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When protests broke out across Chicago following the 2015 release of video showing the police shooting of Laquan McDonald, JaMal Green was on the frontlines demanding changes in the city.

Five years later, hes back at it following the death of yet another black death at the hands of police. Since then, hes run for mayor, been a surrogate for Bernie Sanders and become a radio host for Soul 106.3. Nowadays, hes got a bit more political capital and the mayors ear.

Green spoke with The Chicago Reporter to discuss the current protests, where this movement is headed and whats going down on the ground.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

Since its not Mayor Green, what is your title?

(Laughs) The mayor. The mayor without the title and salary, but community advocate is fine.

What is your relationship with Mayor Lori Lightfoot?

Were pretty close friends. And I advise, if she needs it.

For those who dont know your background, howd you get into this? Whats your first memory of organizing?

It was actually about 10 years ago when I was about 15. I was going to Phillips High School. It was a turnaround school so they didnt have folks that did anything with the young people. They allowed me and my history teacher to do all the organizing for young people in the school. Essentially, what ended up happening was we organized our first peace march that went down 47th and King Drive to 63rd and King Drive and demanded peace. It was my first march. I was 15 and I organized hundreds of young people, lots of politicians, and some of everybody was there. That was probably my first taste of real organizing and then from there, going around the country.

What are the current protests about?

The current protests started because of George Floyd. This man was kneeled on by a police officer with the help of three other officers and killed in Minneapolis. The protests, now, is a spark from all the cases, not just George Floyd. He created the spark and made people start protesting in 50 states against police departments that brutalize the communities and brutalize the schools all around this country. What people are stepping up and saying is that theyre tired of this racist system thats been oppressing them for so many years and now its time for a change.

Its really a revolution. Youve never seen people step up in 50 states all with unified messages and that is the case now. So it started with George Floyd and sparked around the country.

What have you seen in the streets in the last week? What is the media missing?

Most of the protests, I believe, were peaceful. But when you got people that are fed up, you got folks who are going to act out in other ways. Its a small group of people, but somehow theyve taken up all the media.

Riots have always been the language of the unheard. Riots have been here since the beginning of time, since the Boston Tea Party on down. People riot and loot for less reasons like the Cubs winning the World Series.

Folks here are arriving because they dont want to see another black man die by the hands of police. Then you have those who have taken advantage of the situation. They have just literally went in and was filling things and not being a part of the movement. You have a few different groups of people.

How does this feel different from the Laquan McDonald protests?

Whats different is that this was something that was enough for folks to just be fed up. This is that fed up moment. It took a long time for a case to make people fed up. We watched a lot of videos, but now people are at a point where theyre just tired of seeing these videos. They already got PTSD waiting on the next one. At the end of the day, theyre just tired of seeing these videos. This was that spark that made people step up all over the country, instead of folks just looking at one city and seeing what they do about it. They said we gone get up, we gone do something as well and be in solidarity.

What are the demands? What would have to happen to end the protests?

I dont know if you can end these protests with demands, but there are definitely demands on the table in all cities.

The bigger demand is to defund the police department. Were giving billions of dollars, here in Chicago, billions to police each year. One-point-six billion just for payroll, $165 million for police misconduct, $33 million for the schools, $10 million for the park districts. They got contracts everywhere. We got $2 billion that were giving police departments. What folks are asking for is to defund the police and move that money to more preventative measures. We cant police our way out of anything. All it is causing is more brutality in these communities.

For example, one of the demands that theyre talking about today is they want CPD out of CPS schools. Minneapolis was the first to do it. Basically, were spending $33 million on policing our kids. We should be spending $33 million on counselors, clinic staff members and programming for our young people that we dont have. The majority of schools on the South and West sides dont have one person in the school to deal with counseling, or a clinical staff member. So how do we deal with mental health in these schools? We are not.

Instead, were policing them, which causes black and brown young people especially those with disabilities to be referred to law enforcement for adolescent behavior, more than any kid.

Its better to spend that [money] on preventative and restorative measures for the schools, instead of policing. Thats a demand here, to defund the police and put the money where it should be so that we can reduce crime, educate better and create better citizens.

What do you tell the folks who may be angry and may want to act out?

We shouldnt look at this and say looting should stop, but killing the black man is horrible. We have to flip and prioritize correctly. Black men have to stop being killed by police. We know the looting is horrible, but we got to focus on human life. We cant focus on property; it can always be rebuilt.

