On April 4 – WE SAY NO MORE

“I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed, without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today – my own government.” ― Martin Luther King Jr. , (assassinated April 4, 2025)

STAND WITH US in Daley Plaza
April 4th at 6 p.m. – 7:15 p.m.
RESIST. REIMAGINE. REBUILD. / Freedom Cities – LED BY MEMBER GROUPS Black Lives Matter-CHI AND BYP100

STOP STATE AND POLICE VIOLENCE
STOP ECONOMIC VIOLENCE
STOP SEXUAL VIOLENCE, SCHOOL AND STREET VIOLENCE
STOP ICE AND END THE RACIST GANG DATABASE
REINVEST IN SCHOOLS AND SERVICES
COMMUNITY BENEFITS AGREEMENT FOR THE SOUTH SIDE
#NOCOPACADEMY

Last week the city of Sacramento exploded after the police murder of yet another unarmed Black man, Stephon Clarke, a 23 year-old father of two. Clarke’s family felt the pain and rage that so many families have felt in the face of this kind of wanton state violence. And Louisiana has just deemed the gruesome shooting of a penned down and pleading Alton Sterling, justifiable, by not bringing charges against the police who killed him. Closer to home, we are still reeling from the murder of DeCynthia Clements by the Elgin Police on March 12, and April 4 will be the third anniversary of the murder of Justus Howell by Zion, IL. P.D. Just last week Chicago top cop, Eddie Johnson, refused to fire a police officer who shot Quintonio LeGrier and Bettie Jones the day after Christmas in their home after LeGrier called for help. After five years of protest, investigations, exposes in the media, and special commissions – we have to ask America, do Black lives matter, yet?

We stand with the #METOO movement against sexual violence, launched by sister Tarana Burke. This extends to the ongoing struggle to combat violence against queer and trans folk an sex workers as well as others, and is felt most intensely by poor women and women of color. We stand with the young people who mobilized for the #Marchforourlives on March 24 to stand up to the racism and rigidly gun loving NRA and to the politicians they seemingly own. But on the 50th anniversary of Dr. King’s assassination, we are reminded of the movement’s unfinished agenda of militarism, racism and poverty.

STAND WITH US in Daley Plaza
April 4th at 6 p.m. – 7:15 p.m.
RESIST. REIMAGINE. REBUILD. / Freedom Cities – LED BY MEMBER GROUPS Black Lives Matter-CHI AND BYP100

Join us on April 4 and again as we support the actions on April 20

We are demanding:

#JusticeForStephonClark #JusticeForDecynthiaClements#JusticeForLaquan #JusticeForRekia #JusticeForRonnieMan
#JusticeForBettieJones #JusticeForQuintonio #JusticeForAmaiaTyrae#JusticeForJUSTUSHowell #JusticeForThemAll

We demand immediate cancellation of Rahm Emanuel’s plans to build a $95 million cop academy in West Garfield Park. #NOCOPACADEMY

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Supported by:
Assata’s Daughters
Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression
Moms United Against Violence and Incarceration
Brave Space Alliance
Journey 4 Justice
Lifted Voices
Prison and Neighborhood Arts Project
Arab American Action Network
US Palestinian Community Network

Join Mercy For Animals and Abby the Abused Chicken—a graphic, seven-foot-tall chicken with a bloody broken wing and open wounds—for a demonstration to demand McDonald’s ban the stomach-churning animal abuse in its supply chain!

McDonald’s suppliers cram chickens into filthy, dark barns. These birds are bred to grow so fast that they often can’t support their own weight and frequently die from organ failure. This is sickening abuse no company with morals should support. Learn more about the campaigns and sign the petition at www.TruthAboutMcDonaldsChicken.com.

DEMO 1: Friday, April 6, from 10:45 a.m. to 1:15 p.m.
DEMO 2: Saturday, April 7, from 10:45 a.m. to 1:15 p.m.
LOCATION: 23 S. Clark St., Chicago, IL 60603

We need people to hold professionally printed posters (no need to bring your own) during this silent but powerful protest. Please arrive at 10:45 a.m. and dress professionally (no logos, ripped jeans, etc.), as media coverage is expected.

We look forward to seeing you there! And please join us for a team celebration at Native Foods at 218 S. Clark St., Chicago, IL, from 1:30 p.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday, April 7.

Please contact Shayna Rowbotham at ShaynaR@MercyForAnimals.org to RSVP for these events!

