Carlos Ballesteros
@ballesteros_312
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Senior investigative reporter at @injusticewatch, formerly @Suntimes via @report4america. Son of immigrants, against genocide, se habla español
Joined September 2017
What happened in Kenosha tonight should lead every TV broadcast in the Midwest and across the country tonight, tomorrow and everyday until something is done. That police officer shot to kill that man in his own car in front of his kids. Pitiful and enraging. Pay attention.
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There’s a new coffee shop in the West Loop and uh this is what they decided to call it
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All of our cities have successfully created small armies that fail to solve or prevent the vast majority of serious crimes but are really great at stomping out student protests.
ALL OUT TO BROOKLYN COLLEGE RIGHT NOW‼️. NYPD are moving into the Hassan Ayyad Liberation Zone but the students refuse to surrender until their demands are met 🇵🇸
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Mexico v Poland on Tuesday threatens to rupture the Chicagoland area.
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“We accidentally shot the wrong person during the extrajudicial execution” is a crazy excuse.
BREAKING: IDF inquiry found that it is "highly likely" Turkish-American citizen Aysenur Ezgi Eygi "was hit indirectly and unintentionally by IDF fire which was not aimed at her, but aimed at the key instigator of the riot", IDF says in a statement.
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Eat Me Milk Me? Eat Milk Me Me? Either way I'm calling the cops.
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You: People from Chicago need to shut up about Chicago.People from Chicago:.
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@lawrence_wright Dog… I get your point (I’ve read Freire too) but no one forced those guys to rough up Issa. Your thoughts are a little misplaced I think, and frankly make me way less inclined to read your take on the whole thing whenever the story is out.
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Imagine trying to get home after a full shift and you see this… Chicago could not care less about the workers who make it run.
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Thinking about this response from Sen. Duckworth as I read about US doctors amputating little kids in after US bombs blew up their limbs, and how the doctor that saved Duckworth’s life won’t leave his patients behind in Gaza even though she’s negotiated a way for him to get out.
I asked Illinois Sen. @TammyDuckworth at a news conference today in Pilsen if she’s willing to call for a ceasefire. “I am not willing to call for a ceasefire at this point because that would not help the residents of Gaza nor would it help the security of Israel,” she said.
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Student journalists at Columbia are the only ones on the ground able to report out the NYPD’s imminent raid of their campus because the police is blocking other reporters from getting even close to the gates. Every single self-respecting news outlet should lead with that story!.
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Parents dropping off and picking up their kids are causing so much traffic in Chicago man… everyday… put that 15 year old on the bus ma’am.
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How do we incentivize kids and their parents to take the bus to school? This morning drop off traffic is ridiculous and needs to be curbed.
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@WhitlockJason “How is this racist slur bad? Other than people who get called the slur saying it’s bad, I don’t see the damage”. You’re a fucking loser.
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If you got shot and survived in Chicago last year there was a less than 5% chance the cops arrested the person who shot at you. We spend almost $2 billion on police every year.
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Adam’s altar at the National Museum of Mexican Art 🕊 🤍
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BREAKING: Youth activists are outside Chicago Board of Ed President Miguel del Valle’s house on the northwest side calling on him to vote out cops out of public schools
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The main reason why New York slices are superior is because of demand; they have to keep making pizzas all day, which keeps them fresh, and the sheer volume allows for a slice to be $1-3. This is why we need to build public housing and double Chicago’s population within a decade.
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Every time you see a sidewalk like this on a major intersection, I want you to try and imagine getting to the bus stop or reaching a warming center but on a wheelchair, or crutches, or a cane — it’s obscene, degrading, and totally unnecessary. Plow the sidewalks now.
Days like today are the perfect example of why we’ve fought for municipal sidewalk snow and ice removal. Leaving it up to property owners means the job doesn’t get done, and an uncoordinated response means snow piles up at corners. There is a better way: #PlowTheSidewalks!
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BREAKING: By a 7-1 vote, Benito Juarez Community Academy's local school council votes to remove its school resource police officers.
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The “experts” they quote here:. - Retired police chief from a suburb with less than 10,000 residents.- Cop union secretary.- Downstate sheriff who said in a June op-ed there are “serious political efforts underway to label the Holy Bible and Christian beliefs as hate speech”.
Illinois ending cash bail a ‘backdoor’ defund movement that will spark police exodus, experts say
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It’s paleta season in Chicago, please pay extra and let the paleteros keep the change.
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Why does the art institute close at 5 pm? Who the hell has time to look at art before 5? This is classist and I want reform.
