Ronald Reagan throws the first pitch at Wrigley Field in 1988. His legacy of slashing welfare lives on in the Windy City today, thanks in part to the Chicago City Council.
CHICAGO – This week, in his weekly newsletter, Alder Daniel La Spata (1st ward), allegedly one of the most progressive members of City Council, informed constituents that Brandon Johnson’s dreaded property tax increase had been avoided (a whopping average $600 per year per property owner)—thank God—but to get ready for severe cuts to close the budget gap as a result. Was it worth it?
City Council has until December 31 to pass a budget and has been immersed in a high-profile feud with Mayor Johnson for weeks over how it will be funded. The mayor, in an effort to avoid mass layoffs and retain progressive social programs, in October proposed a property tax increase to balance the budget, a move which launched media outrage as well as a blistering 50-0 rejection by City Council. This vote made the mayor—a favorite Fox News target—look bad, it made alders look good to their constituents, and it risked the City’s credit rating, with Standard & Poor’s suggesting the rating might be downgraded due to the political drama inside City Hall. “The city needs more recurring revenue,” Matt Fabian, an expert on municipal bonds, told the Sun-Times in the wake of the vote. “Not raising property taxes is a mistake.”
Having vanquished Johnson, the Council was confronted with the fact that the City still has bills to pay and obligations to fulfill. And in the grand old tradition of neoliberal austerity, it is now turning toward slashing social programs to make ends meet. The Resistance is back, baby!
“I expect to see significant budget cuts,” La Spata wrote in a Wednesday newsletter. “Several alders have rejected inflation-adjusted revenue sources (for example an increase of about two cents a pint to the tax applied to beer) in favor of cuts to economic development and social welfare programs. This means the City’s federally-funded small business assistance and guaranteed basic income programs will be severely decreased if not eliminated altogether.”
Great. Luckily, the progressive bloc of City Council is fighting back against cuts to social programs…right?
“This is admittedly not the route I would have preferred,” La Spata went on. “These programs haven’t just been good for the city, they’ve changed lives right here in the 1st Ward. Chicago gains nothing from losing programs that create jobs and lift households out of poverty, but it is the route preferred by a substantial number of colleagues.”
Not exactly fighting words. More like exasperated resignation. Implicitly, in spite of his newsletter’s mournful tone, this route was also preferred by La Spata himself, as his participation in the anti-property-tax vote shows. And not just him—the entire progressive bloc of the Council, in joining the vote against the tax increase, opened the door for an inevitable regime of austerity. Why inevitable? Because the money has to come from somewhere. The whole point of Johnson’s property tax proposal was to avoid austerity. The fact that the entire progressive bloc—which claims to be the voice of Chicago’s downtrodden—voted against a measure which would have funded programs to benefit Chicago’s downtrodden is…astounding.
Alder Carlos Ramirez-Rosa of the 35th ward, who also voted down the property tax, has been more rhetorically harsh on his colleagues. In his own newsletter on the budget negotiations, he wrote:
Earlier this week, a group of 15 alderpeople signed on to a letter orchestrated by conservative Alderman Raymond Lopez advocating for drastic cuts in our city services beyond what has already been proposed in the mayor’s 2025 budget. The mayor’s 2025 budget proposal already imposes a 3% across-the-board cut to city departments and delivers hundreds of millions in personnel savings through the elimination of vacant positions. I am supportive of the savings and cuts the mayor has already proposed. However, I do not support the deep cuts proposed by Alderman Lopez and other conservative alderpeople. Their proposed cuts include $8.2 million from the Department of Public Health, $24.2 million from Sanitation operations, $37.5 million from the Office of Public Safety Administration, $51.3 million from the Department of Family Support Services (DFSS), and $2 million from Forestry Operations.
All of this misery to avoid an average $600-per-year tax increase for homeowners, people who chose to buy property in this City but who are offended by the idea that they should pay for its welfare. And make no mistake, readers—this situation would have been avoided if Ramirez-Rosa, La Spata, and others had simply found the spine to stand for the tax increase, to stand for the progressive principle of progressive taxation.
Some readers may be asking: but I’m a renter. Wouldn’t the tax hike be passed on to me? The answer is yes. But you are already paying your landlord’s property taxes in the form of your rent, and your rent will keep going up according to the market regardless of property taxes. The defeat of the Johnson proposal will not protect you from higher rents, but it will limit City services that you might have otherwise benefited from. You are losing. And by the way, the state legislature is perfectly capable of lifting the state ban on rent control, which would circumvent this question for renters altogether. Loganites, email your electeds.
We spoke with one homeowner in the 47th ward (Alder: Matt Martin), whose property is worth about $400 thousand. Under Johnson’s defeated proposal, this individual would have paid around $400 extra per year, which would have helped fund the programs that are now on the chopping block.
“I can afford that,” he said. “I want to pay that.”
Nonsense! Now, we told him, thanks to your heroic alderman, thanks to the entire City Council, thanks to the integrity and spine of the progressives, the Democratic Socialists in that deliberative body, you can have that four hundred dollars in your pocket, as opposed to giving it to that pinko commie Brandon Johnson, as opposed to doling it out to all the ungrateful, impoverished hordes, as opposed to forking over that four hundred dollars for social programs and—
Chicago City Hall interior. Image: Thomas Woolworth.
CHICAGO – As Mayor Brandon Johnson struggles to move his 2025 budget proposal through City Council—last week, the Council voted 50-0 in a symbolic rejection of his plan to raise property taxes—there is one swollen source of funding just begging to be lanced to fill the current $150 million budget gap: the police.
The Chicago Police Department’s budget is around $2 billion per year and climbing, dwarfing other city departments. David Orlikoff, district councilor for CPD’s 14th District Council, says that City Council “could cut CPD’s budget by 300 million and increase quality of service easily if they did what the experts, OIG, facts and community demand—end pretextual stops.” These stops, he told us, are racist, ineffective, and wasteful.
“They should also cut most of CAPS because it functions as a buffer to actual community access, as a PR wing, totally divorced from the actual business and function of CPD,” he told LLL. He specified that he does not support cuts to constitutional policing or to implementation of the consent decree.
The budget dispute is Mayor Johnson’s latest battle with City Council. Last week’s 50-0 vote was a dramatic rebuke of a pretty modest tax increase, which would have resulted in a tax of around $100 per year for every $100 thousand a home is worth. That tax scheme has been slashed in half, and wrangling continues over where the remaining $150 million will come from. Alder Scott Waguespack (32nd ward), a crime alarmist who has worked to undermine the police accountability efforts of the 14th District Council, hypocritically implied to the Sun-Times that youth anti-violence programs might need a trim.
Logan Square’s left-wing alders Carlos Ramirez-Rosa and Daniel La Spata did not come to Johnson’s defense during the property tax debate. In a fiery newsletter announcing his no vote, Ramirez-Rosa wrote that he has “consistently opposed higher property taxes because I have seen how rising property taxes have displaced families from our community and led to higher rents.”
“We must tax the rich to redistribute wealth and build our nation up,” he continued. “I’m not talking about pie in the sky. Taxing the rich to build your nation up successfully is the reality that hundreds of millions live in the developed world.” Apparently he wasn’t talking about property taxes.
In fairness to Ramirez-Rosa, he did suggest to reporters that the CPD budget needed a look. “There’s no question that we absolutely have to look at where those dollars are going and if they’re being well spent,” he said. “It’s similar to the Department of Defense budget.”
