Author: THE AMIR SHAKUR SPEAKS BROADCAST CHANNEL & MEDIA GROUP
THE AMIR SHAKUR SPEAKS BROADCAST CHANNEL & MEDIA GROUP is an American media company based in Chicago, IL. The company was founded by Global Influencer and Journalist Amir "King Seven" Shakur in 2000 the company produces Radio, TV, Magazines etc. Black America World News Associated, Soul America Broadcast Network, The Owl Radio, and more are affiliates.
Our ideas of "Civic Responsibility," is defined as the "responsibility of a citizen" (Dictionary.com). We encourage actions and attitudes associated with social participation. Our Actions of civic responsibility can be displayed in advocacy for various causes, such as economic, civil, environmental or quality of life issues.
We hope to "Help the World Sing in Perfect Harmony."
CHICAGO (CHICAGO URBAN DAILY)— The petitions are filed, and Mayor Brandon Johnson’s reelection bid is officially on.
Johnson wheeled 33,000 signatures into Chicago Board of Elections headquarters, collected by 2,500 volunteers down to the wire. Candidates need only 12,500 valid signatures to make the ballot — but campaigns gather far more to survive challenges to signature authenticity. The filing deadline is 5 p.m. Monday, October 26, with petition challenges starting the next day. Johnson says he won’t be challenging anyone else’s petitions.
But getting on the ballot is the easy part. The headwinds are brutal.
A recent NORC poll puts Johnson’s approval rating at just 22%, with 53% of Chicago voters disapproving of his job performance. Among likely voters, 59% expressed enthusiasm for Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias as a potential candidate, compared with 32% for Johnson. His labor coalition has already fractured with the loss of support from the Service Employees International Union.
And the money race isn’t close. Johnson is trailing with a cash balance of just $379,471. His biggest challenger, Giannoulias, has approximately $19 million.
Yet his team believes millions of dollars in investments, lower crime, and kept campaign promises will convince voters to let him keep the job. His reelection message? “Cranes are up and crime is down.”
Sixteen candidates had already declared when the petition filing period opened Monday, October 19. The election is February 23, 2027.
Stay tuned to Chicago Urban Daily as the mayor’s race takes shape.
Reported by Chicago Urban Daily News. Visit chicagourbandailynews.com for updates.
CHICAGO (CHICAGO URBAN DAILY)— Tonight, downtown Chicago belongs to the artists.
The 12th annual Arts in the Dark Halloween Parade takes over Columbus Drive from 6 to 8 p.m. — a free, family-friendly nighttime procession that treats Halloween as what organizers call the “artist’s holiday.” Giant puppets, illuminated floats, dancers, musicians, and hundreds of costumed performers will fill the street, with Chicago cultural institutions, youth arts programs, and performers from across the city all in the mix.
This year comes with a big change: after outgrowing its recent State Street footprint, the parade has moved to Columbus Drive, marching north from Balbo Drive toward Jackson Boulevard, with the skyline and Buckingham Fountain as the backdrop. The event draws an audience of more than 100,000, and it has been named one of the top 10 Halloween events in the country by USA TODAY.
The parade is part of Mayor Brandon Johnson’s Fall Fest, and it’s free and open to the public. Costumes are encouraged — this is one parade where the crowd is part of the spectacle.
Arrive early for the costume contest: Goodwill’s “Haunted Runway” lets parade-goers vote for the ultimate DIY costume winner as finalists walk the route from 5 to 6 p.m. Food trucks will be set up on Ida B. Wells for anyone who needs a snack before the festivities.
So grab the family, pick a spot on Columbus Drive, and watch Chicago’s creative spirit light up the night.
Stay tuned to Chicago Urban Daily for more of what’s happening across the city.
Reported by Chicago Urban Daily News. Visit chicagourbandailynews.com for updates.
CHICAGO (CHICAGO URBAN DAILY)— Hundreds of people swept up in Chicago’s immigration crackdown could soon be walking free.
On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Cummings ordered the full release of 13 detained individuals, ruling their arrests ran afoul of a 2022 consent decree that limits how federal agents can make warrantless arrests. And that, attorneys say, is just the beginning.
Cummings gave government lawyers until Friday to comb through a list of 615 people detained at county jails and federal facilities nationwide and determine who qualifies for alternatives to detention — like an ankle monitor — while their immigration cases proceed. He said he would issue an order for their release next week, and in the meantime he temporarily paused deportation proceedings for people who might qualify for bond.
Those without criminal histories or prior removal orders could be released on a $1,500 bond. The order also bars the government from pressuring detainees to agree to voluntary deportation while their cases are pending.
Attorneys for the detainees hailed the move as a win — and said they plan to bring more cases.