There are some who are acting out not in the name of the movement, but taking advantage of the movement. Were going to hold them accountable. Whats important is that we stay focused on this racist system, and whats happening to folks like George Floyd, Eric Garner and Laquan McDonald and get them to understand the message and the narratives.

Lets not forget about white people doing it: looting and rioting and burning stuff down and knocking stuff over for something far less. People have acted out all over this country for many years. Dont allow this protest to make you look at a different message because essentially what it will show is that you have racist intent.

Its just like folks who looked at Colin Kaepernick when he kneeled and turned it into the flag and America. It was just about police brutality and they never talked about it. Folks only did that because they did not want to talk about the realities of America. Realities that are happening in these communities.

I need folks to understand that privilege. I need folks to listen, try to be allies and support.

Who are the young leaders on the ground that folks should be paying attention to to understand the moment?

There are a lot of young people that are on the ground and are doing some good work. You got GoodKids, MadCity doing good work. I got a couple mentees in that group. You got folks like Assatas Daughters doing some good work as well.

Theyre a lot of younger activists who are just stepping forward and fighting folks like Diego Garcia, Jalen Kobayashi and Alycia Kamil.

You were also on the ground in Pilsen and Little Village, where tensions between black and brown folks are running high. What was that situation like?

They try to take the focus off of the movement by putting Latinos and black folks against each other and thats a problem. What I wanted to do was show up and basically say, listen, right now we got to fight together, okay? And at the end of the day, we dont have time for beef. We dont have time for black folks to brutalize these communities. We just dont have time for it. At the end of the day, all of our problems are the same so either you guys can get behind us in this movement so that everybody can win or not. But right now, we got to cease this beef for the community and make peace.

Theres still some work that needs to be done because you got some knuckleheads who just do their own thing, but we got to keep pushing the message of what this is about and keep controlling our narrative.

Where do we go from here?

Its gonna be a long haul. You just got to keep fighting all the way until we get some sort of justice. The young peoples now stepping up, let them lead.

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'It's really a revolution': Ja'Mal Green on protests taking over Chicago and the nation and what's next for the movement - Chicago Reporter

Representative Ron Dellums (D-CA) addresses an anti-Vietnam War demonstration on the steps of the US Capitol building in Washington DC, May 5, 1971. (Photo by Dave Watt/Keystone/Getty Images)

Demagogue that he is and that hes toyed with becoming since well before he ran for president, Donald Trump used his June 2 rant against looting and thuggery after George Floyds murder to bang the drum for a civil war that hes been toying with starting ever since he took out full-page newspaper ads in 1989, calling for the death penalty and greater police presence even after the charges against young black men in the Central Park jogger attack were found to be entirely baseless. As a candidate in 2016, he toyed with civil war again by musing that Second Amendment people might thwart Hillary Clintons prospect of appointing judges.

But now Trump isnt just musing or experimenting. He has made official subordinates such as US Attorney General William Barr and General Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States military, agents of thuggery itself against American citizens exercising their Constitutional rights peaceably in the nations capital. He has done more than just toy with deploying the American military against them. For these and many other reasons, Trumps administration is no longer legitimate or sustainable, and those who assist him in it are traitors to the republic.

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BY Leonard Steinhorn | July 27, 2017

Yet how much more legitimate and sustainable was the republic that preceded Trump and that elected him in 2016? It was already corrupted enough to have reduced even a president as well-qualified and well-intentioned as Barack Obama to a figurehead. Several presidents earlier, one morning in 1968, walking across the Yale campus to a class, I came upon a small, solemn demonstration in which three seniors were refusing conscription into the Vietnam War. The government says were criminals, one of them said as I leaned in to listen, but we say that the government is criminal for waging this war.

For all I knew, these three were about to be arrested on the spot, and I felt arrested morally by their example, carrying as I did a draft card like the ones they were returning to the government at the risk of serving five years in prison.

That was when I first understood that it isnt mainly a tragic Lyndon Johnson, a scheming Richard Nixon, or even an ignorant, pathological Donald Trump who make a republic and its political culture and economy illegitimate and unsustainable. A republic gets bad leadership when its foundations and wellsprings have become so corrupted that millions of its citizens are looking to escape from the rigors and rewards of citizenship itself. They look for side deals, practice predatory lending and marketing, succumb to enervating, addictive consumption and embrace scapegoating that displaces the blame for their degradation. They do all this under the guidance of authorities whose myth-making seems to explain, ennoble and offer vengeful outlets for their resentment and demoralization.

