What if #ChicagoPD and #BlackLivesMatter started to trend together?

All eyes are on the Chicago Police Department.

Or, more accurately, on a TV show called Chicago PD.

So #ChicagoPD is trending on Twitter.

Sophie Bush tweets about Chicago PD -- and the Twittersphere lights up . . .

Great. So how about an ep about Homan Square?

Or Rekia Boyd?

Or Flint Farmer?

Or John Burge?

What if #ChicagoPD and #BlackLivesMatter started to trend together?


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People around the world reading the exposé in The Guardian today about the thousands of (mostly African-American) people denied their rights while being detained at a secret Chicago Police Deparment location at Homan Square might wonder if anyone in Chicago is doing anything in an attempt to get control of the police.

(See CHICAGO: Twilight Zone? Constitution-Free Zone? (What's it look like to YOU?) )

The State's Attorney for the Chicago area finally got around to bringing a charge against a police officer who shot and killed a citizen. Why, I wondered, didn't Anita Alvarez charge him with murder? Then I remembered my Chicago vocabulary lesson.

(See Chicago Vocabulary Lesson: "Overcharging" and "Undercharging" )

In the city where I live, "normal" or "right" or "acceptable" has been given a brutal construction by the power structure:

Police encounter black man on street
Police shoot black man
Black man dies
(Business as usual in Chicago.)

 (See We need to get the police off the streets of Chicago. QED.)

More than any other part of the day, I was moved by the assurance with which Alderman Joe Moore, the resolution's sponsor, stated, "I expect this resolution will pass UNANIMOUSLY."

(See summary of testimony offered in Why Chicago Must Become a Torture-Free Zone )












A campaign exists to bring about a democratically-elected Civilian Police Accountability Council (CPAC) in Chicago. The campaign would involve the people in electing the watchers of the police, and put the ultimate control of (and responsibility for) the police in the hands of the citizens of Chicago.

(See Does a Civilian Police Accountability Council (CPAC) need to be part of a "new plan of Chicago"? ) 



Eventually, in large part due to Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, the United States was converted from a country in which a small number of people thought slavery needed to be ended into a country determined to act to end slavery. This literary work took the movement wide, and it took it deep.

Why is a novel an important tool for creative resistance?


(See Creative Resistance 101: Uncle Tom's Cabin )