S2E1: Karina Mireya and Benji Hart on #NoCopAcademy: A Campaign Against Chicago’s ‘Cop City’

In this episode, we’ll hear about a campaign to stop Chicago’s “cop city” that recruited dozens of organizations to support an abolitionist effort for the first time. This campaign also helped pave the way for a shift in the city’s organizing landscape that propelled now-Mayor Brandon Johnson to victory in 2023. His administration’s first municipal budget, passed at the end of 2023, includes historic investments in alternatives to policing. 

Organizers Karina and Benji explain how the campaign got started with innovative tactics like subway canvassing (20:48) and neighborhood art pop-ups  (14:08), and how they recruited support from residents in the part of town where Mayor Emanuel wanted to build the academy (46:14). We’ll also hear their reflections on this campaign’s relevance to Stop Cop City in Atlanta (32:10), and how the campaign’s ripples reverberate in the city’s movement ecology today (52:28). 

Check out a writeup on this campaign at The Forge. For more resources about the campaign, check out the #NoCopAcademy toolkit. You can also find a documentary trailer and a series of oral history interviews on the #NoCopAcademy website.

Karina Mireya is a digital organizer and freelance photographer intertwining storytelling and narrative building in movements. Raised on the southwest side of Chicago, Karina began organizing around education while in high school and has been a part of No Cop Academy, Treatment Not Trauma, and Cops Out CPS. 

Benji Hart is an interdisciplinary artist, author, and educator whose work centers Black radicalism, queer liberation, and prison abolition. They organized with the #NoCopAcademy campaign in the role of an adult ally. 

Transcript

Andrew Willis Garcés: This episode features a campaign from 2017 that you might have not heard about, but shaped two major stories in 2023, when this interview was recorded: Stop Cop City, and Mayor Brandon Johnson. 

Let’s start with him. Many of us were captivated this year by the election of former Chicago Teachers Union organizer Brandon Johnson as mayor of the country’s third-largest city. He’s arguably the most left-wing mayor of a large US city in decades. And he was elected by a basebuillding union that, alongside other aligned Chicago formations, has gradually weakened the city Democratic Party’s fearsome electoral machine, a firewall for the mayor and party bosses keeping left challengers in check. Breaking through this wall may not have happened without the campaign discussed in this episode, #NoCopAcademy. 

From the name, you can probably guess what it has in common with Stop Cop City. #NoCopAcademy was an 18-month campaign to stop a $95 million police training facility from being built on Chicago’s west side, pushed by former Mayor Rahm Emanuel. It had a lot of similarities with how Stop Cop City has unfolded: pitched as a “done deal” to turn public land into a police training facility, spending tens of millions of taxpayer dollars to further militarize already overpoliced neighborhoods, the city’s political establishment immediately lined up behind it. The groups involved worked to disrupt that narrative, and to pull in as many organizations as possible publicly against the proposal. Much of the grassroots energy was powered by youth organizers. They didn’t stop it from being built, but that may not have been the point. 

In some ways, #NoCopAcademy is a bridge between eras of abolitionist organizing. As you’ll hear, one of the leading organizations, Assata’s Daughters, had previously campaigned against Mayor Rahm Emanuel and State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez’ attempts to help the police cover up the murder of a young man, Laquan MacDonald - a period you can hear more about in Season 1, Episode 6, on the campaign to end money bail in Chicago. Those campaigns seeded the movement ecosystem that took on Rahm’s training facility proposal, eventually eroding his political viability. And the tail end of the #NoCopAcademy arc strengthened movement alignment on abolitionist demands, at the same time as campaign momentum helped oust pro-police incumbent aldermen, with new electeds who went on to support the historic Chicago Teachers Union strike later in 2019, and have continued to build out broad movement support that culminated in Mayor Johnson’s election. 

So, that’s the long view. Now we’ll refocus on this two-year campaign arc. In the campaign’s first phase, in the fall of 2017, the #NoCopAcademy rapid response alliance that formed, led by youth organizers and adult advisors in groups like Assata’s Daughters and Black Lives Matter Chicago, alternated between disruptive protests to visibilize opposition, and educational tactics for new recruits. New activists like Karina, who we’ll hear from, were recruited by one of many youth organizations, created meeting and action schedules for middle and high school students. Karina found her way to the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council through art parties they hosted after school. Several artists’ groups, like For the People Artists Collective, which Benji Hart, who we’ll also hear from, contributed to, used artist pop-ups and performance art to grow and project public opposition to the academy. Overall, it’s impressive how many people were politicized and recruited into active support through community building activities. 

In the next phase, in early 2018, organizers focused on developing both targeted and broad opposition to the mayor’s plan. They invited existing groups concerned with education, housing, or other neighborhood issues to consider the $95 million as a public resource that could be better spent on other needs. They eventually persuaded over 100 organizations to support the 

campaign’s demands, most of whom did not have an abolitionist ideological orientation before participating. That was intentional – they could have simply focused on building with the other youth-focused, direct action-oriented abolitionist groups who were in more alignment. But they went wider. Asian activists recruited parents at the Lunar New Year Parade, others organized teach-ins at senior centers, and some recruited LGBTQ people to take action against a gay

alderman actively promoting the academy. Broad support, check. 

And organizers spent time canvassing the West Garfield Park neighborhood, eventually making waves with a report showing that most residents didn’t know about or support the mayor’s plan. They also zeroed in on a few city aldermen who supported the academy, and where existing basebuilding groups had power. Some of those people campaigned to unelect those aldermen in 2019. Targeted geographic support, check. 

It wasn’t all protests and art pop-ups. Campaigners used traditional advocacy strategies, too, mobilizing supporters to visit alderpersons at their offices, and filing a lawsuit to obtain city planning documents. And as with Stop Cop City, solidarity actions played a role, with Mayor Emanuel’s public appearances disrupted by #NoCopAcademy supporters in at least four different cities. In fact, at the height of the campaign, he was protested almost everywhere he went. 