While the defeated property tax increase would have been progressive in structure (taxation correspondent to ability to pay), Johnson’s budgetary deference to CPD can hardly be called progressive in practice. Much of the budget drama comes down to personnel and the mayor’s reluctance to lay off city employees. While we commend this goal in spirit, in practice, progressives should be honest with themselves that not all city employees are created equal. There is a significant philosophical difference between laying off a garbage collector and laying off a cop.
The mayor himself acknowledged the budget-closing power of laying off cops in a statement about the budget released in October. “If solely workforce reductions were employed to address the full budget gap,” the statement read, “it would necessitate an additional reduction of 4,000 positions, equating to a 17% decrease in the City’s workforce. This would entail reducing the police force by 2,500 personnel, or just under 20% of the force, and cutting over 600 personnel from the fire department, significantly diminishing the ability to respond to fires and provide lifesaving medical care.”
Reduce the police force by 20 percent? Sounds like a slam dunk! Unfortunately, the property tax increase sucked up all of the media oxygen around the budget. Opposition to the tax was framed in neoliberal, no-new-taxes terms, while progressives could have—and should have—framed it as what it actually was: a police tax. The tax appears to have been Johnson’s attempt to keep everyone on City Council happy: bend the knee to the cops, retain social services, and ask for a little more from property owners in return.
This strategy backfired spectacularly. CPD is unlikely to give an inch on personnel, and the budget hole will likely be closed with a patchwork of program cuts and consumer taxes. In other words, the people who progressives on City Council claim to be defending will be the ones footing the bill, in order to keep the police officers who harass them daily on the city payroll. Not only that, but the Council’s petulant dispute with the mayor could result in the City’s credit rating being downgraded, resulting in more expensive borrowing in the long run. Nice job, everyone.
“With the budget we see the intersection of regressive policing and regressive taxation,” Councilor Orlikoff told LLL. “Right now Chicago is faced with a choice: either limit a police force from targeting and harassing people of color, or raise taxes and cut services. The progressive choice is clear.”
CHICAGO – Injustice Watch has published its voter guide for November’s Cook County judicial elections, and it’s worse than you think. 75 circuit court judges and two appellate court judges are up for reelection. When we at LLL received our mail-in ballots last week, we took one look at the sprawling second page, full of names we had never heard of, and nearly threw up our hands. Luckily, Injustice Watch helped us out.
Many of these people are clowns. Judge Kathy Flanagan ordered an attorney to be handcuffed to a chair. Judge E. Kenneth Wright lives in Will County even though he is required to live in Cook County. Judge James M. Varga has previously been advised against retention by the Illinois Bar Association due to “temperament issues.”
Judge Mary Margaret Brosnahan was married to a cop accused of torture, and the appellate court has ordered re-trials for cases of hers due to the sloppiness of her judgments. Judge Maura Slattery Boyle has had dozens of her rulings reversed by the appellate court. Judge Carl Anthony Walker is (allegedly) connected to a mortgage fraud scheme.
Judge Mike McHale presided over a case wherein jurors were accused by fellow jurors of racial bias, and McHale convicted the six Black men on trial anyway. Judge James Patrick Murphy is the son-in-law of disgraced ex-alderman Ed Burke and took funds from Burke’s campaign. Judge Lionel Jean-Baptiste told a domestic violence victim that she needed to “respect” that her abusive former partner “loves you and he still likes you.” Judge Michael R. Clancy has set bail at higher-than-average rates.
Judge Carl B. Boyd threw a wine bottle at his girlfriend and was arrested for domestic battery. Judge Daniel R. Degnan has financial ties to shady businesses across the Midwest. Judge William G. Gamboney served on the defense for a torturing cop. Girl, I Guess uncovered that Judge Michael C. Kelley is a Republican. Judge Michael Tully Mullen ruled in favor of arbitration for police misconduct cases. Judge Paul S. Pavlus is also a Republican. Not only that, but he looks like this:
Do you trust this man?
Judge Beatriz Santiago has been involved in shady real estate maneuvers. Judge Cecilia Anne Horan dismissed a class action suit against ComEd. Judge H. Yvonne Coleman tripped on a sidewalk and sued the City for $30 thousand (not disqualifying, but pretty funny). Judge Debra A. Seaton defended a serial rapist/murderer. Judge Peter Michael Gonzalez shared an office building with Ed Burke. But he also dismissed a bogus case against a pro-Palestinian protestor.
Judge Elizabeth Ciaccia-Lezza likes to issue arrest warrants for defendants who are a few minutes late to court. Judge Colleen Reardon Daly is married to a cop who (allegedly) tried to cover up an illegal chokehold by his colleague. Judge Ieshia Gray is being investigated by the Judicial Inquiry Board.
Judge Shannon O’Malley, formerly Phillip Spiwak, also lives in Will County, and he legally changed his name to sound Irish to improve his electoral chances. Judge James “Jamie” Shapiro was a partner in a shady investment company with Ed Burke. Judge Tom Sam Sianis is a co-owner of the Billy Goat Tavern, which is a cop bar.
They’re not all bad. Many of the judges up for retention seem to be measured, reasonable, intellectually rigorous people. Judge Ramon Ocasio III is a former public defender and writes a column for the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin about civil rights. Judge Carol M. Howard has been hard on the company that owns ShotSpotter (although she has also handcuffed attorneys to chairs). Judge John H. Ehrlich helped win domestic partner benefits for City workers in the nineties. Judge Lisa Ann Marino allowed a tenants union to file suit against their landlord. Judge David R. Navarro prosecuted cops.
That’s the quick and dirty! We encourage you to take a look at the Injustice Watch guide for further details.
LOGAN SQUARE – FRAU COMMANDANT – sorry, Commander Melinda Linas of the 14th District of CPD, headquartered on California and Shakespeare, will appear at a special meeting of the 14th District Council this Thursday, June 27, at Haas Park at 6:00 PM.
Linas has been reluctant to appear at a meeting of the council, dodging requests to do so for months. The public will have a chance to ask questions of Linas during a question and answer session at the end of the meeting.
A quick visit to the Invisible Institute’s website shows that Linas has a middling record of civilian complaints lodged against her. She had a busy year in 2004, when four use of force complaints were filed against her. Another report was filed the following year.
The 14th District is also home to Officer Michael Nowacki, who once emailed a community member that “I have no desire to help inner city poor people” and whose name appeared on a leaked roster of the far-right Oath Keepers last year. The Southern Poverty Law Center describes the group as “one of the largest far-right antigovernment groups in the U.S. today.” The organization recruits heavily from law enforcement and the military, hence the oath reference.
Nowacki also has his fair share of civilian complaints lodged against him, including use of force.
An investigation by CPD’s Bureau of Internal Affairs (BIA) concluded this year that Nowacki and seven other officers who appeared on Oath Keepers’ rolls had not “actively participated” in the organization’s activities. Readers will recall that the group was a leading force in the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the United States Capitol.
In a statement following the BIA’s decision, the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability (CCPSA), which oversees the District Councils, said that it “believes wholeheartedly that no one associated with hate groups should be allowed to wear the uniform of a police officer.”
LOGAN SQUARE – An ordinance proposed by Alder Daniel La Spata (1st ward) which would designate a swath of Milwaukee Avenue between Armitage and Western as a “Low-Affordability Community” has passed the Committee on Housing and Real Estate and will head to the full City Council for a vote tomorrow. The low-affordability designation would open the door for more affordable housing in the area, in exchange for lower property tax rates. (If you aren’t a street names person, we’re talking about the stretch roughly between Village Discount and Cozy Corner.)
In his testimony before the committee last Wednesday, La Spata stated that a number of low-affordability designations have been assigned on a parcel-by-parcel basis in recent years in the area. His ordinance designates an entire swath consisting of several parcels as low-affordability. Such a designation would lower property taxes for developers who commit to building affordable housing.
