The Tribune Editorial Board’s editorial decrying gun violence in the city over Labor Day weekend (“Chicago’s gunmen did not get Pritzker and Johnson’s memo,” Sept. 3) suggests that state and local politicians should not have pointed out (accurately) that violent crime rates are falling because that gives a talking point to President Donald Trump as he crafts his plan to send federal forces to our city. The piece is a remarkable mix of pretending local officials said things they did not say and wishing Trump was a completely different human being than what we see each day.
It is at best an exaggeration to suggest that any official has ever taken a “nothing to see here” approach to crime and gun violence in Chicago or beyond. At every turn, officials have pointed out that falling crime rates in Chicago are an unfinished story — with more work to do. But, as the piece points out, none of this was enough to forestall the president’s attempts to take over the city. The suggestion that officials should timidly avoid mentioning established crime data altogether, and that doing so would somehow appease Trump, badly misunderstands the way this administration operates.
The editorial board suggests that more cooperation among the federal, state and local governments is necessary to advance public safety. That is true. But the president is not looking for compromise. He is seeking domination — including by proposing he send heavily armed forces into our streets to advance his agenda, not make our communities safer.
It is the height of fallacy to even pretend that Trump has any interest in cooperation and collaboration. He long has had Chicago in his sights. Because of “crime”? No. He doesn’t like Chicago because a majority of voters and elected officials in our city do not to support Trump’s reckless and cruel immigration policies, they oppose his attacks on diversity and equity in our society, and they won’t embrace his attacks on trans kids and their access to lifesaving gender-affirming care.
The president has made clear that he wants to cover up his corrupt use of power and usurp all power from the local officials who oppose his policies and that is why he wants to bring federal forces to Chicago.
Everything else is pretense. That is the truth all of us must see.
— Edwin C. Yohnka, director of communications and public policy, ACLU of Illinois
Editorial does disservice
I am a law professor who teaches in this city and whose work focuses on the relationship between First Amendment freedoms and democracy. In my view, the Tribune Editorial Board’s latest piece badly undersells the gravity of the Donald Trump administration’s domestic deployment of military personnel. This mistake prompts the board to equivocate between what it views as inadequate messaging by Democratic officials on the one hand and, on the other, flagrantly authoritarian overtures by the Trump administration. Though presumably argued in good faith, this reversion to “both sides” judiciousness does a disservice to the newspaper’s readership.
The board characterizes Trump’s motives as “impure,” fueled by his ego. Quite right. But the fact that Trump has proved himself a megalomaniac does not lessen the severity of his administration’s actions. True, the National Guard might, as the board fears, wander around Chicago “performatively” while the troops linger in “relatively low-crime areas, scaring tourists and residents alike.” While these dynamics offer easy punchlines, the subtext indicts Trump’s ineffectiveness rather than his authoritarianism. This is a profound error.
The federal government’s deployment of military personnel to this country’s cities, all apart from being the Founders’ worst nightmare, threatens a death knell to popular self-government. More glaringly, the board’s concern that the National Guard’s presence would be “performative” obscures perhaps the most important questions of all: What would a nonperformative occupation look like? Which communities would be most likely faced with the barrel of an M4 rifle? What interests would this serve?
The United States military is not a domestic police force. Its very presence in our city, performative or not, would function as a tacit threat to the civilian population, including and especially those opposed to its commander in chief. Were this happening in any other country, would we criticize it in terms of efficacy? Or would we recognize it as the profound sign of democratic backsliding that it is, urgently and unequivocally opposing it?
The board is right. Gun violence is an exigent problem. Moreover, as public officials, Mayor Brandon Johnson and Gov. JB Pritzker are prime candidates for criticism in how they address it. But to suggest perceived flaws in their communication strategies are at all comparable to the Trump administration’s much darker aspirations is to fall short of what this moment requires of all of us.
— Jacob M. Schriner-Briggs, Chicago
Pritzker’s proclamation
The picture on Page 9 of the Tribune on Sept. 3 is very telling. There is our governor, strolling down the street while flanked by several armed security officers.
Gov. JB Pritzker proclaims that Chicago is not besieged by violent crime. It is so safe that Pritzker is surrounded by his armed detail, a luxury not afforded to the citizens of Chicago who are also faced with a police force that at best is making an arrest in one out of six or seven shootings. All of this is compounded by laws and policies that make arrests of criminals less than meaningful as they are released to the streets faster than the police can finish writing their arrest reports.
Yet some seem to think that Pritzker and Johnson’s opposition to accepting the help of our president still makes sense.
— David Howard, Rockford
Let Guardsmen come
I wish politicians on both sides of the spectrum would stop spending time giving speeches calling other names and simply do the jobs we elected them to do.
Crime rates should always be reduced, whether high or low, but we should never waste government resources when it’s clear it won’t help.
But isn’t it obvious that all citizens, Republicans and Democrats, would like their streets to be safer?
Are National Guardsmen really going to arrest everyone in sight and throw them in jail if they come to town? They don’t even have to be given powers to arrest. Their mere presence in high-crime areas and on a few of our buses and trains should help deter crime. It’s time we sent the message that all of us should follow the law.
If nothing else, let’s just try it. If it doesn’t have an impact, President Donald Trump will look foolish, but if our Illinois politicians refuse to even give this a try, they will look even worse.
Yes, we might waste some tax money, but what’s new about that?
— Wayne Meyer, Chicago
Dangerous potential
The National Guard is not trained for law enforcement. It is trained for war.
It’s only a matter of time until innocent citizens are shot. Doesn’t anyone remember the Kent State massacre?
— Rose Fox Hedman, Chicago
Pick up books at fest
If the troops arrive in time, I hope they’ll stop by the Printers Row Lit Fest this weekend and pick up a few good books to read while they’re here.
— Mark Maroney, Forest Park
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