Let’s talk about the campaign goals. The mayor’s attempt to appropriate land and millions of taxpayer funding was a surprise, and the campaign unfolded as these often do, with organizers scrambling to break apart a Democratic party political machine consensus and galvanize urgent opposition, but without a clear sense of whether they could stop the academy. Rather, the organizers’ goals were more about recruitment, leadership development, and shifting more people and organizations towards an abolitionist orientation. Nine months in, they still hadn’t won over many elected officials – a council committee voted 39 to 2 to approve a land sale for the academy. But less than a year after that, with primary elections looming, the campaign had persuaded six more aldermen to vote “no.” And more importantly, they had not only recruited dozens of new organizers into active participation, and dozens more organizations to take their first steps into an abolitionist orientation, they had also further eroded the mayor’s public support, such that in the fall of 2018, he surprised almost everyone by announcing he wouldn’t run for reelection. 

Eighteen months after the mayor first promoted the cop academy plan, the Chicago City Council approved the contract to build it by a vote of 38 to 18, in April 2019, but as the organizers we interviewed point out, it was a significant victory to have moved eight alderpeople to vote

against– and four of those voting for it, were ousted by anti-academy primary candidates just a month later. As you’ll hear in our story, back in spring 2019, the organizers were divided over when or whether to put the campaign on ice. But much of the youth organizing energy unleashed during #NoCopAcademy then rolled into a new effort, Cops Out of Chicago Public Schools, which succeeded in cutting $21 million in funding for school policing. 

The academy opened in January 2023, at a final cost of $170 million. And the mayor who

enthusiastically participated in the academy’s ribbon-cutting ceremony, Lori Lightfoot, was

herself ousted by voters four months later, during an election campaign in which Brandon Johnson was supported by several of the DSA members, now on the City Council, who first won their aldermanic elections in spring 2019. And, Mayor Johnson’s former employer, the Chicago Teachers Union, was one of the organizations eventually persuaded to support the #NoCopAcademy campaign’s demands. 

I’m lifting up these throughlines across time, because this campaign is in some ways emblematic of where basebuilders on the social movement left - those recruiting and developing people standing on the sidelines - have been since the fall of 2020. Many of our organizations absorbed new members and found our footing around campaigns responding to the moment created by the George Floyd uprising, the pandemic, and a widespread desire to defeat Trump at the ballot box. But in the new organizing conditions we helped to create, in the years that followed, facing a sense of less overall urgency and an ascendant pro-policing wing of the Democratic Party, many have struggled with a fallow period for movement building in general and issue-based campaigning in particular. But sometimes effective campaigns, even the ones that fall short of their demands, are most notable for the way they bridge toward the next phase of struggle, helping us develop our skills and build organization. It may be that some of us will look back at this time as a bridge, or a valley that allowed us to eventually peek over a new horizon, into an unfamiliar organizing terrain, or catch sight of the new world we were starting to manifest. 

Karina Mireya is a digital organizer and freelance photographer intertwining storytelling and narrative building in movements. Raised on the southwest side of Chicago, Karina began organizing around education while in high school and has been a part of NoCopAcademy, Treatment Not Trauma, and Cops Out CPS.

Benji Hart is an interdisciplinary artist, author, and educator whose work centers Black radicalism, queer liberation, and prison abolition. They organized with the #NoCopAcademy campaign in the role of an adult ally. 

Andrew Willis Garcés: Benji and Karina. Thank you so much for being here on the craft of campaigns. So, if the NoCopAcademy campaign were a movie, could you give us the trailer for the story we're about to hear?

Benji Hart: Okay, well, I can kick us off. There is actually a trailer for the documentary which will be coming out about this campaign, made by Soapbox Productions. To give an audio description: here in Chicago, where we both live, Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the former mayor, closed half of our city's mental health clinics in 2012 and then closed 49 public schools in 2013, which was the largest school closings in U.S. history, targeting almost exclusively Black

neighborhoods on the south and west sides. And of course, both times that there were these massive closures of public services, the story was that there wasn't enough money in the budget to keep supporting those programs. 

And then all of a sudden, in 2017 - very under the radar - Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced on July 4th weekend that there was going to be a massive new training facility built for the Chicago Police Department, that at the time was quoted as costing 95 million dollars. When, for example, there was not 2.5 million dollars in the budget to keep the mental health clinics open.

The Chicago Police Department already received 1.5 billion dollars annually. It's now close to two billion. And so this was going to be an additional almost a hundred million dollar investment in the police department.

And so, abolitionist organizers, and in particular young people who had both been impacted by the school closings and continued police violence in Black and Brown, poor and working class neighborhoods around the city, joined together to oppose that announcement and to oppose further investments in the Chicago Police Department. 

They were saying, if we didn't have two and a half million dollars for our mental health clinics, if we couldn't keep our public schools open, if we can't support public and affordable housing, how do we suddenly have a hundred million dollars to give to the Chicago Police Department, which is already lavished with money and resources? And so that was the beginning. The initiation of the campaign was adult allies and young Black and Brown people from the South and West sides coming together to say, this is a clear hypocrisy. This is clearly not about what the city can and can't afford or how much money the city does or doesn't have. It's about who is and is not prioritized in our city. And we're demanding that Black and Brown, poor and working class, immigrant, undocumented young people be who is prioritized in our city.

Karina Mireya: In 2014, the Chicago Police Department murdered Laquan McDonald. I always think about this because it happened less than a mile from my house. Laquan McDonald was murdered and shot 16 times by officer Jason Van Dyke. And the video of his murder was not released until four years later. This gave reasoning to the Department of Justice to release a report saying that The Chicago Police Department is racist and corrupt, which gave precedent to the mayor to say actually we need a new training facility because we need to make sure that they're not racist and corrupt when obviously training is not going to solve anything.

AWC: Well, Karina, you just started to mention, that happened really close to where you live. Can you both tell us a little more about your connection to the story of the campaign? 

KM: I got involved as a young person. I was 17 years old. I kind of got involved a couple months after the campaign had already launched. But I was learning, and I experienced a lot of things in my own community in policing. I had seen the way that my father has been pulled over by police and I've seen a lot of the ways that a lot of community members have also interacted with 

police. So when I heard of NoCopAcademy and I had a lot of folks in my circle who were talking about NoCopAcademy, they invited me to different events. There were art parties where folks held simultaneous teach-ins and built art together. 

