Freedom of expression? Or should Derrick Rose keep his trap shut?!?

A t-shirt is going to show us just how much Chicago sports fans “love” Bulls point guard Derrick Rose.

Bulls fans have become critical of the fact that Rose has suffered so many injuries during his professional athletic career and gives the impression that he’s in no hurry to recover from his various maladies.

THE DEBATE OVER Rose is whether he’s merely being careful and taking care of himself; or if he’s got a lazy streak within him.

But now, we’re going to have another issue – following the Saturday night incident where Rose publicly wore a t-shirt with the slogan “I can’t breathe” printed on its front.

That slogan refers to what were among the “last words” spoken by Eric Garner in New York while being held in a choke hold by police. Garner later died, and his words are being used by protesters angry that the officer in the incident evaded criminal indictment for his actions that caused the death.

Rose became merely the latest professional athlete to show sympathy toward someone who died recently because of a police officer’s actions.

LET’S NOT FORGET the St. Louis Rams football players who last month took the field prior to a game against the Oakland Raiders with their hands held in the air, symbolically letting police know that just because they were black men, they weren’t about to commit any violent acts.

As though the assumption was that black people are naturally violent and pose a threat that law enforcement should react harshly towards.

The St. Louis Police Officers Association led a verbal attack on the football players, saying it was disrespectful for them to side with the people who believe the death of Michael Brown in suburban Ferguson, Mo., was caused by police and who are angry that an officer there also managed to avoid being indicted for his actions.

Now, we’re going to see how the sports world comes out against Rose, although it should be noted that the Chicago Tribune reported most of Rose’s Bulls teammates are supportive of his right to express his views.

THEN AGAIN, ROSE is the supposed star of the Bulls team and is the man whose fitness is key to whether the Bulls have a chance to be in the NBA playoffs come spring.

If he does play well this season, he “buys” himself the right to say what he thinks.

Those Rams football players (Stedman Bailey, Tavon Austin, Jared Cook, Chris Gevans and Kenny Britt) are not NFL stars. In fact, there’s a good chance that when they die, their obituaries will lede with the fact that they were the guys who protested Brown’s death – instead of anything they did during a game.

As for Rose’s gesture of protest, I think it is rather mild. If you weren’t paying attention during pre-game warm-ups, you didn’t see it. It’s not like he’s going around elaborating on his attitude these days.

SO I THINK anybody who gets too upset about Rose taking such a stance is probably saying more about themselves than anything Rose (or Garner) said or did!

It reminds me of the book “Ball Four,” in which former pitcher Jim Bouton addressed the attitude of baseball people toward those of their colleagues who expressed views on social issues.

Ballplayers could say anything they want if they expressed a socially conservative viewpoint because they were “right.” But if they said something construed as not supportive of the conservative establishment, then they were criticized for being “wrong.”

Unless the player in question was a big-enough star, in which case they’d get a simmering silence directed toward them. Is that bound to be Rose’s fate for daring to wear a t-shirt Saturday night?

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The more we change, the more we stay the same. And that is pretty sad!

Protesters gathered both Thursday and Friday at prominent points in downtown Chicago to express their outrage with the fact that a New York police officer managed to avoid indictment, despite being caught on video putting a choke hold on a black man who later died as a result.

In a legal context, the death of Eric Garner is a perfect example of the difference between “homicide” and “murder.” The former is a medical term for any death caused by another human being’s action.

YET PROSECUTORS THIS week in New York determined that the shouting and screaming and other hostilities that occurred between Garner and police Officer Daniel Pantaleo caused the incident to rise to the level by which use of force was justified.

Therefore, no criminal charges!

That is what has activists upset all across the country, including in Chicago. Thursday night saw four people get arrested for misdemeanor charges when the protest they participated in caused traffic on Lake Shore Drive to close.

On Friday, they were to gather on State Street (“that great street”) for another rally. Who’s to say how long they will continue to do so?

THE GARNER INCIDENT may wither away into the past. But at the rate we’re going, it will be a very short period of time before there’s another “male black” (to use police jargon) who winds up getting killed because of a police officer’s actions.

It was just last week that the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and the refusal of grand jury to indict the police officer on any charges caused activists in Chicago to camp out at City Hall – literally spending a night outside the mayor’s Fifth Floor office to express their disgust.

