WBEZ: White Cook County Judge Tells Black Defendant: 'You Were Never A Slave'

They say we have to watch these judges, unfortunately folks in one community can't influence the selection of judges in another community. Or could we?

I found this interesting from WBEZ and this case took place in the northwestern suburbs:

The racially charged comment came from Judge Richard D. Schwind as he sentenced 31-year-old Deon Lindsey in a misdemeanor battery case.

Lindsey admitted hitting his ex-girlfriend’s white brother at her apartment in Hoffman Estates in May. But Lindsey told police he was provoked by being called the N-word, records show.

Speaking from the bench on July 18, the judge said the slur was an “ignorant term” for the recipient of the punch to have used with Lindsey.

But the transcript shows Schwind then told Lindsey, “You take offense to a word that — you, you were never a slave, but you take offense to it. And I understand that. But the bigger man walks away. You don’t resort to violence. That’s why society is the way it is now.”
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After hearing cases Wednesday in Courtroom 101 in the Rolling Meadows branch, Schwind declined to comment.

But on Thursday, the spokesman for Chief Judge Timothy Evans told WBEZ that the court system’s executive committee will review the matter at its Oct. 3 meeting.

The spokesman, Pat Milhizer, added that judges must abide by an Illinois Code of Judicial Conduct rule stating, “A judge shall perform judicial duties without bias or prejudice.”
...
Schwind, 66, became an associate judge in April 2012 and has been assigned to the 3rd Municipal District courthouse in Rolling Meadows since 2013. Associated judges are chosen by a vote of circuit court judges elected by voters.

He is currently serving a four-year term that expires on June 30, 2019.

A graduate of John Marshall Law School, Schwind worked for seven years for the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office and then more than 27 years for the Illinois Attorney General’s office, rising to chief of the criminal enforcement division.
...
At the sentencing hearing, Schwind said, “Mr. Lindsey, it’s my understanding … the victim in this case used a term that is insulting to you. And I understand that.”

Lindsey told the judge that the slur was used “in front of my daughter.”

“That doesn’t give you a right to hit him,” Schwind replied.

The bigger man walks away, however, the N-word is offensive whether or not we're slaves. And I'm with Dartesia Pitts - who was formerly President of the Cook County Bar Association - stating: “It was totally unnecessary for the judge to make this commentary on the record at all relating to slavery”. Yes, it was unnecessary!


 

Political Forum discusses Black county court judges

[VIDEO] Dartesia Pitts - she introduces herself as the outgoing President of the Cook County Bar Association - hosted this recent special edition of CAN-TV's Political Forum with guest attorney Erica Kirkwood introduced as a past president of the Black Woman's Lawyer Association of Greater Chicago. They discuss the fact that no Black lawyers were elected associate judges by county circuit court judges.

I shared this article last month about this fact which will allow you to read up on this subject. Give it a quick read.

No African-American candidates chosen as Cook County judges add 16 to bench https://t.co/KKxYLijB3R

— The Sixth Ward (@TheSixthWard) May 27, 2018

You might have seen a regram of this on our ig feed. Ms. Pitts certainly helped to put word out about her CAN-TV program on her ig. I'm sorry I didn't share this with you before it aired so that you could turn in and ask your own questions. Political Forum is normall a live call-in program.

Sun-Times: Rahm Emanuel’s cabinet comes up short in diversity

I'm sure there will be comments from those who believe we should see more minorities in the top echelons of city government. This article argues that there isn't at current:

When Mayor Rahm Emanuel convenes meetings of his cabinet, the racial breakdown of those top aides hardly reflects the diversity of the city they serve.

In a city in which no single racial group makes up more than a third of the population, almost two of every three City Hall department heads is white. Of 30 Emanuel appointees to the highest-ranking city government positions, only five are black, and three Hispanic, a Chicago Sun-Times analysis shows.

“It’s abysmal,” Ald. Leslie Hairston (5th) says of blacks’ under-representation in the upper ranks at City Hall. “We have talked about it with the mayor, but apparently it has fallen on deaf ears.”