The Low-Affordability Community designation is part of a Cook County Assessor’s Office program. The Assessor’s Office suggests that any dip in tax revenue would be canceled out by increased development and activity, which will theoretically be a boon to the City.
The ordinance would also apply to existing property owners and developers who have at least seven units of affordable housing within a parcel. For example, the developers of the Congress Theater project, which will cost an estimated $88 million, will benefit from the property tax break, as the project contains fourteen units of affordable housing.
A map of the proposed Low-Affordability Community area
Chicago is in the midst of an affordable housing crisis. Block Clubreported in November that there are 200 thousand people on the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) waitlist for housing assistance. According to a 2023 report by Housing Action Illinois, there are only 34 available units for every 100 extremely low-income rental households in Illinois.
Logan Square has faced a massive gentrification wave over the past two decades, which makes the need for affordable housing especially acute in the neighborhood. The proposed ordinance states that Chicago’s “shortage of affordable rental housing is harmful to the health, prosperity, economic stability and general welfare of the City.” Housing was a central theme of Senator-elect Graciela Guzmán’s (IL Senate 20th District) recent campaign. She told LLL that “the number one issue I hear about from neighbors at the doors is housing affordability…At all levels of government, we not only need to incentivize the construction of affordable housing but also upzoning to prevent the loss of affordable, urban density in our neighborhoods.”
La Spata’s ordinance comes in the midst of several other affordable housing efforts under way in Logan Square. Bickerdike Redevelopment Corporation is planning a large new project at 2525 North Kedzie (where City Lit is located). The site is, weirdly, owned by the CTA, because the Logan Square L stop used to be there. According to Block Club, the project will contain 94 affordable units. An anti-gentrification ordinance affecting properties near the 606 Trail and in Pilsen was also extended until December.
NAVY PIER – All the art girlies were out this weekend for the aesthetic event of the season: ART EXPO. Only on this strange weekend can one witness the mingling of suburbanites and tourists with the hippest, gayest, and trendiest of Chicago in the same place. Yes, sharp and chic “artsy types” made their pilgrimage to perhaps the corniest location in the city to see what the art world had to offer—and what a haul it was indeed.
No offense to Navy Pier. It is home to LLL’s favorite attraction in the whole city: the Sea Dog. Have you ever wondered what it feels like to pile into a high-speed boat and soar across Lake Michigan as early 2000s R&B blasts in your ears? Don’t act like you don’t want that.
LLL got to the Expo the Chicago way: on the bus. Ah, how we savored our approach through bumper-to-bumper traffic surrounded by SAIC students and nervous tourists unfamiliar with the charms of the CTA. One passenger asked us what was going on, and we told her it was an art event at Navy Pier. She then told us to enjoy the “free concert” and explained her idea for installing a Mission Impossible-style laser security system at WalMart. She also told us that she was close personal friends with Paris Hilton and Jennifer Lopez, a claim that we were unable to verify.
Have you ever thought that an art gallery should feel more like an airport? Well, apparently the organizers of Art Expo did, because they recreated the vibe perfectly. After elbowing our way through throngs of tourists and reaching the “Festival Hall” toward the end of the pier, we found ourselves in a line to have our bags searched. Having been deemed safe for entry, we were then herded up an escalator and into a cavernous hall that looked more like a blimp hangar than an art gallery. Talk about an immersive experience.
They put a dress on a trash can. Can you believe it?
As we noted, the hippest Chicagoans were all at the Pier this weekend, and not for the tacky consumerism that brings most people to Navy Pier. No, they were here for art. They were here for culture and refinement, not Ferris wheels and hotdogs!
And if you wanted art, then baby, the Expo was the place to be. They had it all! Paintings! Resin! Neon word sculptures! Tapestries! Oh, GOD! They had acrylics, beads, chrome, collage! They had portraits of poodles and photographs of beautiful naked men! Pensive closeups of peasants! They had a freakin’ glittery Girl With a Pearl Earring! Booth after booth as far as the eye could see, full of all the goddamned art you could ever want! YES!
Poems? They had them—multiple booths of them for sale. They had a lecture zone, thirty-dollar flutes of champagne, and gift shops galore! A smorgasbord of color and texture, a who’s who (we assume) of creators. Landscapes! FUCK! Oodles of oils and scads of sculptures! The only thing missing was Jeff Koons on a trapeze.
Not a whiff of shameless commodification could be detected anywhere. Certainly not at the gift shop or by the brand-new Audi raffle. Certainly not in the line for the $18 Mesopotamian protein bowl (quinoa, etc.) Thirsty? Luckily, they had $7 cans of water. Our feet beat seven miles across the concrete floors of the art bonanza. And did we purchase anything?
Hell no! What do we look like, Russian oligarchs? No, after having our bags searched again, we left the hall and made our way north. We took in the glorious, sunny weather and the jewel-blue lake. We walked all the way to Devil Dawgs on Rush Street, and we shoved works of art straight into our little pink mouths. They call it the Big Chicago: tangy mustard, spicy sport peppers, crunchy pickle, neon-green relish, tomatoes, and a snappy dog. A masterpiece.
CPD 14th District Councilors David Orlikoff and Chris Laurent struggle over the gavel at the council’s Saturday meeting. Source: Facebook
LOGAN SQUARE – At a fiery meeting of the CPD 14th District Council on Saturday, the civilian board voted to formally distance itself from a rogue committee on “public safety” run by community member Adam Burck and initiated by District Councilor Chris Laurent in October. Progressive councilors David Orlikoff and Ashley Vargas voted to pass a resolution and a slate of bylaws which clarified the role of committees in the council’s work and condemned the Burck committee in particular. Libertarian councilor Laurent voted no on each of them.
The meeting, which was held at the Logan Square branch of the Chicago Public Library, was extremely tense and, at times, outright hostile. Members of the public sat in a circle with the council at the front of the room. During the public comments and discussion portions of the meeting, they sparred with one another and with councilors over a number of issues, including the role of committees, the meaning of pretextual traffic stops, and parliamentary questions.
Audience members were divided over the role of the committee in question, which Burck calls the Community Committee for Public Safety and Policing Initiatives. Several members of the audience reiterated concerns that the committee was posing as the District Council or, at the very least, that its legal status was confusing to the public. LLL conducted an extensive investigation of the committee in March, and found that Burck has vacillated on its legal status, claiming at times that it is a committee of the District Council and at others that it is not.
At one point during Saturday’s meeting, Councilor Laurent stated that “it is not recognized as a subcommittee.” However, in previous statements made to LLL, Laurent stated that “I initiated the committee.” During public comments on Saturday, Burck stated that his committee was formed under the framework of the statute which established the district councils. We are not clear as to why, if the committee was formed within the guidance of the statute, at the direction of a district councilor, it would not be subject to laws which govern public bodies. Put bluntly, this argument does not make any sense, and yet it is an argument that Burck has made in several emails and conversations with LLL.
Olan Mijana, who, with other members of the public, submitted a letter to the council in February calling for the disbandment of all committees formed by councilors, reiterated their support for disbanding the Burck committee and expressed their concern that 14th CPD District Commander Melinda Linas has apparently refused to meet with Councilor Orlikoff for several months.
The most heated exchange came about halfway through the meeting, when a member of the public implied that CPD officers could not respond to 911 calls “with no car chases and no foot chases.” This was an apparent reference to CPD’s updated pursuit policy, which requires officers to have a compelling reason to chase individuals. Councilor Orlikoff, who is probably the most publicly critical of the police among the three council members, raised his voice as he responded to this comment. “If there was somebody that was a public danger,” said Orlikoff, “they have every right to chase. And the fact that the police say that ‘we cannot chase’ shows that they are not thinking about the public safety interest…and that’s unacceptable. There is nothing preventing them from protecting public safety.”
