Dear Chicagoans,

I have lived in the City of Chicago for going on twenty years. I dearly love the Windy City. It is my home. That is why it pains me to witness this city sinking into a rat infested sewer of political corruption, as it has been doing over the past few years.

Some of you know, I have been a strong supporter of Mayor Daley. But having heard his recent reactions to certain events, reactions that have been giving this city a bad name (such as his reaction to the Cook County Building fire, or to the wrongful death of May Molina), I have to wonder if Daley has become so comfortable inside of his back-washing machine that he simply doesn't give a flying fuck about the good people who keep him in office anymore.

Am I the only one, or does Mayor Daley and his goon squad seem to be increasingly at war with the good people of Chicago? The members of the government of Chicago are so busy covering each other's asses, that they don't have any time to serve anymore, no time to protect anymore, no time for truth or justice. What has emerged like a python in this city is a system so heartless, corrupt and busy protecting itself, that it serves no viable purpose other than to divide this city into aristocrats and those of the lower class. The police have become an army that harasses and degrades, showing no decency toward the common man. Somebody at City Hall has been watching too much Law and Order. A good Police Department is respected, not feared.

If this trend keeps up, this city is heading straight for the shit hole!

For one thing, Mayor Daley keeps talking about all the good a casino will do for this city. Good for whom? Daley skips over the part about how a casino will attract organized crime, how gambling addicts will lose their life's savings, how rowdy, drunk, uncaring assholes will swarm in from the suburbs, and how such a casino will encourage and speed up the gentrification trend, that has been raping this city's heritage and that has been shoving anyone without a six-figure income out of this soon-to-be God forsaken town for over a decade already. Daley acts like this is all okay, as long as he has a place to wine and dine all his suits and ties. What's next? Bulldoze the West Side in the middle of the night?

Why is this type of organized crime called gambling okay? Could it be because it's HIS kind of organized crime: the rich, big shot, connected, politico, kind; not the sick, elderly, wheelchair bound woman gagging on six bags of heroin that was shoved down her throat, kind. The kind of pearly white organized crime that hands out contracts to relatives and financial contributors, resulting in the senseless death of innocent people, not the line 'em up against the grocery store wall 'cause the freakin' niggas be peddlin' crack to feed their starvin' kids again, kind. If you can't drive 'em out with increased property taxes, you can always lock 'em away, Mr. Daley.

Mayor Daley seems to have forgotten that he and his band of big, bad-ass policemen and politicians are employees of the people. The people, I say! Servants of the people. From denying protesters the right to lawfully demonstrate, to framing and then railroading yours truly—-it has become an us-or-them situation on the streets of Chicago. And it is just wrong, because the people of Chicago are good people and don't deserve this brand of sanctioned terrorism.

And where did this all come from, anyway? I'm sure I am not alone when I say, I am a law abiding citizen. Okay, I've had my bad days like everyone else, but generally I do no harm. I try to be a productive part of this city any way I can be. Why, then, is there not one day that goes by without some bully cops giving me sideways looks as if I am a piece of slime and they are the owners of the streets in MY NEIGHBORHOOD? Why do I feel intimidated by these muscle men, drunk with power, who ride around and don't even stop for pedestrians when they're making a turn? Where has the community gone? You can't even go to the fucking lake on a hot Summer evening without some gestapo thugs flashing their stupid ass lights at you! Now they even have undercover police on el platforms harassing cigarette smokers. They've posted signs saying "Guess which one of these people is the undercover cop." The Chicago police no longer exist to solve problems, they exist to cause problems, they don't watch over the people, they watch the people, and they are breeding a paranoid society in which you can't even walk down a Rogers Park street to hang out at Heartland Cafe without bald goons in unmarked cars slowing down beside you and giving you evil eyes. Chicago has become a society where you can't even watch an episode of Millionaire without a commerical bragging how "We are going to give you a ticket!" I've been to a lot of cities, and I must say Chicago has the most unfriendly civil servants.

The fact that Daley is already sticking up for these civil servants in the case of May Molina's death is truly telling. The lab reports aren't even in and already Daley is taking sides.

First of all (regardless of the heroin factor), when a lawyer requests to give his client her medication and he is DENIED, that is criminal! Whoever denied Molina's lawyer access to his client needs to be fired Donald Trump style, immediately, heroin or no heroin. Was Molina already dead by the time the request to deliver the medication was made? That could be one reason why the request was denied. Maybe the reason why they were not concerned about her health was because it was already too late.