We haven’t had violent outbursts in Chicago yet. But just envision if one of these upcoming acts takes place here. When one considers that a person asking a police officer why they’re being questioned can, under certain circumstances, be construed as resistance, it’s just a matter of time before there’s another police-related death in Chicago.

The sad part of all this is that it isn’t the least bit new. In fact, Thursday was the 45^th anniversary of when the Chicago police raided the West Side house where the Black Panther Party was located locally.

WHICH MEANS THAT 45 years ago today, we had people outraged over the blatant actions of Chicago police that resulted in the death of Panther party leader Fred Hampton and others with the group.

There were others more than willing to believe the rhetoric that the group was a subversive organization, and would cite the armed conflicts that had burst out between the group and police across the country in the late 1960s.

Then again, there are those who argue the Panthers’ desire to arm black people for “self” protection was because the police themselves were not doing anything to protect those individuals – and may well have been the problem.

Some people might well think that nothing has changed – police still viewing black faces as the problem, and being more willing to use potentially-deadly force.

I HAVE ENOUGH sense to see that in the 21^st Century, we’re in a more subtle situation.

Nothing that has happened in recent months is as blatant as the Panther raid, where the FBI provided intelligence they gathered about the Panther headquarters and turned it over to Chicago police – which then carried out the raid that resulted in criminal indictments against 13 law enforcement officials, including of then-State’s Attorney Edward Hanrahan.

All of them were ultimately acquitted, although Hanrahan’s desires to someday become mayor withered away and died. In his mind, that may well have been the ultimate punishment!

Although others still feel an injustice was done – a level of discontent felt by some in our society these days who wonder if attitudes will ever change significantly.

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Immigration appeals to the nation’s hearts and minds in coming months

The fight over revamping our nation’s immigration policies into something that makes sense is going to become a battle for the hearts and minds of our society, and Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., is likely to become a visible part of it.

The Washington Post reported this week how Democrats are trying to plot a strategy by which they will present an image to sway people over to backing the desire of President Barack Obama to revamp immigration policies in ways to prevent families from being split by deportation.

IT’S GOING TO be a bi-lingual approach. There will be many appeals to people to whom Spanish is a significant language in their lives.

It likely will be along those lines that Gutierrez, who long has urged the need for serious reform and was upset at how long it took Obama to act, and other members of Congress will be explaining just how detrimental it really is to our society to let the conservative ideologues have their desires of a policy that stresses deportation over all other changes.

The point being that conservatives who are counting on a new Republican majority over all of Congress to tout their nativist desires are going to be throwing out their own share of rhetoric about the evils of Obama using his executive order powers to implement some changes without Congressional approval.

Admittedly, it would be better if Congress would act on a comprehensive plan to fix the flaws in immigration laws that turn it into a bureaucratic nightmare for those who have to endure it.

BUT THE REPEATED failure of Republicans in Congress in recent years to even consider the issue gave Obama the moral high ground to take some action – one that various polls show a majority of people can support.

The ideologues, however, will want to believe their minority viewpoint is the one that represents the thoughts of all people. If Obama isn’t careful, too many people will come to view their twisted line of logic as fact – just as there are those who ought to know better when it comes to health care reform.

That was an issue where backers of making health insurance more readily available were not aggressive enough, and wound up letting the opposition dominate the debate with their trash talk.

Gutierrez & Company are meant to prevent the same from happening with immigration reform. There also will be the case that Spanish debate will wind up being dominated by the Obama backers – unless Republicans can start finding Latinos capable of badmouthing immigration reform with a straight face.

THAT’S SOMETHING NOT likely to happen!

The trash talk has already started. On Thursday, the GOP-run House of Representatives gave its support to a measure expressing its opposition to Obama on immigration reform. It is a measure that the (for another month) Democrat-led Senate will ignore.

At least it isn’t any of the nonsense talk about defunding the federal government to cause a shutdown of services to the public.

Although the Washington Post reported how there is talk of acting early in 2015 to cut off funding to the Department of Homeland Security for programs that relate to immigration law.

IT SEEMS THE ideologues are hoping they can get people all worked up against Obama so that if there is a future government shutdown, people might be inclined to blame Obama for it.

Even though history shows that whenever Republicans try to shut down government services for ideological reasons, the public sees through the tactic and winds up blaming the Party of Reagan (who himself is probably rolling over in his California grave at the short-mindedness of his alleged ideological colleagues).

