Chicago lost a giant tonight, with the death of community activist Beauty Turner, who died late this afternoon after suffering a stroke several days ago that left her in a coma. She was 51. For those who didn't know Beauty, she was a tireless fighter against police brutality and state violence, and lent her formidable organizing and writing skills to the battle for justice for public housing residents and working class people throughout the metro area.

Beauty lived in the Robert Taylor Homes, one of the nation's most troubled and neglected public housing projects, for sixteen years, and her advocacy included a long stint as a writer for the Residents Journal, a publication by and about Chicago's public housing residents. As an investigative reporter and advocacy journalist, she wrote regularly for the South Street Journal, the Hyde Park Herald and other community newspapers, and also worked as a research assistant for sociologist and Columbia University Professor Sudhir Venkatesh. She's been recognized or received awards from a variety of media groups and community projects, including the National Society of Professional Journalists and the Chicago Association for Black Journalists. Newspapers from the Washington Post to the Wall Street Journal have written about her work as an activist and reporter.

She worked on projects and campaigns that ranged from the Poor People's Millenium Movement to Beauty's Ghetto Bus Tours, a project that brought people from across the world to Chicago's public housing projects for an upclose view past the veneer of racism into the real dynamics driving poverty and disenfranchisement in Chicago's poor neighborhoods.

Her's was the voice you'd catch on the other end of the phone line late at night, saying "They did it again. I need you." And she had that capacity -- to inspire, to motivate, to move, to trouble the fuckers. For many in the movement, she stood as one of the most treasured mothers in the struggle -- a mother for us all, who pushed back against state violence and injustice whether the oppressed were Palestinians in Gaza or poor Black kids on the West Side. She understood intimately that an injury to one was an injury to all, a message she carried to almost every sector of the movement, from the struggle to end U.S. imperial wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to the battle for economic justice at home. She had a huge heart, almost boundless tenderness and an abiding sense of compassion that was simply indominable. She embodied the old Joe Hil axiom: Don't mourn. Organize!

Information about wake and funeral arrangements will be forthcoming. Friends, comrades and supporters can leave their personal remembraces on the Chicago Indymedia article at the following url: chicago.indymedia.org/newswire/display/85124/index.php

See below for links to some of Beauty's work.
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/07/AR2008030701352.html
www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2008/12/beauty-turner-housing-activist-dies-cha-chicago.html
windycityworldwindnews.blogspot.com/
www.beautysghettobustours.blogspot.com/