A child and a man were shot Oct. 8, 2021, in Gresham. | Sun-Times file photo

Both were hospitalized in good condition, according to police.

A 2-year-old girl and a man were shot Friday afternoon in Gresham on the South Side.

They were getting into a car in the 8400 block of South Sangamon Street when someone drove by in a silver SUV and opened fire about 4:45 p.m., according to Chicago police.

The girl was struck in the arm and taken to Comer Children’s Hospital in good condition, police said. The man, 25, was shot in the thigh and taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center, where he was also in good condition.

No arrests have been made.

This is a developing story.

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A Brazilian flag hangs on a clothesline on Copacabana beach amid white scarves that represent those who have died of COVID-19 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Friday, Oct. 8, 2021. The action was organized by the NGO “Rio de Paz” to protest the government’s handling of the pandemic as the country nears a total of 600,000 COVID-19 related deaths. | AP

Almost 45% of the population is fully vaccinated, and a booster shot is being administered to the elderly. A greater percentage of Brazilians are at least partially vaccinated compared to Americans or Germans, according to Our World in Data, an online research site.

SAO PAULO — Bars in Brazil’s biggest metropolis, Sao Paulo, are full again for Friday happy hours and lawmakers in the capital have nearly done away with video sessions via Zoom. Rio de Janeiro’s beaches are packed and calls for strict social distancing seem but a memory.

These developments are part of Brazil’s bid to return to pre-pandemic normalcy, even as its death toll tops 600,000, according to official data on Friday from the health ministry. Relief in both COVID-19 cases and deaths have been particularly welcome given experts’ warnings that the delta variant would produce another wave of destruction in the country with the second-most victims. So far, that hasn’t materialized.

The country’s average daily death toll has hovered around 500 for a month, down sharply from more than 3,000 in April. Almost 45% of the population is fully vaccinated, and a booster shot is being administered to the elderly. A greater percentage of Brazilians are at least partially vaccinated compared to Americans or Germans, according to Our World in Data, an online research site.

Improvement has encouraged mayors and governors to admit fans into soccer matches, and let bars and restaurants stay open until the wee hours. Some are even contemplating the end of mask mandates, which people often ignore already. And Rio’s mayor has announced plans to bring back the city’s massive New Year’s Eve party on Copacabana beach.

Gonzalo Vecina, a professor of public health at the University of Sao Paulo, told The Associated Press in July that delta, which is more contagious, would cause “a new explosion” of cases within weeks. He was hardly alone among experts sounding the alarm.

Now, Vecina believes the high number of Brazilians infected earlier this year with the gamma variant — first identified in the Amazonian city Manaus — may have slowed delta’s advance.

“That isn’t a conclusion from a study; it is a possibility we are raising in the face of what we are seeing,” Vecina said. “We are seeing delta rise in countries that reopened just as much as Brazil, and our number of cases is still going down, with few very particular exceptions.”

Some analysts remain worried about delta’s potential to spread. Among them is Miguel Lago, executive director of Brazil’s Institute for Health Policy Studies, which advises public health officials. He believes authorities are taking considerable risk by reopening too much and announcing celebrations, and that Brazil may soon see more hospital admissions.

“The pandemic has waned, but 500 deaths per day is far from good. And we don’t even have half the population fully vaccinated,” Lago said. “We just don’t know enough and we have this horrific milestone to contemplate now.”

Friday morning, on Copacabana where Rio’s New Year’s party will take place in less than three months, activist group Rio da Paz held a memorial on its sands to mourn the 600,000 dead, with hundreds of white kerchiefs strung on lines.

Across town, at a support group for family members of the virus’ victims, Bruna Chaves mourned the loss of her mother and step-father.

“It’s not just 600,000 people who are gone; it’s a lot of people who die with them, emotionally,” Chaves said in an interview. “It’s absurd that people treat it like it’s a small number. It’s a big number.”

