already overburdened by pollution.

"In order to continue, we're going to give our body nutrients. We're going to go back to eating, and we're going to continue the fight. But we're not going to do it alone," said Yesenia Chavez, organizer with United Neighbors of the 10th Ward.

Chavez is among eight people who joined the hunger strike after 4 February, when three organizers announced they would go as long as it took to stop Southside Recycling from operating. Chavez said she experienced severe weight loss, headaches, muscle pains, and anxiety attacks during her 25 days not eating solid foods.

Lightfoot has come under fire for aiding the owners of General Iron, a controversial metal scrapper in an affluent white neighborhood, in closing the facility last year - and then allowing the business to construct a new metal recycling plant in a low-income Black and brown community across town. The mayor wrote a letter on 23 February acknowledging the hunger strike and the environmental racism the East Side neighborhood faces, but stopped short of denying the final permit needed for Southside Recycling to operate. Hunger strikers called the letter "insulting" in their own statement.

Thursday's rally drew more than 200 people from across the city. It started at a church outside Lightfoot's block, which was heavily blockaded by police, and snaked through the streets of Logan Square. Protesters wore "Stop General Iron" masks and carried signs saying "We deserve clean air!" and "Ecological devastation is immoral". At one point, they stopped traffic at a busy intersection.

Chicago activists lie on the street as part of Thursday's protest. Their sign reads 'Stop General Iron', referring to the metal shredder on the North Side that closed last year. Photograph: Dominic Gwinn/ZUMA Wire/REX/Shutterstock

Many of the speakers were students from George Washington high school, located half a mile from the proposed facility. "There's no reason why I should starve for a week to get Lori's attention," said Gregory Miller, a 15-year-old student organizer.

The defunct General Iron site was rife with controversy. The scrapyard violated US Environmental Protection Agency standards in 2018, 2012 and 2006 and was widely regarded by neighbors as a nuisance. "There was a near constant rumble of massive machinery, and our facility manager had to replace external air filters weekly," said a spokesperson from Paws Chicago, a nearby animal shelter.

The particulate matter that often escapes these types of businesses can lead to severe heart and lung conditions, according to Dr Susan Buchanan, public health professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago. Reserve Management Group (RMG), the metal recycling company that owns General Iron and Southside Recycling, is adamant that the pollution controls at the new site will be enough to keep residents safe. "We've been made a target, but we are not the enemy," wrote Steve Joseph, CEO of RMG, in an op-ed.

Chicago's Southeast Side has a long history of environmental pollution. The steel mills that once attracted immigrants to the neighborhood with good-paying jobs are gone now, due to manufacturing jobs moving overseas in the 1980s. But the area is still home to toxic industries pouring a million pounds of heavy metals into the air every year.

Oscar Sanchez lost about 20lb from participating in the hunger strike all 30 days. His grandmother, a recent widow who has suffered from Covid-19, called him before the rally. "She's hooked up to an air tank, [because] the only air she can breathe is not from the Southeast Side."

But she was more concerned for her grandson, according to Sanchez. "She said, 'I miss your grandpa. Don't make me miss you too.'"

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Chicago activists end hunger strike against recycling plant but vow to continue fight

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On the 30th and last day of their hunger strike, activists from Chicago's Southeast Side held a vigil. Mourning the health of the hunger strikers who have gone without food for a month, demonstrators clad in funeral attire carried a fake casket on Thursday through Logan Square, the North Side neighborhood where Mayor Lori Lightfoot lives.

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Killing by Police Declined After Black Lives Matters 

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Killing by Police Declined After Black Lives Matters 

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A study also found body-camera use and community policing increased in places with the most active movements

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Killings by Police Declined after Black Lives Matter Protests

A study also found body-camera use and community policing increased in places with the most active movements

By Jim Daley

Since Black Lives Matter protests gained national prominence following the 2014 police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., the movement has spread to hundreds of cities and towns across the U.S. Now a new study shows police homicides have significantly decreased in most cities where such protests occurred.