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I asked Illinois Sen. @TammyDuckworth at a news conference today in Pilsen if she’s willing to call for a ceasefire. “I am not willing to call for a ceasefire at this point because that would not help the residents of Gaza nor would it help the security of Israel,” she said.
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@mtaibbi @mehdirhasan @MSNBC You must be off the za right now. Funniest part is you asked to go on the show and now you’re crying because the better journalist beat your ass with a simple and predictable line of questioning.
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What are you willing to do to protect your neighbors? That’s the question we all must ask ourselves in this moment.
Mass deportations will "start right here in Chicago," Trump's border czar says
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Blows my mind that Chicago still hasn't figured out a way to vaccinate people throughout the night. Thinking about all the daytime workers who can't afford or aren't allowed to take a day off.
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Mexican migration saved Chicago from perpetual population loss, this city should be so lucky to have us.
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Are you kidding me?. How about $2 billion in public money to fix the @cta instead of retrofitting Soldier Field for a less than mediocre NFL franchise?. This is ridiculous. We deserve so much better
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Just so y’all know some schools in Chicago have a cop in the building everyday but only one (1) social worker a week.
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A story in two parts:. First time offense for stealing $300 or more worth of stuff will now get you a felony charge in Chicago. Meanwhile, if you’re a biz owner and commit wage theft in Illinois — which cost workers $13.5 billion in the last decade — you get no criminal charges.
Confirmed: Cook County retail theft felony charges will occur at $300 threshold or a prior conviction .as @EileenCookCnty takes office .rescinding Kim Foxx’s policy of allowing for a $1K threshold or 10 convictions. (As first reported by @CPD1617Scanner).
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NEW from me: Chicago police have denied hundreds of U visa certification requests from undocumented crime victims this year. Many of the denials are at odds with federal and state law. Who are the officers signing those denials? . Let me tell you.
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This is 29-year-old Jacob Blake who was shot by Kenosha police. His fiancé shared this picture with us.
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Holy shit — Suburban families in Chicago are giving up guardianship of their kids so they can in turn declare financial independence and get scholarship and financial aid money from colleges and universities earmarked for poor kids.
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Wild how a quadruple murder isn’t enough to get the head of the CTA to stand at a podium and take questions — especially right after his agency was parading new gun-detecting surveillance software on his trains.
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Rarely do we get something as unintentionally symbolic about our country than this video right here.
The same House chamber doors where the armed standoff took place hours ago is being cleaned for members to return for the joint session:
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I think as part of the Green New Deal convos we need to talk about how the rich are allowed to freely waste resources — like destroying a perfectly fine house in a great part of town just to build a new one(s) that makes more money.
DEMOLITION ALERT: 4432 N. Hermitage Avenue, Chicago. Beautifully restored, 5 bed/2 bath single family home in Ravenswood. 2,660 sq ft with 8,150 sq ft lot. Demolition permit was released on December 16, 2020. More photos at:
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So many people want Chicago to fail but guess what we love it here even if we get tickets every third day and the winters last eight months and the rents keeps going up and the cops pull over about 1800 people a day and the police costs us $2 billion a year but we don’t feel safe.
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You’d think they were fighting Bane but it’s actually unarmed college students.
Absolutely insane footage of the NYPD entering Columbia University. It’s endless.
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Local reporters in Chicago and other cities, please look into how laundromats are disappearing from gentrifying neighborhoods, leaving working families lacking in-unit W/D with fewer options to was their clothes. Yet another failure of the private market; public laundromats now.
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Disabled student who stayed two weeks at the DePaul encampment says Chicago Police threw out her mobility scooter, meds, glasses and more after they raided the camp earlier this week and is asking for help to replace her needed items.
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Chicago has ~1 million fewer residents since 1964 but it's spending nearly 3x as much per person on policing today, even though crime has consistently fallen over the last two decades and less than in one in four murders are solved. Why? What's our ROI?.
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With all due respect to my colleagues, our local media screwed up by calling this a “migrant crisis.”. 10k in nine months is peanuts compared to the Great Migration, or when Poles, Italians and other Europeans came in the late 1800s. This is first and foremost a housing crisis!.
City presentation lists 9,926 total migrants arriving in Chicago since Aug 31, 2022, mostly from Central and South America.
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Just to put a button on it: Literally no one else was there to ask questions but me. The Senator ended the press conference immediately after answering my questions because nobody else had any.
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Another winter storm without public funding to plow the sidewalks in Chicago — a service we do for cars but not for pedestrians, many of whom are older and disabled. We need to prioritize their safety and mobility too!.
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One of the continent’s smallest states offering itself up to a global hegemon as a penal colony, just days after its president published videos showing endless rows of prisoners working in maquiladoras producing textiles and garments for free.