Members of the audience asked him to “relax” and “keep your voice down.”
Justin Tucker, who is affiliated with the Libertarian Party of Illinois, was present at Saturday’s meeting and attempted to speak. At this point, Orlikoff reached for the gavel—presumably to try and call for order—but Laurent snatched it from him. This prompted audible gasps from the audience. Tucker, who at previous points in the meeting had been a stickler for Robert’s Rules, then called for order, an action which is not permitted by members of the audience.
Laurent banged the gavel and angrily shouted, “Order!”
Orlikoff made a motion to remove Tucker, which did not pass.
“David is very passionate about this,” said Councilor Vargas, “and I just really want to move on.” A few minutes later, Laurent asked everyone in the room to use their “inside voices,” a teacher-y statement accentuated by the colorful alphabet displayed directly behind Councilor Orlikoff.
Councilor Chris Laurent calls for order. Source: Facebook
The fireworks at this portion of the meeting highlighted the different styles of the players in the room. There was the impassioned Orlikoff, the mercurial Laurent, the diplomatic Vargas. There was the pedantic Tucker and the quiet, calculating Burck, who remained cool as a cucumber for the duration of Saturday’s meeting. He did not raise his voice, nor did he speak out of turn. He hardly moved at all. Earlier in the meeting, Tucker had praised Burck, saying that “Mr. Burck has tenacity, he’s organized, he’s professional,” as a way of explaining his success with alders and the media in pushing his agenda.
Burck’s cerebral style is at odds with his hardline vision of policing. In Reddit posts, he has explicitly stated of his committee that “the goal is to increase arrests” in the 14th District. He has also signaled a concerning desire for the police to use more surveillance technology, including drones and helicopters. In our own interactions with Burck—in emails and phone conversations—we have found a strange lack of consistency in his statements. He says his committee does not keep minutes, then emails us a document with “Meeting Minutes” clearly marked. He says his committee is not official, then posts online that it has legal authority under the City code. He says he never suggested that CPD buy more helicopters, then creates a PowerPoint presentation with “helicopter” clearly included as a suggestion. For the sake of posterity and the public interest, we have uploaded documentation from the Burck committee at the below links.
Since Saturday, Burck has been active on Reddit criticizing the District Council. “The issue is 2 of the 3 District Councilors who are hostile to CPD and are clearly more interested in blocking progress made by others than in reducing crime,” he wrote in one post. In another post, as well as an email to members of his committee, he wrote that “two of the three Councilors passed a Resolution disavowing all ‘committees of any kind, or similar bodies of volunteers, assisting with the work of the 14th District Council.’” This is a stretch. The resolution actually said that “there are currently no committees of any kind, or similar bodies of volunteers, assisting with the work of the 14th District Council.” What Burck describes as a disavowal is actually a statement of fact. His misleading statements to the public, clearly on display in posts such as this one, are what led to the elected council voting to distance itself from his group in the first place.1
The 14th District Council has now clearly declared that it has no affiliation with Burck’s committee. We at LLL praise this development, as we believe the Burck committee was distracting the council from the important work of police accountability. While the mood in the room on Saturday was tilted away from Councilor Orlikoff, the mood in the 14th District is firmly with him and with Councilor Vargas. They have an overwhelming mandate from voters, who want to see them push for restorative justice efforts and police accountability in our community, not to squabble with police apologists at the library.
This week, there is more urgency than ever for them to heed their mandate. A few days after the meeting, the Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA) released video footage which shows the killing of Dexter Reed by a squad of CPD officers during a traffic stop in Humboldt Park—just down the street from Logan Square—on March 21. According to the COPA press release accompanying the video, Reed was stopped not because he presented some imminent threat, but because he was not wearing a seatbelt. The video shows officers advancing on Reed while he is seated in his car, then demanding that he unlock the car doors. An officer yanks on the driver’s side door handle. Shots ring out. Officers then fire a reported 96 rounds at Reed, including after he falls to the ground.
Alder Jessie Fuentes (26th ward), in an April 9 press release, referred to the maneuver to stop Reed as a pretextual traffic stop. “Dexter Reed’s death underscores the immediate need to end the harmful practice of pretextual traffic stops,” she said. She went on to say that “today we’re witnessing the escalation of a mass pretextual traffic stop program. In this case, Mr. Reed was pulled over for not wearing a seatbelt, and now he is no longer with us.”
A recent report by the Free2Move Coalition describes a pretextual traffic stop in the following terms:
Each day Chicago Police Department (CPD or the Department) officers make over one thousand traffic stops around Chicago. Data indicates that most of these stops are made under the pretense of a minor traffic violation when the true purpose is to fish for evidence of a crime, despite there being no evidence that a crime has been committed. Repeated analyses show that these traffic stops are not improving traffic or public safety. Instead, pretextual traffic stops are disproportionately impacting Chicago’s Black and Latine drivers and communities and wasting our City’s resources.
Working to eliminate pretextual traffic stops is one of Councilor Orlikoff’s main focuses. The infamous gavel squabble came after a brief discussion of pretextual traffic stops.
****
Also at Saturday’s meeting, Councilor Vargas shared that she and colleagues throughout the city presented a slate of nominees to Mayor Brandon Johnson to serve on the citywide board of the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability (CCPSA). Mayor Johnson missed a deadline earlier this week to choose members of the board. A representative from CCPSA who was at Saturday’s meeting suggested that as long as the mayor moves before a mid-month meeting of the City Council, the delay should not put the agency terribly behind schedule.
In addition, Vargas shared that she has filed several complaints regarding the treatment of migrants at the 14th District last year. Until December, nearly two thousand migrants, primarily from Venezuela, were housed at police stations throughout the city. Jim Daley at South Side Weeklyreported on extensive abuse against migrants, including at the 14th District, perpetrated by CPD officers.
Vargas shared the details of one complaint, in which a heavily-armed CPD officer showed up at a volunteer’s house asking to speak to a migrant who was staying there. Vargas said that a COPA complaint was filed as a result of this incident, and that later an officer from the 14th District placed a “menacing” phone call to the migrant. Vargas said that in the phone call, the officer stated that “as an immigrant she shouldn’t be looking for any issues, and insinuat[ed] that she should get rid of the COPA complaint.”
—LLL, 10 April 2024
In a previous version of this article, LLL incorrectly stated that Burck’s Reddit posts had been taken offline. This is not the case. We regret the error. ↩︎
LOGAN SQUARE – Sources tell LLL that the 14th District Council of the Chicago Police Department will move to restrain committee activity at their monthly meeting this Saturday, April 6, at 1:00 PM at the Logan Square branch of the Chicago Public Library. The move comes in the midst of an ongoing controversy surrounding an unelected spinoff committee of the democratically-elected District Council.
The civilian District Councils were established in 2021 for each of the City’s twenty-two police districts. The 14th District, which covers most of Logan Square, is represented by progressives David Orlikoff and Ashley Vargas and libertarian Chris Laurent.
In February, community members, including some longtime police reform activists, submitted a letter to the 14th District Council which alleged that an associated committee was engaged in undemocratic activities and was attempting to push the council toward a tough-on-crime platform out of step with the desires of 14th District voters. Councilor David Orlikoff alleged that the rogue committee’s chair, retiree and actor Adam Burck, has been “impersonating being a 14th District elected official,” and that Alder Scott Waguespack (32nd ward) was “aiding and abetting” this activity by promoting Burck’s work in a misleading manner to the public.