Join Mercy For Animals and Abby the Abused Chicken—a graphic, seven-foot-tall chicken with a bloody broken wing and open wounds—for a demonstration to demand McDonald’s ban the stomach-churning animal abuse in its supply chain!

McDonald’s suppliers cram chickens into filthy, dark barns. These birds are bred to grow so fast that they often can’t support their own weight and frequently die from organ failure. This is sickening abuse no company with morals should support. Learn more about the campaigns and sign the petition at www.TruthAboutMcDonaldsChicken.com.

DEMO 1: Friday, April 6, from 10:45 a.m. to 1:15 p.m.
DEMO 2: Saturday, April 7, from 10:45 a.m. to 1:15 p.m.
LOCATION: 23 S. Clark St., Chicago, IL 60603

We need people to hold professionally printed posters (no need to bring your own) during this silent but powerful protest. Please arrive at 10:45 a.m. and dress professionally (no logos, ripped jeans, etc.), as media coverage is expected.

We look forward to seeing you there! And please join us for a team celebration at Native Foods at 218 S. Clark St., Chicago, IL, from 1:30 p.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday, April 7.

Please contact Shayna Rowbotham at ShaynaR@MercyForAnimals.org to RSVP for these events!

Join Us Outside of Levi Hall on April 5th 12:30 PM for 11 minutes of silence and to demand all the charges and the ban against Maya be dropped!

University of Chicago police brutally attacked and arrested Maya, a member of the Revolution Club Chicago, as she was leaving campus after participating in a SILENT protest in Reynolds Club student center, where almost the entire dining hall fell silent for 11 minutes in support of 11 million undocumented immigrants. On top of this outrageous attack, in which SHE is the one who sustained injuries, Maya has been indicted with a felony charge of battery on a police officer and resisting arrest. She was further targeted by the state at what should have been a routine bail hearing when the assistant state’s attorney presented a lengthy, distorted, and utterly irrelevant political dossier on Maya, implying that she should not be released—on the basis of her alleged political views and associations. She has been banned from campus as a condition of being released.

Meanwhile, the university has rolled out a red carpet for Steve Bannon to speak. Bannon spoke recently to a gathering of fascists in France and advised them, “Let them call you racist… wear it as a badge of honor.” His propagating of the racist myth of the “superiority of Western civilization” comes with the head of state, Donald Trump, giving speeches calling immigrants criminals, animals and snakes, targeting sanctuary cities and states, ruthlessly hunting down and deporting people, holding the terror of deportation over the heads of hundreds of thousands of Dreamers, and separating children and parents in detention centers. At the same time the Trump/Pence regime assembles a war cabinet and makes bellicose threats to attack Iran and North Korea.
Universities are places where critical thinking can and should be what is in the air, where ideas are debated with intellectual rigor and creativity, where new ideas can take hold and reverberate throughout society. Instead, at the current moment, there is a real attempt to make them platforms to legitimize and normalize fascist ideas, and more and more the voices of dissent are being repressed with the power of the state.

Maya, a revolutionary who is fighting for the emancipation of all humanity, has courageously stood up to say the attacks on immigrants are intolerable, and she has been working to bring forward a mass determined movement to drive the Trump/Pence regime from power. She has argued for the importance of taking up what is said in the filmed speech by Bob Avakian, “THE TRUMP/PENCE REGIME MUST GO! In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America, A Better World IS Possible,” in particular the need for everyone who cares about justice to step outside their comfort zones and be willing to put themselves on the line to prevent Trump/Pence fascism from consolidating its rule and fully implementing its program.
Drop the charges and drop the ban. Thursday, April 5th we will do as Maya did and stand for 11 minutes of silence, outside of university president Robert Zimmer’s office at Levi Hall.

To contact Revolution Club Chicago, find us on FB or Twitter @RevClubChi, 312.804.9121, revclub.chi@gmail.com, 1857 E. 71st Street in South Shore.

In 2017, the Field Museum helped lead one of the world’s largest Marches for Science. A crowd of nearly sixty thousand marched from Grant Park to the Museum Campus to publicly take a stand for scientific research and advocacy. This year, we’re going one step further: we’re giving Chicago an outlet to voice their support for these causes and their hopes for change. On Saturday, April 14, the Field and United Sciences of Chicago are inviting the city to join us at Speak Up For Science, the city’s official March for Science event: a science fair and rally to celebrate science and advocate for its advancement and protection. The event, which will be free to the public, runs from 1-4pm.