“All of the tactics of ICE have been unlawful in the vast majority of arrests,” said Mark Fleming, a lawyer with the Chicago-based National Immigrant Justice Center. “We’re concerned they have no access to counsel and no understanding of what their situation is.”
The stakes are enormous. More than 3,300 people suspected of immigration violations have been arrested in Chicago and its suburbs since Operation Midway Blitz began in September — and many have already been deported or left on their own.
Justice Department attorney Will Weiland pushed back, telling Cummings that at least 12 people on the list of 615 were “high risk” and shouldn’t be released into communities. “Nothing has been easy with this case your honor,” he said.
Stay tuned to Chicago Urban Daily as the release order takes shape.
Reported by Chicago Urban Daily News. Visit chicagourbandailynews.com for updates.
CHICAGO (CHICAGO URBAN DAILY)— On the National Day of Protest against police brutality, one organization made its presence known in a way this city will not forget. Blocks United Chicago, standing in association with Families Demanding Justice, brought families and supporters into the streets on Thursday, October 22 — and announced themselves as a social justice revolutionary force to watch for the future.
This was not a rally staged for cameras. This was families — mothers, partners, brothers, and sisters carrying signs bearing the names of loved ones stolen by police violence — standing front and center, with Blocks United beside them, organized, disciplined, and unafraid. The message from the microphone was plain: do not wait until this fight lands on your doorstep. Join the families. Join Blocks United. Build the movement year-round, and come back in fuller force.
Protesters with Families Demanding Justice banners at the October 22 National Day of Protest against police brutality in Chicago.
The timing gave the day its edge. The protest landed the same week the system justified the killing of a 1-year-old baby — Kohen Wiley of Senatobia, Mississippi — and speaker after speaker named it from the microphone: an epidemic of police brutality that will not end itself, and a movement that must be built by the people who refuse to accept it.
National activist Amir A.H. Shakur — Amir Shakur Speaks — leader of Freedom First International, stood in support of the action and saluted the organizers directly. “A huge thank you to Blocks United and Families Demanding Justice – Chicago for taking a powerful stand against police brutality on the National Day of Protest,” Shakur said. “They made their presence known as true revolutionaries — and a force to watch for the future.”
That is the story of October 22. In a season of press conferences and filings, Blocks United put bodies in the street and families in the front — the kind of organized, family-led pressure that leads the charge from here. Watch this organization. The ground is moving.
Stay tuned to Chicago Urban Daily for continuing coverage of this movement. Reported by Chicago Urban Daily News. Visit chicagourbandailynews.com for updates.
CHICAGO (CHICAGO URBAN DAILY)— National activist Amir A.H. Shakur — Amir Shakur Speaks — leader of Freedom First International, stood outside Chicago Police Headquarters on Thursday with Samaria Rice, mother of Tamir Rice, alongside families and community activists, demanding a full investigation and real correction of Chicago’s police accountability system after the city closed 654 misconduct investigations under the Civilian Office of Police Accountability’s so-called “Timeliness Initiative.”
Residents gather outside Chicago Police Headquarters to call for justice, accountability, and community safety.
The numbers behind the demand are staggering. The 654 closed investigations named 1,041 individual Chicago police officers. Nearly 90 percent of the allegations involved civil-rights violations or excessive force. And the average case sat for roughly 1,020 days — nearly three years — before it was closed out.
“Chicago did not investigate these complaints — it buried them,” Shakur said. “When a system closes 654 files to make its numbers look better, that is not reform. That is a cover-up with a deadline. The people of this city deserve investigations that actually investigate — and somebody at the top of this system must be held accountable for what was done in their name.”
Standing with Rice — whose 12-year-old son Tamir was killed by police in Cleveland — and representatives of their affiliate organizations, Shakur laid out four demands for how these investigations must move forward:
Real investigations, on real timelines. Every complaint — especially those alleging civil-rights violations and excessive force — must be fully investigated, not closed out to satisfy a quota or a clock. Cases closed under the Timeliness Initiative that were never fully investigated must be identified and reopened.
Staff the system to do the job. COPA and the Bureau of Internal Affairs must be funded and staffed to carry the caseload, and district accountability sergeants must stop being diverted away from the accountability work they were assigned to do.
Discipline in the light, not behind closed doors. Serious police discipline belongs before the public Police Board — not in private, closed-door arbitration.
Named accountability. This backlog did not happen by accident; it happened by decision. The officials who chose speed over truth must answer for it — publicly.
And the battle does not stop at police headquarters. Shakur made clear the fight is now going to City Hall — straight to Mayor Brandon Johnson — because the system that buried these complaints answers to the fifth floor, and City Hall is going to answer for it.
