Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot said she woke up in shock and pain for her city on Monday, after crowds overnight broke windows and looted stores in the north side shopping area known as the Magnificent Mile. Following a contentious situation 10 miles away on the city’s south side on Sunday, where police shot a 20-year-old Black man in the back, wounding him, more than 100 people were ultimately arrested in the trouble that flared, apparently in retaliation for the shooting, in the upscale business district. For many of the city’s residents, the events were not so much a shock as a social time bomb going off that had been ticking louder and louder since the spring. While the destruction at the flagship stores made national headlines, weeks of smaller-scale eruptions on the south and west sides of the city had garnered relatively little attention, along with a surge in gun violence, amid a public health, economic and policing crisis crushing already poor neighborhoods. Joseph Williams, a Black south sider, father of five and community organizer, found himself at a nexus on Sunday when he saw a crowd gathering in his neighborhood after the latest police shooting. He was alerted by a Facebook livestream, he said, and came across an all-too familiar incident.“Minutes after I arrived, I watched [the police] pull a man under the crime scene tape and beat him bloody on the sidewalk. Then they put him in the police car like he was the one that did something wrong,” Williams told the Guardian. Williams said he’s no stranger to poverty and police violence. He sees decades of investment in some parts of the city and systemic deprivation in others, like his own, a majority Black community, where life expectancy is 30 years less than for those living on Chicago’s north side, home of the Magnificent Mile.“

All data is taken from the source: https://www.theguardian.com/
Article Link: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/12/chicago-erupts-violence-looting-amid-pandemic-economic-policing-crises


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