On March 13, Chicago’s City Council voted 38 to 8, with two abstentions, to approve a contract with mega-construction company AECOM for building an $85 million police and fire training facility in the west side neighborhood of Garfield Park. The vote came at the end of an 18-month campaign, initiated by a coalition ultimately supported by over 100 local grassroots organizations, called #NoCopAcademy.
The multiracial and multigenerational coalition brought together organizations that are often siloed in Chicago organizing. Communities that rarely interact—and have even historically been at odds—not only recognized the danger of the academy’s imminent construction, but the need to connect their struggles to resist it. From Muslim youth’s disruption of Rahm Emanuel’s Iftar dinner, to Black leaders joining Organized Communities Against Deportations to head the #ChingaLaMigra march in the Loop. From queer Asian organization Invisible 2 Invincible bringing a #NoCopAcademy contingent to the Lunar New Year Parade, to young people from the south and west sides marching in Uptown against 46th Ward alderman James Cappleman, chair of the zoning committee, and uniting in the fight against school closings across Black neighborhoods. On the day of the budget committee’s final vote on the academy, members of Raise Your Hand IL and the Chicago Teachers Union linked arms with Black and brown youth to block elevators at City Hall, while west siders from Black Workers Matter spoke out against the misuse of TIF funds meant for their communities.
By jumping on the construction of the academy and highlighting the city’s hypocritical claims of being “broke” when it closed half its mental health clinics and 49 public schools only years prior, #NoCopAcademy provided a concrete example of the abolitionist politic in action, asking: Why can’t Chicago find money to heal and educate our communities, yet can always find money to police and incarcerate them? What if we reversed the spending flow, divesting from the failed institution of policing, and investing in the support systems that can prevent crime and violence in the first place?
Benji Hart is an author, artist, and educator living in Chicago, and an organizer with the #NoCopAcademy campaign.