Black Lives Matter (BLM) began when Oakland, Calif.-based activist Alicia Garza posted a message of protest on Facebook after George Zimmerman, a neighborhood-watch volunteer who followed and fatally shot 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Fla., was acquitted of murder in 2013. Patrisse Cullors, another Oakland community organizer, began sharing Garza's message on social media, along with the hashtag #blacklivesmatter. The slogan soon spread, building into a largely leaderless movement against structural racism and police violence. Last year, spurred by a Minneapolis police officer's killing of George Floyd, millions of people demonstrated in hundreds of BLM protests throughout the U.S.

"Black Lives Matter represents a trend that goes beyond the decentralization that existed within the Civil Rights Movement," says Aldon Morris, a sociologist at Northwestern University, who was not involved in the new study. "The question becomes, 'Are Black Lives Matter protests having any real effect in terms of generating change?' The data show very clearly that where you had Black Lives Matter protests, killing of people by the police decreased. It's inescapable from this study that protest matters-that it can generate change."

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The study, posted in February as an online preprint item on the Social Science Research Network, is the first of its kind to measure a possible correlation between BLM and police homicide numbers. It found that municipalities where BLM protests have been held experienced as much as a 20 percent decrease in killings by police, resulting in an estimated 300 fewer deaths nationwide in 2014-2019. The occurrence of local protests increased the likelihood of police departments adopting body-worn cameras and community-policing initiatives, the study also found. Many cities with larger and more frequent BLM protests experienced greater declines in police homicides.

The study involved a quantitative research technique called "difference in differences," which mimics a controlled experiment with observational data. Difference-in-differences studies use variation in the timing and location of a "treatment variable" (such as BLM protests or police killings) to sort data into artificial control groups and treatment groups; researchers can then compare an event's apparent effects in different settings or time periods. The new study compared police killings in cities that experienced BLM protests with those that did not.

"It's really difficult to measure Black Lives Matter protests and lethal use of force by the police," notes the study's author, Travis Campbell, an economist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. This is mainly because comprehensive data on police killings are lacking: the federal government does not track police officers' lethal use of force, and media and grassroots organizations attempt to fill the void via Freedom of Information Act requests and crowdsourcing efforts.

Aislinn Pulley is a co-founder of Black Lives Matter Chicago, which has compiled a list of everyone who died at the hands of the Chicago Police Department since 2011. "It's extraordinarily important to have concrete data of the numbers of incidents that involve police violence of all stripes, from killings to torture to being held incommunicado in police stations to people who died in custody," she says. "We didn't have access to that data prior to the movement-and we still have only partial access."

Because the national picture of police homicides remains incomplete, "the big issue is that you may undercount the true number of fatal interactions" with police-especially in lower-population areas where media coverage may be lacking-Campbell says. To address this, he gave greater weight to results from larger cities, where he says news reports of police killings and protests likely had more accurate estimates of both. He analyzed the relationship between protests and police homicides using several different techniques and consistently found similar results.

Joscha Legewie, a Harvard University sociologist who was not involved in the study, says the difference-in-differences design is "very well suited" for the kind of data Campbell was analyzing. "It's extremely important [to have] a better understanding of the processes behind this," he says. "Are these reductions driven by reforms initiated in response to protests? That's a key area we need to understand to draw more conclusions about policy implications." Legewie hesitates to accept the precise estimate of 300 fewer killings but says the study still indicates a substantial-and important-overall trend and correlation, which should be noted. "It's more important," he says, "to focus on this possibly substantial decrease in the number of police killings as a result of Black Lives Matter."

The difference was significant in this study: it found police killings fell by 16.8 percent on average in municipalities that had BLM protests, compared with those that did not. When Campbell compared municipalities that already had similar trends in police homicides before BLM began, the estimate rose to 21.1 percent. The specific mechanisms that might be involved in such a decline remain unclear. BLM protests may have this effect because they push police departments to adopt reforms such as body cams or community policing, as the study found. Another reason may be that the protests affect police morale, causing officers to adopt a less aggressive patrolling posture that reduces police-civilian interactions in general. And not all cities experienced declines amid the protests. Police homicides increased in Minneapolis, Portland, San Francisco and St. Louis during the five-year period Campbell studied.