“The Field Museum exists and has always existed to be the voice and champion for the future of our natural world,” says Field Museum President Richard Lariviere. “We’ve worked relentlessly to pursue ways of making it better, and today is no different.”

Science fans and supporters are invited to come to the Field Museum’s South Terrace to meet scientists (and see some amazing scientific collections), learn how to communicate about science and the environment, and find out concrete things they can do here in Chicago to fight for the planet. Most importantly, though, people will be given opportunities to share their support for science with legislators, including a postcard-writing campaign and voter registration.

General admission to the Field will be free on April 14; there’ll be more Speak Up For Science events inside.

Please RSVP at marchforscience.com/RSVP and let your representatives know you’ll be joining us on April 14!

You’ve probably heard that men are paid more than women for doing the same job. Compared to white men, white women earn 78 cents to every dollar a man earns. African American women make 64 cents, and Latina, 54 cents. The gender pay gap in the United States has been found in 99.6% of occupations and affects women of all ages, races, and education levels.

While we do have laws against wage discrimination, they have loopholes and aren’t always enforced. Why? Because there is no constitutional protection against gender discrimination.

The Trump administration has already demonstrated why it’s dangerous to leave gender equality out of the constitution. In 2017, just a day before Equal Pay Day, the symbolic day when women’s earnings “catch up” to men’s earnings from the previous year, Trump rolled back President Obama’s Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces Order.

The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) simply states, “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State on account of sex.” It was passed in 1972 by Congress with overwhelming bi-partisan support and needed to be ratified by 38 states in order to be added to the Constitution. To this day, only 36 states have ratified the ERA. Despite having an equal protection clause in its state constitution since 1970, Illinois has yet to ratify the ERA. It is time to fix that!

The Illinois General Assembly is expected to vote on the ERA (SJRCA4) this spring.

This year Equal Pay Day is “celebrated” on Tuesday, April 10, 2018. For those that cannot make it to Springfield to lobby for the ERA, we will be hosting rallies in Chicago and Peoria.Chicago’s rally will be at the Daley Center Plaza at noon. Let’s send a message to our legislators that they must support the ERA and vote YES! We are recruiting for men and women to wear black and hold signs with their respective pay gap ratio.

Not One More! We Will Unite to Shut it Down for Stephon, Laquan, Alton, Rekia and All Victims of Racist Police Terror on the Anniversary of MLK’s Assassination.

Let’s get out into the streets in solidarity with Sacramento. Let’s build a movement to bring an end to the institutionalized violence against Black and Brown communities.

We will stop the war on Black america!
We need money for schools, housing, jobs, education and healthcare, not more cops!
We demand justice and power!

On April 4, we will also unite with immigrants and all those who are under attack by Washington, Wall Street and the Pentagon.

Initiated by BLM Women of Faith and Answer Chicago

Spread the word! Let’s build the movement!

NOTE: This event has been postponed, and thus cancelled by the organizers. We will remove it from our site within 24 hours.

Thousands of people are locked up before trial simply because they are too poor to afford bail. We have made progress in decreasing the number of people incarcerated before trial through Chief Judge Evans’ affordable bail order, but Sheriff Tom Dart is attacking and defying this order. He has publicly spoken out against releasing people accused of violent crimes and gun possession, even though these defendants are innocent until proven guilty. And he has refused to release some defendants that judges have ordered released on electronic monitoring.

On April 12, a lawsuit is moving forward against Sheriff Dart for his inexcusable behavior in refusing to release defendants that judges have ordered released prior to trial. Join us in supporting this lawsuit and defending bail reform from Sheriff Dart’s attacks!

This is a March For Our Lives event to respond to the looming problem this country faces with school shootings and gun reform. We will be moving from the parking lot and marching across the bridge to the park on Kimball/Rt. 31 (State St.) Please invite and bring along as many people as you can so we can make an impact. After the 12:00 noon event there will also be a special March for Our Lives event to read the names of shooting victims at 2:30, as a bell tolls in remembrance. This is a companion event to the marches planned around the country. It will be held at a secondary location at the Elgin township building on 729 S. McLean Blvd. Elgin, IL. 60123. The number 17 will be a focus in honor of the Parkland school victims, and people who have died in all types of shootings will be remembered, as a reminder that we’re all in this together.

We are working with local students to coordinate a March For Our Lives event in Frankfort. Please mark yourself as interested or going so that you can get the updates as the plans unfold. Know a student who would like to also help us plan? Have them send us a message on FB or at swsuburbanactivists@gmail.com