Before DNC, Westside Activists Demanded Democrats Spotlight Police Reform — They Ended Up Disappointed 

Two days after the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago ended, a well-known Westside social justice leader lamented the lack of attention paid to police reform. 

On July 25, activists and community leaders gathered at the New Mt. Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Church, 4301 W. Washington Blvd., to demand justice for Sonya Massey, the Black woman murdered near Springfield on July 6 by Cook County Sheriff’s Deputy Shawn Grayson. They also demanded that the Democratic Party focus on police reform at the DNC, particularly by centering legislation like the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act.  

“If you think you’re going to come to Chicago and hold a Democratic National Convention and not talk about Sonya Massey, I come to tell you that whatever goes down in this town, we have to talk about what happened to an innocent Black mama who should be alive today,” Rev. Al Sharpton, an MSNBC personality and founder of the National Action Network, said at the July 25 rally. 

On Aug. 18, the National Action Network partnered with Leaders Network, a Westside faith-based social justice organization, to host a Gospel Musical Kickoff for the DNC at New Mt. Pilgrim to reinforce the demand they made in July. This time, presidential candidate, activist, and scholar Dr. Cornel West joined the activists in their push to be heard. 

“Anytime I come to Chicago, I know that the New Mt. Pilgrim is where my soul and body belong — on the Westside of Chicago,” said West, who is running for president as a People’s Party candidate. Melina Abdullah, a professor and activist, is the party’s candidate for vice-president. West won’t be on the ballot in Illinois, but voters can write him in. 

West discussed his close relationship with Rev. Marshall Hatch, Sr., New Mt. Pilgrim’s pastor and Leaders Network co-founder. 

“I’ll take a bullet for this brother because I love and respect him,” West said of Hatch. “We’ve been in foxholes together and many to come. But I come to the church to get spiritually empowered.” 

Rev. Ira Acree, a Leaders Network co-founder and pastor of the Greater St. John Bible Church in Austin, said the organizations hosted the Aug. 18 concert to highlight critical issues facing the Westside and inner cities nationwide. 

“We are here today celebrating the kickoff of the Democratic National Convention being hosted here in our town,” Acree said. “We wanted to put a little spirit in the air as we initiate this moment. We’ve taken ownership of this day as the official kickoff of this convention. We wanted to highlight some of the issues we’re facing in our communities.” 

Acree pointed to redlining, or the practice of denying loans and other financial services to areas based on their racial profile, and police reform as issues he hoped the DNC would highlight. 

“We are here today in the aftermath of a Sonya Massey Justice Rally held here just a few weeks ago, and our community stood here in partnership with Rev. Al Sharpton and [attorney] Ben Crump, and we made the case that Sonya Massey should not be dead because the person who killed her should not have been on the police force in the first place,” Acree said on Aug. 18. 

“We are hoping, and we expect our nominee to bring up police reform,” he added. “It did not come up in the Republican Convention, but we want it to come up in our convention, and we are advocating for the George Floyd Act. If we had the George Floyd Act, Ms. Massey would be alive today because the Act mandates a national law enforcement registry for bad [police officers].” 

However, as Reason Magazine pointed out, four years after criminal justice reform and police accountability were center-stage in Democratic politics, they were conspicuously absent at the 2024 DNC, “replaced by more law enforcement-friendly rhetoric and quietly cut from the party platform.” 

Multiple speakers at the DNC emphasized Vice President Kamala Harris’s career as a prosecutor. Chris Swanson, a Michigan county sheriff, said that Harris “is exactly the tough prosecutor that I’d want to see.” 

Reason Magazine reported that Swanson’s “inclusion was indicative of how much or little thought the DNC organizers gave to criminal justice issues. Swanson was one of two Michigan sheriffs named in a class-action lawsuit filed earlier this year accusing county officials of colluding with large prison telecom companies to end face-to-face jail visitations and then price-gouge families who are forced to rely on phone calls and video chat services in return for major kickbacks.” 

Reason pointed to Rev. Sharpton’s appearance with “four of the five members of the Central Park Five—a group of black and Hispanic teenagers who were convicted of raping a jogger in Central Park in 1989 but who were cleared in 2002 by DNA evidence and the confession of another man” — as “one of the only major acknowledgments of criminal justice issues” at the 2024 DNC.  

Reason also compared Harris’s 2020 DNC speech accepting the nomination for vice president with her 2024 speech accepting the nomination for president. 

“In her 2020 DNC speech accepting the nomination for vice president, Harris noted ‘the excessive use of force by police’ and broader inequities in the criminal justice system. She name-dropped George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Harris’s speech last night didn’t mention the police, except in passing references to the January 6 riot.”

When contacted on Aug. 24, Acree said he was disappointed that police reform and criminal justice issues weren’t centered during this year’s DNC. 

“It was a noble request on our behalf, but the truth is no particular issue was front and center,” he said. “I think the Democratic Party pivoted and tried to be more inclusive and broaden the tent. They went to the center. So, I can’t say that I was satisfied with that. We’ll just keep pushing, but we were disappointed that it was not mentioned. 

“There was not a lot of policy discussed at the Democratic National Convention,” Acree said. “It was more or less trying to push patriotism and extend the olive branch so that independents can find a place to belong. I’m a person who is totally against the MAGA vision for America, so I was able to process that pivot to the center this year at this convection better than I would have been able to in the past.”