Representative Cori Bush of Missouri, a Democrat elected in 2020 to represent the congressional district that includes St. Louis, worked as a triage nurse and organizer during the 2014 protests in Ferguson, Mo. (which is part of the St. Louis metropolitan area). "Decreasing police killings still means people are being killed by police," Bush says. "And here in St. Louis, where the modern movement fighting for Black lives was born, we haven't seen a decrease at all." She notes that human rights activist Malcolm X once said progress involves healing historic wrongs. "The fact of the matter is that we need to see structural change, because our current criminal legal system is structurally unable to deliver the progress that Malcolm X outlines."

Pulley says the Black Lives Matter movement can take some satisfaction in its possible impact on police homicides. "We should use that knowledge to know that the work we're engaged in-the movement, the advocacy, the organizing-is what we need," she says. "And that needs to expand and get broader, so we can join much of the rest of the world in having zero police killings. We can get there. That takes continued and persistent organizing."

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Killings by Police Declined after Black Lives Matter Protests

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A study also found body-camera use and community policing increased in places with the most active movements

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Images from the Black Lives Matter Protest

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BBC One - The Andrew Marr Show, 28/02/2021, Stacey Abrams: 'US voter suppression is not dead'

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Andrew Marr spoke to the US Democratic politician and voting rights activist Stacey Abrams

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In the recent election, a record of nearly 5 million Georgians voted, nearly 1 million more than four years ago. As of Tuesday morning, President-elect Joe Biden was leading President Trump in the traditionally red state by more than 12,000 votes.

Many are crediting the efforts of one woman - the state's former House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams. Much of America met her last year, giving the Democratic response to Mr. Trump's State of the Union speech, but it was last week when Abrams really made her mark.

Abrams and the New Georgia Project helped register 800,000 new Georgia voters, mostly in communities of color.

"We knocked on doors in pockets of communities that had never been touched. And we kept coming back," Abrams told CBS News national correspondent Mark Strassmann. "Is there anyone else in your family who needs to register? What about your neighbors?"

Abrams, now 46, graduated from Spelman College and Yale Law School. She became a state representative and eventually Georgia's house minority leader.

But her passion since she was 17 has been fighting voter suppression.

"Politicians believe their way to preserve their power is to impede the ability of voters to be heard. And typically they target people of color, young people, and they target the poor," Abrams said.

In 2018, Abrams ran for governor in Georgia. Barack Obama endorsed her. Oprah Winfrey campaigned for her.

But the year before, the Republican-run state slashed nearly 670,000 voters from its rolls. Nearly 70% of those voters were Black.

The secretary of state who was overseeing the purge was Republican Brian Kemp, who was Abrams' opponent in the governor's race.

She lost by 55,000 votes.

Abrams never conceded the race.

"I believe it was stolen from the voters," she said. "I just said it can't happen again. And that has been my mission for the last two years."

After that loss, Abrams founded another group: Fair Fight. In this recent election, it worked to blunt voter suppression in 20 states.

"We were in Michigan. We were in Wisconsin. We were in North Carolina. We were in Pennsylvania. Voter suppression happens anywhere," Abrams said. "We changed not only the trajectory of Georgia, we changed the trajectory of the nation. Because our combined power show that progress is not only possible, it is inevitable."

Abrams' next challenge: the Super Bowl of in January. Georgia will elect both its U.S. senators. Control of the Senate itself hangs in the balance.

Abrams is hoping the surge of new Georgia voters would be enough to elect two Democrats: Jon Ossoff, who is challenging incumbent Republican Senator David Perdue, and Reverend Raphael Warnock, who is running against incumbent Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler. While voters typically do not turn out in the same numbers they would for a general election, Abrams and her team believe that now that they've proved to people that their vote can make a difference, it will be much easier to get them to vote again.

"People will do almost anything when they know success is likely," Abrams said. "It is the actual thing that can change the future. And I believe they'll show up."

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Stacey Abrams says fighting voter suppression changed "the trajectory of the nation"

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In the recent election, a record of nearly 5 million Georgians voted, nearly 1 million more than four years ago. As of Tuesday morning, President-elect Joe Biden was leading President Trump in the traditionally red state by more than 12,000 votes.

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In 2020, when definitions of sexuality and gender are undergoing major changes, can a straight man be a queer icon?

Yes, according to a glowing cover profile of Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny in the latest issue of Rolling Stone. Singer Ricky Martin, who publicly came out as gay in 2010, told the magazine that Bad Bunny, born Benito Ocasio, had become "an icon for the Latin queer community".

