The University of Chicago The Law School

President Trump’s Halloween party at Mar-a-Lago, set to the theme of “The Great Gatsby,” reenacted the decadence of that story’s licentious era: befeathered flappers shimmying in the crowd; gilded and onyx décor; scantily clad women posing in an enormous champagne coupe. The revelatory moment says so much about where we stand today — and what we could be lurching into next.

Attorneys representing a group of protesters, clergy and journalists suing the federal government over what they allege are excessive and “indiscriminate” use of tear gas and pepper spray argued before a federal judge Wednesday morning, saying the court should issue a preliminary injunction that would stop federal agents from using crowd control chemicals against protesters and others in the Chicago area.

My first intersection with anything related to Laquan McDonald was reading a couple of paragraphs about the shooting in the local papers. This was a story you’d see on a weekly basis because, at that time, Chicago police were shooting, on average, [close to] one Black person a week. The story was like, “Police see a young Black man armed with a knife, he comes at them, an officer shoots him in self-defense. End of story.