How else to explain the nonsense lawsuit that got filed earlier this week in the U.S. District Court in Brownsville, Texas that seeks to have a federal judge strike down Obama’s executive order? Sixteen other states, including the knuckleheaded Hoosiers and Cheeseheads to the east and north of Illinois, joined in that lawsuit.

I just can’t see any federal judge attuned to the realities of life in south Texas – where it is the Mexican-Americans who are the majority of people and where it is blatantly obvious that the U.S./Mexico border used to be significantly to the north of the Rio Grande – having the nerve to go along with such xenophobic tripe.

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Can Rahm opponents unite to stop Emanuel from getting vote majority?

A lot of people are watching the mayoral campaign, speculating on the chances that Mayor Rahm Emanuel can be forced into a run-off election come April – thinking that a one-on-one campaign would allow all those Rahm bashers to unite against him.

At this point, however, I’m skeptical that the people of Chicago will be able to unite behind a single candidate. Let’s be honest; various polls show enough undecided people that all Emanuel has to do is swing over a slight share of them to his camp, and he wins!

NOW I’M NOT going so far as to predict an Emanuel victory in the Feb. 27 elections. I’m just saying I’m not going to view it as the largest surprise in the world if Rahm, with the benefits of incumbency and that huge campaign cash stash, winds up prevailing.

Anybody who thinks Emanuel is doomed to defeat is being ridiculously premature.

I don’t doubt there are people who are determined to dump Rahm from office – there always have been hard-core, outspoken critics of Emanuel every time he has put his name on a ballot. Those critics and their opposition has always been overcome.

In this particular election cycle, there seems to be two (of nine overall) mayoral challengers who are getting attention paid to them by voters – 2^nd Ward Alderman Robert Fioretti and Cook County Board commissioner Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, D-Chicago.

GARCIA IS IN the news these days because he got a pledge of a $250,000 campaign contribution from the Service Employees International Union’s political committee.

Yet before the money that would more than double the size of his campaign fund ($477,000, according to the Chicago Tribune) could even get into his bank account to be spent, there already are challengers.

There are those people within the union who are claiming that union has no business providing financial help, or support of any kind, to any candidate.

There probably are people within the SEIU who want to dump Emanuel from office as much as the Chicago Teachers Union officials who have been particularly outspoken (and who kicked in some cash to Garcia’s campaign as well).

BUT IT WON’T shock me to learn that Fioretti has his backers there, and probably some people who aren’t about to back Garcia. Which is why various polls usually show those two men with about 17 percent support each, to about 35 percent for Emanuel.

I was particularly entranced with the results of a poll by San Francisco-based pollster David Binder that put Emanuel’s support level at 44 percent (compared to 16 percent for Garcia and 15 percent for Fioretti).

When asked how people would vote if it was narrowed down to Emanuel and Garcia (who’s going to try to portray himself as the Latino take on Harold Washington), it becomes 49 percent for the mayor to 37 percent for Garcia – with another.

That leaves 14 percent who can’t commit to either. Why do I suspect that Emanuel, with his nearly $10 million (and growing) campaign fund, is capable of finding “2 percent” of those people  who would refuse to accept Garcia and would wind up holding their noses, so to speak, while casting ballots for Rahm.

THE FACT IS that Chicagoans upset with the idea of “four more years!” of Emanuel haven’t united behind an opposition candidate. Considering how malcontent in nature many Chicagoans can be, I won’t be surprised if they never do.

Personally, I’d be as intrigued by the concept of “Mayor Chuy” at the head of Chicago city government as many of his hardest-core supporters. I’m just not convinced yet that there are enough of us out there.

Unless there can be some sense of unity amongst the opposition, there’s a chance that the people who are already looking past Feb. 27 to an April 7 run-off will wind up disappointed that there’s nobody to vote for and only the Chicago Cubs’ Opening Day defeat to the St. Louis Cardinals two days earlier to ponder over.

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Not unheard of for Chicago to have its own legal standard on many measures

It’s not at all unusual for there to be different standards in the law between Chicago or Cook County and the rest of Illinois. Anyone reading state statutes carefully will find many references to laws that apply only to communities of “3 million or more people.”

The Legislatures’ intent in passing such measures was to have them apply only to Chicago, and to specifically not have them apply to rural parts of Illinois.

