There has not been a Republican mayor of Chicago since 1931 [William Hale Thompson]. In that city’s recent election, Lori Lightfoot became the first incumbent seeking re-election to suffer defeat in over 30 years. I found her assertion, shortly after her elimination in Feb., that she had lost because she was Black, Female and Gay, utterly repulsive yet typical of those consumed by Identity Politics. But in a recent [April 21] address to the African American Mayors’ Association, she jumped tracks and boarded the train of Rational Discourse, suggesting Democratic mayors around the country needed to be far more sensitive to issues of Law and Order, or face defeat in the near future. As crime was absolutely out of control in Chicago throughout her regime, she seemed to be admitting both her own personal failure as well as the inadequacy of “compassionate,” “forgiving,” Leftist Ideology in general. Indeed, she seemed to be endorsing a “conservative” approach to the issue of crime.
To be fair to Lightfoot, she was never a supporter of the “defund” movement. In 2020, in the aftermath of the George Floyd affair, she did propose 80 million dollars in cuts to police services, while many local “progressives” lamented that was not nearly enough. She was perhaps caught in the middle, realizing the need for an effective police force, while also attempting to placate her supporters who were rabidly pro-B.L.M. and anti-cop! Whatever her excuse, her years in power saw a gross upsurge in crime on the streets of Chicago, an inordinately high percentage of it being perpetrated by Blacks on other Blacks.
Brandon Tatum is a Black “conservative” commentator, formerly a police officer in Tucson, Arizona. While certainly not exonerating Derek Chauvin or suggesting there are no racist White cops, he found B.L.M.’s attempt to demonize all Whites and all Cops, utterly repulsive. Indeed in a June, 2020 interview with the “conservative” British tabloid, The Sun, he pointed out that the 25 Blacks killed mostly by other Blacks on a recent Chicago weekend, were almost twice as many as had been killed by the city’s police force over the previous two years. Why, he asked, was B.L.M. and indeed the mainstream media not focusing on the ugly reality of Black on Black crime? Why are ivory tower “liberals” who have never been in a frantic, life and death confrontation with a violent criminal, so eager to pass judgment on officers who are so on a regular basis?
Were a White social critic to focus on the inordinate level of violent crime in Black, urban America, he would of course be accused of Racism. Hence the importance of people such as Tatum, Candace Owens, Thomas Sowell, etc., people of color whose political views are rooted in their capacity for Reason rather than the hue of their skin. But what would lead Lori Lightfoot, who did little to stem the tide of violence while in power, to suddenly suggest that Democratic mayors across the country ought to prioritize those decent, law-abiding citizens constantly under threat from career criminals, rather than the criminals themselves, released again and again by “progressive” judges and D.A.s in the name of “social justice”?
I do not mean to be cynical, but both the timing and substance of Lightfoot’s comments at the aforementioned mayoral conference would seem to be less a matter of a profound moral commitment than of her concern that Democrats should continue to be successful in upcoming elections. To “conservatives,” the death of a single innocent citizen at the hands of a recidivist criminal, utterly exposes the stupidity of releasing such criminals from custody out of some “woke” sense of social justice. The most brazen example of such “liberal” lunacy, as I cited in an earlier blog, is that Saskatchewan Indigenous who, having been arrested more than 50 times, was nevertheless free in 2022 to kill several innocent people because of his status as a victim of colonialism.
To Lightfoot I would say: Talk is cheap. That you are now endorsing a “tough on crime” policy while showing little inclination to be so while still mayor, would seem to be the height of hypocrisy. Ironically, the people of Chicago, no doubt led by its Black community, ultimately elected a “progressive,” Brandon Johnson, a staunch supporter of the “defund” movement, over his chief rival Paul Vallas, who, while also a Democrat, actually had the endorsement of the Chicago police union. So crime will continue to flourish in Chicago as it does in a host of other American cities infested with Leftist D.A.s and judges, while decent, law-abiding citizens of all races will continue to be robbed, beaten and perhaps even killed, all in the cause of “social justice.”