Calloway For Five
William Calloway, a leader in the movement pushing for justice following the Chicago police killing of Laquan McDonald, recently announced his run for alderman.
For two and a half years, William Calloway watched former Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke walk out of the Leighton County Courthouse a free man.
On October 5, that changed. Almost four years after Van Dyke fatally shot black teenager Laquan McDonald, a jury found Van Dyke guilty of second degree murder and sixteen counts of aggravated battery. He was the first Chicago police officer in over fifty years to be convicted of murder for an on-duty incident.
Van Dyke appeared before the court for the first time since his conviction at the end of October. He was disheveled, in a torn yellow jumpsuit, escorted in by two heavily armed guards. The atmosphere was calm even as racial justice activists like Calloway, several of McDonald’s family members, and Van Dyke’s wife and father sat in close quarters, packed into the pews.
After no more than a couple minutes, the court adjourned with no sentencing date. In what will likely be a long court battle involving multiple appeals, Van Dyke’s sentencing remains an open question.
Activists around the nation applauded the rare conviction of a white cop in the murder of a black kid. Among Chicago’s black community, it carried the extra weight of symbolic justice for a long history of police shootings. For Calloway, a leader in the movement following McDonald’s murder, Van Dyke’s conviction felt like just the first step of many to fundamentally change the city he calls home.
“I think now is the time,” he tells The Progressive, “for activists and protestors like myself who have been out here on the front lines speaking truth to power.”
Calloway, who grew up on the city’s South Side, was drawn to social justice work after Chicago woman Rekia Boyd was shot in the head by an off-duty police officer in 2012. He began organizing in communities that had experienced police brutality.
“It’s traumatic, its devastating, it’s disheartening,” he tells The Progressive. “Because the same entity that’s supposed to serve and protect you is the same entity that is unjustifiably shooting and killing you.”
Calloway began pushing for justice for McDonald’s death since before the trial began. He was one of three people who filed a FOIA for the release of the police camera footage of McDonald’s death—evidence Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel had tried to hide.
In the weeks following the guilty verdict, Calloway and other activists took to the streets to demand broader change within the Chicago Police Department. Days later, U.S. District Judge Robert Dow Jr. held a two-day public hearing on the Chicago Police Department’s Consent Decree, released in July 2018 and aimed at improving training and record keeping on the use of police force.
“It’s time for us to transcend our protests into policy.”
Calloway says several requirements of the consent decree could help improve police-community relations. This includes providing sorely needed mental health staff and resources at the CPD—the suicide rate for Chicago officers is 60 percent higher than the national average, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
“I think a large portion of shootings [by police] happen because of officers suffering from mental illness,” says Calloway. “We just saw a fourth officer in the past couple months take his life this week.”
The decree also requires cultural training for officers on neighborhood social dynamics, to be co-developed with local community-based organizations.
“Something that an officer that’s not from our community might see as a threat,” says Calloway, “we just see [as] someone blowing off steam.”
And a key measure will require officers to report all instances where an officer points their gun at a person, shoots a firearm, or discharges a Taser.
But the decree can only go so far, says Calloway. Two years ago, he had pushed for The Laquan McDonald Act. Introduced in the Illinois legislature in November 2016, the bill sought to establish a procedure for an election to recall officials—including the Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, Chicago alderpersons, and Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez—that activists say botched the handling of the case.
“We no longer want to wait for their term to expire, we want a protocol to remove them,” says Calloway.
Then Emanuel suddenly dropped his bid for a third term as mayor and Alvarez lost her post in the November election. With the bill now moot, Chicago’s political landscape has nonetheless rapidly shifted in the wake of the historic Van Dyke conviction.
It all has played a part in Calloway’s latest move, announced in November: running for alderman in the city’s fifth ward. “It’s time for us to transcend our protests into policy.”
Growing up in Chicago, Calloway saw many people struggling in his neighborhood. But he was surrounded by positive influences, too. Calloway was taught by his pastor mother to be community oriented—loving your neighbor, giving back to the less fortunate, speaking out against injustice.
“It was those values that was instilled in me that made me want to grow,” says Calloway.
A central plank of Calloway’s platform is promoting what he calls “the sanctity of life.” He hopes that providing mental health resources to low-income communities will help stem violence and crime. “How do we as a community, as a city government, as city elected officials, create a better neighborhood where we can pick up the slack where some of those households are falling short?”
“We need to keep giving hope back to the community and our generation. We need to get them to believe in the civic process again.”
Calloway believes his grassroots approach can finally bring healing, understanding, and change to Chicago.
“We need to keep giving hope back to the community and our generation,” he says. We need to get them to believe in the civic process again, believe that we can put someone who has fought the system who has been vocal about change in city government and put them in office. I want to give that inspiration to others, not just in my ward but all across the city.”
Meanwhile, the fallout McDonald case churns on. The CPD’s consent decree will soon be assigned a judge-appointed monitor who will issue public reports on whether the city of Chicago and its police department are meeting requirements.
Van Dyke was back in court on December 14, when his attorney argued that the court’s guilty verdict should be dismissed. After denying the motion, Judge Vincent Gaughan set a sentencing date for Van Dyke for January 18, 2018. Three additional CPD officers are currently on trial for covering up McDonald’s murder.
As he moves ahead with pursuing public office, Calloway is as committed as ever to seeing the case through.
“We have to be marathon runners and not sprinters,” he says. “So we are going to continue to fight.”