DNA Info: Protesters Plan Citywide 'Walkout' From Work to Call for Rahm's Resignation
Protesters are again calling for the resignations of Mayor Rahm Emanuel and state’s attorney Anita Alvarez, this time by telling people to leave their jobs Wednesday and rally Downtown.
About 1,500 people say on Facebook they’ll join the “citywide walkout” Wednesday. The protest begins at noon at Daley Plaza, 50 W. Washington St.
The rally is planned by several Chicagoans who are familiar faces at Downtown protests. One of the organizers is Rousemary Vega, who has spoken out previously about school closings and Riot Fest’s move to Douglas Park. Another is Lamon Reccord, the teenager known for staring down police in recent rallies. They’re not affiliated with any group, just one cause: getting Emanuel and Alvarez out of office.
ABC 7: Rahm Emanuel's approval rating sinks to 18%
A new poll suggests that Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s support is falling sharply following the release of two police shooting videos and a federal investigation of the police department. Many critics say Emanuel has lost his credibility with the public and at City Hall.
On Wednesday morning, Emanuel will address the Chicago City Council as he tries to rebuild his political standing that a new poll says has sunk to its lowest point ever.
The aldermen ABC7 talked to agreed that when the council reconvenes, it will hear from a mayor weakened by a credibility crisis.
Daily Herald: How teachers get paid more in retirement
Pensions were meant to provide an income stream during retirement.
They’re doing that and more among former Illinois educators, who in many cases are making more in retirement than in most of the years they spent in the classroom.
Nowhere is that more apparent than in Leyden High School District 212, where nearly 55 percent of the district’s retired teachers and administrators are making more than the average of their four highest-paid years, the salary benchmark used by the Illinois Teachers’ Retirement System to determine starting pension amounts.
Crains: How to fix Chicago Public Schools
When it comes to student success, policy experts pretty much agree that you can’t get exceptional achievement without a stellar principal in charge. The trouble in Chicago is our best principals are disappearing and the pipeline to replace them is virtually nonexistent.
In the past three years, almost half of Chicago’s roughly 650 principals left the district, with little, if any, notice. This is according to a comprehensive survey released in early November by the Chicago Public Education Fund, a nonprofit group often at the center of Chicago school reform.
Vice: Why the Agency That's Supposed to Hold Chicago Cops Accountable Is Such a Failure
When Lorenzo Davis arrived at the corner of 53rd Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Drive on October 12, 2014, he found a familiar scene: A black man had been shot and killed by a Chicago police officer, and detectives were running the show. So Davis, an investigative supervisor with Chicago’s Independent Police Review Authority (IPRA), started working outside the crime tape, looking for nearby surveillance cameras that may have captured the incident—the fatal police shooting of 25-year-old Ronald “Ronnie-man” Johnson.
He knocked on doors in case anyone in the graystone apartments that line King Drive across from Washington Park had seen the shooting. Davis hoped to find people milling about the sad scene and to learn what they knew, what they saw, and what they heard. But he found no witnesses and no cameras.
So he waited.
CBS Chicago: Decades Of Complaints Against Chicago Cops Are On The Verge Of Being Destroyed
In 2014, the Illinois appellate court ruled that records of police misconduct are public information. In theory, access to police complaint data would have given Chicagoans the kind of view of police misconduct no other city has ever been privy to.
But a majority of the complaints were never released. Citing their contract with the city, Chicago’s Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) was able to get an injunction on most of the data dating back to 1967.
Instead of almost five decades of complaints against the police, the city was only able to release data going back to 2011. Combined with data obtained from two civil lawsuits against the city, this information can be seen at the Citizens Police Data Project (CPDP), courtesy of Chicago non-profit Invisible Institute.
Chicago Sun Times: Emanuel addresses Council, city: 'I'm sorry'
Mayor Rahm Emanuel told the Chicago City Council Wednesday that the city is at a “defining moment” in how its Police Department treats the residents of the city.
“We can either be defined by what we have failed to do – or what we choose to do,” he said, as he continued to try to contain the political damage and public-relations fallout from the release of the fatal shooting by police of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald.
NBC Chicago: Protesters Call for Mayor Emanuel's Resignation in Citywide Walkout
Hundreds of protesters demanding an investigation of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration flooded downtown Chicago streets Wednesday afternoon as part of a citywide walkout just hours after Emanuel publicly apologized for the shooting death of Laquan McDonald and vowed to fix broken Chicago police practices.
The group chanted “Whose city? Our city,” “Who’s got to go? Rahm’s got to go,” and “No more killer cops.”
Demonstrators gathered at Daley Plaza at noon and started marching on North Dearborn. Police briefly detained two people during the protest near Dearborn and Washington as several other activists gathered around the vehicle chanting “Hell no, we won’t go.” The two demonstrators were later released.
Chicago Tribune: Google Fiber superfast Internet service may come to Chicago
Google Fiber said Tuesday it was eyeing expansion of its superfast Internet service to Chicago and Los Angeles.
In a company blog post, Jill Szuchmacher, director of Google Fiber expansion, said the company will work with city leaders to collect information and study factors that could affect construction of such a network.
The company says its service offers speeds of up to 1,000 megabits per second and is already live in Kansas City, Mo.; Austin, Texas; and Provo, Utah. Pricing for Google Fiber in Kansas City begins at $70 for 1 gigabit per second broadband service and costs $130 with the addition of TV service. Szuchmacher said it was too early to estimate what pricing would be in Chicago.