BREAKING: U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio says El Salvador's president has offered to accept deportees from the U.S. of any nationality as well as violent American criminals now imprisoned in the United States.
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Riot Fest is so punk it has a CPD recruitment booth!.
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Me in the summer: I can’t believe I live in this city. Me in the winter: I can’t believe I live in this city.
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Clear to anyone who knows anything that we just witnessed a three-day white power rally lol.
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Make this shit illegal everywhere.
This used to be a 4 unit apartment building. The current owners converted the top three units into a mansion and the garden apartment into a garage. They even got a curb cut so they could drive on the sidewalk! . They also put up a sign that says #HelpEachOther
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I’ll never forgive Shameless for filming most of their stuff in Little Village and erasing Mexicans from the show like how are you in Chicago and not a single paisa makes it on the screen.
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Chicago twitter: The fireworks ain't that bad. Pilsen and Humboldt Park:
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Adam Toledo's death sparked outrage nationwide. But here in Chicago, the 13-yo was dragged through the mud for his alleged gang affiliation, many times by other Latinos. I honed in on that discord, what it says about our community, and who's pushing back.
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Every day I thank my dad and grandparents for immigrating to Chicago and not anywhere in California, Texas or especially Florida.
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Shop owner says his employee told Chicago cops they needed to buy a cup of coffee in order to use the bathroom and they proceeded to…throw a tantrum and come back with folks living on the street to make a point? The dept should investigate. Ridiculous and reckless behavior
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Chicago Police brought out their SWAT team to clear out the student encampment at the garden next to the Art Institute
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Student encampment at the Art Institute garden seems to have decided on a name: Hind’s Garden
Chicago Police brought out their SWAT team to clear out the student encampment at the garden next to the Art Institute
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When I saw footage of a white police officer pumping seven bullets into the back of a Black man in Kenosha last Sunday, I knew I had to write about it. So I started pulling some data around police spending in Wisconsin and what that money pays for. Here's what I found: (1/10).
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Here’s the other half of my exchange with Senator Duckworth. I didn’t appreciate her accusation that my questions about an ongoing catastrophe involving a US ally were some sort of filler buster. I was the only reporter in the room today. I started with topical questions…
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You know “objectivity” is bullshit when 15 people get shot in Chicago and national media don’t send out push alerts about a mass shooting.
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The City Council was willing to stomach a property tax hike but refused to consider a corporate head tax on Amazon, which is worth more than $1 trillion🙃.
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They want $2 billion+ of public money…. for add-ons to a stadium in which a football team that hasn’t won a championship in nearly 40 years plays eight regular season games a year…. games that are too expensive for most of their fanbase to attend…. Yeah it’s a no for me dog.
The Chicago Bears are set to announce their plans for a new enclosed stadium on the lakefront with taxpayer help — but the team will have to overcome serious skepticism from several directions.
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Chicago, the city that forbids its teenagers from enjoying its downtown park after 6 pm on the weekends.
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Please god no, the riverwalk is beautiful BECAUSE it doesn’t have ads aka visual pollution.
Allowing billboards along the Riverwalk and near city parks could bring in revenue without new taxes, argues Ald. Will Hall. "I dare you to rent a boat, ride down the Chicago River, that's nothing but a runway to get a message out,” he said.@CrainsChicago.
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35 out of 50 Chicago alderman are calling for the resignation of the city’s police union president following comments he made in support of the insurrection at the Capitol.
City Council Resolution calling for FOP President John Catanzara’s Resignation introduced by @40thforward and signed by 35 Alders and City Clerk.
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It’s no secret Paul Vallas wanted to turn as much of CPS into a charter system and take power away from the city’s teachers union, but I don’t think you’d see teachers on this app talking about mass resignations tonight if Vallas was in the lead. Cops, on the other hand…
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After today, 31 journalists have died in Gaza in less than a month. If these were white journalists, I have no doubt that every Israeli politician or military leader would get asked about this any time they went on TV. But they’re not white journalists. And our industry is silent.
Another Palestinian journalist in Gaza killed by Israel, Mohammed Abu Hattab and 11 members of his family were killed in Khan Younis, SOUTH of Gaza, where residents were told to flee too. This is his death being announced on TV. You don't need to understand Arabic, just watch.
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Love how @chicagosmayor allows bars and restaurants to serve up to 50 people at once but still only has one reporter asking her questions at news conferences!.
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Is it a question of adding more school/public busses? A tax credit for parents who send their kids on the bus to school? Extra credit for kids who show up on the bus most mornings?. Idk man but we gotta figure something out! You don’t need to drop off your child at the door!.
