Second UIC hospital worker confirmed dead of COVID-19
Chicago, IL – A University of Illinois health operating room technician, represented by SEIU Local 73, passed away this week of COVID-19 complications. An UI Health RN, represented by Illinois Nurses Association (INA), passed away last week. Over 200 hospital workers have tested positive for COVID-19. The two workers who died were not assigned to COVID-19 designated floors. There is a growth of infection outside the COVID-19 designated floors. Many employees throughout the hospital are only given surgical masks and gloves as protection.
Chicago, IL – These are hard days for people the world over. The COVID-19 virus has forced billions of people to stay at home, bringing the global economy to a near standstill. At the moment of writing, nearly 3 million people have been confirmed to have COVID-19 across the world, and over 200,000 people have died.
Chicago, IL – Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) will be marking International Workers Day virtually with talks from leaders of workers struggles in Chicago. The Sunday, May 3 forum will be streamed from the FRSO Chicago page via Facebook Live at 4 p.m.
Chicago, IL – 100 cars surrounded the Thompson Center in Chicago’s Loop, April 20, during Governor J.B. Pritzker’s daily press briefing on COVID-19. The caravan protest was held to demand Pritzker free police torture survivor Gerald Reed and all vulnerable prisoners at Cook County Jail, Illinois Department of Corrections prisons and ICE detention centers in Illinois – especially those over 60, those with medical conditions, and those who the governor’s own Torture Commission has already confirmed are victims of police torture and therefore wrongfully convicted.
Chicago, IL – Hundreds of people took their cars to Chicago’s jails and detention centers on Tuesday morning, April 7, to demand a mass release of incarcerated people in the city. Isolated from each other in their cars, they were united in their message: Jails, prisons and detention centers must be depopulated before the spread of COVID-19 turns them into death camps.
Chicago, IL – Hundreds of prisoners at the Cook County Jail have tested positive for COVID-19 as of April 6. Frank Chapman, the interim Executive Director of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, stated, “Right now, the Cook County Jail is a death trap for the prisoners because it is overcrowded, and the prisoners can't practice social distancing. This jail must be depopulated at once to save lives.”
Frank Chapman, a long-time leader in the Black liberation movement, talks about the November 22- 24 Chicago conference to refound the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression. The interview was prepared for the print edition of Fight Back! which is now on hold due to the pandemic.
Chicago, IL – Teamsters Local 710 published an online memorial to Brother William “Dollar Bill” Young, who passed away on Sunday, March 29. Brother Young worked at the UPS CACH facility and was remembered as “hard working,” and “dedicated to his craft and always a friendly face.”
Chicago, IL – The COVID-19 health crisis has (rightly) led to millions of people staying home in order to reduce the spread of the virus. For hundreds of thousands of Teamsters though – drivers and warehouse workers at UPS and YRC, grocery store clerks and food service workers – all deemed “essential services” by the Trump administration – we have to continue to work regardless of the risks.
Chicago, IL – Two dozen prominent organizations and individuals have urged Gov. J. B. Pritzker in a letter to use “the powers of [his] office to provide long overdue justice to Gerald Reed.” Reed’s deteriorating health puts him at extreme risk due to the COVID-19 pandemic. He has heart failure, and late last year while awaiting a new trial at Cook County jail he had a heart attack.
Chicago, IL – This past week, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) won expanded protections for all its members at United Parcel Service (UPS). The mid-contract negotiations were in direct response to the Trump administration's designation of UPS as an essential service during the COVID-19 crisis, meaning that workers will continue to work throughout the duration of this health emergency.
Chicago, IL – In a statement delivered to Lori Lightfoot. March 13, 31 law professors from the University of Chicago and Northwestern University law schools are calling on the mayor to pass the Civilian Police Accountability Council, or CPAC, ordinance. CPAC would give communities in Chicago the democratic right to elect police accountability representatives with the power to control the Chicago Police Department (CPD), including having final say over discipline in misconduct cases and setting department policy.
Mass pressure and a mayor’s own greed stall a planned power grab
Chicago, IL – In true Chicago fashion, Mayor Lori Lightfoot had expected to easily ramrod through a police reform bill this week that would have affirmed her grip on power. If passed, the “Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability” ordinance would have left the entire police accountability system in her control, rendering it at the discretion of the executive branch whether to hold itself accountable for abuses of power committed by its police department, rather than giving communities terrorized by police tyranny the power to defend their rights.
Chicago, IL – 100 people attended the International Women’s Day celebration sponsored by Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) in Chicago. The speakers, as well as the people in the room, were from the Black liberation movement – most notably the Chicago Alliance against Racist and Political Repression – labor unions, and anti-imperialist movements like the Filipino, Palestinian and Puerto Rican liberation movements, as well as electoral candidates and elected officials.
Chicago, IL – In an attack on the human rights movement to stop police torture in Chicago, a Cook County judge ordered a torture survivor back to prison for life on February 14. In doing so, Judge Thomas Hennelly ignored irrefutable X-ray evidence of Gerald Reed’s torture at the hands of the infamous Jon Burge “midnight crew,” flouted the findings of the governor-appointed Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission – which affirmed Gerald’s claim of torture – and overturned the ruling of the judge formerly assigned to the case, who vacated Reed’s original conviction before retiring.
Chicago, IL – On February 21, in a letter sent to the staff and principal officers of the Teamsters, James P. Hoffa announced that he would not seek re-election as general president and would retire from the union at the end of his term in March 2022.
Chicago, IL – The courtroom was packed February 14. This was my fourth Gerald Reed court hearing. Usually, there is a crowd of folks who show up to support Gerald and his mother, Armanda Shackleford, who has been fighting for her son since he was arrested, tortured and framed in 1990. Shackleford sits in the front row, wearing her Free Gerald Reed t-shirt. Together we sit for an hour, two hours, three, and hear powerful men debate the innocence of a man whose sentence was vacated a year ago.
Fight Back! News Service is circulating the following statement from the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, the Chicago Torture Justice Center, and Mamas Activating Movements for Abolition and Solidarity.
Chicago, IL – The latest episode in the Jussie Smollett saga continues to unfold as the campaign to rid Cook County of the first honest, progressive, Black woman state’s attorney in county history, Kim Foxx, reaches lower and lower into the barrel of dirty tricks, a la Roger Stone and Donald Trump. And make no mistake about it: this is not about rooting out favoritism to the wealthy in the state’s attorney’s office, as cynically declared by Bill Conway, the billionaire Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) candidate running against her. It’s about getting rid of the first state’s attorney in Cook County history who has actually done something about crooked cops and prosecutors and freed their victims and survivors from unlawful prosecution and incarceration.