BH: For me I'm originally from Massachusetts. I moved to Chicago about 11 years ago, and I actually initially moved to go to UIC to get my master's in elementary education. At the time that I moved here, and at the time that I was student teaching, was actually observing and working in one of the schools that was closed. Stockton Elementary School on the north side.

I was working with young people and part of a community that experienced one of the school closures. It was a really traumatic event for me as a young Black person who was not from Chicago. And that being my initiation to the anti-Black racism of Chicago as well as you know, in an even more dramatic way, seeing the ways that it really impacted young people. Just the tragedy of the school closings was something that really impacted me and stuck with me, and in a lot of ways moved me towards abolition. 

I did not start off as an abolitionist. It took me some time to get there. But seeing the ways that our city was constantly putting more and more resources in policing and incarceration while committing these really violent acts. School closures and mental health clinic closures are violence. Just seeing the ways that Black and Brown young people were not just being deprioritized, but were actually being attacked by these budget choices, I think really pushed me to get involved.

I was not one of the initial organizers who clocked or caught that announcement on July 4th weekend. Again, it was very under the radar. A lot of people didn't even hear about it at the time or know that it was happening. But many of the organizers who did were organizers that at that point I had been working with on campaigns for years and were people that I really trusted and that we already had sort of long-standing organizing relationships with.

Folks that I really love and trust were like, this is important. This is a really crucial moment for us to intervene. Not just because this is so heinous but also because it's a really important moment for us to point to hypocrisy and get more folks understanding abolition in a concrete way than might have previously.

And I think that was - in one of the ways - the biggest successes of the campaign, that up to that moment when we had said “abolish the police” or “defund the police” but not everyone understood what that meant or where that was coming from. But sort of hopping on this Cop Academy campaign and saying, if the city didn't have this small amount of money to support social programs and now has this massive amount of money to give to the Chicago police, what does that actually tell us about our city's priorities? And what does public safety actually come from? And how are our communities going to redefine that? 

KM: I don't think any of us came into the space being fully abolitionist but Cop Academy was the campaign that pushed us to learn. 

AWG: So let me see if I've then got it right in terms of what came before the campaign. In 2012 Mayor Rahm Emanuel closed half of the city's mental health clinics. There was a huge campaign to fight that. In 2013, he closed over 50 public schools. In 2015, he covered up the police murder of Laquan McDonald. And also there was a separate sort of campaign going at the time that had been many years in the making to win reparations for police torture. And there were other campaigns in that vein around policing in Chicago and also just the city's public services.

And then on the 4th of July weekend - which seems to be a time that a lot of nefarious people do nefarious things - but he announces this Cop Academy that would spend $95 million on this police and fire training academy in the West Garfield Park neighborhood. 

It sounds like the campaign ended up really launching closer to September. I'm wondering if you could tell us about what happened after the announcement, what was the backstory to launching the campaign? And in terms of also, what was the thinking about, are we trying to stop this? Do we think we can, what leverage do we think we can get? And who do we have to convince? Who do we have to win over? 

BH: So I was at the first NoCopAcademy action, which was a press conference in front of the mayor's office and was tiny. It was probably like 10 to 15 people. And we were like, you know, holding signs and saying “NoCopAcademy.” It was in some ways the announcement of a campaign. But I think even in that moment, we didn't know what that campaign was going to look like or how long it was going to last.

No one knew at that press conference of about 10 to 15 people that we were beginning in an 18 month struggle. That was definitely not the initial view. It was really saying,you know, we can't let this go. We can't let this happen without drawing attention to it. We can't let this happen without creating an outlet for community dissent.

And that was sort of the initial impetus. But again, as you've already really greatly pointed out, there were also already multiple campaigns and years and years of organizing around all of these issues that A) had created a tight community and cohort of abolitionist organizers but B) that these things were ongoing.

And so there were a lot of folks sort of ready to mobilize as a result of years and years of organizing together and of these multiple and intersecting campaigns. That also meant there

were a lot of people ready to go - even though, as you also said, this was initially kind of a rapid response, effort - a lot of folks were ready to go. 

And again, as abolitionists, as organizers, we understand that it's not always about winning - or at least winning in terms of getting the awful, terrible thing to not happen. That winning can look like a lot of different things. I think the initial framing was that there needs to be a record that people opposed this. It needs to be included in the narrative, and in the story, that this was controversial. That a lot of people didn't want it and that it was not just, the mayor said, I want this academy, and then the academy was built, and that was the whole story. 

AWG: So that was the impetus and it sounds like - as Karina already mentioned as someone who got recruited through one of these art parties - that there were a lot of different sorts of things you all were doing even in that first month or two. You were demonstrating opposition, like, we can't let this slide, like you said, but also recruiting people through art parties, through train takeover outreach. If you could describe that, some of which were, I think queer- and trans-focused. There was an organization called Assata’s Daughters, a Black feminist direct action organization, that was recruiting people. 

Because on the one hand you said, we can't let this slides so we're just going to do what we can, but also there seemed to be some methodical “let's go out and activate specific people in our communities and specific places and try to build to something bigger or towards some kind of showdown.”

Can y'all tell us more about what the thinking was or what it became as you all kept building this campaign? 

KM: So every week youth had a meeting and kind of determined what the campaign was going to do. And then adult allies like Benji were there to support in whatever way that was needed. And I think it was really special to be able to share space with folks, specifically just young people and talk about ways to engage young people. Although the campaign engaged a lot of different folks from elders from Jane Addams Senior Caucus to so many different communities. I think those weekly youth meetings are really important to determining how to navigate as a campaign, and it was really important to figure out how to get people involved.

So the meetings were held in a central location that was accessible by CTA. Folks were given CTA passes to be able to get home after the meetings, there was always food provided. So it was really important to making sure that the youth were leading it, and youth were making the decisions as people who were most impacted by this decision.

And I think that can be seen in the ways that we recruited other folks, whether it was just like texting people, like, Hey, come to this meeting on this day and you'll have food and you got CTA passes, or like, come make buttons with us. It was a lot of really engaging activities that also

had conversations about, what does it look like when there are police in your neighborhood? What would you like to see in your neighborhood? How have you been impacted by this investment in your community? So, like, tying these conversations into something fun and something that we felt like we had control over was really important to engaging more people.