An LLL investigation found that Burck, who leads a group which he calls the “14th District Community Committee for Public Safety and Policing Initiatives,” has been engaged in a campaign since last October to increase arrests in the 14th District and to roll back CPD’s pursuit policy, among other goals. In addition, he has claimed on Reddit that his group is an official arm of the District Council and is legally empowered by the City to work with CPD 14th District Commander Melinda Linas. The group was formed at the direction of Councilor Chris Laurent.
Simultaneously, Burck has told LLL and community members that his group is not affiliated with the District Council, which is a direct contradiction to his statements online. His mixed messages have caused confusion among elected officials and community members, who are unsure of the group’s legal status. Burck told LLL that “the assertion[s]…that I personally have acted ‘illegally’ are very serious and I do not take them lightly.” However, in an email to his group, he then doubled down in claiming his committee has nothing to do with the District Council.
As a recruitment tool, Burck claims online that his group is an official body. In one Reddit post, he stated that “this Committee is empowered by the Chicago City Code to work with the 14th District Police Commander & community members to help develop and implement community policing initiatives to reduce crime.” Other posts cite the “official” status of the group as a means of enticing participation from the community.
But in interviews, emails, and at District Council meetings, Burck claims that his group is not an official committee and is thus not subject to legal oversight, including adherence to the Illinois Open Meetings Act (OMA). The OMA requires that public bodies advertise meetings and maintain records for the benefit of the public, which Burck has refused to do. Meanwhile, he has taken recommendations from his group to elected officials and to Commander Linas.
The District Council has limited tools for restraining Burck. The council bylaws could be amended to clarify that elected officials are empowered with certain responsibilities, and that members of the public may not claim to represent the council. Councilors may also pass a resolution condemning Burck’s actions, or refer their complaints about Burck and Waguespack to the Office of the Inspector General.
Another option is that the Council, which uses Robert’s Rules of Order for its parliamentary procedure, may remove Burck from its meetings. According to Robert’s Rules, “nonmembers…can be excluded at any time from part or all of a meeting of a society, or from all of its meetings.” If Laurent, who is the chair of the Council, does not wish to remove Burck, Orlikoff and Vargas could use their majority power to override him.
One thing is certain: it’s going to be a spicy day at the library on Saturday.
CITY HALL – LLL was present for a truly baffling special meeting of the City Council on Monday. A group of alders—dubbed “The Dirty Dozen” by a Vietnam War veteran who gave public comment against these members’ anti-free speech shenanigans—had called the meeting in an attempt to strip Alder Byron Sigcho-Lopez (25th ward), a Democratic Socialist and ally of Mayor Johnson, of his position as chair of the Committee on Housing and Real Estate.
Spoiler alert: they failed.
The brouhaha commenced on March 22, when an Afghanistan War veteran named Zachary Kam burned an American flag in front of City Hall. The occasion was a demonstration by the antiwar group Behind Enemy Lines, which advocates for an end to the atrocities in Gaza and canceling the DNC in Chicago, among other causes. After the flag was reduced to a blackened husk on the sidewalk, Sigcho-Lopez gave a speech near it. He was photographed with the flag’s remains in the foreground, and with a banner which referred to President Joe Biden as “Genocide Joe” in the background. Sigcho-Lopez would later deny knowledge that the flag was burned. Matthew Kaplan, who took the picture which launched the whole ordeal, stated on Instagram that “Alderman Sigcho-Lopez was not present when the flag was burned, I can attest to this personally.”
Zachary Kam ignites a US flag on March 22 to protest the genocide in Gaza. Image: @mkaplanphotoAlder Byron Sigcho-Lopez (25th) speaks near the remains of the flag. Image: @mkaplanphoto
A group of alders proceeded to publicly lose their minds over the photographs, condemning Sigcho-Lopez for standing near the burned flag. Ray Lopez (Dirty Dozen – 15th ward), one of the most unhinged members of the council, lashed out on Twitter over the next few days. He took a number of shots at Sigcho-Lopez, accusing him of forcing migrants to live in “a dirty, measles-infested shithole in your ward” and referring to him as a “fool.” He accused the “Leftino Caucus” of “ignoring the very real and extremely negative impact of their own members’ actions.”
“This is totally disgusting,” Gil Villegas (Dirty Dozen – 36th ward) tweeted, “and disrespects the millions of Americans who have defended this country and the thousands who have died to ensure we remain a beacon for democracy and freedom around the world.” It is unclear if Villegas, who is himself a veteran, was aware when he released this statement that the person who burned the flag had served in the Marines in Afghanistan.
The Dirty Dozen gelled around the line that Sigcho-Lopez’s “actions” (giving a speech near a burned American flag, apparently without knowledge of the flag) exemplified poor judgment. This was the wedge that Lopez and his comrades would use in an attempt to dislodge him from his committee chairmanship. They held a press conference which was swiftly interrupted by pro-Palestine demonstrators, and on March 27, they transmitted a letter to the Clerk calling for a special meeting of the council, to remove Sigcho-Lopez from his committee post.
Only fifteen alders signed this letter. There are fifty members of the Chicago City Council. Fans of math will note that a majority of the full council is twenty-six, not fifteen. From the outset, we at LLL were scratching our heads about the Dirty Dozen’s plan to get from fifteen votes to a majority. We were also baffled as to why, after spending the preceding week dancing on the grave of Bring Chicago Home, the conservative bloc of the council would expend so much political capital on a stunt like this, especially when it was clear from the very beginning that they didn’t have the numbers to pull it off. In a matter of days, they had gone from looking triumphant to looking like a bunch of clowns.
Nevertheless, thanks to these fools, on Monday, April 1, the council convened. Reporters in the room noted that the progressive bloc was late to arrive, causing a delay in obtaining a quorum. Ray Lopez helpfully tweeted that “In case anyone is curious, our brave colleagues are hiding in the 3rd Floor Conference room behind a locked door #Cowards,” alongside a voyeuristic photo.
For those who have never attended a City Council meeting, it is a truly dystopian scene. Dozens of police officers roam the marble halls outside the chamber. Inside, a robotic voice ominously states the council’s rules on a loop. A man in a paint-encrusted jacket roamed the gallery shouting “You don’t vote for them!” as he pointed at the alders.
“What’s going on!” he shouted, and we wondered the same thing.
LLL has still, rudely, not been invited to sit in the press pool, a section of the council chamber against the far wall. Reporters on their laptops are seated at a long desk, while camera operators and TV reporters rise and slouch around them. Given LLL’s status as a scrappy newcomer to the Chicago mediascape, we were confined to the gallery with the riff-raff. And you know what?—GOOD. The real action is in the gallery, baby. The only reason we would want to sit in the press pool is to be closer to our City Hall boyfriend, Jake Sheridan. We think we may have made eye contact with him at one point, and if he ever sees this article, we want him to know: Jake Sheridan of the Chicago Tribune, we would die for you.
Also in the gallery with us were several veterans, some wrapped in keffiyehs, others in their full military regalia. Their honor, after all, was being invoked by the Dirty Dozen. In addition to the bad math, the decision by these alders to condemn a flag burning by a veteran didn’t seem like a great strategy. There are few people in US society besides veterans who have had a front row seat to the horrors of war, and who are able to comment with certainty on the machinations of the American war machine. Besides, as we have noted elsewhere, flag burning is firmly protected under the First Amendment.
“This mic is not on!” shouted the painted man, tapping the microphone reserved for public comment.
