OPEN LETTER TO THE MOVEMENT
From Frank Chapman, Field Organizer, CAARPR
A word about the Empowering Communities for Public Safety (ECPS) Coalition and our immediate tasks going forward.
WHO ARE WE?
First of all we are a coalition of community based organizations, faith-based organizations, and labor organizations rooted in Black, Latinx, Arab, East Asian and South Asian communities. We are driven principally by Black led organizations such as Black Lives Matter Chicago, Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression and we have registered (signed up people) with our movement through canvassing and tabling in mostly oppressed communities over 65,000 Chicagoans. Most of this organized support is overwhelmingly Black people who live on the South and West sides of Chicago, but we also have thousands of Latinx in Little Village and Pilsen and white supporters on the Northside side. We have the support of white workers in Bridgeport and Back of the Yards. We have the support of the City Council Causes, such as the Black Caucus, Latino Caucus, Progressive Caucus and Socialist Caucus. We have the support of Trinity United Church of Christ and the ecumenical movement represented by the Community Renewal Society (involving Christians, Muslims, and Jews).
In terms of working-class organizations, we have in our coalition the United Working Families, the Chicago Teachers Union, all the SEIU locals, transportation workers, postal service workers, Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, Black Presidents of over a dozen local unions and the A. Phillip Randolph Institute.
There are also grass roots movements in some 17 Wards that we initiated during the campaign for ECPS, especially in the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 29th, 35th, 39th, 46th, and 48th Wards. We worked closely with people already organized in the 50th Ward. It is this on the ground organizing and agitating that bought Mayor Lightfoot to the negotiating table and got us 36 votes in the City Council.
Our coalition included people who were in the Defund and Abolition movements, but we never claimed to represent those movements. Not one time during the negotiations from January to July did we put demands on the table to defund or abolish the police. Our principal demand was and continues to be community control over the police as the key to greater safety in our communities. Our coalition is not taking a position against defunding or abolition; we just don’t believe these demands can be implemented if we don’t have the political power to implement them. Our struggle is fundamentally a democratic struggle that addresses the demand for racial justice in our communities. For us the first step is advancing the struggle for community control of the police through the democratic processes available to us. And this is precisely what our ECPS Ordinance is doing, it is centering policing in the needs of the community by empowering the community to make policy.
THE BASIS OF OUR SUCCESS AND GOING FORWARD
The ECPS Coalition was started by the Chicago Alliance (CAARPR) and the Grass Roots Alliance for Police Accountability (GAPA) as a united front against Mayor Lightfoot’s efforts to have no police accountability at all. We succeeded in stopping the mayor, but this success was predicated on our movement making some concessions. Our United Front agreed to make these concessions, but we also committed the ECPS Coalition to continue to fight for our demands going forward.
Now that we have negotiated and compromised with the powers that be in order to have critical community input into policing in Chicago, we must maintain this coalition to consolidate our partial victories, to hold on to the ground we have won to gain more ground and more victories.
Those who maintain that ECPS is not a victory are clearly opting out of the struggle to consolidate what we have gained. Objectively speaking they are uniting with the Mayor and the Chicago Tribune and the FOP. Mayor Lightfoot is projecting herself as the sole benefactor of the ECPS Ordinance and the Tribune, and Sun times newspapers are saying the same thing. The FOP, coming from their extreme right position, is saying that the Mayor has empowered “criminals” and BLM protestors to interfere with policing.
The forces of disunity don’t want us to continue forward in united struggle, but we must go forward. We must now reorganize our people to wage the fight for implementation of ECPS and to pass our Referendum Ordinance. Those who say they don’t want to work on nothing, but the referendum are the same defeatists who never worked on ECPS in the first place. Consolidating victories is a fundamental principle of political warfare.
Let’s start now to fight to have our people on the interim commission which will go into effect in January. Let us start now slating candidates for the election of 66 commissioners in 2023. Let us start now pushing the Alderpersons in our coalition to fight for the passing of the Referendum Ordinance. It’s a lot to do so now is the time for preparations for the battles ahead.
The Struggle Continues!!! ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE!!!
Yours in united struggle,
Frank Chapman, Field Organizer, CAARPR