Under Rahm Emanuel, Chicago’s racist police terrorism continues

A report by the We Charge Genocide coalition is scheduled to be presented to the United Nations next month. The report consists of firsthand testimony and statistical information that the Chicago police are a racist terrorist organization occupying the non-white communities of Chicago. Among charges listed in the report is a charge that the Chicago Police Department is engaged in an “ongoing, pervasive” campaign of violence targeting the city’s youth of color in a way perpetuated by its “culture of impunity.” The systemic problem of racist terrorism being waged by the Chicago police against non-white people was once the subject of another UN report in 1953.

The report will be present to the United Nations Committee Against Torture in Switzerland. The groups of activist making up the coalition are also calling for the leadership of the Chicago Police Department and the mayor to respond to the charges publicly and they want an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice.

The We Charge Genocide website states,

We Charge Genocide is a grassroots, inter-generational, volunteer effort to center the voices and experiences of the young people most targeted by police and most impacted by police violence in Chicago. We offer a vehicle for needed organizing and social transformation to resist police violence in Chicago. The name, We Charge Genocide, comes from a petition filed to the United Nations in 1951 that documented 153 racial killings and other human rights abuses across the United States, mostly by the local police. Today, police violence in Chicago continues to violate human rights principles as seen in the daily harassment, abuse, and targeting of youth of color by CPD officers.

Published on Oct 20, 2014, Youth Hearing on Police Violence Chicago, IL

Alarming statistics on police terrorism and murder of young non-white men will be presented alongside testimony collected during a community hearing that was held in August. The We Charge Genocide Un Report 2014 is available on the website.