BH: Yeah, it's actually a very big question. And I think especially because the campaign was kind of figuring out what it was as it went rather than there was this master plan at the beginning. It was rapid response. And then as it evolved and as people started showing up, and as different organizations came to the table, it sort of evolved into what I think we think of it as now, you know, being able to look back on it - a youth led campaign really focused on pushing abolitionist demands across the city and creating a multiracial cross-generational coalition of people and organizations in a hyper-segregated city. And the meetings that Karina was describing were such an important part of that model.

So there were ultimately 106 organizations that co-signed, were a part of the NoCopAcademy coalition, by the end of the campaign. And again, I think we can unpack that because some of those organizations were actively, vocally abolitionist, but many of them were not. And it was exciting actually to see organizations and leadership who were not on board with abolition or might not be ready to say “defund the police” or “abolish the police,” but who could say “this is not the best use of funds. If we have $95 million available, there are way better ways to spend it than on the Chicago Police Department.”

And so creating a broad base, a broad coalition, that was focused on this demand, even if sort of larger political philosophies weren't 100 percent aligned - for me, that was a success in and of itself - especially because we saw a lot of people in a lot of organizations, as Karina said, move towards abolition throughout the course of the campaign. Seeing that by working with people who aren't necessarily politically aligned with you - at least not a hundred percent - that is actually a very important way in which people get pushed into political alignment and which people get pushed closer to abolition. And I think that was, again, one of the actual goals of the campaign and one of the successes. Even if we weren't successful in stopping the academy from being built, getting 106 organizations to say, “we should not give more money to the Chicago Police Department, there are so many other things we can fund” was a huge success in and of itself.

And then I think another goal of the campaign that's really important to name is actually training youth organizers. So not just using youth as props or as “we want there to be youth at the front of the action” or “we want there to be youth visible because it's good for our optics.”

It was really important that youth were really guiding the campaign and that youth were actually being trained and skilled up as organizers. And not just being used, but actually being invested in. And so those meetings that Karina described were ones where youth made decisions about

the campaign that were then sort of passed down to the endorsing organizations. But what also happened in those meetings was direct action training and political education and relationship building and all these things that we saw as really crucial to training a cohort of youth organizers who would continue to do abolitionist organizing after NoCopAcademy. 

AWG: One of the reasons that the Chicago movement ecosystem has been in the news this year is because y'all, as an ecosystem, elected mayor Brandon Johnson. And I think probably some of the people and organizations that were supporting that effort, some of those people probably got activated on this campaign that we're talking about. 

Just so we can get sort of a picture, when you say there's all this youth organizing happening, these trainings and everything, is it multiple different organizations where youth are coming after school to do the organizing? Is it a coalition space? Could you paint us a picture of the sort of cast of characters who's on team justice fighting this plan? 

KM: I think it was a mixture of organizations who were bringing their young people. I know that's kind of how I got involved with the work, youth organizing at Brighton Park Neighborhood Council, and Assata's Daughters was bringing folks together.

A couple other folks like Kinetic from Asian Americans Addressing Justice would also be a part of it. There was a lot of different organizations bringing together their young people. Also, there were so many people who were not connected to any organization whatsoever. They just heard about it, like, “hey, my friend said that there's this meeting that y'all are having, and I can get food there,” or “there's this art party that's happening, and I can just do whatever I want there. I think that's the beautiful part of it is that you didn't have to be tied to an organization to be part of it. There is a place for everybody in the movement and we'll find a place for you.

AWG: Are there other examples of this organization or that one that was not abolitionist before? Here are things that we saw them do or now see them practicing or now see them leaning into as a result of this campaign? That will get us a picture of what does that look like that they went from here to here. 

BH: I think a lot of organizations even taking on policing as an issue. A lot of organizations saying, “as a racial justice organization or an immigrant justice organization, as an organization that advocates for public health or advocates for mental health care, we have to address policing.” I think helping folks see again, through this, this one project, the way all these different struggles are interconnected and, and the way the budget is harming all of our struggles, the way the funding of the police and prison system is A) fueling racial violence, fueling literal violence at the hands of the police and prison system. But B) is also sucking up all these resources that we're then left fighting over. You know, trying to get crumbs for mental health care, trying to get crumbs for youth development and arts programming when there's literally billions of dollars available, that's going to incarcerating and surveilling and harassing young people instead of actually nurturing them.

So seeing people make those connections and seeing people broaden what the scope of their work was was exciting. And then I think there's a lot to unpack there because I think on the one hand, NoCopAcademy went from 2017 to 2019. I think that laid a crucial found work foundation for the uprisings of 2020. I think a lot of people and organizations getting involved in the uprisings of 2020, and not just saying Black Lives Matter, but saying Defund the Police. I think that was a really important and exciting development that I think, in our ecosystem, NoCopAcademy played a really large role in.

And at the same time, now we're in 2023. And I think the backlash to 2020 has also intimidated a lot of people and scared a lot of people. And there are people who were saying Defund the Police who are now saying, “Oh, that's a little too much, that alienates people and that's too controversial.” Seeing there be some backsliding as a result of the backlash has been frustrating and disappointing for me, but I think is also to be expected.

For me, it's still a testament to the power of our campaigns that we made it possible for people to say Defund the Police when some people wouldn't even talk about the police, wouldn't even touch policing as an issue, previous to the NoCopAcademy campaign, I think that's a big deal.

AWG: Coming back to the story of how everything went down where we left off, you all were having art parties, train takeovers, demonstrations, I think that focused initially not just on “Rahm Emanuel is the bad guy,” but getting City Council to stand up to him and to this proposal. You ended up focusing on specific alder people, City Council people and also trying to just generate more and more public opposition. Can you tell us more about how that all evolved?

BH: Yeah, and I also wanna plug we had some incredible archivists who are part of the campaign, and there is a full timeline that is also on the NoCopAcademy website that breaks down literally every single event, every single action that happened over the course of those 18 months.

