Students at several universities in the Chicago area are calling on their schools to end relationships with the Chicago Police Department. In one social media post, the student activists described their local police force as a “white supremacist cult.”
According to a report by Campus Reform, students at nine universities in the Chicago area are calling on their institution’s leaders to cut ties with the Chicago Police Department.
Students at Northwestern University, the University of Chicago, DePaul University, Roosevelt University, Loyola University of Chicago, the University of Illinois at Chicago, Columbia College, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have formed a coalition called Solidarity Street that aims to abolish policing on campus.
The group has “Cops aren’t workers and the city needed to stop negotiating with them years ago. August 1st we’re demanding y’all cut ties and divest from this white supremacist cult sooner rather than later,” one Instagram caption reads.
In another post, the group argued that cops only exist to defend wealthy Americans. “Cops are not workers. A worker is someone that sells their labor to make ends meet. Cops do not do this,” the post reads. “They defend the interests and property of the wealthy. Cops do not need a pay raise. They need to be defunded. They are the armed wing of the American capitalist state.”
In a statement, Chicago Police Department Supt. David Brown said that they will continue their efforts to reduce violence in the area.
“As we continue moving more officers into the districts and closer to our communities, we have also been focused on creating teams that can address violent crime head-on within our most vulnerable neighborhoods,” Brown said. “Our officers will engage directly with residents. We will hear their concerns, and continue to work in partnership with them as part of an all-hands-on-deck effort to curb the violence in our communities.”
Breitbart News reported in July that 50 student organizations at Duke University had signed onto a petition that calls for the abolishment of the Duke police department. “We must imagine a world beyond police and prison,” the students wrote in the petition.
Stay tuned to Breitbart News for more updates on this story.