VIGIL FOR 13-YEAR-OLD BOY KILLED BY CHICAGO POLICE
“I just want to know what really happened to my baby . . . he was a little boy . . . he still played with Hot Wheels. . . He would cheer everyone up just with his smile … [Police] could have done something else, not kill him…If they are trained to shoot, why shoot to kill him. I want justice for my son Adam.” — Elizabeth Toledo (from news stories)
This statement from Facebook and the photos are by Sarah-Ji Rhee, loveandstrugglephotos.com, and are used with permission.
In the early hours of Monday, March 29, Chicago Police shot and killed 13-year-old Adam Toledo in Little Village. Today, the community gathered to mourn and honor Adam’s life in a vigil and to protest the police in a noise demo and march through the neighborhood. We have heard [Chicago] Mayor Lori Lightfoot blame the lack of a social safety net for Adam’s murder, the same mayor who is perfectly OK with CPD’s (Chicago Police Department) bloated budget of over $4 million/day, who adamantly refuses to defund CPD, who still wants to send people with guns to situations involving mental health crises, who insists on putting cops in schools, whose response to neighborhood problems is more and more police and more and more surveillance, and who gave away 65% of Federal emergency COVID C.A.R.E.S. funding to CPD while our most vulnerable communities continue to suffer. Adam is one of three youth who have been murdered by CPD in less than two weeks. Adam should still be with us today. 18-year-old Travon Chadwell should still be with us today. 22-year- old Anthony Alvarez should still be with us today. Justice for Adam and Travon and Anthony would look like their families and communities having the resources to thrive so that they never would have been murdered by police in the first place. #DefundCPD #AbolishthePolice #AbolitionNOW