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Nifty electrical map from @BlockClubCHI shows how several predominantly Latino neighborhoods in Chicago on the Southwest Side — such as Little Village, Midway, and Brighton Park — either went to Trump or were way more competitive than most other areas in the city
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According to CPD, a cop shot and killed Adam Toledo at about 2:35 AM on Monday. Reporters wouldn't break the news about his age for another 72+ hours. When did @chicagosmayor, @ChiefDavidBrown and @TomAhernCPD find out Adam was 13? And why didn't they tell the public sooner?.
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NEW FROM COPA: Chicago cop who shot and killed 13-year-old Adam Toledo fired his gun only once. The shooting was captured by the officer’s body-worn camera — but COPA says it can’t publicly release the video barring a court order under state law because Toledo’s is a child.
> ShotSpotter sends notif of shots fired.> Cops go to the scene, they see two people.> People on the scene start running.> Cops go after them.> There's a "confrontation in an alley".> 13-year-old boy ends up dead with a shot in the chest.
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So you’re telling me Chicago demolished most of its public housing unit without replacing them and now there’s a housing crisis? . And the city is struggling to house thousands of newly arrived immigrants as well as a rising number of mostly Black houseless locals?. Shocking!.
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It's been more than four days since a Chicago police officer shot and killed 13-year-old Adam Toledo in the middle of the night — and neither the Mayor nor Superintendent has stood in front of reporters to answer questions about it. Instead, we've gotten statements and tweets.
As a mother of a 13-year-old myself, I can only imagine the incredible pain this boy's parents are experiencing at this moment. My heart goes out to them.
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The kind of journalism we think of when we talk about journalism today — independent, fact-based — was always a historical aberration, a product of newly won freedoms for democracy and civil rights. As those rights erode, it tracks that journalism would, too, esp w/o govt subsidy.
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The average cost to settle a Chicago Police misconduct case over the last five years is $4.7 million (44 cases since Oct 2024 at a total cost of $207.8 million). A single average Chicago Police misconduct payout would cover the cost of the city’s Visual Arts dept for five years.
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NEW: Chicago Police is refusing to share the training materials for the hundreds of out-of-town cops coming to the city for the DNC. The dept claims that the training materials for those cops are still in draft form — less than one week from the start of the convention.
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Chicago has the best tacos in the United States of America yeah I said it.
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Hate that I have to even say this but please refrain from making ableist jokes and sneers at the Senator. Hiding and blocking all said replies.
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Mayor Lightfoot (@chicagosmayor) isn't scheduled to make herself available to the media today, her press office just told me. Again, a Chicago cop killed Adam Toledo at about 2:35 AM on Monday. We didn't find out Adam was 13-yo until Thursday morning. No press conference since.
It's been more than four days since a Chicago police officer shot and killed 13-year-old Adam Toledo in the middle of the night — and neither the Mayor nor Superintendent has stood in front of reporters to answer questions about it. Instead, we've gotten statements and tweets.
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Would be nice if @Suntimes @chicagotribune @BlockClubCHI posted up at bars on the southwest and northwest sides where Chicago’s two largest immigrant communities come in contact with each other to see how this plays out. Guaranteed funny Chicago tomfoolery.
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Ah yes, the Lollapalooza exemption, famously attended by youth who live within the city limits.
A new executive order directs Chicago police to “immediately increase enforcement” of a new 10 p.m. curfew and take teens who don’t comply into custody. It also exempts teens coming home from concerts, ballgames or other ticketed events. More:.
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Question for the group — is it cool for armed agents of the state to raid a house wearing a t shirt with a calavera in handcuffs encircled by a ring with bullet holes and the initials for three law enforcement agencies that make up the Chicago Hispanic Streetgang Taskforce? Y/N?
FBI agents entered a residential building on the 2200 block of West Farragut Avenue Thursday morning in Chicago.
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Consecutive weeks of children being killed in Chicago isn’t okay. What’s also not okay is pretending as if white supremacy, mass incarceration and the pillaging of Black wealth aren’t at the root of what we’re seeing today.
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Avondale/Logan to Humboldt… on a Saturday. This isn’t what a “global city” looks like. Does the city want to incentivize people to drive home from the bar when they live three miles away?
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I love the library I wish there were hundreds more affordable housing units on top of them I would love to live above a library.
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You should tell this agent of the state how you feel about these masks sir
These face masks are NOT medical devices. Wearing them in order to conceal one’s identity while committing crimes in Chicago should come with enhanced penalties. Call your City Council member today & ask them to support O2024-0009463. It just makes sense!
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Did I just walk into a Pink Line train or a meth lab you decide
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