How Lightfoot and housing activists reached an uneasy détente in the battle for Woodlawn's future

Alex Nitkin

July 22, 2020 |

The TRiiBE |

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1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States, Chicago, Illinois

After tense negotiations and protests, the Coalition for a CBA (Community Benefits Agreement) and the mayor of Chicago agreed to an ordinance guaranteeing a percentage of affordable housing for tenants making below 50% of median income. The coalition expects gentrification to accelerate due to the nearby $500 million Obama Presidential Center, making housing unaffordable for current residents. In addition to negotiations, the coalition organized a blockade of the mayor’s office and set up a “tent city” to emphasize their message. Not all residents want the ordinance and neither side got everything they want.

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How sports institutions have overhauled their images in the past

Dana Jacobson

July 18, 2020 |

CBS News |

Broadcast TV News |

5-15 Minutes

Response Location: United States, Washington, District of Columbia

Renaming the Washington Redskins to remove a racist name and logo will require a difficult and delicate process juggling a host of issues that other professional and college sports franchises have successfully navigated in the past. Often a years-long process, rebranding involves choosing a name and color scheme that replace the harmful imagery with a positive name that passes trademark tests, wins fan support, maintains brand equity and continuity built over decades, and can be reduced to a simple logo that looks good on helmets and in all media, from TV screens to smartphones.

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How a Coalition of New York Activists Revealed Police-Department Secrets

Tom Robbins

July 17, 2020 |

The New Yorker |

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Over 3000 Words

Response Location: United States, New York

When New York legislators abolished a state law that had long shielded police officers’ disciplinary records from public scrutiny, they were not just responding to recent protests but also to activism over many years by reform advocates and families of victims of police violence. Long-running legal challenges had failed to pry the records loose. But activists – opposed by police unions and their allies – had used public testimony, publicity, and their families’ stories to lay the groundwork for changes that then came quickly after George Floyd’s death sparked nationwide protests of police brutality.

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Oakland's Homeless Community Knows How to End the City's Housing Crisis. Will Its Leaders Listen?

Ariel Boone

July 14, 2020 |

Law at the Margins |

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Over 3000 Words

Response Location: United States, Oakland, California

The city of Oakland and local activists use a similar response to the problem – building encampments of "tiny houses" – but there are critical differences between the two programs. An activist group called The Village has taken over parkland or vacant lots to build 23 tiny structures at the heart of self-governed communities that activists hope alleviate homelessness in the short term and lead toward permanent solutions. The city has torn down most of The Village's structures and erected its own two-person sheds in camps governed by the city, an approach that has had mixed success for the people it served.

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As protests against police brutality go global, these Latina moms fight in memory of their sons

Esmeralda Bermudez

July 07, 2020 |

Los Angeles Times |

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1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States, Los Angeles, California

Mothers of young Latino men killed by sheriff’s deputies in East Los Angeles have struggled to pry information from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, but along the way they have formed a network of support groups helping fellow survivors cope with their grief and trauma. The loosely organized groups, populated mainly by women who hardly consider themselves activists, respond to the scenes of police shootings and engage with the mothers of victims in the weeks and months afterward. They have formed a sort of accountability watchdog brigade for a department that resists oversight.

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They envisioned a world without police. Inside Seattle's CHOP zone, protesters struggled to make it real

Elle Reeve Samantha Guff

July 06, 2020 |

CNN |

Broadcast TV News |

3-5 Minutes

Response Location: United States, Seattle, Washington

The police-free zone that emerged during Seattle's protests in June 2020 was meant to demonstrate how safety could be provided by the community itself. But the six-square-block area, called the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) and then Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP), devolved into chaos and deadly violence thanks in part to the inability of organizers and their security team to keep armed people from committing violence. When fistfights turned into multiple shootings, and an ambulance crew could not reach a shooting victim, who died, police finally moved in and cleared the area.

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Black lives matter, LGBTQ groups find common ground in fight against police brutality

Martha Quillin

July 02, 2020 |

The News & Observer |

Multi-Media |

800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States, Raleigh, North Carolina

Black Lives Matters and LGBTQ protests, set to take place on the same day, merged into a single much larger march demanding civil rights. Racism in the LGBTQ community and homophobia in the Black community have previously led to divides, but people who are members of both the Black and LGBTQ communities have advocated inclusivity and broad representation. Both groups have created space to question how multiple oppressions work in society and where there is overlap between the two. Ultimately, members were able to find common ground advocating against police brutality and systemic discrimination.

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Northern Ireland's police transformation may hold lessons for the US

Laura A. Weinstein Donald Beaudette

June 26, 2020 |

The Conversation |

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800-1500 Words

Response Location: Ireland

With lessons for American police-reform advocates, the transformation of the Royal Ulster Constabulary – a militarized enforcer of inequality hated by the people of Northern Ireland – into an entirely new organization was founded on the necessity of community support. Neither easy nor simple, this 20-year process, following 30 years of conflict, intentionally included recruiting local Catholics in order to win local support. Citizen oversight served as another pillar of the new structure, which still has problems but has won critical political support from Sinn Féin, the leading nationalist political party.

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Mural project brought Black voices to a shuttered State Street

Will Cioci

June 23, 2020 |

Wisconsin Watch |

Photojournalism |

1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States, Madison, Wisconsin

A “rapid response” mural project transformed shuttered storefronts with vibrant messages of pride, perseverance, anger, justice, and unity. The project was funded by Arts in Public Places Looking Forward, a new organized formed to support artists impacted by Covid-19. An open call was posted for interested artists, and the project prioritized artists who had been affected by racial violence and injustice. More than 100 commissioned murals, and many more works of graffiti and public art, focused on support for the Black Lives Matter movement or called on an end to police misconduct.

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In Seattle, Protests Over Racial Equity Turn to Land Ownership

Gregory Scruggs

June 23, 2020 |

Bloomberg CityLab |

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800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States, Seattle, Washington

Over 1000 community members gathered to demand officials keep a 2016 promise to give a vacant publicly-owned fire station to the Africatown Community Land Trust. The station is in a historically Black and quickly gentrifying neighborhood and the trust wants to turn it into a resource center to develop the next generation of Black entrepreneurs. As citywide protests for racial equality spread, the city abruptly agreed to turn it over. The group also wants more unused properties turned over to Black community ownership and for the city to develop an anti-gentrification land acquisition fund.

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