Samaria Rice added a statement of her own: “The families of Tamir Rice and George Floyd will not hesitate. We are moving forward, and our focus is fighting police brutality.”
Shakur also addressed the death of 1-year-old Kohen Wiley, killed on June 14 in Senatobia, Mississippi, renewing the coalition’s demand that Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch and state authorities release the body-camera, dash-camera, and surveillance video of the shooting. The coalition — the Amir Shakur Speaks Broadcast Network, Samaria Rice and the Tamir Rice Foundation, Freedom First International, and Rodney Floyd of the Justice for George Floyd Committee — filed an emergency FOIA on October 20; under Mississippi law, the agencies’ response is due Thursday, October 29.
The press conference also announced a march against police brutality held later Thursday at 5:30 p.m. at 35th Street, with families and community members standing for an end to police violence and real accountability in Chicago and across the nation.
Stay tuned to Chicago Urban Daily for continuing coverage of this fight for accountability. Reported by Chicago Urban Daily News. Visit chicagourbandailynews.com for updates.
CHICAGO (CHICAGO URBAN DAILY)— The judge’s nightly leash on Chicago’s immigration chief didn’t survive 24 hours.
On Wednesday, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals intervened and blocked the order that would have forced Border Patrol’s Greg Bovino to report to U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis every day at 6 p.m. The one-page suspension landed before Bovino’s first late-afternoon meeting ever happened.
Ellis issued the order Tuesday, after weeks of tense encounters and increasingly aggressive tactics by agents working Operation Midway Blitz — the sweep that has netted more than 1,800 arrests since September and drawn complaints of excessive force. What drove her decision was the weekend scene on the Northwest Side, where Border Patrol agents disrupted a children’s Halloween parade with tear gas.
“Halloween is on Friday,” Ellis said Tuesday. “I do not want to get violation reports from the plaintiffs that show that agents are out and about on Halloween, where kids are present and tear gas is being deployed.”
The Justice Department called her order “extraordinarily disruptive” while appealing it, arguing it “significantly interferes with the quintessentially executive function of ensuring the Nation’s immigration laws are properly enforced by waylaying a senior executive official critical to that mission on a daily basis.” Bovino himself told Fox News he was eager to talk to the judge.
Lawyers for the news outlets and activists suing over excessive force now have until 5 p.m. Thursday to respond in the appeals court.
Stay tuned to Chicago Urban Daily as this courtroom fight plays out.
Reported by Chicago Urban Daily News. Visit chicagourbandailynews.com for updates.
CHICAGO (CHICAGO URBAN DAILY)— On the night they honored Mike Ditka, the Bears played like the monsters of the midway.
Chicago knocked off the New England Patriots 30-24 on Thursday Night Football at Soldier Field — the franchise’s first home game since the death of its coaching legend — and it was a heavyweight fight from kickoff to the final whistle.
Caleb Williams was sharp all night: 22-of-33 for 308 yards and two touchdowns. Rookie receiver Luther Burden III torched the Patriots for 130 yards, including a 24-yard touchdown with 14 seconds left in the half. D’Andre Swift punched in a 4-yard touchdown, and kicker Cairo Santos drilled a career-long 58-yarder — matching the franchise record — to put the game away in the fourth.
The Patriots refused to die. Drake Maye threw for 321 yards and two touchdowns, including a wild 48-yard strike to Rhamondre Stevenson on the final play of the first half that cut Chicago’s lead to 20-14. A 30-yard score to Eli Raridon in the third made it 27-21. But New England couldn’t finish the comeback, and its three-game winning streak is over.
“These nights are awesome,” Williams said afterward. “You play against another good team on a primetime game in a short week… That’s who we are. We’re a smashmouth football team, an innovative team. And when things happen and things don’t go our way and the water is rocky, we stay steady.”
Across the field, Patriots coach Mike Vrabel had a shorter summary: “Tackling wasn’t good enough, not against this team.”
At 5-2, the Bears are rolling — second straight win, prime-time style, and one for the coach who defined them.
Stay tuned to Chicago Urban Daily for the fallout.
Reported by Chicago Urban Daily News. Visit chicagourbandailynews.com for updates.
CHICAGO (CHICAGO URBAN DAILY)— The ink on Mayor Brandon Johnson’s 2027 budget wasn’t even dry before the knives came out.
Johnson unveiled his $17.6 billion spending plan Wednesday to close an $882 million gap — reviving the corporate head tax as the “Equitable Employer Tax” ($25 a month per employee at firms with 125-plus workers, worth about $101 million), jacking the lease and cloud-computing tax from 15% to 20% (another $234 million), nearly doubling the sports-betting levy, and borrowing $480 million to pay off police-related legal settlements.
City Council response? Ice cold.