In contrast, Gov. Pat Quinn has tapped African Americans and whites to serve in top state posts at a rate that roughly mirrors the size of their communities in Illinois, though Hispanics are relatively scarce in Quinn’s cabinet despite their growing population.

Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle has 15 whites and 13 blacks in the 34 top posts in her administration. As in the Quinn and Emanuel administrations, though, few Latinos occupy top positions under Preckwinkle. She has four Asian cabinet members and two Hispanics, even though Hispanics are four times as numerous as Asians in the county’s population.

Hat-tip Newsalert!

Redistricting the ward/population differences. -- your thoughts?

One in a series of drafts that were started but that we forgot about in the midst of other news. This draft was started on July 18, before the redistricting process had really started.

The Chicago Tribune recently posted a story on Ward re-mapping, and gave us a tool to compare 2000 AND 2010 populations.

For example, the 6th ward's Asian population grew more than 11%. OK, it was only 4 people, but it sounds impressive). The non-African-American population did gain more than 200, making themselves almost 3% of the 6th Ward's poplation, though no area appears to be an "ethnic neighborhood". However we lost 5000 African Americans. 

Here's the comparison maps...

http://media.apps.chicagotribune.com/ward-redistricting/index.html#41.8322234439287,-87.60635375976562,12,0
Roseland Heights seems to be the most diverse:
96.8% African-American
01.2% Other
01.1% Hispanic
00.6% White
00.3% Asian   

The Ward seems generally with logical boundaries, but some thoughts:

Burnside west of Cottage Grove ought to be folded into the ward.  It doesn't make sense why it would be outside, as many of the resources (such as Burnside Academy, Tuley Park) are in the 6th.

Also, to bring up the population to the target 53,000, perhaps going south on the part of the ward that is West of the Dan Ryan (I-94) may  help as well. 

How do you think the ward should be reconfigured?

How do we become a part of this process?

ChathamNOW: Blog Question

Check out this blog question from the new Chatham neighborhood blog, ChathamNOW:

Do you think with the influx of Mexican-Americans into Chatham as the newest residents that St. Dorothy's School may have a majority Hispanic student body by 2016? Leave your comments on the comment line.

The blogmaster there may well have been a writer for the CAPCC blog, so this question may seem similar to many you have seen there.

BTW, if you're working on a neighborhood blog or otherwise is a blogger who live in the 6th Ward or surrounding areas we will be very happy to link to you.

Students at Worst Schools Get Ticket to Elite High Schools

What do you think about this story?

Chicago is adding a total of 100 seats to four coveted high schools: Northside College Prep, Walter Payton, Whitney Young, and Jones College Prep, where competition to get in is fierce.

Schools chief Ron Huberman says it’s not fair that students from the lowest performing elementary schools rarely get into the city’s top high schools. So now CPS will set aside seats for those kids.

Huberman says school officials have combed through the worst elementaries and picked out kids with high test scores. Some never applied for the city’s competitive high schools, and others were rejected in the normal application process.

Here's more from the Sun-Times:

The best-scoring eighth-graders from some of the city's worst-scoring schools are being saved 100 seats at four elite college preps -- including the top-scoring high school in the state -- in the latest twist to this year's controversial admission process.

Some time this week, 336 eighth-graders at 87 of the lowest-scoring public schools will be sent letters inviting them to apply to Whitney Young Magnet and Northside, Payton and Jones College Preps under the "choice'' provisions of the federal No Child Left Behind law, Chicago Public Schools officials said Wednesday.

Previously, CPS has used the federal "choice" provision to offer kids from low-scoring elementary schools seats in better schools, but Wednesday's announcement marks CPS' first venture into high school "choice.''

The new procedure raised immediate questions: Given the chance, will such kids want to attend such rigorous schools? If they go, will they be successful?