Many in Brazil continue to downplay the pandemic’s severity, chief among them President Jair Bolsonaro, whose popularity has sagged largely due to his government’s chaotic pandemic response. But he hasn’t veered from his positions, including staunch support for drugs proven ineffective against the virus, like hydroxychloroquine.

He also continues to criticize restrictions on activity adopted by mayors and governors, saying Brazil needed to keep the economy humming to avoid inflicting worse hardship on the poor. On Thursday night, during a live broadcast on Facebook, he showed a series of newspaper articles reporting economic turmoil in Europe and the U.S. last year in an attempt to prove he was right all along.

Months after its New Year’s bash, Rio will also host Carnival, according to Mayor Eduardo Paes. And he said social distancing is out of the question.

“That would be ridiculous, asking people to keep one meter away. If that were the case, I would be the first to disrespect that,” he told residents in a middle-class neighborhood on Monday. “Science has advanced, it won, it is allowing us to open.”

Brazil’s long history with vaccination campaigns has played a significant role in slowing the virus’ spread, with broad uptake. Nearly three-quarters of Brazilians have received at least one dose so far — despite the fact Bolsonaro spent months sowing doubt about their efficacy and remains unvaccinated himself. Even most of his supporters rolled up their sleeves.

As Brazil surpasses 600,000 deaths, a Senate inquiry on the government’s handling of the pandemic is nearing its end. Sen. Renan Calheiros, who will write the investigation’s final report, told journalists Wednesday that it will include the recommendation for at least 40 people to face charges, including Bolsonaro, his former health minister Gen. Eduardo Pazuello and several allies.

Luiz Davidovich, president of The Brazilian Academy of Sciences, said scientists performed their role in alerting Brazilians about the pandemic’s dangers, but their advice should have been better heeded.

“What remains now is the memory of this tragedy that marks the history of the country and our lives, involved in collective grief, permeated by sadness and indignation,” Davidovich said.

_

AP videojournalist Lucas Dumphreys contributed from Rio de Janeiro.

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Dueling statements revealed the stark division between Lightfoot, an ex-prosecutor herself, and the county’s top law enforcement official over what evidence is needed to charge five suspects with murder and aggravated battery after a gunfight in Austin. | Pat Nabong/Sun-Times

Lightfoot and Foxx are women of color. No one should be more motivated to stop the carnage.

Politicians are especially effective at finger-pointing.

So goes the latest ugly war of words between Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx.

Last week, Lightfoot excoriated Foxx for not pursuing criminal charges in a deadly gang-related shootout on the city’s West Side.

On the morning of Oct. 1, gang members pulled up outside a home in the Austin neighborhood and started shooting. People inside the home fired back, according to the police officials and video recorded at the scene. One person was killed and two injured.

Foxx’s office subsequently issued a statement: “After an extensive review of the available information presented to us, we determined that the evidence was insufficient to meet our burden of proof to approve felony charges.” Five individuals who had been arrested in connection with the firefight were released. Witnesses at the scene would not cooperate with investigators, prosecutors said.

Lightfoot attacked.

“They shoot up a residence in broad daylight, and there’s no consequences,” NBC 5 quoted her as saying. “We have to understand how it’s possible, when this kind of shootout is captured on film, that there are no charges of any person.”

Foxx called a press conference on Tuesday to push back. “Our job is not only an arrest but also to get a conviction,” she declared. “Discussing the facts of this case in the press without the benefit of all of the evidence does nothing but disservice.”

Lightfoot should know better, Foxx added. “I was quite honestly mortified by what happened yesterday, particularly because the mayor, as a former prosecutor, knows that what she did yesterday was inappropriate,” she said.

This is not their first dust-up. For months, Lightfoot, Chicago Police Supt. David Brown and Foxx have been blame-gaming over the shootings and murders that are terrorizing our neighborhoods.

The finger-pointing goes on. The killing continues.

When politicians land on the hot seat, they succumb to an irresistible urge — to blame someone else.