Also, it seems to me, if the police busted her door down and swarmed her home, Molina would not have had the TIME to swallow six bags of heroin. It would also seem to me that if Molina did indeed have some eighty or even ninety bags of heroin in her home (as the police are claiming), what purpose would swallowing six of them serve!? Molina was not dumb; she was 55 years old and had been around the block a few times, I'm sure. To suggest she didn't know the danger of swallowing six bags of heroin, especially in her physical condition, when the police were going to find seventy-four or more bags anyway, sounds to me like a made up story, if there ever was one.

But, as it happens in Chicago time and time again, we may never know, because in this case, once again, the accused parties get to investigate THEMSELVES. Don't hold your breath waiting for the Office of Professional Standards to do anything. Everyone from the Mayor on down is going to work closely together on this one, so that everyone has their stories straight, and the appropriate documents are misplaced. Believe me. They are on the horns with each other as you are reading this.

Let me tell you from experience. This city went through extraordinary efforts, just so they wouldn't have to admit that one of their officer's didn't have probable cause when he arrested me, drunk in my parked car one night last year. From forged hospital records that didn't even have the correct dates on them, to the arresting officer lying under oath after being coached to do so by the malicious prosecutor: boy, did they ever go out of their way to dot all of their I's and cross all of their T's, just to convict this poor schmuck named [drunk bastard], who just wanted to hang on to his lousy nine to five job driving a truck for the post office! They ganged up on me as if they were The Untouchables. God forbid, the lousy gun slinging knucklehead, who was more concerned with kicking my ass than he was with finding out what was actually wrong with me, should admit he didn't see shit, and that he merely charged me with a crime just to reach his quota, maybe to set a record and appear in a television commercial--who knows. God forbid the truth should be told. When they say "You have the right to remain silent" what they really mean is "Shut the fuck up, nobody cares." I'm still paying $75 every time I'm forced to visit a social worker at that torture chamber at Belmont and Western. They're going to be taking my money and my piss until the middle of 2005! For what? Because I happened to be wearing an anti-war button the night I was unlucky enough to drink from the wrong bottle.

Okay. It's over a year later, and I'm still bitching about how I was treated that night, and I'm not done passing a heavy dose of bad, bad karma off on them wherever the fuck they send me, here, there, doom follows me like a shadow. One act of God after another equals the score. But let's just call that coincidence and fodder for fiction. I do have a point. My point is, how much effort do you think will be spent covering asses on the Molina affair? Times what they did to me by about a million. The bottom line: you can't trust anyone even vaguely associated with the city on this one.

Now I don't pretend to know the first thing about May Molina. For all I know, she might have been guilty of heroin possession. I do wonder, if that is true, how did the police know where to find it so easily? Smells like entrapment, but again, I don't pretend to know. The law says heroin possession is a crime, okay. If Molina was legitimately caught with a quantity, she should have gotten a fair trial. The law does not, however, say that mere possession of heroin strips a person of all rights, and therefore she can be left to die like a pig in a cell like some abused Iraqi after being butt fucked by an over zealous law enforcement agency. I think we all know that locking a person up and denying her medical attention until she dies, is a much WORSE crime than possession of heroin is. Murder is worse than drug possession by anyone's standards.

What do I know? I know that I don't trust the system. Not after witnessing first hand how they framed and railroaded me for a simple misdemeanor, how they summed me up in the blink of an eye as just some drunk bastard, how they violated my rights, how they made sure I was good and fucked just so they wouldn't have to admit they made a mistake. I have had first hand experience with the bullshit machine and everyone who works for it. And I do mean everyone. Karma does not negotiate. I do not distinguish the city worker from the city: they are one in the same. They are all equally to blame. They love to destroy lives and then they love to deny it ever happened. They love to play God and God is offended by that. They are all in cahoots.

A civil rights activist who mysteriously dies in police custody? Give me a break. Hasn't anyone seen Mississippi Burning? Wise up. Demand a federal investigation for May Molina, before you are next.

--Drunk Bastard

PS, a word of advice. Don't trust those smiling crackers in the coroner's office either! They are all on the same payroll and they are not on your side.