Here are some stats starting with the Sun-Times:

All 336 prospective "choice'' students scored at the 77th percentile or above on seventh-grade state reading and math tests, indicating they have potential to be competitive at a college prep, schools CEO Ron Huberman said. However, some may have attended schools that did little or nothing to help their kids apply to college preps, he said.
...
The new development comes after 3,040 other students were sent letters last week notifying them that their test scores and grades won them a seat at one of the city's nine college preps under a new process tied to socioeconomic factors and census tracts. Some 23 percent of all 13,056 kids who took the admission test were ultimately offered a seat.
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Data released Wednesday indicate that Northside, Young and Lindblom College Prep selected far fewer students from the lowest of four economic tiers that were supposed to produce 60 percent of selected kids under this year's new process. Using that method, Northside -- the state's highest-scoring public high school -- picked 55 kids from the richest tier, but only 15 kids from the poorest one.

Then more stats from the Tribune:

But of the 336 students who have high enough standardized test scores to be considered under the new plan, 270 had already applied to selective high schools. And more than a few of the 87 sending schools said that they already encourage their students to apply to the selective schools. At Mollison Elementary, half of the eighth-grade class applied to such schools, though only four students scored high enough to be eligible for the program.

Here's the reasoning:

One reason for starting the program now appears to be the fear that a new admissions system started this year will re-segregate the elite schools. A federal court order that forced racial balancing in the schools was scrapped last year, forcing the district to devise a way to maintain diversity without using race as a primary factor. Under the new admissions criteria, 60 percent of the openings were divided according to four socioeconomic tiers. The rest of the openings were given to the highest-scoring students.

Many suspected that would result in less racial balance. And the district acknowledged that the new students, who will come from poverty-stricken schools that are almost entirely African-American and Latino, will help maintain diversity at the schools.

"The program also will help ensure continued racially diverse student bodies at the district's selective enrollment high schools," according to a Chicago Public Schools press release.

Yet despite promises of transparency, district officials refused to release the racial breakdown of students given offers through the new high school admissions process. Specifically, schools chief Ron Huberman skirted the issue of whether the new policy resulted in fewer offers to African-American and Latino students.

Of the new program, he said: "This is an additional factor that helps ensure the inclusiveness of all of our schools."

Do you think that our elite public schools will remain diverse as a result of these efforts?

Do people from the North Side have an accurate view of us?

There’ some talk by bloggers in Uptown, and the comments mentioned our own area (79th & Vincennes). Look in the comments for one by UptownPits.

The area they are talking about is called Wilson Yards. More than 10 years ago, the “Wilson Yards”, former (as in decades ago) end-of-line & repair garage for the CTA burned down leaving a 5 acre parcel of land available – the largest such open space on the North Side. A TIF was developed to reconstruct the area. The problem is, the community has 2 loud camps (not including those in the middle): those who advocate for low income housing, and those who was to ** Uptown. The original plans called for demolition of an existing storefront building (which have since relocated across the street) & and Aldi (to be replaced by a new building), a new parking structure, Target, Movie Theaters, smaller stores, and 2 buildings of mixed income housing. This complex is right off of the Wilson Red Line El Stop, not too far from the Lake and even Wrigley Field.
The current situation is this:

• 
  Aldi has been the only thing built, and has been functions
• 
  Target has JUST gotten everything approved (i.e. internally) to officially build, and made an announcement that made the Chicago news circuit.
• 
  The Movie theater was dropped (to be built somewhere nearby)
• 
  The housing, now beginning construction. Opponents have likened it to Cabrini Green . The reality is it is more like 2 existing buildings in the neighborhood on Sheridan Road. 4645 houses seniors, and 4640 has lower income families (including many African & Caribbean immigrants). However, the Wilson Yards buildings are FAR SMALLER than the Sheridan Road buildings. And they will NOT be like Cabrini Green.
  

South Siders – how “true” do you think his/her assertions about travel, etc. are? Is it bad for housing to be built for lower income seniors & families to be built next to the El? How similar – or better or worse—would it be for something similar hear in the 6th ward or nearby?
You can weigh in over there, but expect to be attacked if you aren’t supporting their point of view.

If you post here on thesixthward, we just ask that you be respectful, and try to understand “the other side”.

How diverse is your ’hood?

Here are some stats about Chicago's diverse neighborhoods and here's another story about diverse neighborhoods in Chicago. Both links via Built Chicago.