Looting along Chicago's Mag Mile raises ire to mayor

 

Tuesday proved to be a cleanup day for downtown Chicago businesses in the aftermath of a well-coordinated looting that hit the smartest and most expensive shops in the city’s Magnificent Mile district, a result of the shooting of a young black man on the Southside, but many observers have credited it as an excuse to loot, and less concern about avenging what some saw as police misconduct, and misinformation, of what was believed to b a 15 year old boy, but in reality was a 20 year old.

Regardless of the reasons, the damage, estimated to be in the millions hit Neiman Marcus, Bloomingdale, Yves St, Laurent and Gucci, and a clutch of pricey boutiques along side streets in the posh area, and a viable tax base.

It has also opened up a further discontent with the nascent administration of Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who received a raft of bad press after the tailgating rioters on the peaceful protest in May after the George Floyd murder.

 ABC 7 News located at the corner of State and Lake streets, another area that was hit, had reporters and cameraman on the scenes as cars and vans gathered around the stores, disgorging crowds of people  to break windows and grab the goods; suggesting a well coordinated attack; and, in fact, another television station showed a screenshot of what appeared to be a Tweet saying the looting would begin at 12 midnight that Monday, and would avoid the South and West sides of the city, which are predominantly black.

While new police Chief David Brown said in a press conference on Monday that it was an attack on the police, the opposite appeared to be true, and while it was obvious that both location of the press conference and Brown leading with opening remarks, that the mayor is standing behind her man.

But, City Hall observers are wondering for how long, as this is the second attack, and many of the same damaged stores, had just recovered from the May attacks and are now boarding up again, and some including local Ald. Brian Hopkins are wondering for how long these stores and the resulting glamor will remain.

He also commented on the area’s residents, who have helped buoy the local economy after much of Chicago’s black middle class has left the city, and as he told the Chicago Sun-Times, “sense of security stolen from them. … They can’t walk out the door without risking their lives — even in the middle of the day.

Lightfoot and her team, or teams seem to be stumbling on how to handle scenes like this, and while they have been mum on who was part of the planning, it is a safe bet that she and others will face some damming and blaming in the near future, even beyond a local society columnist who in a community newspaper called her a Bolshevik.

In what was the opening salvo of words, Hopkins noted: “That is not to criticize the blue shirts on the ground. It’s to criticize the strategy and the tactical decision-making of the senior command who were unprepared for this. … They acknowledged they had intelligence that this was going to happen. Yet it happened. So, if there was an attempt to intervene at the earliest stages and to stop it, it failed. … And once it started, there was no stopping it,” the alderman said.

Most residents are beginning to acknowledge that there might be more truth than heat to his words as the mayor’s office has not acknowledged who was part of the decision  making in May that proved to be a debacle that reached the national media.

Lightfoot reacted, “Alderman Hopkins has a penchant for letting his mouth run before he actually gets the facts,” the mayor said. CPD “got the intelligence, acted on it quickly, brought 400 officers downtown. And what we need now is not Monday-morning quarterbacks and sideline critics. What we need is to come together as a city and have a united strategy and focus.”

Name calling aside, a city already battered by the endemic and in a state with growing numbers of COVID infections, plus a budget in deep arrears, and an economy that is struggling to recover, does not need images such as people hauling off armfuls of clothes, an ATM machine, and designer handbags, not to mention flat screen televisions, from a near Northside electronics dealer, that was also robbed.

 Ald. Brendan Reilly (42nd) said that a “major course correction on resource deployment is necessary,” along with a “deep review of police intelligence-gathering capability.”

 “Caravans and U-Haul trucks. Stolen vehicles lining blocks. Divvy bikes scattered everywhere. ... All of this was pre-packaged and ready to go. All it took was an all-systems go on social media for this thing to play out,” Reilly said.

This also has political echoes from a mayoral election that had two back women running and where only 21 percent of the electorate voted, some saying because there were no white candidates in a city long divided by race. And, it will be easy fodder to day that local black leaders, including the mayor and the State's Attorney Kim Foxx may not be able to manage the city.

