Chicago Fabulous Four

Fabulous News from the Courtroom

2009-08-13T16:35:00.003-05:00

Dear Friends,

In their infinite wisdom (and knowledge that the Fabulous4 was falsely arrested and treated inappropriately), after an emotional and aggravating day in court with legal and comrade support, the Chicago Police ran out of the court room on the 7th with their tails between their legs, cowering in trepidation of what we would bring to them if they continued to poke is with their dirty sharps.

That is to say: ALMOST ALL THE CHARGES HAVE BEEN DROPPED!!! For the Chicago Fabulous Four, all but one misdemeanor charge was dropped (can you say "lack of evidence") and the crew of folks who showed up at the court house to support, legally and emotionally, were amazing.

THANK YOU -- to all of you who donated to our legal defense, medical, and travel expenses. Every penny made/makes a difference.

and THANK YOU -- to those of you who challenge police brutality in your neighborhoods and on the streets. If we are in solidarity with each other, we can work together to eliminate the police presences in our lives.

and THANK YOU -- for all the support and for showing up, in spirit or in the carbon form.

and THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU legal support team, who were not obligated to stay involved, but were there every step of the way. nevertheless.

love,
one of the Chicago Fabulous Four

P.S. the story of inside-the-courtroom to come soon. and we're sure as hell not lettin' the police off that easy....more to come soon.

Update on Charges

2009-07-26T09:22:00.001-05:00

At the end of this week, the Fab4 learned that one of their felony charges was either previously misread by Cook County clerks, or was recently lowered to a misdemeanor status, (which is Awesome!). Now collectively facing 2 felonies and 7 misdemeanors, we're revving up the engines, but still have a long way to go.
Keep on keeping on!

The 1st Court Appearance -- coming up soon!

2009-07-17T12:07:00.001-05:00

The Fabulous Four’s first court date is an arraignment on August 7^th 2009 at 1pm. It’ll be at the court house on 2452 W. Belmont in Chicago. And we’d love to see you there! If you can make it, your presence would be a wonderful relief and the visible support may help us legally as well. Check back in here before August 7^th for any updates that we may have about the arraignment.

Thanks and much love!

How the Fabulous Four came to be- story

2009-07-16T11:31:00.004-05:00

The events and police riot of 5-30-09:

On Saturday night, May 30th, a crowd of approximately 100 queers disembarked the red line train at the Belmont stop into Chicago’s Boystown area. While walking in Boystown, the crowd found themselves too large to fit on the sidewalk, (especially in an area where bars are frequent and patrons and tables spill out the front doors), and out of necessity about half of the crowd moved into the street, walking around cars and allowing cars to pass in the middle.

A few blocks down, the crowd took a left turn, and the police showed up from behind. In attempting to get their cars around the crowd, they repeatedly ran into people’s legs, in some cases knocking the victim onto the hood of the car, then slamming on their brakes to cause the person to fall to the ground.

As a few cop cars got to the front of the crowd. The first car in the line stopped and the cop jumped out and ran at the crowd, which parted down a residential side street. The cop stopped, shook his baton at the crowd, then went back to his car. The first few cars followed the crowd onto the side street. More cops parked and began running into the crowd, grabbing queers seemingly at random (although they did catch a high percentage of non-gender-conforming folks) and proceeding to beat them with batons and extendable asps. At this time, there was a scream from the middle of the crowd, and then people shouting, “he just ran her foot over!” The patient was helped out of the fray and a medic took over her evacuation.

During this time, at least 8 cops were involved in the beating of at least 10 queers in the crowd. They drug queers into the street and proceeded to hit them with batons, the queers falling to the ground in attempts to protect their heads.

It appears that the most-targeted individuals were those who conform less to binary systems of gender. This was evidenced in the continued targeting of one of the eventual arrestees, when a cisgendered person put herself between the cop and his target and, instead of being hit, was told, “Move it!”

A summary of the injuries suffered by people in the crowd (not just the arrestees)- a broken foot, bruised ribs (three people, one of which developed into pneumonia), bruised kidney, sprained fingers with accompanying infection, separated ligaments in the shoulder, soft tissue damage to the elbow, and uncountable bruises, cuts and scrapes.

Four people were arrested, and spent the remainder of the night being harassed and tormented in police custody. At the police station, still in Boystown, the queers were mocked for their choices of hairstyle, interrogated without being Mirandized, dehumanized, and threatened with injury, beating, and rape (”you won’t like it when we leave you in a cell with Tyrone. He’ll sure like you though.”). They were then transferred to a jail and released the following morning.

A small group of passionate and committed people doing jail support stayed outside of the police station, and then the jail, for the entire night and morning. In the early morning hours, a couple folks doing jail support traveled across town to gather more folks outside of the jail to show support. When queers started showing up by the carload at 6:30am, creating a (beautiful and intimidating) presence outside of the jail, officers got antsy inside and 'coincidentally' released the four arrestees by 9am.