By Ash P and Gio Araujo
Chicago, IL – On October 14, over 50 Chicagoans gathered at Casa Michoacan in the Pilsen neighborhood for a town hall meeting on the ongoing campaign to end collaborations between the Chicago Police Department and federal agents. This town hall, organized by the Immigrant Rights Working Committee of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (IRWC of CAARPR), served as both a celebration of the progress that has been made on the campaign and as an open discussion of how to move forward.
This town hall comes after a recent victory in the IRWC’s campaign. After a year of pressure and mobilization at the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability’s (CCPSA , the city’s police accountability board) monthly meetings, a resolution was passed by the commission to hold special quarterly hearings regarding how CPD implements and enforces the Welcoming City Ordinance. This win signifies a new phase in this campaign.
Louise Carhart opened up the discussion addressing the basis to the campaign, stating, “A lot of people were very upset because they had seen their communities torn apart by ICE in the preceding months, and had seen very little action on any CPD collaborations that had taken place.”
She continued, “The CCPSA would be where that accountability starts, given their position at the top of the accountability bureau in Chicago. After that, there wasn’t a lot of follow up from the CCPSA, despite repeated community outcry about this issue, despite increasing reports of CPD and ICE collaboration.”
Omar Flores, a leading member of the IRWC, and someone who has been on the ground to document police collaboration, talked about how CPD escalated confrontations between federal agents and community members.
Flores stated, “A lot of CPD’s justifications to how they respond to these situations and why they do ‘crowd control’ is because they say they’re there to calm the situation. But any of us who have been in the movement for any amount of time, or even just in communities that police tend to arrest, know that they are not de-escalators. They are escalators, that is their whole goal. To go in there and make the situation worse.”
A member of Pilsen Unidos por Nuestro Orgullo (PUNO) spoke up during the discussion, “We have seen in the last month or so instances where there have been known ICE vehicles in police-only areas. This is something that we also will have to go to the CCPSA and COPA [Civilian Office for Police Accountability] you know, to raise the alarm.” They referred to instances where ICE agents have used CPD parking lots as staging grounds for raids.
Investigations into these events are currently underway, and the struggle against police collaboration is growing across the city. It has become a major criteria to the selection of the next Chicago Police Department superintendent. The campaign is far from over, and the IRWC is ready to mobilize for meetings and to the streets.
#ChicagoIL #IL #ImmigrantRights #ICE #CPD #OppressedNationalities
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