Trumps crude but mind-bogglingly effective myth-making is forcing people like me, who considered the society of the late 1960s frightening and maniacally riven enough, to reckon more darkly now with what destroys or regenerates a republic. Fortuitous developments that enabled the American Revolution and that covered a multitude of sins for two centuries with a seemingly boundless frontier and protective oceans are now being displaced by swift undertows that would swamp any new birth of republican freedom.

Its hard to imagine would-be defenders of republican civic virtue winning the civil war that has been ignited on mountains of tinder accumulated within the republic itself. Defenders of the republic would stand little chance of trying to emulate embattled farmers who as if anticipating the Second Amendments recognition of well-regulated peoples militias, fired the shot heard round the world at troops of the only established government of their time and place in 1775 in Concord, Massachusetts.

A republic gets bad leadership when its foundations and wellsprings have become so corrupted that millions of its citizens are looking to escape from the rigors and rewards of citizenship itself.

Its just as hard to imagine many of todays young Americans emulating Nathan Hale, a 1773 Yale graduate who was reported to have said, I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country just before he was hanged in 1776 for spying on troops of the British Empire in the name of a nascent republic. But maybe Edward Snowden is the Hale of our own time, winning only exile and virtual imprisonment in Moscow for warning against unwarranted surveillance by an unaccountable national security state.

Its also hard to imagine many people emulating the strategically directed, war-painted looters in the Boston Tea Party of 1773 by breaking into headquarters or warehouses of big pharma conglomerates such as Pfizer, Inc. and dumping their over-priced products into rivers. The original Tea Party delighted John Adams, but provoked King George III to declare, The die is cast, foreclosing any prospect of reconciliation short of imperial victory or defeat. What chance of victory would a second American revolution have now against todays imperial power? The self-styled heralds of a second Revolution the frivolous Abbie Hoffman, the violent, self-immolating Weathermen and Black Panthers didnt teach us anything we can use now. Even the true and urgent recent claims of Black Lives Matter and #MeToo havent wholly survived the seductive, corrupting illusion that breaking a structures glass ceilings necessarily improves its walls and foundations. Too often it merely reshuffles the social inequality and decay that those walls protect.

But what about the more-rational, well-organized, far-seeing committees of correspondence that produced the Continental Congress? Its Declaration of Independence accused King George III of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny that might be lodged just as credibly against Trump. For example:

In every stage of these oppressionsour repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Disheartening though is to consider how aptly such charges fit the wayward president of a republic whose founders overthrew a monarch, some recent experiences in this country and around the world suggest that massive well-organized, non-violent movements can dislodge tyranny.

The late writer Jonathan Schells The Unconquerable World shows unforgettably how unarmed, marginalized people have brought down vast empires and national-security states in British India, Soviet Eastern Europe and regimes of segregation in the American South and in South Africa.

Schell demonstrates that tyrants have often foundered with refreshed ignorance by flooding streets with soldiers and police and by scrambling to shut down or discredit news media. Although tyrannys sophisticated enablers and apologists dismiss democratic yearnings for candor and equality, those yearnings prove irrepressible time and again.

Schell, channeling the political philosophy of Hannah Arendt and others, shows that power and authority flow not from those who are daunting, dazzling or wealthy, but from seemingly powerless people who, if well-organized and disciplined, stop obeying them and reconfigure their lives together without permission or reward from above. Ultimately, its not approval by the powerful that counts, but courage and skill to reconfigure power itself against whats approved in think thanks and chancelleries.

Some of Schells most telling examples show how the American Revolution began in the hearts and minds of the people, as John Adams put it, years before that first shot was fired at Concord. Even during the riven, often tragic 1960s, impoverished American black churchgoers, many of them nave, unarmed and trembling, but well-organized and brave, walked into Southern squares ringed by armed men, discrediting their segregationist oppressors in other Americans eyes. It may indicate not how far this country has regressed since then, but how far it has come, that whites have been as numerous as people of color in the demonstrations following George Floyds murder.

But theres much more to say about how greed, power lust and racism have been lathered together into the American republics foundations ever since the abduction and commodification of the first African slaves in 1619. That foundation remains evident through the exploitation and endangerment of essential workers in the current pandemic. In a review essay forthcoming in Democracy, I posit that racism is deep and damaging enough that it causes anti-racists as well as racists to obsess about it so much that they fail to challenge forthrightly the equally deep greed and power lust that antedated racism and intensify it with scarcities that drive people into defensive, warring ethnoracial camps.