If they can’t even agree on the facts, how can they solve the crimes?

Foxx and Lightfoot privately met on Thursday. The next day, Foxx issued an “I-told-you-so.”

Noting that law enforcement officials had provided Lightfoot “with all of the evidence that has thus far been gathered in the Austin shooting,” Foxx’s office said in a statement. “As from the very beginning, (the Chicago Police Department) continued to agree that there is insufficient evidence for charges at this time and informed the mayor as such.”

Foxx “hopes to continue to have conversations with the mayor and Supt. Brown regarding concerns about Area 5 and violence in Chicago,” the statement added. “Throughout the conversation, State’s Attorney Foxx and Mayor Lightfoot renewed their commitment to work collaboratively to address violence in the community.”

Conversations.

Talk has become even cheaper than the lives we continue to lose.

It is clear that no one, not the powerful people in charge, not the city’s raft of crime and public policy experts, not the endless stream of armchair critics, have the answers.

It is also clear that the victims of Chicago’s horrendous crime wave are overwhelmingly people of color.

Lightfoot and Foxx are women of color. No one should be more motivated to stop the carnage. Our communities have become shooting galleries. Children and young people are being shot and killed every day, in senseless, rampant violence.

Chicago is desperate for solutions.

Work together. Devise a viable plan to stop the violence.

Act.

Send letters to [email protected].

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Mayor Lori Lightfoot. | Pat Nabong/Sun-Times

Today’s update is a 5-minute read that will brief you on the day’s biggest stories.

Good afternoon. Here’s the latest news you need to know in Chicago. It’s about a 5-minute read that will brief you on today’s biggest stories.

This afternoon will be partly sunny with scattered thunderstorms and a high near 71 degrees. Tonight will be mostly cloudy with more scattered storms and a low around 62. Tomorrow will be mostly sunny with a high near 79.

Top story

Chicago city workers not vaccinated by next week will be placed on ‘no pay status,” but can opt to be regularly tested

Chicago city employees who fail to report their vaccination status by Oct. 15 will be placed in a “non-disciplinary, no-pay status,” but there will be a testing option for those who haven’t gotten the coronavirus vaccine.

After weeks of confusion and united opposition from police unions, Mayor Lori Lightfoot finally announced the testing option that Fraternal Order Police President John Catanzara told his members about one week ago.

“Employees who are not fully vaccinated by October 15, 2021, including employees who have received an approved medical or religious exemption, must undergo COVID-19 testing on a twice weekly basis with tests separated by 3-4 days,” the policy states.

“Employees are responsible for obtaining those tests on their own time and at their own expense, if any, and for reporting those results to the city,” it says. “The testing option will only be available through December 31, 2021. Thereafter, employees will be required to be fully vaccinated unless they have received an approved medical or religious exemption.”

To comply with the new policy, employees must provide information about the type of vaccine received. They must also upload either a scanned copy or a photograph of their vaccination card.

Fran Spielman has more on the policy here.

More news you need

Today marks the 150th anniversary of the Great Chicago Fire — an event that changed the city in manifold ways. To commemorate the blaze, we’ve published a wide range of coverage taking a look back at its impact and exploring how our city rose from the ashes.

Despite public pronouncements to the contrary, embattled Chicago Park District Supt. Mike Kelly still has a golden parachute contract through 2022, making it more difficult and costly to fire him. Some City Council members have demanded his ouster, but Lightfoot has said she’s waiting for results of the investigation into alleged sexual harassment and abuse of lifeguards.

In a report released today, Maggie Hickey — independent monitor of a consent decree requiring the Chicago Police Department to reform its policies on use of force, discipline, training and recruiting — says CPD blew about half its deadlines between January and July. But she’s “encouraged” by the department’s most recent efforts.

Two-sport pro legend Bo Jackson is trying his hand at the gambling game with a stake in a development group vying for a license to open a new casino in Chicago’s south suburbs. Jackson has become an equity partner in the proposed Southland Live Casino, which is looking to open in Calumet City.