But yeah, I think here for me, there are some parallels between NoCopAcademy and Stop Cop City in that in the same way that I think we're able to get a lot of organizations who are not necessarily abolitionist at the table, making abolitionist demands, I think also we part of the success of that and part of the ways that I think we were all pushed as organizers was we also had to use a range of tactics both to to make the campaign accessible to people that we wanted to draw in. But also because we had to have real power analysis of what it was actually going to take stop this academy from being built. And so for someone like me who has never done electoral organizing, is not particularly excited by electoral organizing, really hates going to city halls, it's my least favorite place in the entire city, again, having organizers that I have long term relationships with saying “this is really important, this is an intervention we need to make, and

this is a way that we can wield power. This is a weak place. This is a weak point where we can apply pressure.” I had to really trust those people and trust those relationships. Which if I was brand new and didn't know anybody, I don't think I would have. So that history was really important. 

And so exactly as you said, there were different targets at different times. You know, Rahm Emanuel, the Chicago Police Department. These were like the large targets. But also there were specific alderpeople who were voting in support of the academy or who were the heads of specific committees that needed to green light the academy.

And so targeting those people, especially when we had an organization functioning out of that ward or young people who came from that neighborhood sort of being strategic about who was at the table with us, who could target the specific people that we needed. And I think one memorable example of this that I think you alluded to was a group of trans and queer organizers got together to target Alderman Kapleman, who did not run for reelection - thank goodness - he's gone but was a white gay man who very frequently used his identity to kind of paint himself as a progressive while he was really fueling gentrification and displacement in the uptown neighborhood, which is one of the few sort of multiracial mixed income neighborhoods in the city.

He had been working for years to push out homeless folks, unhoused folks, poor, poor folks in that neighborhood in particular. And so he was head of the budget committee and the budget committee at one point in this struggle had to sign off on the budget, had to say, you know, we're approving these funds to go to this academy. And so we targeted him, trans and queer organizers targeted him specifically as someone who is using our identities to fuel gentrification and policing in our city. And again, as trans and queer people saying that is unacceptable. And just because someone is gay does not mean they're with us. And just because someone is gay does not mean we're with them. And so that was a specific action targeting a specific person.

That again was also very intentional about who was doing that targeting. And you know, sometimes it was really important to have young people. Sometimes it was really important to have folks from the West Side. Sometimes it was really important to have trans and queer people be the ones leading the various events or the various actions.

But because we had such a broad coalition, there was lots of really interesting ways and interesting moments that could happen and that different people, different older people, different city officials could be targeted in different ways at different times. 

KM: Yeah, I think like when it comes to City Council, I knew nothing about City Council going into the campaign. And so I had to learn a lot about what an alderperson does and what a mayor is responsible for and what a budget is within the campaign. And I know a lot of the other young people did too. We were learning as we were doing. But then we learned that a lot of these people in power are people who are elected who don't represent our actual needs in the community.

I remember there being an action specifically against another person, Raymond Lopez, on the Southwest side, which is where I live, who is a Latino, who is a gay man who has never stood for the community ever, who continues to not stand for the community and make very problematic choices. In doing that we learned through doing, so I remember being at, seeing this action outside of Raymond Lopez's fundraiser and asking him to commit to voting to not approve the funds for the police academy.

I think a lot of people across the city did similar things with aldermen, we were making people answer the question, like, whose side are you on? Are you on the side of Black and Brown young people? Or are you on the side of the city that has continued to disinvest in us?

I'm actually happy that a lot of people are not in their positions anymore. And a lot of that organizing is due to what NoCopAcademy did. And the organizing that came before us. 

AWG: Yeah, I was noticing that one of the things that you all did, it seemed like, was focus on having conversations with people in the neighborhood that was slated to host the Academy, at West Garfield Park, that you had over 500 conversations with people in that neighborhood. The vast majority had never heard of it.

This is the winter. This is months after it was announced. And then also that you all were prioritizing events that were about inviting people to think about how “would we spend 95 million dollars, whether it was in this neighborhood or in the city, what do we need, what do we want? What, what would make it, would make this place great?” And really inviting people into that as it seems like part of the organizing conversation is part of the recruitment pitch. And one of those, the neighborhoods and the alderpeople you ended up focusing on was in Ward 33. Which as you alluded to was one of the places that a year later, a year and a half into the campaign, the people of Ward 33 kicked out their representative.

And so I'm curious about what else stands out to you about, as you all do these things of, we're trying to engage the people both around the neighborhoods that would be most impacted, but also just where we know that there's at least four or five alder people who, like you all are pointing out, some of these people say they're one thing and they're actually doing another thing. And I think four or five of them lost their reelection bids in April 2019, fast forward to that. You have a mayor who's at the time, technically popular in the sense of he can get his agenda passed.

You know, you had 48, I think, initially alderpeople who voted in favor of selling or buying the land that we needed to construct it. So in that way, very similar to Atlanta, where it's like the City Council is all for it, you know, we're going to spend all this money. And then, a year and a

half in, the tide is shifting, public opinion is shifting, incumbents are getting bounced in their reelection bids who had been supporting this. And you all had to do a lot of work in between the announcement of this “is kind of a done deal,” and wait a second,” actually a lot of people are against this. And one way we're seeing now is the representatives who had been able to get away with supporting the mayor's pro-police thing,are not able to get away with it. And progressive challengers are getting elected. What else did you all feel like was important that made that happen, that you all did over the course of that year?

BH: I would say you've kind of highlighted already a lot of those key examples. But I think also even just like what Karina was saying that even just creating some awareness around who these people are, that folks actually benefit from there not being a strong understanding of who is involved in city government, what their role is, what they have power and jurisdiction over, what they can and can't do, and a lot of people just aren't aware of that.

And as much as people complain about lack of civic engagement, they benefit from people not paying attention to what they're doing and from not knowing who they are and not being able to treat them as targets. So I think even just teaching people these folks names - like a lot of people didn't know the names of their own alderperson, much less someone on a completely different side of the city. 