“Many of the revenue items that the mayor is proposing are probably dead on arrival,” said Finance Committee chairwoman Ald. Pat Dowell. “This basically says to me that our budget season is going to be difficult this year again.”
Ald. Scott Waguespack said it was “very troubling to see an administration move forward in this fashion again where they’re just doubling down.” Ald. Marty Quinn called the head tax “a tax on growth and it’s non-starter.” And the mayor lost two of his biggest labor allies — SEIU Locals 1 and 73 pulled their support and endorsed his challenger, Alexi Giannoulias.
Ald. Gilbert Villegas agrees the burden rolls downhill: “Microsoft, Google, they do not absorb that. They pass it down. And ultimately, it’s going to be regular people.”
Johnson counters that “every Chicagoan receives their fair share,” paid for “by asking wealthy corporations to pay their fair share.” The council, the small businesses, and now his own unions are saying otherwise.
Stay tuned to Chicago Urban Daily as budget season gets ugly.
Reported by Chicago Urban Daily News. Visit chicagourbandailynews.com for updates.
CHICAGO (CHICAGO URBAN DAILY)— The budget fight at City Hall just turned into a street fight between the city’s future casino and the council — and Bally’s came out swinging.
The aldermen’s alternative budget cleared the Finance Committee Tuesday on a 22-13 vote, with $6.8 million in licensing-fee revenue from legalizing video gaming terminals — the state’s biggest source of gaming tax dollars, currently banned inside Chicago city limits by ordinance. Ald. Anthony Beale’s legalization ordinance already cleared the Licensing Committee in September.
Bally’s, building its $2 billion casino in River West for an opening next September, says the move would be a disaster for the city’s bottom line.
“To incorporate unregulated, independently-managed VGTs as a budget line item will result in a loss of substantial new revenue for the City, and will create significant job losses at the Bally’s Chicago Casino,” said Bally’s Vice President for Government Relations Elizabeth Suever. “Even if this proposal were to pass as is, it would generate $0 revenue in FY 2026 for the City.”
In a separate statement, the company warned the council that VGTs would cause a yearly total tax loss of $260 million from Bally’s Chicago Casino — roughly $70 million in tax revenue a year gone from Chicago’s books, not counting the $4 million annual Host Community Agreement payment Bally’s says it would likely forgo if it re-opens the deal. It also predicted the loss of 750 to 1,050 union jobs.
Mayor Brandon Johnson has opposed legalizing VGTs, saying they wouldn’t generate substantial revenue. Beale, who included the $4 million deduction in his revenue estimate, clearly disagrees.
With a December 31 deadline to pass a balanced budget, the gloves are officially off.
Stay tuned to Chicago Urban Daily as the budget battle heats up.
Reported by Chicago Urban Daily News. Visit chicagourbandailynews.com for updates.
CHICAGO (CHICAGO URBAN DAILY)— A federal judge just put the Trump administration’s immigration chief in Chicago on a nightly leash.
On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis ordered Greg Bovino — the public face of the administration’s city-by-city immigration sweeps — to brief her in person every day at 6 p.m., reporting how his agents are enforcing the law and whether they’re staying within constitutional bounds. To every request, Bovino answered: “Yes, ma’am.”
The crackdown has netted over 1,800 arrests since September. But it was the images that drove the judge’s order — especially what happened over the weekend, when Border Patrol agents disrupted a children’s Halloween parade on the Northwest Side with tear gas. Neighbors had gathered in the street as someone was arrested.
“Those kids were tear-gassed on their way to celebrate Halloween in their local school parking lot,” Ellis said. “I can only imagine how terrified they were. These kids, you can imagine, their sense of safety was shattered on Saturday.”
Ellis also demanded every use-of-force report since Sept. 2 from agents in Operation Midway Blitz — originally by the end of Tuesday, but Bovino told the court that would be “physically impossible” because of the “sheer amount.” He also faces a Friday deadline to get a body camera and complete training, after the judge required cameras when tear gas raised concerns agents weren’t following her orders. Attorneys for news outlets and protesters claim he violated her use-of-force order in Little Village, filing an image of him allegedly throwing tear gas into a crowd without justification.
“My role is not to tell you that you can or cannot enforce validly passed laws by Congress,” Ellis said. “My role is simply to see that in the enforcement of those laws, the agents are acting in a manner that is consistent with the Constitution.”
She predicted the new oversight would work: “I suspect that now knowing where we are and that he understands what I expect, I don’t know that we’re going to see a whole lot of tear gas deployed in the next week.”
Stay tuned to Chicago Urban Daily as this standoff unfolds.
Reported by Chicago Urban Daily News. Visit chicagourbandailynews.com for updates.
