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Tag Archives: alderman
CPD Reportedly Guarding Chicago Alderman
Jennifer Keiper, WLS-AM 890 News
A Chicago alderman is reportedly under police guard after the Chicago Sun Times reports he received a threat from a street gang.
Southwest Side Alderman Raymond Lopez has been vocal about this opposition to the street gangs suspected in several high profile shootings in his 15th ward.
“The wake-up call has been here and it’s time for us to act. It is time for each and every one of us to start looking at what’s going on on our blocks,” said Ald. Lopez.
Lopez’s comment came after a weekend shooting near a memorial.
Chicago police believe the two people who were shot and killed during a memorial for a man fatally shot earlier that day were all members of the same street gang and were likely killed by a rival gang.
Copyright 2017 WLS-AM 890 News
Emanuel appoints Sophia King to fill 4th Ward aldermanic seat
(CHICAGO) Mayor Rahm Emanuel has appointed a “longtime community advocate” to replace his staunchest African-American ally, Ald. Will Burns (4th), who stepped down earlier this year, the Sun-Times is reporting.
“For almost 30 years, Sophia King has not just lived in the 4th Ward, she has worked to improve the quality of life for everyone who lives there,” Mayor Emanuel said in an emailed statement. “She has led initiatives to increase education, recreation, employment and safety, as well as quality affordable housing. She will be a tireless advocate for her constituents as she serves on City Council.”
King was expected to appear before the City Council’s Rules Committee, then face a confirmation vote in front of the full City Council on Wednesday, according to the mayor’s office.
King is the founder and president of Harriet’s Daughters, a nonprofit group of professional women that helps find jobs for African-Americans, among other things. King is also a community advocate and volunteer, the mayor’s office said. King was president of the Kenwood Park Advisory Council from 2008 to 2015.
“I’m ready to roll up my sleeves and get to work. I believe the only solutions we are missing are the ones we won’t work on together,” King said in a statement. “I look forward to collaborating with all people who want to make a positive difference in the city that I love, and to continue to position the 4th Ward as an example of transparent, innovative and community focused work that lifts all residents. I appreciate the confidence of Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his willingness to engage a new voice.”
Burns — who helped the mayor improve his South Side ground game on the way to capturing nearly 58 percent of the black vote in the April 7, 2015, runoff — resigned his seat earlier this year, accepting a job with Airbnb.
Alderman to Rahm: Say “I’m Sorry”
By Bill Cameron, WLS News
(CHICAGO) In the police brutality scandal, some of African American aldermen are calling on Mayor Rahm Emanuel to apologize to them for what happened.
Emanuel is promising a major speech about the scandal to the aldermen at Wednesday’s City Council meeting. Here’s what candid Ald. Carrie Austin (34th) thinks the mayor should say.
“The same thing that we’ve asked the president of the United States, and I’m not talking about Barack [Obama], say “I’m sorry.”
Listen to Bill Cameron’s report for WLS radio news here:
Austin’s colleague Ald. Emma Mitts (37th) agrees and says she’s already apologized to her constituents for not keeping a closer eye on the $5 million Laquan McDonald legal settlement. These and several other aldermen also like the idea of being able to view police video in private before voting on legal settlements.
@ 2015 WLS News
Sandi Jackson Reports to Prison
By Bill Cameron, WLS News
Former-Chicago Alderman Sandi Jackson, wife of convicted ex-congressman Jesse Jackson has reported to prison today.
Sandi Jackson reported to a minimum security federal prison in West Virginia and became federal inmate #32453-016.
She’s doing a full year in prison for filing the false tax return that did not declare the money she and former-U.S. Rep. Jesse Jr. (D-Chicago) looted from his campaign fund.
Reporting to prison is a stark reversal of the promise Alderman Jackson made in December of 2012.
“I will finish my term. I intend to finish my term unless something catastrophic happens,” Jackson said. “I could step outside and get his by a bus today.”
But of course something catastrophic did happen and Jackson will serve a one year sentence because of the scandal.
@ 2015 WLS News
Alderman JoAnn Thompson has died
(CHICAGO) Ald. JoAnn Thompson (16th) has died, a source confirmed Tuesday morning.
Thompson, 58, had been hospitalized recently with heart-related ailment and had undergone surgery, the Chicago Sun-Times reports.
Her re-election campaign had been getting support from a Super-PAC, Chicago Forward, formed to support the re-election of Mayor Rahm Emanuel. That political action committee has selected 17 aldermen to support.
A Whole Foods grocery store has broken ground in her Englewood ward, one of the major developments of her tenure.
On the July 2014 day when ground was broken on that grocery, she recalled attending the International Council of Shopping Centers convention in Las Vegas six years earlier to urge retailers to take a chance on Englewood. She came away empty and despondent.
“Everything was fine until they said,’Where are you from?’ I said, “Chicago” and they said “What neighborhood are you from?’ When I said ‘Englewood,’ nobody wanted to be bothered with us.”
“It was such a sad day. I was crying out to God, saying, ‘What am I going to do? What can I do to bring things to my ward?’”
Until her death, Thompson had been fighting for survival in a race against a City Council colleague: Ald. Toni Foulkes (15th). The two incumbents were thrown into the same South Side ward under the new city ward map.
Foulkes, a member of the City Council’s Progressive Caucus, is almost certain to emerge as the frontrunner now in a race that includes four lesser known candidates. But, Foulkes didn’t want to talk about the politics after getting news of Thompson’s death.
“My heart, my love and my condolences go out to her family and her children. It’s overwhelming. It’s a colleague. We knew each others’ families,” Foulkes said.
“All I knew was that she was in the hospital. I didn’t know any details.”
Foulkes said she was forced to run against Thompson by necessity, but it was never a comfortable thing.
“We were always friends. Me running in the 16th Ward was never personal. It was because 40 percent of my ward was remapped into the 16th Ward,” Foulkes said.
Thompson was one of 17 incumbents in tough races to benefit from an outpouring of spending by Chicago Forward, the $2 million super-PAC created to re-elect Mayor Rahm Emanuel and strengthen his City Council majority.
Chicago Forward had blanketed the 16th Ward with direct mail pieces touting Thompson’s support for Emanuel’s plan to raise the city’s minimum wage to $13-an-hour by 2019 and her support for creating jobs in her impoverished South Side ward, in part, by bringing a Whole Foods to the food desert.
Before becoming an alderman, she had been a Cook County Jail officer, holding the rank of lieutenant.
Thompson was born Sept. 18, 1956, and had survived a period of being homeless in the early 1990s.
When she was elected to the council, she joined forces with Mayor Rahm Emanuel in cracking down on flavored tobacco. She had quit smoking in 2012 after 44 years.
“It only took me 44 years to find out that I was killing myself with smoking,” she said on the day she got a plaque for her efforts to prevent another generation of minority children from taking up the deadly habit.
“It was the hardest thing to do, to stop smoking,” she said. “Smoking for so long really took a toll on my health.”
–Sun-Times
© Copyright 2015 Sun-Times Media, LLC
