The Scream: Democrats Pritzker, Lightfoot Play Their Race Cards in “The Great Unraveling” of Chicago

By John Kass

September 14, 2022

There is nothing that curdles the fortunes of Gov. JB Pritzker and his ally Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot quite like the scream. It exposes them for what they’ve done.

It is a woman’s scream, a real scream of fear that was randomly captured the other day on a Ring doorbell security camera as she was attacked, pulled to the ground, and robbed by thugs as she walked on a beautiful Sunday afternoon in Chicago’s “mostly peaceful” and leafy Lakeview neighborhood.

Within that scream of terror hides another, buried sound, part of what the writer Matt Rosenberg, senior editor at wirepoints.org, brilliantly calls “the great unravelling.”

It is the sigh of a once-great but thoroughly exhausted city, a Chicago bone-tired, spent by decades of political corruption, hammered by the brutal application of race card politics in a city of tribes, and in 2020 Lightfoot’s City Hall failed miserably to stop the riots and looting that grew out of the George Floyd protests, and then Lightfoot endorsed the Soros-backed State’s Attorney Kim Foxx for re-election.

It is a city drained by street gang violence and political indifference, where police have been weakened and demoralized, even as private security forces crop up, paid for by those with means who demand protection. In this, Chicago is like Rome.

The city where Cook County judges release violent criminals on low or no bail–or electronic monitoring–only to see them be arrested again and charged with other violent crimes, where there aren’t enough cops to handle emergency calls. A city where one-party Democrat rule and fading corporate media shield Foxx, the prosecutor who is more social justice warrior than a state’s attorney.

And the people know it as police are attacked, as the rule of law breaks down, the people now feel so unsafe that they talk openly of carrying guns to perform their daily errands.

Through this unravelling comes that woman’s screams, she could be any woman, from any neighborhood. And Pritzker and Lightfoot have no response other than to pull out their greasy race cards, trying to gaslight the public even though most victims of violent urban crime are not white and middle class, but poor and black and brown.

If you live in Chicago, you’ve probably heard that scream on the news. It is now the focus of a powerful political ad by conservative Dan Proft and his “People Who Play by the Rules” PAC. That PAC supports conservative Republican State Sen. Darren Bailey for governor in the November general election.

The Proft ad is simple, yet devastatingly effective. There is no narration, only that video and scream and a photo of Pritzker with Lightfoot. And there is copy: “Pritzker. Lightfoot. How much worse does it have to get?”

But the ad has another purpose, to call Pritzker and Lightfoot to account for support of soft-on-crime policies and  the Illinois Democrat Party’s damaging and controversial “criminal justice” centerpiece:

The Democrat Safe-T Act, supported by party-line Democratic vote in Springfield and signed by Pritzker. The Safe-T Act is vehemently opposed by most law enforcement and by 100 of the state’s 102 county prosecutors. It does away with cash bail on Jan. 1, and prosecutors are in panic.

So is Pritzker. He signed it. Seemingly unsatisfied by the way his political water on this issue has been enthusiastically carried by the Tribune, Axios and other media outlets, Pritzker went public, lashing out at the ad, claiming the spot intentionally uses racial imagery.

“It’s a terrible commercial,” Pritzker told reporters the other day. “They’ve chosen a particular crime in which there was a white woman who was the victim and apparently black perpetrators. That’s the ad they want people to see, particularly in the suburbs.”

Then he walked away. So, he played his  race card and smeared the messenger and escaped before media could ask him to explain specifically what was so “racist” about the ad. There is absolutely nothing racist about it. It depicts what happened. Chicago media often talk vaguely about “speaking truth to power,” but that’s only on their Twitter accounts. When it comes to “speaking truth” to power on the Democrat left, over bad crime policy that will hurt minority residents, the journos remain quiet. They remain polite. They remain still.

On Tuesday, on his Morning Answer program on AM560 that he co-hosts with Amy Jacobson, Proft responded to the governor’s attack:

“The race of that victim in that beating and robbery in Lakeview, that’s what the most important thing is to the governor?” Proft said. “The race? Not what happened to her?

“I did the spot. I can’t make out the race of the perpetrators,” Proft continued. “Either the governor has racial X-ray vision, or he just wants the attackers to be black. Well, why would he want that? I think it’s disgusting…That’s what the left does. That’s all they have.”

He expects that since Pritzker and Lightfoot are shielded by fading left-leaning corporate media, the governor and mayor will  continue playing their race cards to defend their Safe-T Act, even though most victims of violent crime are black and Latino.

“There’s more to come,” Proft said, “So, hey governor, mayor, keep playing the race card, keep going with your race hustle, I implore you…I want everyone to see this ad, how these politicians have laid waste to your state.”

100 state’s attorneys are opposed to the Safe-T Acts elimination of cash bail, which will put more violent offenders on the streets. Only Democrats Cook County’s Kim Foxx and Lake County State’s Attorney Eric Rinehart support the Safe-T Act

Among the many prosecutors who oppose it is J. Hanley, the State’s Attorney of Winnebago County. The other day in the Rockford Register Star, he wrote:

“On Jan. 1, 2023, it is estimated that more than half of the inmates in the Winnebago County Jail will walk out the door. Approximately 400 criminal defendants will be released back into our community because our Illinois legislators passed the “SAFE-T Act” back in 2020.”

Democrats privately say they’d like to amend the Safe-T Act, but if they do, they’ll have to expose their party leaders Pritzker and Lightfoot who seek re-election. So, they posture and wait, and posture some more, as the people suffer. There will be more victims. And the great unravelling continues.

Matt Rosenberg joined Jeff Carlin and me on this week’s episode  of The Chicago Way podcast.

The link is provided.  We talk about civic exhaustion from “the great unravelling.” I hope you listen.

“I think the chickens are coming home to roost, John, the great unravelling as I call it clearly began in 2020 …yeah and it’s not like we didn’t have years of disturbing and serious crime. The great reckoning for white progressives in lakeview and elsewhere…it [violent crime] was once confined to the South Side and West Side but everyone knew it wouldn’t last, that the predators would search for softer victims who wouldn’t shoot back

“You can walk around Chicago, you can spot the ‘soft’ people. They wear open-toed shoes,” Rosenberg said. “They’re out of shape and they’re going to get it one day. And it raises the question of armed self-defense in the city of Chicago and nobody should have to consider that as an imperative just to not be victimized.”

But they do consider it, couples talk about the prospect of carrying guns just to do basic errands, in the city where more women now feel they must be armed to walk quiet streets of their neighborhoods on a Sunday afternoon, as the politicians play their race cards and rely on media toadies for cover. In the exhausted city, Chicago, where “the great unraveling” is underway.

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(Copyright 2022 John Kass)

 

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