A Chicago firefighter has died from COVID-19, the fourth member of the department to die from complications of the virus. Michael Pickering, 45, joined the department in 2003 and was a father of three, officials said.

An oil spill from the U.S. Steel plant in northwest Indiana forced the closure of nearby Lake Michigan beaches yesterday for the second time in less than two weeks. It’s unclear if the oil spill was fully contained to prevent it from spreading further into Lake Michigan.

A security detail exchanged gunfire with a carjacker outside the Hyde Park home of Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle last week. But neither Preckwinkle nor other officials would release details of the attack yesterday, including whether the robber was shot.

When her character was diagnosed with breast cancer on this season’s “The Chi,” it started actress Yolonda Ross’ real-life journey to support Black women dealing with the disease. Maudlyne Ihejirika reports that Ross will unveil a photo exhibit and partnership donating $100,000 to three Chicago organizations at an event in Bridgeport.

A bright one

Have a ball in the mall: Empty Macy’s at Water Tower Place becomes Dr. Seuss wonderland

Fans of Dr. Seuss get their chance to walk into and interact with several imaginary worlds from the beloved children’s books beginning today.

An interactive exhibit called “The Dr. Seuss Experience” opens at Water Tower Place after successful runs in Toronto and Houston and will run through Jan. 2, although it may be extended depending on demand, company officials said.

From the “Circus McGurkus” carousel (inspired by “If I Owned a Circus”) that can be seen through the corner window at Michigan and Pearson, to the maze of balloons from “The Lorax,” to a 3,500-pound “Thromdimulator” — the machine Herbie broke in the book “Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are?” — visitors can do more than just walk through and look.

In another room, inspired by “There’s a Wocket in My Pocket,” kids can go on a scavenger hunt and seek out the 32 characters, some in plain sight like the Bofa on the Sofa — and some hiding, like the Jertain in the Curtain.

Pat Nabong/Sun-Times
People dressed as Thing 1 and Thing 2 play on a swing in a room based on the book “The Lorax” at the Dr. Seuss Experience at the Water Tower Place yesterday.

And of course, there’s a room inspired by Dr. Seuss’ best-known book, “The Cat in the Hat,” where kids can interact with an electronic Cat In The Hat character equipped with a hidden camera and microphone and manned by the team member behind the scenes.

The interactive exhibit is a partnership between Kilburn Live, a Los Angeles-based entertainment company, and Dr. Seuss Enterprises, the company started by Audrey Geisel, the widow of Dr. Seuss (Theodor Geisel).

While families are the target demographic, organizers also expect a lot of tech-savvy adults: “Because it’s very Instagrammable-photo-friendly, we’ll get a lot of millennials and Generation Z coming in.”

After Chicago, the exhibit will move on to a yet-to-be-announced city and will travel until 2024.

Bob Chiarito has more on the pop-up exhibit here.

From the press box

Dylan Cease or Carlos Rodon? The White Sox will reveal their Game 3 starter tomorrow, manager Tony La Russa said today.

Longtime Chicago baseball observer Steve Stone spoke with our Jeff Agrest about broadcasting during the pandemic, working with Jason Benetti and the Sox’ postseason prospects.
The Bears will likely be without Akiem Hicks this weekend against the Raiders due to a groin injury. The team listed Hicks as doubtful today.

Get ready for the 2021 Chicago Marathon, which returns Sunday after taking last year off due to the pandemic.

Your daily question ?

What’s the best way to avoid rush-hour traffic in Chicago?

Email us (please include your first name and where you live) and we might include your answer in the next Afternoon Edition.