Foxx has been heavily criticized for lowering the financial threshold for felony shoplifting that some shop owners have said increased the raft of shoplifting, even before the Floyd murder, with bands of youths smashing and grabbing along Michigan Avenue.

Lightfoot’s predecessor, Rahm Emanuel, faced with the shooting of another black man, 16 year old Laquan McDonald, hid a damning video with the completeness of the former state’s attorney and got  widespread anger in the black community, and even with liberal lakefront liberals, and many say that the fallout was one reason he chose not to run for reelection.

Crime may be the new snow for Chicago mayors, (a reference to the blizzard of 1979 that cost Mayor Bilandic a chance to remain in office) ) that has political implications for a voting bloc that may, or may not stand behind Lightfoot if she and Brown continue to have an inadequate plan for what may be another targeted event in a city that is boiling over with dealing with the pandemic of the coronavirus, as well as billions of dollars of indebtedness, a legacy of poor race relations, and an increasingly high cost of living, and lacking affordable housing.

Adam Skaf, a spokesman for the Magnificent Mile Association in an interview with Women’s Wear Daily, now known as WWD, “We need a more comprehensive security plan from the city. We need assurance for not only our stakeholders and for visitors — as many as are possible during a pandemic — but also for the 100,000-plus residents who live around the Magnificent Mile and Michigan Avenue,” Skaf said. “It is a very scary time for them as well.”

In a related event, police were attacked they said, during a protest at Millenium Park, where police and those wanting to defund the police department met in violent clashes, but news reports vary, depending on who is telling the story, but all things considered equal there seems to be issues on both sides, and with protesters protecting themselves from expected tear gas, and police saying that they were used to hide objects of attack, and it was also determined that one policeman was hit repeatedly in the head with a skateboard, matters more than appearances warrant in the court of public opinion.

Also there were reports that a nine year old boy was injured and in the aftermath, the move to defund has gained traction. On Tuesday there was a "coalition of community and labor organizations including Grassroots Collaborative, Black Lives Matter Chicago, SEIU Healthcare Illinois Indiana, and Black Youth Project 100 held a rally and car caravan ahead of city budget negotiations this fall," according to their statement.

As the demands grow louder, Chicago seems to be at the crossroads for change as they noted, and added, "At Grassroots Collaborative, we demand the City of Chicago defund the Chicago Police Department and invest in community services. We have seen that the police only serve to protect the property of the white and wealthy few while brutalizing protestors who march for change. We demand the CPD budget be defunded to fund life affirming public services such as health care, mental health, housing, good jobs, restorative justice, and more " said Amisha Patel, Executive Director, Grassroots Collaborative.

 Updated 18 August 2020, CDT

 

 

Chicago schools under pressure go remote

In a swift turnabout Chicago Public Schools announced on Wednesday that they were going to begin the new school year completely remote, rather than the hybrid version it had approved with input from local health officials and a poll of parents and caregivers.

The move has the support of many teachers that are fearing a return to the classroom; especially those that are older, or have pre-existing health conditions to consider, but some are also saying that CPS, as well as Mayor Lori Lightfoot caved under the threat of a threatened strike vote from the Chicago Teachers Union, that had already decided to present the issue for a vote in their House of Delegates.

Mayor Lightfoot

It’s no secret that CTU has no love for the mayor, and in turn, Janice Jackson, the school superintendent, the former because they backed her rival, Cook County Board President, Toni Preckwinkle, and the latter as being in cahoots with ousted former head, Forrest Claypool.

The resulting bad blood has spilled into the arguments on how and when to begin the new school year for elementary and high school students, and then there is the memory of the recent strike, where there were chants of “Lightfoot get on the right foot!” and American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, coming to town and proclaiming, “We’re going to teach the new mayor a lesson!”

