MSNBC reports: “Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Wednesday fiercely resisted calls to follow his police superintendent in stepping down, even as the city continues to roil over the dashcam video released last week showing 17-year-old Laquan McDonald being shot by police.”

JAMANI MONTAGUE,  Jamani.Montague at emory.edu
Montague is a student at Emory University and is an associate with the the group RootsAction.org, which organized a petition — “Rahm Emanuel Should Resign Now” — that has gotten 15,000 signatures and states: “Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel oversaw the withholding from public view — for more than a year — of a video of a police murder of a teenager.

“The police officer who shot 17-year-old Laquan McDonald 16 times, continuing to shoot his motionless body on the ground, has now been indicted for first-degree murder.

“The video was kept secret for 13 months [emphasis in original], during which time Emanuel never corrected the blatant lies by the Chicago Police Department that maintained the victim had lunged at the police with a knife just before he was shot. The video shows this to have been a complete fabrication.

“A mayor willing to cover for the murder of his constituent is no mayor at all.”

ERICA MEINERS, ermeiner at neiu.edu
Meiners professor of educational inquiry and curriculum studies at Northeastern Illinois University.

She said today: “From closing public schools in black and brown communities, to actively supporting the corrupt ‘status quo’ of Chicago policing that kills, the mayor must resign.

“Chicago’s Black youth mobilizations such as the Black Youth Project, labor unions like Chicago’s Teacher Union, community organizations such as Kenwood Oakland Community Organization — these are Chicago’s leadership who are making a just world.”