Trump and police officers who kill unarmed black people are carriers and walking casualties of this toxic brew more than they are its causes. In a six-minute talk prompted by the recent demonstrations, Bernie Sanders has it right: Unless and until we can reconfigure the capitalist walls and scarcities of our racist society, racisms many modulations and mutations will generate American demagogues even more deft and alluring than Donald Trump.

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The Die Is Cast. Can the Republic Be Saved? - BillMoyers.com

A NORTH Berwick couple celebrating their diamond anniversary might have missed out on a meal with the family but were still able to enjoy their special day with a tea party in their back garden.

Pat and Ian Anderson have lived in the town since 1967 and celebrated 60 years of marriage on May 14.

Pat, 84, was born in Turton, Lancashire, and Ian, 85, is from Kilmarnock.

The pair met at a dance in Kensington Town Hall while they were both working in London: Pat at Williams & Glyns Bank and Ian for the civil service.

The couple married in London on May 14, 1960 and have three children Carol, Jan and Chris and four grandchildren: Christopher, Lindsay, Art and Rudi.

Ian is a keen walker and cyclist, often taking journeys from North Berwick to Kingston and Yellowcraig.

Pat not only enjoys gardening and keeping fit but is also a sociable person who enjoys spending time with her family and friends.

Daughter Carol said: Originally we were going to book a meal at Osteria for extended family and friends but that was not to be.

The couple celebrated instead with a tea party in their garden at Marmion Road.

Carol said: Both enjoyed a glass of champagne with scones on the day.

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Diamond couple toast special anniversary with garden party - East Lothian Courier

You are patriotically invited to attend an open meeting of the Saint Augustine Tea Party on Tuesday evening, May 26th at 6:30 p.m., held at the Growers Alliance Cafe and Gift Shop, located at 322 Anastasia Boulevard. The evenings special guest will be Stephen E. Grable, MD speaking about the Wuhan Coronavirus.

Dr. Grable is an internal medicine specialist located in Jacksonville Beach since 1996. Graduating from Wright State University School of Medicine, Dayton, Ohio in 1986, he has been practicing for 34 years. With his vast educational and clinical experience in both conventional and alternative medicine, he will be discussing the recent updated guidelines for the Coronavirus, including Vaccines.

Questions and answers will follow, time permitting. Please join us for a very informative evening. There is no admission charge and you do not need to be a member of the Saint Augustine Tea Party to attend and participate. Please arrive early as seating will be provided for social distancing.

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Local Tea Party to be given updates about the Wuhan Coronavirus - Historic City News

DANVERS The virtual tea party was held not on the roof of the Jeremiah Page House Wednesday afternoon, as it had been in 1770, but on its lawn.

Lisa Steigerwalt, chairman of the Danvers Historical Society's Tea and History program,came dressedas the tea party's protagonist, Sarah Page. Her guestswere wearing masks and sitting 6 feet apart to avoidthe possible spread of COVID-19. The public was encouraged to dress in their best tea timeattire and raise a cup to Page from home.

That's how the Danvers Historical Society marked the 250th anniversary of Page's famed tea party protest, which occurred up on the roof of the Page Street house three years before the Boston Tea Party in December 1773. The Page House today serves as the historical society's headquarters.

With the British imposing a tax on tea in 1770, Danvers patriot and prominent bricklayer Jeremiah Page made a promise not to drink tea. He told his wife, "None shall drink tea inside my house,"according to Beverly poet Lucy Larcom's famous poem, "A Gambrel Roof."

Sarah Page, not wanting to disobey her husband but still having some tea left over, invited friendsto tea when Jeremiah was away. When she brought them on the roof for a tea party, she famously told them: "Upon a house is not within it."

Sheila Cooke-Kayser, the society's interpreter and education chair,explained Larcom wanted to write a poemto mark thenation's centennial in 1876 and was looking for something different to talk about.Larcom heard the story from her friend, Anne Page, who had lived in the Page House and told her the story of her grandfather, Jeremiah.

In an event broadcast live on Facebook Wednesday, society volunteer Amy Driscoll played a reporter named Peggy Sampsonpretending totravel back in time to meet with Steigerwalt dressed as Sarah Page.

"I daresay, upon a lawn is not within a house," Steigerwalt said. "Had I thought of that earlier, it would have been a much easier thing to have the tea than upon a gambrel roof."

You can watch the tea party and learn more about the Danvers Historical Society atfacebook.com/danvershistory.

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Virtual tea party marks 250th anniversary of rooftop protest - The Salem News