While those voices have receded into the background, the political winds have not abated and the harsh words of Stacy Davis Gates during the mayoral campaign also remain in memory..

To be fair, there were many understandable fears on both sides of the fence, but the specter of another teachers strike amidst the pandemic and its grip on public health, plus the increasing homicide rate would have created a public relations nightmare with the world watching, and President Trump sending in federal help, with a major tweet about the demise of a great city, for all to hear.

Sharkey’s own tweet seemed to secure the enmity: “. We have to strike or threaten to strike to be heard, but when we fight, we win.” 

Mr. Sharkey

The mayor on the other hand struck a more unified tone when she said, “The decision to begin the 2020-2021 school year remotely during the first quarter is rooted in public health data and the invaluable feedback we've received from parents and families,” said Lightfoot in a statement.

Politics aside, and that is only momentarily, Jackson has promised that the new remote learning model will be one that is vastly improved from the earlier effort in March, which faced a variety of technical and accessible issues, and that many families did not have the necessary hardware, or access, needed for remote learning.

This time there will be an emphasis on teacher training for remote instruction, plus the baselines seen with in-person learning: accountability on both sides of the desk and including attendance, to name but a few.

“CPS’ remote learning plan must vastly improve on student and family experiences from the spring, and experts on the ground — our members — must be equal partners with the district in crafting those remote learning plans,” Sharkey said.

With legitimate safety concerns, the city’s health commissioner, Allison Arwady, noted “we’ve added between 80 and 100 cases and not seen signs that turning around makes us concerned.”

Also concerned were many teachers who in a Chicago Tribune poll said some of the following in reaction to the initial news: :

“What if a student or educator dies? Or what if a 14 year old comes to school with COVID and is asymptomatic, passes it onto his best friend and kills his best friend's mom?”

“What people don’t realize, outside of actual classroom instruction, is there is a huge nurturing portion of pre K that outsiders normally aren’t privy to.”

“These students who are missing school right now will move past this. . . and may even benefit from experiencing this unusual time in history. The greatest education in the world will mean nothing to our students if they are dead.”

Many of those teachers may not have been comforted by the words of Dr. Anthony Fauci who told a collection of educators in a recent virtual town hall meeting, “In many respects, unfortunately, though this may sound a little bit scary and hard, I don’t mean it to be that way, is that you’re actually going to be part of the experiment of the learning curve of what we need to know.”

Dr. Fauci

Cross infections cannot be ruled out, and the emphasis on masks and social distancing might not have worked in the lower grades, and the probability of a hybrid model, still a possibility for Nov. 9, maybe a nod to that reality.

Of course, there are those that advocate for the role of social interaction in K through 5 classes to help them form social skills later on, and as a developmental tool, and this has been adopted by the American Pediatric Association.

The concern is still there and in some southwestern states there have been accusations that with in person learning, there might be blood on the hands of school administrators.

On the other side of the equation, a report from the National Academy of Sciences, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, also underscores this point, but also said that “health risks to school personnel and students’ families,” should be take into consideration, but also that a partnership and task force should be considered to address the costs.

For Chicago with its racial, and financial polarization, not to mention that over 90 percent of the student body in its public schools are black and brown decreases the support that might be garnered in a whiter and wealthier city.

With a $700 billion deficit in the city budget, simply paying for the costs of cleaning alone, is problematic and one of the sticking points in the Congressional debate for another rescue package, is the size of the increase for state and local governments that the Republican Senate has balked at, and that the Democrats have advocated for, in situations, such as these, in dealing with the pandemic.

In a joint study the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital and the University of Chicago noted that children under five years old, “with COVID-19 have a higher viral load than older children and adults, which may suggest greater transmission, as we see with respiratory syncytial virus, also known as RSV.”

Specifically, they noted that those children “with mild to moderate COVID 19 have much higher levels of genetic material for the virus in the nose compared to older children and adults.”

While they are careful to note that the study was no proof positive that children spread the virus as much as adults, “but it is a possibility.”