The man of the hour, Byron Sigcho-Lopez, arrived, and spectators in the gallery erupted in applause. “Stand up!” someone shouted, and they leapt to their feet. It was hardly a spectacle of disgrace or condemnation. These people loved Sigcho-Lopez. They had come here, on a Monday, on relatively short notice, because they loved him.
Quiet fell as Mayor Johnson appeared. He ascended the dais, and the meeting was called to order.
Members of the public, with a few exceptions, were overwhelmingly in support of Sigcho-Lopez. One commenter welcomed the “Un-American Let’s Reignite McCarthyism Caucus” to the chamber. “Flag burning is free speech,” he said, to a round of applause. Another speaker pointed out that Sigcho-Lopez had been the president of the Pilsen Alliance with a “track record that is unmatched in this council.” A Vietnam War veteran rose to say that Sigcho-Lopez is “a fine supporter of veterans” and that the alder has made the rounds to numerous veterans’ events, including funerals, during his tenure.
Not everyone fawned over him. Several speakers made the point that the City’s Black population was being neglected by the council, and said that attention being directed toward migrants in Chicago and peace in Palestine would be better directed toward these communities. The painted man, whose name turned out to be George Blakemore and whose name, when called, elicited a familiar groan from the audience, said that the American flag “has enslaved Black people. The same flag has killed Black people, has raped Black people, has disenfranchised Black people” and was thus not worthy of defense. Another speaker said that “Black people should be burning that joint every five minutes.” Someone else urged Black voters to abandon the Democratic Party, and Blakemore declared that “one party rules China, one party rules the City of Chicago!”
Mayor Johnson was laser-focused on the gallery during all this. Every few minutes, a member of the audience leapt to their feet and began shouting, at which point Johnson would send in the sergeant-at-arms to remove them. One group stood with printouts of the American flag and ripped them in half before being escorted out. One woman in a keffiyeh shouted “I still love you!” to the mayor as she was removed. And then, Zachary Kam himself, the veteran who burned the flag on March 22, rose. He attempted to speak, he pleaded to speak, but he too was removed. Mayor Johnson admonished Kam that “you did not sign up in time to speak” as he directed the sergeant-at-arms to remove him. However, public commenters at council meetings are randomly selected from a signup list, so it is entirely possible that he did.
Kam later told LLL that “[the flag burning] was always about bringing more attention, eyes onto the genocide happening in Gaza right now being committed by Israel and being paid for by the US taxpayers.” Kam has also stated that his action was in memory of Aaron Bushnell, the US Air Force serviceman who self-immolated in February to protest the genocide in Gaza and subsequently died. Indeed, the US government has transferred hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of arms to Israel since October 7.
With the circus of public comment concluded, Sigcho-Lopez rose to speak. He declared that “one thing I’m not going to do is to condemn a veteran for using his First Amendment rights.” He said that he had received death threats since March 22, and that the lives of his three children were in danger. He said that the Dirty Dozen’s attempt “to distract us from the real issues in the City is a disservice to Chicagoans.”
You could almost hear his opponents gulping and loosening their ties. They suddenly found themselves playing defense, having to explain their beef not only with veterans but with the First Amendment, and having to take responsibility for death threats against a colleague. All of the bluster and brimstone of the preceding week began to disintegrate. One after another, they stood to acknowledge that Sigcho-Lopez probably didn’t know about the flag burning, and that it was plausible that he didn’t even see the flag’s remains on the ground. In the hustle of a press conference, on a sidewalk in Chicago, most people aren’t scanning the pavement for unpatriotic debris, are they?
Chris Taliaferro (Dirty Dozen – 29th), rose and gave a circuitous, confusing speech. He praised the First Amendment and said that no one was accusing his colleague of burning an American flag. The issue, he claimed, was not the fact that Sigcho-Lopez had spoken near the remains of the flag (wasn’t it?), but that he had spoken at a rally held by a “far left” group. He took issue with Behind Enemy Lines’ description of the United States as an “empire”1 and stated that “we have to be careful at times when we exercise our rights.” Then, puzzlingly, he said that he had forgiven his colleague.
What were we doing here then? The opposition was united on the facts that their colleague had not burned the flag and that the First Amendment protects flag burning. Now, one of the Dirty Dozen’s leaders was proclaiming that he had forgiven Sighco-Lopez. So what was the point of this meeting, which the Dirty Dozen had called for the specific purpose of removing him as chair of the Committee on Housing and Real Estate?
Alder David Moore (17th) stood up and basically asked the same question: why are we here? What are we even voting on? What are we saying that Byron Sigcho-Lopez actually did? “I’m not even clear on what the purpose is of removing him,” he said. “What’s the reason? I’m not clear.” He then said that on March 22, he had overheard Sigcho-Lopez speaking in favor of a ceasefire on the sidewalk outside of City Hall, and that he had almost joined him, except that he had somewhere else to be. “Would I have been caught up in this when I didn’t see no flag, when I didn’t smell no fire, and like we all do when we support something, we just go stand at the camera and say ‘I support it?’” He said that the Dirty Dozen had given a smattering of reasons as to why Sigcho-Lopez should be ousted as chair, but that there was no coherent rationale. “I can say why everybody should go,” he said, to laughter throughout the chamber, so why should Sigcho-Lopez?
Alder Monique Scott (Dirty Dozen – 24th) rose to say that the people who burned the flag (veterans) had no integrity, and that by association neither did Byron.
“See you on election day!” someone shouted, as they were removed from the chamber.
She went on to invoke a line that several members of the Dirty Dozen would also bring up during the meeting: that the council shouldn’t be having this discussion, that it should be dealing with the “real issues” facing Chicago instead of having this debate.
SO WHY DID THEY ASK FOR THE MEETING? We could not believe the amnesia on display in the chamber every time an alder made this point. This was a special meeting of the City Council. They asked for it. And yet here were the same people declaring that we shouldn’t be talking about the exact thing that they called the meeting to talk about.
Lopez stuck to his guns. He rose to say that Sigcho-Lopez displayed a lack of “character and judgment” on March 22, and that “you can’t claim that this is a conspiracy because you’re a Democratic Socialist.” (We aren’t sure what this means.) Lopez too said that the Council should be focused on other issues. When his speech concluded, a hearty round of boos emanated from the gallery.
“I haven’t heard or learned anything here,” said Alder Maria Hadden (49th), that would make her vote yes to remove Sigcho-Lopez. She told her colleagues that the rancor in the chamber blew the Council Wars of the 1980s out of the water. If that’s true, the drama addicts at LLL will be attending more council meetings. Jake Sheridan: wait for us.
LLL ❤ Jake
Scott Waguespack (Dirty Dozen – 32nd) said that “I believe that anyone has the right to burn the flag” but that “we need to get back to the business at hand.” So, why did he ask for the meeting? This was classic WagSpeak—utterly empty, obliviously contradictory, and totally abandoning his own responsibility for making the meeting happen.
“We should never be here, never should have been here,” Nick Sposato (Dirty Dozen – 38th) proclaimed. “I like everyone else don’t want to be here.”
Oddly, Sposato, who announced himself to be the most right-leaning member of the council, then began sucking up to the progressives, claiming that he and Alder Carlos Ramirez-Rosa (35th), another socialist, were “kinda buddies now,” and that he hoped he would one day be friends with Sigcho-Lopez too. He lavished praise on Mayor Johnson for how he had conducted the meeting. “I stand for you,” he said to the mayor, “and I stand with you.”
