U.S. Murder Capital, Chicago, Calls for Gaza Cease-Fire

By Luther Ray Abel

Wednesday, January 31, 2024

 

The Chicago City Council passed a resolution Wednesday calling for “a permanent ceasefire in Gaza,” a monthlong effort that split the city council down the middle.

 

Jake Sheridan reports for the Chicago Tribune:

 

Mayor Brandon Johnson cast the tiebreaking vote as the Chicago City Council narrowly passed a resolution calling for a permanent cease-fire in Gaza Wednesday, bringing a monthslong battle over the symbolic declaration to an end.

 

The resolution passed with Mayor Brandon Johnson breaking a 23-23 deadlock in a meeting that saw him once again clear the Council chambers after disruptions from a crowd filled mostly by pro-cease-fire spectators. The vote makes Chicago the largest American city to call for a cease-fire between Hamas and Israel.

 

Opponents of the resolution successfully delayed the vote last week, but couldn’t overcome the cease-fire push after Johnson came out in support last week. The passage marks a key win for Johnson and City Council progressives.

 

“Do I believe that the words that we speak today, how we vote today influences directly international policy? I don’t. I don’t have those illusions,” sponsor Ald. Daniel La Spata, 1st, said. “But we vote with hope, we vote with solidarity, we vote to help people feel heard in a world of silence.”

 

The final push to pass the resolution included an endorsement Monday from powerful unions like the Chicago Teachers Union and a widespread school walkout Tuesday that included cease-fire calls from hundreds of high school students. The Rev. Jesse Jackson, who attended the start of the meeting, also threw his support behind the resolution.

 

If the teachers’ unions and Reverend Jesse Jackson are behind them, who can stand against them? There are many uncharitable (but deserved) things that could be said here, but I’ll leave that to the comments section. Here’s this: Chicago has had the most murders in the United States for twelve straight years, with 617 homicides in 2023 and 697 in 2022. Take a look at Chicago’s homicide map, and one sees that there are obvious concentrations of unacceptable, inhumane crime committed within miles of the city center — but it’s obviously better to spend time and resources to performatively reject Israel’s right to defend itself. The Reverend Jackson ought to extoll the virtue of inspecting eyesockets for spare lumber before sounding off on events that have nothing to do with protecting the people of a city more than happy to bleed them dry with taxation and regulation.

 

Chicago refuses to save itself. Hyde Park, Wacker, and Evanston write the legislation that satisfies progressive appetites while Chicagoans die in unpoliced, unprotected streets. Just sad.