And then I think another big success of NoCopAcademy was people showing up from across the city, was folks from across the city joining Brighton Park Neighborhood Council and other folks from Raymond Lopez's ward to disrupt his fundraiser. Folks from across the city showing up to the West Side to say, this is not a real investment in Black people, in Black communities, in Black youth on the west side, and we actually care about and support Black young people, unlike people in these positions of power. I think creating not just cross-community, but cross-city, cross-geographical solidarity was really important to, again, not just building awareness, but actually building relationships that help create a lot of the shifts that I think we are still seeing the benefits of all these years later and certainly saw the benefits of when a lot of those folks got pushed out or when that was that sort of initial shake up of City Council that I do think NoCopAcademy played a big role in. And I think one of the ways you could see that NoCopAcademy was playing a big role was the Academy became the hot button issue of that election campaign. It went from this under the radar thing that no one really knew about and there wasn't really any reporting on and no one was really talking about to the central issue of the campaign with some folks doubling down on it. And some folks you know, making it very clear where they stood in terms of white supremacy and fascism and support of law enforcement. And other folks realizing that they might lose their seat if they didn't come out against it. And many of the folks who didn't come out against it did lose their seat. And folks being forced to take a side, we know as organizers, polarization is actually important, so even if the side folks chose was doubling down on racism and white supremacy and support for the police, that was important information in and of itself. 

KM: Yeah, this city wanted to pass everything under the radar. They wanted everything approved by the end of 2017. They wanted everything to go as smoothly as possible because they didn't care about people who were impacted by it. And I think the biggest thing, like Benji touched on, was the multi-generational multicultural organizing that made it impossible for you to not talk about NoCopAcademy. I remember seeing the folks walking in the Chinese Lunar New Year parade with science saying NoCopAcademy the Jane Addams Senior Caucus was out there with NoCopAcademy signs. And there was just many people in different areas of the city that were all saying NoCopAcademy. People, I remember, were bird-dogging Rahm Emanuel, and they're like, what's your position on the Police Academy? What's your position on this? Every single place where he went, there were organizers disrupting his dinners, organizers at every single fundraiser he was at.

And not just for Rahm Emanuel, but for a lot of the elected officials that weren't saying anything about the campaign, were like, okay, you have to tell us yes, that you are with young people, or you need to let us no, that you believe that you are against young people. I think that was really essential as making it a talking point of the campaign, was making everybody have a stance. 

One of the things in the campaign that stands out, at least in the second half, was young folks and allies went to Highlander Center in New Market, Tennessee for a week, and we used that week to kind of slow down, continue to build community with each other, and strategize about what was coming next. And through that one week at Highlander, we developed and strategized an action against the Black Caucasus that was having a fundraiser the week after. And the Black caucus were a group of aldermen who were saying that their communities need the jobs, they need this in their communities. But when in 2017, when folks were surveyed, and they were saying, no, actually, we don't need it in our community, so we were trying to target the Black Caucus to be able to say NoCopAcademy. And I remember we sent one of the folks, Freedom, into the fundraiser to disrupt the fundraiser when they were speaking, when they were giving their introduction, Freedom would interrupt them and start shouting, “NoCopAcademy, NoCopAcademy!” I think that was really important to kind of the narrative of being like, these are adults that are supposed to be representing young people and their communities and here they are saying that they're the ones in charge of decisions and they're not doing what they're meant to be doing.

I think also in the instance of the organizing against the Black Caucus, there was also a lot of violence that played out at that fundraiser where young people were pushed and shot by police, and this was happening right outside of the fundraiser. And I think seeing that happen to young people who have been saying that this is happening in their neighborhoods. And this is an event that is so many people of high status, that have a position in City Hall and they're seeing this happen outside of their window of seeing young people being pushed and shoved on the floor by police officers. I don't know a clearer picture to paint for you. If this is happening outside of your window, what happens when they go home at night? What happens when they go to their neighborhoods?

BH: One of the things Karina was referencing that I don't think we've talked about yet is that NoCopAcademy, the campaign, published a survey of Garfield Park residents, Garfield Park being the predominantly Black neighborhood on the west side where the Academy has now been built and members of the campaign were able to canvass 500 different Garfield Park residents to ask them their thoughts and opinions on this academy coming to their neighborhood.

And the big things that surfaced from that campaign were, A) most people didn't know anything about it, had not been told about it. And folks who had been told about it were specifically told that it was a training for the fire department while it is a training for police and fire. But we know is overwhelmingly about, you know, police training. That was the point of this Academy being built and a lot of folks in the neighborhood where it was being built, literally didn't know that it was happening and certainly didn't know who it was actually for. And an overwhelming majority, I believe 70% said they did not want the academy built. And I believe 80% said there are better things to do. There are better ways to spend 95 million dollars in this community, in this neighborhood than on a police training facility.

And again, the city had conducted no survey of that type. So for us to be able to go to City Council and say we talked to 500 Garfield Park residents, and there is not support for this in the neighborhood where it's being built. The things you're saying about community wanting this and needing this and being desperate for this are not true. I think that was another sort of important tactic that we engaged with as a campaign was really actually going to community. And conducting findings that we could then present to back up the arguments that we were making and the demands that we were making. 

AWG: Wrapping up the story of the 18 month campaign. It sounds like there was all this work done in Chicago to polarize, as you said, you know, people against this camp, this academy, to really build this larger, whether it was formal or not, a coalition. I mean, there were all these organizations that officially signed on, but there was abolitionists and just like getting people riled up about what do we really want to choose here, in terms of investing in ourselves and our people and our communities or in policing. It led up to a vote in March, 2019, where the City Council basically for the last time was voting to appropriate the money basically. 

And you all were doing direct actions. There was all kinds of opposition that built up and a month later where these primary elections where a bunch of the people that voted for it were bounced kind of unexpectedly. And also another thing, I don't know that we we talked about, but about a year into your campaign Rahm Emanuel said, I'm not running for reelection, which surprised just about everybody. And at the time there was a lot of speculation that it had really eaten away at his popularity, this campaign, this proposal, particularly other things he'd done obviously also.

But can you take us there into what was that like at the end of this campaign? Because obviously, you know, you've already, you guys already named, we didn't necessarily expect to stop the academy from being approved, but I'm wondering, can you take us into what was that like towards the official end in terms of like this phase, like it hasn't been built yet, but it has been authorized, money's been appropriated and what that led to as far as where the work went, where the energy went, where the organizing went and where it has gone since.