In fact, a lot of bro-ing out from the Dirty Dozen happened during the meeting, with invocations of “man to man” conversations with Sigcho-Lopez, and approaching him “as a man” to hash out concerns. There was talk of hurt feelings and finger-wagging which had resulted in the day’s special meeting. Apparently the feelings of certain council members were so fragile that the gears of government had to be thrown into motion to deal with them. This is a classic feature of fragile masculinity: a man breaks something, and then makes a spectacle of apologizing as evidence of their manhood, in this case on live television.
“I feel better,” Sposato said.
Alder Villegas attempted to equate the March 22 demonstration with January 6, and said that “legitimizing the extremism by a member of this body is dangerous.” He said that “the extreme left is no different than the extreme right”3 and that “our job is to bring people together.” Again, this was a curious statement coming from someone who had called for an extremely divisive council meeting.
Rossana Rodriguez-Sanchez (33rd) summed things up perfectly, saying that support for the resolution “sounds like a lot of fine print. You can exercise your First Amendment right, but if we don’t like what it says, we will seek to punish you…we cannot pick and choose who gets to speak or what is the content of the remarks.”
In the end, her colleagues agreed with her, and they mopped the floor in a 29-16 blowout vote against the resolution. Some media outlets released headlines making it seem like a close shave (Politico: “Sigcho-Lopez dodges chair coup”; Tribune: “Alderman who spoke in front of burnt American flag avoids punishment”), but it wasn’t. The math didn’t math, and it never did. The resolution was defeated by a factor of two to one, with the public clearly in support of Sigcho-Lopez.
We asked Zachary Kam, the Marine who burned the flag on March 22, what he made of the vote. “I think it’s just a show that American politics is an ineffectual drama machine that does nothing but stir up the worst in people and do nothing good,” he said. “We just spent two hours in session. Is there a resolution for homeless veterans? No.”
Protestors march in front of the Logan Theatre on Saturday, March 30, 2024
LOGAN SQUARE – For the second time in a month, demonstrators affiliated with the group Boycott Logan Theatre gathered on Milwaukee Avenue to protest the actions of the theater’s owner, Mark Fishman. Roughly 100 protestors shut down a crucial stretch of the avenue on Saturday night. They marched, chanted, beat bucket drums and clanged cowbells, delivered speeches, handed out flyers, showed off costumes, and even whipped out the ol’ poi in order to publicly condemn the actions of Fishman. “Fry the fish!” they cried, and vowed that they would not “let him off the hook,” as the sun set over the neighborhood.
As of this writing, the Israeli army has killed nearly 33 thousand Palestinians in Gaza since the October 7 Hamas attacks, and wounded another 75 thousand. Roughly 13 thousand of the dead are children. Many thousands more civilians, trapped under the rubble, are presumed dead. In January, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel is committing “plausible” genocide in Gaza. On March 25, UN special rapporteur on human rights Francesca Albanese released a report accusing the Israeli army of committing “genocidal violence against the Palestinian people” and specifically described “the crime of genocide as perpetrated by the State of Israel…since 7 October 2023.” The report states that 70 percent of the dead are women and children.1
Saturday’s protest coincided with Land Day, which is observed by Palestinians every March 30 to commemorate Israel’s seizure in 1976 of five thousand acres of Palestinian land. In addition to its invasion of Gaza, the Israeli government continues to incur on land within the West Bank to establish illegal settlements as part of its program of displacing Palestinians.
LLL was on the scene at the Logan Theatre on Saturday, and a few bewildered tourists wandering down the sidewalk (one from Louisiana, one from California) asked us what was going on. Rarely does a question have so many visuals at the ready for an answer. “Look there,” we told them, pointing north on Milwaukee. A block away, from a window just above an Italian restaurant, hangs the flag that launched this protest before you, the handmade Palestinian flag of Manal Farhan. Her landlord, Mark Fishman, is evicting her for displaying that flag, and he just so happens to own this theater.
There has never been a point in this saga where Mark Fishman’s actions felt reasonable. When the eviction story broke last year, the man at least hid behind the plausibly deniable claim that Farhan’s lease forbids any object from being hung from a window as a way of explaining his actions. At least, that’s what his representatives told Block Club. In a statement, the company claimed that this clause of the lease “is in place solely to ensure the well-being and safety of the entire community.” At the time, of course, this explanation smelled…fishy…but as we said, the lease angle provided Fishman some degree of cover.
“No justice, no peace!” the protestors cried. “So fuck you and your lease!”
Farhan sued Mark Fishman, and his story immediately began to unravel. In court filings, Farhan states that an employee of the company called her in November, and told her that “because there is a conflict [in Gaza], we want to remain neutral.” This is a completely different explanation than the one Fishman had been pushing in the press—that the eviction was not about the flag itself, but the fact that objects cannot be outside of windows. Farhan’s explanation in court turned this explanation on its head and exposed the eviction as politically-motivated from the outset.2 Fishman’s plausible deniability was obliterated. It was obliterated in federal court, and in the public record. According to Farhan, during this phone call, she told the Fishman employee that she herself is Palestinian, and that she was flying the flag to “express love and pride” in her Palestinian heritage. The employee then, according to Farhan, “stated this was unacceptable.” The flag remained, and days later, on November 22, eviction papers were served.
The Fair Housing Act (FHA) forbids landlords from discriminating on the basis of “race, color, religion, sex, familial status, or national origin.” Farhan sued Fishman—first in Cook County and eventually in federal court—on the grounds that the eviction, with its focus on the Palestinian flag, which Farhan had already explained was an expression of her heritage, violated this clause of the FHA. On March 18, Judge Robert W. Gettleman, an octogenarian who was born when the occupied territories were still called the British Mandate for Palestine, dismissed Farhan’s case, essentially giving Fishman the green light to move forward with the eviction.
Gettleman’s opinion makes it clear that Fishman’s strategy changed at some point in the preceding months. No longer arguing that the eviction was simply about keeping articles from dangling outside windows “to ensure the well-being and safety of the entire community,” his lawyers began to argue that, while the FHA may bar discrimination on the basis of race, religion, and nationality, it says nothing about political affiliation. Lawyers argued in court that “at most [plaintiff] alleges that Defendants acted against her based on her political views” and that “the FHA does not bar defendants from creating or enforcing rules based on political beliefs.”
This was a shocking turn, because it confirmed from Fishman’s own lawyers what Farhan had been arguing all along, which is that the eviction was and had always been about Palestine. Fishman’s statements to the press in December that the eviction was a simple enforcement of the lease for safety reasons were suddenly exposed either as lies by omission or as full-blown lies, with the outcome being the same: the public was misled about the true intentions behind the eviction.
Gettleman’s ruling makes very little sense, and reads like the result of a first-year college student’s sloppy Adderall-fueled all-nighter rather than the opinion of a career federal judge. At one point, he writes that “plaintiff does not allege in her complaint…that defendants have a ‘ban on Palestinian flags’…She alleges only that defendants have a policy of neutrality that, as enforced, required her to remove her flag from her windowsill (whether inside or outside).” What?
The hairs are being split so thinly here that they cease to exist. If, as Fishman argued, the company’s policy was one of neutrality in Israel’s war, then only two flags would be subject to this policy: the flag of Israel and the flag of Palestine.3 Thus, while Fishman did not explicitly say that Palestinian flags were banned, a policy of neutrality in this particular war is a de facto ban on the Israeli flag and the Palestinian flag. If Farhan had flown, say, a Costa Rican flag outside her window, this flag would not be subject to Fishman’s “policy of neutrality” and would presumably not have resulted in an eviction, because Costa Rica is not a party to the conflict. “Neutrality” implies that there is something—in this case, a war—to be neutral about. It does not mean that all national flags are banned from being flown outside of windows.