Yesterday we asked you: Have you ever been scammed? Tell us what happened. Here’s what some of you said…

“Someone tried to scam me claiming to be my cousin. I knew it was a scam so I gave them a supposed transaction number and they kept trying to find it in their ‘system.’ Had them trying to find it for two days until I finally sent them a message saying joke was on them!” — Vicky Lugo

“Someone sent me a check from a real company. Luckily I looked them up on the internet. I informed them about the check. It was a scam to get your banking information. Just last night someone said that I had won. They said they were my insurance company. When they wanted my information. I told them they should already have it. He hung up.” — Dave Martinez

“Yes, I — unbeknownst to me — dated a professional criminal briefly. He tried to take everything I had. He didn’t, but he took advantage of many people. Also, once when I was desperate for work I answered an ad to be a part-time personal assistant and it did not go well.” — Bridget Montgomery

Thanks for reading the Chicago Sun-Times Afternoon Edition. Got a story you think we missed? Email us here.

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Bears running back Damien Williams is expected to start Sunday. | Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images

The Bears are expected to put David Montgomery, who has a sprained knee, on injured reserve Saturday. He’d then miss at least three games. Williams will start against the Raiders on Sunday.

When the Bears signed Damien Williams this offseason, they explained the complementary role they wanted him to play behind David Montgomery. But they knew that he could carry the load if needed. With the Chiefs, he scored six touchdowns in the 2019 playoffs and became the first player to ever run for 100 yards and catch a scoring pass in the Super Bowl.

The Bears are expected to put David Montgomery, who has a sprained knee, on injured reserve Saturday. He’d then miss at least three games. Williams will start against the Raiders on Sunday.

“When you go back and you say, ‘OK, big-time moments — he played on a big time stage and made some big time plays,'” Bears coach Matt Nagy said. “So I think the players know that, the coaches know that so there’s a sense of calm knowing that in this type of situation he can step in.”

Nagy insinuated that rookie Khalil Herbert could get between six and 10 carries behind Williams.

“He’s a smart football player that makes a lot of plays,” Nagy said. “He’s also a physical running back too … I think he’s patient, he’s very patient.”

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An artist’s conception of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. | AP

The story of the fire, as popularly told, has lost its way at times in the assigning of credit and blame. This is no small matter for our own day.

The Great Fire of 1871 is Chicago’s creation myth, a heroic tale of the city’s rise from the ashes that civic boosters say best explains the past, present and — if we’ve still got the gumption, gosh darn it — future.

The story is largely true and remarkable, no mythologizing required.

One hundred and fifty years ago this weekend, on the night of Oct. 8, 1871, a fire in a barn on DeKoven Street really did swoop up in the wind and sweep across Chicago, leaping the river twice, for the next 36 hours. It really did gut the heart of our town, leveling some 18,000 buildings over 3 1/2 square miles. It really did bring death and sorrow, killing more than 300 people and leaving a third of the population homeless.

And the fire really was followed — but here’s where the mythologizing also kicks in — by a grand and almost instant renewal, with Chicago in a handful of years becoming a stunningly more modern, beautiful and promising American city. For about 30 years after the fire, Chicago was the American city.

Cheap blame

Where the story of the Great Fire, as popularly told, has lost its way at times has been in the assigning of blame and credit, which is no small matter if we’re trying to understand the fire’s meaning for our own day.

It is not by chance that Catherine O’Leary, a Irish immigrant woman of modest means, was blamed for starting the fire, though that falsehood was dispelled at an official inquiry held soon afterward. You can read read the original transcripts, with their perfect penmanship, in the research library of the Chicago History Museum.

In the years before the Great Fire, anti-immigrant sentiment was running hard among the “better classes” of Chicagoans who owned the city’s stores, ran the factories, ruled the stockyards and published the most influential newspapers. Just four years earlier, in 1867, supposed radicals demanding an eight-hour work day — including many immigrants — had led a strike that practically shut down the city’s economy for a week.

The “better classes” needed the working poor. Somebody had to do the life-draining and dangerous physical work. But they were sure that they — the captains of industry — really built this town.

Grabbing credit

It is not by chance, as well, that a prominent real estate developer, William D. Kerfoot, became the optimistic businessman face of Chicago’s rise from the ashes. Just days after the fire, the Chicago Tribune ran a photo of Kerfoot standing in front of a thrown-together shack in the burnt district — his temporary office — near a sign that declared “All gone but wife, children and energy.”