Martin's generous praise falls in line with the recent attention Bunny has received on social media and from LGBTQ publications. The eccentric, gender-bending rapper was praised for speaking out against the murder of a trans women in Puerto Rico during a live performance on US TV and adopting a drag persona in the video for his track Yo Perreo Sola.

Bad Bunny sits at the helm of reggaeton's crossover moment: performing at this year's Super Bowl with Jennifer Lopez and Shakira and appearing on the top-charting Cardi B song I Like It. At the same time, his development as a liberated, LGBTQ ally is still in its infancy.

Yo Perreo Sola was released only two months ago. And Bunny's sudden position as "queer icon" raises the question why, yet again, a straight man is receiving outsized praise and attention for his LGBTQ activism.

Not everyone is convinced by his newfound status. "Bad Bunny is not a queer icon but I am, you should buy my merch," trans artist Chaseicon said in response to Martin's claims.

Yet this is not a new trend. Popular LGBTQ media and culture has always fixated on straight men who align themselves with queer causes and aesthetics. Recent examples include the blatant queer-baiting of former Disney star Nick Jonas, who would promote his new music at infamous gay clubs and even received an Out Magazine cover. There are the winking, teasing lyrics and gender-pushing outfits of Harry Styles who, despite saying "I'm not just sprinkling in sexual ambiguity to be interesting", has never actually delved into his relationship to queer aesthetics in ways that would actually be useful and concrete to young queer fans that look up to him. Then there are the scores of straight male actors who get casted in seminal queer roles, think Timothée Chalamet in Call Me By Your Name, and amass fervent followings through them.

These figures often become focal points of LGBTQ communities online, and are celebratedas groundbreaking. Yo Perreo Sola is already one of Bunny's most-watched videos on YouTube, clocking in over 200m views.

Of course the phrase "queer icon" has long been used for non-LGBTQ allies in a slightly slapdash, tongue-in-cheek way. The term is also frequently applied by queer men to female pop stars such as Madonna, Ariana Grande, and Britney Spears. However, Martin's labeling, and the kind of attention Bunny is receiving, is not just innocent doting from fans. Bunny is being positioned as doing comparable, or even more significant, activism than actual queer people in the Latinx community. This positioning extends to a recent LA Times profile (where Bunny confirmed he was straight and had a girlfriend, but said "it does not define me") and various think-pieces celebrating his "new masculinity" or how he "bridges LGBTQ and Latinx identities".

It becomes obvious there is more capital to be gained from wearing the queer activism of the moment like a costume than actually living and embodying it.

If Bunny really wanted to dispel homophobia within reggaeton music, he would use his large platform to feature the queer and trans artists that are frequently silenced and ignored within the genre.

Taking issue with Bad Bunny receiving praise for his activism is different than critiquing his actions. It's a further indictment of how media and popular culture prefers its queerness to be served. As the queer hosts of music podcast Only Stans observed, when discussing Bunny's Yo Perreo Sola visual shortly after its release: "People tend to celebrate these queer aesthetics from a very decidedly heterosexual male as opposed to celebrating the queer people who originate them and live these sort of ideals in their day-to-day lives." When Bad Bunny blurs gender lines, it's framed as "ending" toxic masculinity and homophobia.It's not that attempts at combating these social ills are wrong. It's that they are generally removed from the long history of LGBTQ people who came before.

We need to approach this kind of celebrity activity with the same kind of skepticism and scrutiny we apply to the brands and businesses for their Pride campaigns. Because if allyship so easily leads to higher record sales and Twitter trending topics , is it really a pure, selfless kind of support?

Bad Bunny's adoption of a queer aesthetics has led to millions of views and listens online and, arguably, pushed him over into the mainstream in a way he wasn't before. It's great to see a message of a softer, more experimental, kind of masculinity be shared and celebrated.

This is not to say straight male artists should never again wear heels, or paint their nails, or speak out about issues important to their LGBTQ fans. But maybe we should reassess how we react when they do.

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Bad Bunny: does a straight man deserve to be called a 'queer icon'?

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In 2020, when definitions of sexuality and gender are undergoing major changes, can a straight man be a queer icon? Yes, according to a glowing cover profile of Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny in the latest issue of Rolling Stone.