BH: I can kick us off and say you know, this third act. The closing of the campaign was really hard. A, because we lost and that was really heartbreaking, especially young people, this was their first campaign and we fought hard and young folks fought well and it was hard to frankly have such a successful campaign and see it not win was really just hard and demoralizing in its own right, and as you said, the ripple effects continued well after the ending of the campaign and in that last phase, that last chapter, there was a takeover at City Hall. Members of the Chicago Teachers Union participated which again, that was a big shift, the CTU's involvement and support of the campaign that you know there's a lot to unpack there in and of itself.

But there was a many hours-long blocking of elevators at City Hall. And it went well into the night, actually, because police didn't want to arrest us. Police didn't want the optics of protesters being arrested. So folks actually occupied City Hall well into the evening. And then the following day returned to disrupt the final vote, which again was a really intense day. Another day where a lot of violence happened especially towards young Black people, especially towards young women, trans, and queer people. A really intense, really violent day. And again, a day where the vote was made final that the Academy was going to be built.

But that final vote did include eight no votes, which was the most no votes we'd ever gotten. And at a time, Rahm Emanuel in particular, the Chicago city government, is particularly undemocratic. The mayor holds a lot of power and people don't want to upset the mayor because they're often very petty repercussions for them and their wards when they do.

Getting people to go against the mayor at all was hard in and of itself. And those no votes were for lots of complicated reasons. You know, certainly not all those folks supported our campaign. But getting there to be eight no votes at a time where I believed the council voted unanimously with the mayor's office 92% of the time at that time, if I'm not mistaken.

Any vote that was not unanimous was actually a pretty big deal. And so to get eight no votes was a small success in and of itself. And then as much as folks were disheartened by that loss, I'm really proud of the ways that as a, not just as a campaign, but as a community, we stayed connected and stayed aligned.

And I think the next big chapter that's important to highlight is that almost immediately after the NoCopAcademy campaign ended, the Cops Out CPS campaign began, which was a push to get Chicago police officers out of Chicago public schools and to get CPS to end its contract with the Chicago Police Department.

And many of the young people from NoCopAcademy sort of migrated to the Cops Out CPS campaign, which was successful. And Karina can fact check me here again, but I believe was successful in getting 11 million dollars cut from the contract, so it did not end the contract completely. Chicago Police Department has a contract with CPS where they are actually paid out of CPS's budget to be school resource officers. Chipping away at that contract and getting multiple schools to get their SROs out was a huge success of that campaign and young people really used tactics that they picked up from NoCopAcademy to get cops out of CPS, and I was so proud to watch that happen.

KM: It was 21 million that was cut from the CPD budget. So the day the day before the final vote, the budget committee was meeting to approve the contract for AECOM, which was one of the developers and that was the day that we had staged a direct action to take over the first floor of City Hall, so folks were going to kind of blockade each of the doors, the elevators, so that nobody can go upstairs. So we had young people and adult allies from throughout the coalition who were part of that and were trained in direct action. Folks were prepared with legal support if people were arrested, we had anticipated folks getting arrested.

Like Benji mentioned, this lasted through the night because the mayor did not want to have a bad image of arresting people. So that worked out in our favor. And what I think that's really beautiful about that action is how much at the end of it, how much joy young people were displaying. It was like 10 o'clock at night, and young people were still blockading the elevators, and were playing tag in the first floor of City Hall.

This is us reclaiming space that we've always told does not belong to us, that does not work for us, that does not serve us, and this is us taking up that space and sitting right here, regardless. And then the next day came, so we decided that they weren't going to arrest us. We were going to leave willingly because we needed to save our energy for the final vote. For the day of the final vote hundreds upon hundreds of people filled up the lobby of the City Council chambers, and City Council actually didn't want to let anybody in. They let all the people who were in suits, all the people who got money, into City Council, but they said that they couldn't let us in. 

And as a result of that, we started to make a lot of noise. Folks were just chanting on every single thing they can find. They were beating on a trash can. They were making megaphones out of posters. People brought whistles. People were making all sorts of loud noises to be able to be heard. It became so loud that, although we weren't being allowed in, the City Council transcripts had to write down in the background that people were chanting NoCopAcademy from

how loud that we were being outside of the City Council meeting. So, every time Mayor Emanuel opened his mouth, he had to hear NoCopAcademy in the background. 

I don't think we ever anticipated reaching 26 votes. I think 8 votes was a lot more than we had anticipated. Considering one of the first votes, there was only one person who didn't vote, who voted against the police academy.

But I think the community built during NoCop was how a lot of the young people specifically processed it. We made a lot of space to process it together and like what it means. And I think a lot of the conversations were had, like, okay, we didn't cancel the contract. But we made it so everybody had to talk about NoCopAcademy.

Every person who ran for election had to say where they stood on NoCopAcademy. And one of the highlights, I also think, was like the amount of relationships that were built during the campaign. Like, six years later, most of the organizers are some of my best friends. Like, I see them every other week.

We went straight into organizing into Cops Out CPS later that year. And we took a lot of what we learned from NoCopAcademy to do that. We had youth meetings in addition to adult ally meetings. A lot of it had to be flipped and we had to learn a lot because things became virtual with the pandemic. But it was an interesting space to learn and take what we want with us and in similar way, things happened in similar ways in Cops Out CPS than it did to NoCopAcademy. We didn't, we weren't able to cancel the entire intergovernmental agreement between CPS and the police department, but we were able to cut the budget from $33 million to $12 million, which was a huge win, led completely by young people.

And I, I always say, movements build on top of movements, and the organizing and things that happened during Cops Out CPS would not have been possible without the organizing of, like, NoCopAcademy, without the organizing of Bayanida. Without the organizing of people who fought against the mental closing of the mental health clinics, of going to closing of the schools.

BH: I think that is, I kind of want to highlight as the final success of NoCopAcademy because it was actually a hard decision after that final vote to come together collectively and say, okay, this is the end of the campaign because we had fought so long and so hard. And there were some people who were like, it hasn't been built yet, you know, we can still fight in this way, or we can still, you know, galvanize folks to make this happen. And we were really worn out after 18 months cause we really thought it was going to be, you know, two or three months. We had in no way anticipated an 18 month campaign when we did that first press conference. And we delayed construction by literal years, which is something else to be proud of.