NOW I KNOW there’s going to be at least one smart aleck who’s going to feel compelled to point out that Chicago’s population has declined to the point where even that “3 million” standard doesn’t make a difference.

But the point is that there are Chicago-only standards written into state law.

That is why I can’t get all worked up by those individuals who are upset that the City Council on Tuesday approved a plan to boost the minimum wage within Chicago ultimately to a higher rate than state officials want to go to.

There are business-oriented people (who if they were to get their wish, Illinois would reduce its minimum wage rate from the current $8.25 per hour to the federal $7.25 standard) who are now saying there will be chaos and calamity caused by the idea of companies operating in Chicago having to pay their unskilled workers more than they do in other parts of Illinois.

I SAY COMPANIES that truly have their act together will be able to adjust. Companies that can’t were probably being hit with harsher problems than just the compensation levels they were paying their employees – who are, after all, the people who do the work that produce the products or services that enable a company to claim anything in the way of profits.

Of course, Gov.-elect Bruce Rauner has made it clear he’s still in line with those business executives who wish to bolster their bottom line at the expense of their employees.

He said on Tuesday that he still doesn’t want any political action on a minimum wage measure until after he becomes governor in January, and he wants it tied to a series of measures meant to benefit those who fantasize about Illinois someday becoming a “right to work” state.

The Legislature seems willing to hold off – officials there who back a statewide minimum wage boost say they likely don’t have enough political support to approve anything.

BUT MAYOR RAHM Emanuel got the City Council on Tuesday to back the boost in Chicago; because he wants to be able to have the accomplishment in his campaign literature. How long will it be until we get campaign ads on television touting Emanuel’s action toward paying working class people more money for their labor?

All so he can have a chance at getting our vote come Election Day!

So now, we have a state with an $8.25/hour minimum wage that might, or might not, go up to about $11 per hour.

While in Chicago, we have a rate that will soon shoot up to $10/hour and keep going up in increments to $13/hour by 2019.

DON’T BE SURPRISED if a phenomenon that has long existed along the Illinois/Indiana border (where the Hoosier state uses the federal rate for its minimum wage) will arise – people from other places who find it practical to commute will be eager to get a job in Chicago.

The city’s businesses will be the ones that can get more choosy about the quality of people they hire. I know some will want to claim that businesses themselves will eagerly flip across the city limits into suburbs, if they can; which could wind up making those who remain all the more attractive.

And it has me wondering how long it will take for the rest of Illinois to get with the program and figure out that a lot of these allegedly “pro-business” measures the conservative ideologues tout are actually nothing more than measures that make our companies less desirable to work for.

How does that make Illinois, as a whole, any more attractive?

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Body cams? Not good enough

It sounds like an intriguing idea – officers with the Chicago Police Department will start early next year wearing miniature cameras clipped to the front of their uniform shirts to allegedly provide greater awareness of what police officers do on the job.

Audio and video recorded by the cameras is meant to show the interactions that police officers have with the public. It is meant to reduce the feeling that police aren’t accountable for their behavior on the job.

AND YES, ANY activity captured on camera can, and will, be admissible in a court of law. In theory, it could provide indisputable evidence of what exactly a suspect did wrong to warrant police attention.

Groups such as the ACLU and the NAACP are among the supporters of such cameras, and I don’t hate the idea in theory. It’s just that I’m skeptical of the way these cameras will work.

Because they’re going to try to give us the police view of an incident, when I think we’d be better off getting the outside view.

Give me a camera shot that shows a police officer in action, instead of the officer’s view. I can envision instances where we’d be better off seeing what the officer did to provoke an outburst, rather than seeing an outburst in and of itself.

IF WE’RE GOING to use technology to try to make police more accountable, then let’s do it properly. Let’s train the cameras on the cops. Which is something that any legitimately-behaving police officer ought to welcome.

If they’re really doing nothing wrong, then they shouldn’t fear having a camera trained on them for the bulk of their eight-hour shift (no, I don’t want to see an officer in the process of taking a bathroom break during his shift).

If anything, we’d probably see the tedium of being a law enforcement officer, dealing with the hours of boredom intertwined with the seconds of sheer terror in which someone can get killed if anybody screws up!

Considering that the police are all too eager to have the ability to watch any of us in detail at a moment’s notice, we ought to support the idea of turning the tables. Not just because it’s totally proper to expect police officers to live up to a higher standard than the general public.