If we really want to get into it, the parties in this conflict are the State of Israel and Hamas. The flag outside of Farhan’s window is the flag of the State of Palestine, which is not technically a party in the war. In the context of the genocide, the flag can thus only be understood as representing self determination and liberation for the Palestinian people, not as “taking a side” in the war itself. In other words, the flag outside of Farhan’s window, in terms of this war, is neutral, because the State of Palestine is not technically at war with the State of Israel.
Gettleman goes on to claim that “while plaintiff implies that the Palestinian flag is the symbol of a nation, she does not plausibly allege that [she] was discriminated against based on her national origin, rather than her political beliefs in support of the Palestinian cause.” We know this is not true, because in the November phone call, Farhan explained the reason she was flying the flag: her Palestinian heritage. While it is plausible that any person regardless of nationality, race, or religion can fly the Palestinian flag outside of their window, and that since October many Chicagoans have done this, Farhan received a phone call and explicitly told a Fishman representative that she was flying it because she is Palestinian. In that moment, the flag transcended being simply “the symbol of a nation.” It became the symbol of Farhan’s Palestinian identity.
Gettleman says that this context is irrelevant, because Farhan disclosed her Palestinian heritage after the Fishman employee explained the neutrality policy. According to him, until this moment, the employee had no way of knowing Farhan’s background and thus, asking her to remove the flag could not be construed as racist or xenophobic. But why wouldn’t Farhan’s disclosure of her background change this calculus? While it is certainly plausible that the employee was unaware of Farhan’s heritage at the beginning of the phone call, no one disputes that she was aware of it by the end. Shouldn’t that count for something?
Apparently not. Gettleman asserts that Fishman “would have demanded that plaintiff remove the flag regardless of plaintiff’s national origin.” (How could he know this?) Farhan could have said that she was “Jordanian, Egyptian, Lebanese, Israeli, Syrian, or any other national origin, but defendants still would have enforced their neutrality policy, apparently to avoid conflict among their tenants.” (Would they, though?) During Saturday’s protest, organizers blew a hole through Fishman’s “neutrality” claim. They reminded protestors that just three weeks prior, on March 11, the Logan Theatre hosted a film screening for a decidedly non-neutral documentary called #NOVA. One might argue that any film about Israel or Palestine could not qualify as truly “neutral,” but this particular film appears to have been decisively over the line. It contains a compilation of social media footage from the October 7 Hamas attacks on southern Israel and was recently described to LLL by a theater employee who saw the film as “creating a pretty strong permission structure with being okay with genocide.” Boycott Logan Theater organizers have described the documentary as a “Zionist propaganda film.” If the “neutrality” defense were legitimate, and if the same standard was applied to the theater that was applied to Farhan, the Logan Theatre would be shut down for screening this film.
Gettleman concluded his opinion with the chilling statement that Fishman’s so-called neutrality policy “was directed at the political nature of the war, not the national origin of defendants’ tenants. Although defendants’ policy might seem to implicate First Amendment issues, defendants are not state actors and therefore are not bound by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.” This conclusion should give anyone—regardless of political affiliation or their opinions about Israel—pause. What Gettleman is saying is that landlords have the right to call tenants at any time, ask their political affiliation, and evict them if they don’t like the answer.
And that is precisely what Mark Fishman is doing to Manal Farhan. Gettleman’s ruling was handed down on March 18. On March 19, Fishman, instead of heeding the public backlash to the original eviction, filed a new eviction in the Circuit Court of Cook County. The cruelty and callousness of this man apparently know no limits. He knows that the public knows about the eviction. He knows about the boycott of the Logan Theatre. He knows that a large segment of the neighborhood, including multiple elected representatives, condemn his actions. And yet he pushes forward anyway.
Boycott Logan Theatre, which organized both the March 11 protest as well as Saturday’s, described Fishman’s actions as “Zionist, racially-motivated attempts to terrorize and displace a Palestinian person from their neighborhood.” At this point, it is hard not to agree. Fishman is absolutely, one-hundred-percent aware of Manal Farhan’s Palestinian heritage. He is absolutely aware of why she is flying the flag of Palestine outside her window (if we haven’t been clear, it’s because she is Palestinian, not because of political curiosity). Manal Farhan is being targeted for removal because she is Palestinian, which is indeed reflective of the ideology of Zionism.
Organizers and speakers at the Saturday action sought to weave these strains of thought together. They made the connection between the forced displacement of Palestinians in the occupied territories and the forced displacement of a Palestinian woman right here in the neighborhood. Speakers also pointed out that, as Fishman’s own lawyers argued in court, the eviction is a form of political repression. Any Fishman tenant, of whom there are hundreds in Logan Square, is now at risk of eviction if they support the cause of Palestine. This isn’t hyperbole; it’s straight out of a federal judge’s chambers.
As the sun set on Saturday, flares were lit on the asphalt, the ominous spire of the red LOGAN sign towered above the protestors, the smell of burning sulfur filled the air, and the chant “From Logan to Palestine, forced eviction is a crime!” rang down Milwaukee Avenue. As LLL moved among the crowd, confined on either end of the street by over a dozen police cruisers and two paddy wagons, their blue lights flashing across protestors’ faces as officers lined up to face them down, the same question circulated through our head over and over: how does this man sleep at night? What is he gaining from this? Why would he intentionally make himself loathed by an entire neighborhood? Why doesn’t he just leave Manal Farhan alone? We, as always, did our due diligence and asked the Fishman office for comment on Saturday’s protest. We know that there must be employees of conscience who are afraid to speak up. We reiterate here that we will protect your identity. Simply email us at loganslooselips@proton.me.
Farhan’s eviction hearing is scheduled for May 8, and Boycott Logan Theatre has indicated its desire to “build neighborhood support against Fishman,” which may or may not include more protests. At one point on Saturday, an organizer declared into a megaphone that “this neighborhood is our neighborhood, not Mark Fishman’s,” which was met with a roar from the crowd. Indeed, it appears to us at LLL that opposition to Fishman is growing and spreading. His actions have crossed a red line from sleazy to authoritarian, and he shows no sign of stopping.
On Saturday, among the smoke and the music, bathed in the blue light of police cruisers, there were some who knelt on the asphalt and turned east to pray. In some places, this is illegal.
—LLL, 1 April 2024
The summary section of the report reads as follows: “After five months of military operations, Israel has destroyed Gaza. Over 30,000 Palestinians have been killed, including more than 13,000 children. Over 12,000 are presumed dead and 71,000 injured, many with life-changing mutilations. Seventy percent of residential areas have been destroyed. Eighty percent of the whole population has been forcibly displaced. Thousands of families have lost loved ones or have been wiped out. Many could not bury and mourn their relatives, forced instead to leave their bodies decomposing in homes, in the street or under the rubble. Thousands have been detained and systematically subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment. The incalculable collective trauma will be experienced for generations to come.
“By analysing the patterns of violence and Israel’s policies in its onslaught on Gaza, this report concludes that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating Israel’s commission of genocide is met. One of the key findings is that Israel’s executive and military leadership and soldiers have intentionally distorted jus in bello principles, subverting their protective functions, in an attempt to legitimize genocidal violence against the Palestinian people.” ↩︎
Why a property management company feels the need to weigh in on geopolitics—and force tenants to comply with its position—is still an open question, although one explanation does account for it: Mark Fishman is a racist. ↩︎
While Fishman tenants who support Farhan have taken to displaying Palestinian flags in their windows, we wonder what would happen if they began flying American flags outside of their windows. This action would violate the lease as well as the alleged neutrality policy. ↩︎
Logan’s Loose Lips 