“Cheer up!” extolled the Trib.

In this skewed telling of Chicago’s history, spoon-fed to generations of school children through at least the 1950s, our whole city rose to the occasion after the fire, but it was the “great men,” above all others, who delivered us from ruin and built a mighty metropolis. Among the heroes in three-piece suits were Marshall Field, Potter Palmer, Cyrus McCormick, George Pullman and Philip Armour.

Give these men their due. They did impressive things. Field was a genius of retailing. Armour was a brilliant mass-production butcher of cows. McCormick was a pioneer of industrial farming.

But lost in this incomplete narrative was an inconvenient truth. It took the entire population of Chicago to rebuild after the Great Fire — to clean up the mess, put up the new skyscrapers, pave the roads and, for that matter, polish the floors in the new mansions of the super-rich who were hustling off to the relative safety of Prairie Avenue.

And while Chicago’s “leading citizens,” as they flattered themselves, enjoyed unimaginably great Gilded Age wealth, they fought all efforts to narrow a wide and growing gap of economic inequality. It was enough, they told themselves — just as many of their spiritual descendants tell themselves today — to give generously to charity.

A city in turmoil

What they got for their greed and inflated self-regard was a city that was often in turmoil. Ordinary Chicagoans wanted an eight-hour work day. They wanted safer working conditions. They wanted paychecks big enough to support a family. And so they rallied, marched and went out on strike, off and on, all through the 1870s, ’80s and ’90s.

The ferment culminated in the Haymarket Affair of 1886. And in the Great Strike of 1877, in which Chicago railroad workers played a leading role. And in the Pullman Strike of 1894.

A little more social justice might have brought a little more peace, just as it might today. Does anybody honestly believe Chicago’s current plague of violent crime has nothing to do with chronic poverty, third-rate schools and a pervading sense of hopelessness in so many neighborhoods?

Yet we are warned today, in our own Gilded Age, that we had better not raise taxes on the super-rich. Because that would be “socialism.” As if it makes perfect sense for one person to enjoy a net worth of $21 billion while other people, though they work every day, can’t pay the rent. We’re pretty sure this falls short of the capitalist credo of fairly rewarding merit.

A moral for today

Chicago rose from the ashes after the Great Fire, but only a relatively few Chicagoans soared on the thermals. And when the city’s labor unrest finally frightened the city’s elite too much, they persuaded the Secretary of War in 1886 to create a military outpost, Fort Sheridan, to protect their businesses and homes.

If was a familiar substitute for justice, one we hide behind today: Call in the cops.

The real moral of the story of the Great Fire of 1971 is this: Chicago will always rise or fall together.

Send letters to [email protected].

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Tony Bennett with Lady Gaga at the Grammy Awards in 2015. | Sun-Times Media

Why are fictional Italians who behave like violent Neanderthals considered more “authentic” than living legends like Bennett?

On CBS’ “60 Minutes” last Sunday, reporter Anderson Cooper offered a profile of 95-year-old Tony Bennett, detailing the great crooner’s struggles with Alzheimer’s. For those of us lucky enough to catch Bennett’s annual performances at Ravinia over the past decades, it was bittersweet to watch.

Though slowed by the disease, Bennett’s performing spark lit immediately whenever he heard music or was in front of a crowd. Bravo, Antonio!

SEND LETTERS TO: [email protected]. Please include your neighborhood or hometown and a phone number for verification purposes. Letters should be approximately 350 words or less.

I found it telling, though, that on that same weekend “The Many Saints of Newark” — a prequel to the “Sopranos” TV series — opened in theaters and via HBO. Critics and fans constantly comment on the “Italian” background of the film’s characters, all of whom (it’s rather embarrassing to have to point this out) are completely fictional. They do not exist.