But it was a hard decision to say, we've done what we set out to do, and even though we weren't successful in stopping this from being built, we did what, this campaign did what we wanted it to do and we need to phase it out and, and actually take time to rest. That was a hard decision and kind of a heartbreaking decision in its own right.

But I think was really important to sustaining future efforts. And to recognizing that we were approaching burnout at that point and needed to stop in order to make other efforts possible and in order to, to maintain our ecosystem. And I'm really proud to say that it's six years later, and I'm still friends with everyone in the campaign and still organizing with almost everyone in the campaign in different capacities and in different ways, but almost everyone who was at the organizing table back then still is.

And again, I think we know as organizers that that's not always the case. And that people do burn out and sometimes campaigns are successful at winning their goals, but everyone hates each other at the end. And no one will work with each other ever again. I'm like, proud that that didn't happen and proud that almost all of us are still at the table doing abolitionist organizing all these years later. 

AWG: And are there any other last reflections or insights or offerings when you all think about, not just for the StopCopCity campaign, but for other campaigns or even just what you're seeing in our movements today, that are insights from the work on the NoCopAcademy and the work that came after it that you think especially are things that the rest of us should learn from or appreciate or notice?

BH: I think multi-racial multi-cultural and even multi-political-philosophy, multi-political orientation organizing is actually necessary if we're going to win. One of my favorite actions from NoCopAcademy was Rahm Emanuel's Iftar dinner being disrupted.

He used to host an annual Iftar, which is goofy for so many different reasons. And Muslim youth disrupted his Iftar dinner to say NoCopAcademy, and we're actually carrying a banner that said, “from Gaza to Garfield Park occupation is a crime.” And Palestinian solidarity and Black solidarity in the city under NoCopAcademy, Muslim and non-Muslim solidarity. And again, treating NoCopAcademy not just as a Chicago issue, and not just as a U.S. Issue, but as a global issue and an international issue. And building international solidarity in the fight for abolition and demilitarization was something I was really proud of, even when it only happened in sort of spurts and moments like that. Those are some of the moments that I was the most proud of and the most excited by. 

And so I think it's important that we're always, even as we're fighting these local fights, which is so important to have that local focus, tying them to not just national but international struggles for Black liberation, for abolition, against imperialism and colonialism and war.

We know these issues are at the heart of all of these fights, and we need to actually name that. And I think it's important to name that in order to build solidarity. I also think it's important to actually say what we want, and to make radical demands, and not be intimidated about the demands that we're making.

I think Stop Cop City is doing an incredible job of that, and I think more of our campaigns and organizations need to follow suit in terms of actually saying what we want. Folks have been too effective at making it, you know, the third rail to say, Defund the Police, to make it too controversial to say, defund or abolish the police and as organizers, we can't be intimidated by that. We can't be intimidated by the president, or whoever is in whatever seat of power, telling us don't use that language or that alienates people or that's too far, that's too radical. The crises we are facing as a planet require radical solutions. And that means we need to be making radical demands and not be intimidated and not be swayed in demanding the things that we know are what our communities need if we're going to survive and if we're going to thrive.

KM: One of the lessons that I take away from it is that not everyone came into this movement an abolitionist, and we have to make space for that. A lot of the young people, myself included, did not come into the space being abolitionists. But it's learning and talking about resources about what our communities could look like that inspired us to be a part of this campaign and continue to organize. And kind of like Benji was mentioning, like, to not be afraid to think, to imagine beyond institutions, beyond these systems of power that have told us that this is the way that it has to operate. It doesn't have to operate this way.

And I remember a lot of the support within the campaign. Paige, who used to run Assata's Daughters, would always be like, I don't want you to think about any kind of barriers in place. I just want you to think of any kind of idea that you have, the sky's the limit. And I think there's a lot of fear to do that, to, like, truly dream that we're always having people tell us that's not possible, that we can't do that, it's not feasible. But we have to be willing to experiment and willing to dream to be able to build this world that we're developing. 

I'll just add is that NoCopAcademy went to Atlanta earlier this year. Benji and I, and a couple of other folks went in solidarity with Stop Cop City during the week of action. I mean, it was really important to see that across the city solidarity, they had told us that they studied our toolkit that we created, which was kind of crazy to think about to think about how again, like, campaigns impact one another.

AWG: Is there anything you want to say about the importance of all the actions that happened? Rahm Emanuel, to my understanding, was disrupted at least four different universities where he tried to speak out of the state by people acting in solidarity with NoCopAcademy and AECOM, the developer was protested in Los Angeles. What should we know about the value of that kind of work in terms of, you know, amplifying the movement demands outside of the place where, you know, principally the struggle was taking place?

BH: It's invaluable, which I think is part of the reason it's tamped down on so hard and we've seen that, I think in some much more intense ways actually with Stop Cop City and the pushing of this narrative of outside agitators and, you know this isn't folks from Atlanta, this isn't folks from Georgia, this is folks from other parts of the country that are like coming in and creating trouble.

Part of the reason that narrative gets pushed so intensely is because there's a really active effort to discredit cross community solidarity. And in fact, to make cross community solidarity look like a bad thing or something that undermines movement and undermines the demands that we're making rather than the exact opposite.

And A) it's so important because it makes people feel less alone and less isolated. We felt very alone sometimes and having to fight this massive, ugly project in our city and not hearing a national outcry about it could make us feel kind of isolated as organizers. So wanting to make sure that folks in Atlanta who are fighting almost the exact same fight don't feel that way was really important to us. 

And again we can't leave it to Atlanta to fight this project alone A) because it's going to take all of us. But B) because what is happening in Atlanta impacts the entire planet. The construction of Cop City in Atlanta is going to be a model for what happens in other cities. It's going to train law enforcement around the U.S. and around the world to further fascism and to disrupt movements and silence and target impacted communities. And that's something that we will all be impacted by, even if we're not Atlanta or Georgia residents. So that solidarity is so important to our collective wellbeing, but also to actual movement building, because these individual projects we know represent a much larger shift that we're in the midst of, and it's going to take all of us to block that shift from happening.

AWG: Karina and Benji, thank you so much for sharing the story and these insights with us on this podcast. Appreciate you.