Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot has had it with demonstrators of any stripe in front of her house and she won’t put up with it anymore. The Chicago Tribune reports:
The Chicago Police Department has effectively banned protesters from demonstrating on Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s block in the Logan Square neighborhood, ordering officers to arrest anyone who refuses to leave, the Tribune has learned.
The directive surfaced in a July email from then-Shakespeare District Commander Melvin Roman to officers under his command. It did not distinguish between the peaceful protesters Lightfoot regularly says she supports and those who might intend to be destructive, but ordered that after a warning is given to demonstrators, “It should be locked down.â€
This is not a good look. If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. Nobody want demonstrators in front of their houses. Not only did she voluntarily seek to become mayor she has spoken in favor of “peaceful protesters”. She should just suck it up or take more stringent measures against protesters in general. Here’s one attorney’s reaction:
The city interpretation of the statute is on questionable constitutional grounds, and an administration that believes in accountability to the people wouldn’t try to ban picketing near the home of the mayor even if an argument could be made for its constitutionality.
which strikes me as just about right.
Seems to be a trend among Democrat mayors. Pittsburgh, Seattle, Portland, Chicago……… Let them eat cake.
https://hotair.com/archives/jazz-shaw/2020/08/20/pittsburgh-dem-mayor-no-cant-protest-outside-house/
Ms, Lightfoot has good company.
Seattle’s mayor, Jenny Durkin, ended CHAZ/CHOP (which she once praised as a summer of love), immediately after protestors protested at her house. Not after multiple people, including 2 teenagers were killed there, but when they visited her house.
I think they should protest in front her house every day and night 24/7 until she lets the police end the rioting and looting their way. Give her a taste of the fear too many Chicagoans have been forced to experience for months on end. dealing with people with a significant grievance, you’re dealing with spoiled children and hoodlums who think mayhem and murder are fun.
Don’t the BLM protestors know that she’s ONE of them?
I bet she’s surprised to find out that she’s not and that they cannot be appeased.
So now conservatives support the right to protest. LOL. I think the protestors should have the right to protest, including at the mayor’s house. If they get violent arrest them.
Steve
My view is that people have a right to assemble and demonstrate but not a right to block streets, block access to buildings, to break windows, or to set fire to property other than their own. “Violent” is a broad term, covering destruction of property as well as battery or assault, and applies to using force of numbers to restrict the rights of others.
What should have happened from Day 1 of protests is that when the very first rock was thrown, fireworks lit, or street blocked, there should have been a bullhorn announcement that it was an unlawful assembly and asked to disperse. If, after a suitable interval, that had not happened, everyone should have been arrested. Use nylon ties and leave them on the street until they can be picked up. Gandhian civil disobedience is one thing; disorderly conduct is another. The unit of measure of mob is mob.
Justifying disorderly conduct or mob violence is a violation of elected officials’ oaths of office. Illinois has lots of voting but little democracy, rather like Iraq under Saddam Hussein or Soviet Russia in that regard. Under a more democratic order, you should be able to remove elected (or unelected) officials from office for violations of their oaths of office. Here we’re stuck with them until the next election.
Was rushing but I agree. Protestors need to follow a set of rules, including not destroying property. There should be consequences when they break those rules.
Steve
Wonder when a civic minded attorney will seek a writ enforcing the demonstrators rights to peaceably assembly and seek redress of their grievances with accordion accompaniment in the day light hours.
Dave makes an important point – about addressing the acts of “peaceful†protesting immediately after they cross the line to non-peaceful. I’ve said this before, “What you accept, you encourage.†This is applicable for work place and academic habits, child rearing, marriage, etc., and especially for expressions of public grievances, aka “Street protests.â€
“Protestors need to follow a set of rules, including not destroying property. There should be consequences when they break those rules.”
Wow. Well there’s a brave give me liberty or give me death moment. Can I get in on this? For the record, I want everyone to know I’m only for good things, and most assuredly against bad things. So there.
Back to the real world. Portland, Seattle, Chicago, NYC Pittsburgh……. Elected leaders and warped DA’s are refusing to enforce the law, encouraging these thugs. That’s the whole point. And Biden, Schumer and Pelosi etc are cynically and tacitly supporting it through their silence on Antifa and their stated support for BLM.
It didn’t take Lori long. I wonder if that suburban housewife support I hear about will hold when these thugs are roaming through the streets of Winnetka.
There are certain sections of the Northwest Side in which I would advise them not to roam. In fact, I think that Chicago had a narrow escape when there were protesters in Beverly.
I have no trouble believing that, Dave. I wonder how many here understand the Beverly reference.
This situation is like the scene in the Godfather movie. “So we’ll keep the drug trafficking in the colored neighborhoods. They’re animals anyway.” Could Democrats be more crass and cynical? I hear rumblings that black neighborhoods are fed up with the Dem pandering to white Marxists in Antifa and BLM. Could Trump carry 15% of the black vote?
That would be the disaster scenario for Democrats. They would lose states they could easily have won. To place that 15% in perspective, 8% of black voters voted for Trump in 2016. I still think it’s unlikely his vote among black voters would be that high but it’s not impossible.