Lysistrata, only smarterTHE release on December 4th of Spike Lee’s “Chi-Raq”, a musical about gang violence on Chicago’s South Side, comes at a poignant moment for the city. Chicagoans are outraged by a pattern of police misconduct that seems to get worse every day. City officials led by Rahm Emanuel, the mayor, are doing their utmost to contain a scandal whose scale they have underestimated. The Department of Justice has announced it will investigate the city’s cops.
The protagonists of the film are feuding members of rival black gangs on the South Side, idiotic policemen, racist military men and a moronic mayor with a short temper. All this will make uncomfortable viewing for Chicago’s leaders as they grapple with the fallout from the release of a non-fiction video showing the execution-style shooting of a black teenager by a white police officer. Mr Lee waded into the upheaval by predicting that “some more heads are gonna roll” after Mr Emanuel fired his chief of police on December 1st. He was right: on December 6th Mr Emanuel sacked the head of the Independent Police Review Authority, which had declared...Continue reading
Source: United States http://ift.tt/1Y5fEW2
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