PERHAPS IF WE had such video out of Ferguson, Mo., we’d be more willing to accept the officer in question and his account that Michael Brown tried to hit him, thereby causing him to reach for his weapon and fire the shots that killed the 18-year-old.

Without it, there will always be those who are unwilling to accept the account (just as there are those who will always want to believe that certain people “get what they deserve” from police).

It will be interesting to see how this idea gets tested in Chicago. Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy said Monday that local officers would begin wearing the recording devices in about 60 days, according to the Chicago Tribune.

But if we start getting too many incidents of officers whose portable cameras “just happen to malfunction” at key moments while on duty, it is going to create a level of distrust amongst the public.

THIS COULD BE a way of bolstering the level of trust we ought to place in our police department. We have a right to know more about what they do; they are city employees who work for a significant share of our local tax dollars.

But if this comes across as focusing too much on giving police another way to watch the public, it’s going to come across as a massive waste of those municipal funds.

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Rahm wants your vote come Feb. 27! He’ll do what’s necessary to get it!

It will be interesting to see the activity of the next few days as city officials scramble to try to impose a significant boost in the minimum wage; as Mayor Rahm Emanuel wants to have an accomplishment that can be used to appeal to the voters of Chicago who right now are inclined to want to dump him from office.

That accomplishment is an increase in the minimum wage paid by Chicago-based companies to up to $13 per hour by 2019. It would be a gradual increase implemented in coming years.

IT WOULD BE far more than the measures being pondered by the General Assembly in Springfield, which has hinted it might consider an increase from the current $8.25 per hour to $10. then to $11 by 2017. Which would make Chicago companies better paying for those who have to rely on minimum wage work to earn a living.

That has some political people concerned that the differential will harm business interests. It is why some are pondering that a state minimum wage increase ought to include provisions preventing any community in the state from imposing its own pay rate.

Yet Emanuel, in his struggle to try to appeal to less-than-wealthy Chicagoans living in places outside of the neighborhoods of the north lakefront, wants that $13 per hour increase -- even if it won't take effect until the very end of the upcoming mayoral term.

He wants to be able to boast about that as an accomplishment as he tries to undercut the appeal of mayoral challengers Jesus “Chuy” Garcia and Robert Fioretti to those working stiffs.

HE CERTAINLY DOESN’T want the political “yahoos” in Springfield to steal away that option from him. Although I wouldn’t be surprised if, should the General Assembly were to pass such a bill, outgoing Gov. Pat Quinn would sign it into law as a way of tweaking the egos of both Emanuel and Gov.-elect Bruce Rauner simultaneously!

The state Legislature comes back to Springfield Tuesday through Thursday for the remainder of its fall veto session, and state Sen. Kimberly Lightford, D-Maywood, has said the Legislature may act this week on the issue.

Which is why city officials last week scheduled a committee session to review a proposed minimum wage hike for Chicago come Monday. Then, on Tuesday, the full City Council will hold a special meeting – the sole purpose of which is to approve whatever gets recommended by the committee the day before.

Is it possible for the city to pass something before the General Assembly convenes Tuesday afternoon? Would the state try to pass something that they would claim circumvents Chicago’s ability to address the issue on its own?

WILL WE GET a lengthy legal fight over whose bill/ordinance will be allowed to prevail? Will there be bruised political egos, no matter what the outcome of the issue?

How much will Emanuel be willing to expend to ensure he prevails? Because while he can count on the same north lakefront support of people who in last month’s gubernatorial election were willing to vote for Rauner or not vote for governor at all, that isn’t enough to win a municipal election.

He wants to have credit for providing a higher minimum wage!

Just as he used his first campaign ads of the mayoral election cycle to take credit for the closings in recent years of coal-burning power plants in the Pilsen and Little Village neighborhoods.

THE ENVIRONMENTAL AND Latino activists who were involved with those efforts to reduce air pollution caused by those plants think that Emanuel was actually an obstacle to their efforts, which were ongoing long before Rahm became mayor in 2011.

But Emanuel wants to be on the side of “the people” and is willing to give himself a bit of praise; hoping that most of us weren’t paying much attention to know who did what.

He wants these “accomplishments,” just like he’s bound to seek many more in coming months as he tries to persuade a majority to believe that “Rahm II” won’t be a complete mistake for Chicago.

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