I can't tell you how many times she called with news of yet another police shooting or other dire community happening, generally before any of the commercial press had reported it.

And this city made Beauty a very busy person. Chicago police shoot more civilians than the New York Police Department, even though New York City has three times as many people. Beauty's voice was often one of the few bravely speaking in contradiction to the police version of events, repeating the words of civilian witnesses who, with good reason, were afraid to publicly tell their version of events. Just last week, for example, a federal jury yet again awarded hundreds of thousands to a young Black man whom Chicago police retaliated against for reporting their brutality.

But Beauty was not a "one note" activist. Besides supporting any number of "other people's issues," her record of reporting the trail of lying by Chicago public housing officials and their mayor is matched by few. Invariably these officials were "shocked, shocked" that anyone would accuse them of breaking their promises to public housing residents, such as that every unit of public housing destroyed in the "revitalization" of CHA would be replaced by a new or rehabbed unit.

If we've been paying attention, we all now should know the history – Chicago city government's record of lying to public housing residents is reminiscent of this country's treatment of Native Americans. Solemn agreement after agreement, or treaty after treaty, brazenly broken simply because the government had the wealth and power to do so.

This year's epidemic of violence – over 500 murders in the city to date – can in large part be traced to the destruction of public housing, as our poorest residents had yet another element of the safety net ripped away from them, as youngsters and their families were shuffled across gang boundary lines by the residential displacements, and turf wars over the drug trade became even more desperate as the city's youth unemployment rate hit its highest level since the statistics began to be gathered in the late 1940s.

But even though our side overwhelmingly lost the battle to preserve public housing, Beauty refused to keep her mouth shut about it. She brazenly organized her "Ghetto Bus Tours" to the sites around the city where government officials had broken their promises, repeatedly making national news in the process, and rightfully embarrassing city officials as they primp for the 2016 Olympics.

Fortunately there are other activists in our city doing pieces of the valuable work that Beauty did for so many years. But I can't think of anyone who did nearly as much as she did, and so the void left in our city's life by her absence is enormous.

And the void goes way beyond the loss of an invaluable activist voice. "Hey love" was always much more than Beauty's signature greeting, but a genuine expression of love and caring, even when she needed to share some urgent, awful news. Those of us lucky enough to have known and loved her will miss that warm voice on the other end of the telephone, that enthusiastic hug on a cold street corner.

We've lost a dear, dear friend, whose humanity was absolutely genuine, and so heroic in light of all the pain she had witnessed.

Thank you, Beauty.