On “60 Minutes,” Cooper never once mentioned that both Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga, his frequent partner for duets, are Italian Americans. Bennett was born Benedetto, Gaga was born Germanotta. Was Cooper obligated to do so? Of course not. Bennett and Gaga are, first and foremost, Americans. Their talents belong to us all.

But this does raise the question: Why are fictional Italians presented as violent Neanderthals considered more “authentic” than living legends like Bennett and Gaga?

Talk about “illusion” vs. “reality!”

The novelist Luigi Pirandello, whose specialized in that literary theme, would have been disturbed by this. So should we all.

Bill Dal Cerro, Norwood Park

Pass ‘Freedom to Vote Act’

Given how dysfunctional Congress has become, it’s clear that bipartisan negotiations for voting rights and democracy reform are impossible. Democrats in the Senate should change the rules of the filibuster, end Republican obstructionism, and pass the “Freedom to Vote Act.” Senators controlled by special interests should not be allowed to block legislation that a majority of Americans support.

In June, more than 100 leading scholars across the political spectrum, right to left, issued a “Statement of Concern” that our democracy is in peril. The Freedom To Freedom to Vote Act would set national redistricting standards, close the revolving door between government and corporate interests, block dark money from influencing our political system, reduce the influence of big money in politics and protect voters against discrimination.

While our two senators from Illinois, Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth, have voted consistently for pro-voter democracy reform, it’s time to pressure their colleagues in the Senate to amend the filibuster rule that stands in the way of progress. We the people deserve a responsive, accountable government, one that gives us all a stronger voice and puts our needs ahead of those of the special interests.

The Senate this year has already filibustered four bills that would improved our democratic system. I urge our senators to do everything in their power to amend the rules of the filibuster and pass this smart compromise bill — the ‘Freedom to Vote Act.’

Donna Limper, Bloomingdale

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Dozens of Black Lives Matter protesters march around Kenosha after District Attorney Michael Graveley announced that no charges will be filed against the Kenosha police officer who shot Jacob Blake, Tuesday night, Jan. 5, 2021. | Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times

Officer Rusten Sheskey shot Blake, who is Black, during a domestic disturbance in Kenosha in August 2020. The shooting left Blake paralyzed from the waist down and sparked several nights of protests. An Antioch man shot three people, killing two of them, during one of the demonstrations.

MADISON, Wis. –Federal prosecutors announced Friday that they won’t file charges against a white police officer who shot Jacob Blake in Wisconsin last year.

Officer Rusten Sheskey shot Blake, who is Black, during a domestic disturbance in Kenosha in August 2020. The shooting left Blake paralyzed from the waist down and sparked several nights of protests. An Antioch man shot three people, killing two of them, during one of the demonstrations.

State prosecutors decided not to file charges against Sheskey earlier this year after video showed that Blake had been armed with a knife. He was wanted on a felony warrant.

The U.S. Department of Justice launched its own investigation days after the shooting. The agency announced Friday that a team of prosecutors from its Civil Rights Division and the U.S. attorney’s office in Milwaukee reviewed police reports, witness statements, dispatch logs and videos of the incident, and determined there wasn’t enough evidence to prove Sheskey used excessive force or violated Blake’s federal rights.

“Accordingly, the review of this incident has been closed without a federal prosecution,” the Justice Department said in a news release.

The Blake family’s attorney, Ben Crump, didn’t immediately reply to a message seeking comment. Blake’s uncle Justin Blake, who has been acting as the family’s spokesman, also didn’t immediately respond to a message.

The Justice Department’s findings mirror Kenosha County District Attorney Michael Graveley’s determination in January that Sheskey could successfully argue that he fired in self-defense.

Investigators found that Blake had fought with three officers for several minutes before he was shot, at one point shrugging off a shock from a stun gun, and was trying to get into an SUV when Sheskey tried to stop him by pulling on his shirt. Graveley said video shows Blake turning toward Sheskey with a knife and motioned the blade toward the officer.

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