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Originally published on chicago.suntimes.com 06/17/2020 | Image: Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times
Editor’s note: This article deviates from Sun-Times practice by spelling out a racial slur — an exception made after the reporter and her editors concluded that spelling the word conveys the true pain of the racism the subject experienced.
The past few weeks have been a pretty “poignant moment” for Toni Preckwinkle.
They rekindled painful memories of growing up in St. Paul, Minnesota, and her walks home from school in the 1950s — when white children would try to beat up Preckwinkle and her younger brother “for the crime of being a nigger,” she said.
“I often say, whatever else happens to me in life, I will never be 7 or 8-years-old and dreading walking home from school and getting beat up again,” Preckwinkle said on Wednesday. “It’s a sort of odd way to frame your experience, I guess, but it’s given me the courage to deal with a lot of other things in life. … It puts things into perspective.”
The 73-year-old Cook County Board president is drawing on that perspective now, hopeful for meaningful change — including “dramatically” reducing police funding and licensing officers — but not deluding herself that trying to address centuries of racism will come easily.
“How the police department relates to the community has to drastically change,” Preckwinkle said.
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Originally published on wbbm780.radio.com 06/19/2020 | Image: WBBM Newsradio/Craig Dellimore
Protestors across the country have called for the defunding of police departments in the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and one local government has an answer.
The Cook County Board during a virtual meeting Thursday passed a resolution that called to “redirect money from the failed and racist systems of policing and into social services.”
"We have certainly reached a moment in our history where we have to come to terms with the state sponsored terror that has ruined and destroyed black lives for generations," he said.
Republican Commissioner Sean Morrison, of Palos Park, said he is happy to discuss law enforcement reform, but said the resolution was loaded with "offensive terms" that labeled officers, judges, and prosecutors as racist.
Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle is already grappling with a pandemic-sized budget deficit, and she said there will not be any radical changes in law enforcement funding. According to the Sun-Times, Preckwinkle previously estimated the pandemic had cost the county $200 million in lost revenue “and that number of course just keeps climbing,” she said Thursday.
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Originally published on wgntv.com 06/16/2020 | Image: AP
Governor J.B. Pritzker on Tuesday approved a massive expansion in voting by mail, a plan derided by Republicans nationally.
The Democrat said allowing voters to mail in ballots for the November presidential election would limit polling place crowds and COVID-19 transmission.
Republicans, led by President Donald Trump, have argued it opens the door to fraud.
The law requires that vote-by-mail applications be sent to every voter who voted through the mail for any election since 2018. It even directs reminders to be sent in the fall and authorizes the Illinois State Board of Elections to publicize and ease the process.
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Last week, the Forest Preserves shared a statement in response to the most recent events in a legacy of systemic and individual racism in our country. As an agency in the most diverse county in Illinois, we work hard to welcome everyone into the preserves. But we recognize that people of color often feel unsafe and unwelcome in natural outdoor places. The Forest Preserves acknowledges that we did far too little for far too long to correct this.
After an officer in our police force failed to protect a young woman during a racist incident two years ago, we immediately understood we had more work to do. We want to give some insight into what that has meant in your Forest Preserves of Cook County.
Building on an existing commitment to equity, we had tough conversations with staff and with community leaders and developed a plan to move forward. As first step, we partnered on a new annual rally in the preserves to celebrate diversity, hosted by the Northwest Side Coalition Against Racism and Hate, and convened a summit of Cook County, Forest Preserves and community leaders around policy and training reforms.
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