By Rex Wholster @Shutterstock
As early as 2012, Francis Menton, aka the Manhattan Contrarian, wrote about Chicago, referring to it as a “basket case,” due to:
- declining populations
- astoundingly high rates of violent crime, in every case mostly black on black
- uninterrupted rule by leftist Democrats for generations
Wrote Francis Menton in 2012:
You may ask, is Chicago really a basket case? . . . The downtown is in good shape, with new condos and office towers; the near north side is upscale and attractive.
But the population has gone from a peak of 3,620,962 in the 1950 census to just 2,695,598 in 2010. [And if instead of staying downtown you take] the Green Line el south from the loop to the end of the line, . . . you will observe huge deteriorated public housing projects surrounded by vast vacant areas and abandoned private buildings.
No Justifying the Looting
Now Mr. Menton brings readers up to date in 2020, where just this past Sunday Chicago police shot and injured a black suspect.
The police claim that the suspect was armed and had shot at them first; but they have no video to prove that. Whether the police behaved wrongly remains to be established, and if they did, the officers in question should be dealt with accordingly.
But there is no justifying what followed. On Sunday night into Monday there was a first wave of looting in the downtown area.
BLM’s Marxist Idiocy
The Chicago chapter of Black Lives Matter on Monday put out a press release that dropped all pretense of “peaceful protests” and explicitly sought to justify the looting, while also threatening further violence:
The mayor clearly has not learned anything since [the killing of George Floyd in] May, and she would be wise to understand that the people will keep rising up until the CPD is abolished and our Black communities are fully invested in. Contrary to Mayor Lightfoot’s position, Black lives are and always will be more important than downtown corporations who siphon Tax Increment Financing (T.I.F.) money, while avoiding taxes, and exploiting the labor of Black and Brown Chicagoans. These corporations have “looted” more from our communities than a few protesters ever could. . . .
[Some] commentators seem to believe that the immense wealth that has been hoarded in downtown Chicago is in some way all of ours. The South and West sides have seen no benefits to this hoarding. . . . When protesters attack high-end retail stores that are owned by the wealthy and service the wealthy, that is not “our” city and has never been meant for us.
A Second Wave of Looting on 11 August
Then last night a second wave of looting erupted in Chicago, including both in the downtown and in the luxury shopping district just north of downtown known as the “Miracle Mile.” There are many videos of the looting, which appears to have been orchestrated on social media.
BLM Banner Advocates Looting
At a BLM demonstration yesterday, a large banner explicitly advocated looting:
How is that somehow a bigger issue than the well-over-300 blacks murdered so far this year in Chicago by people who are not the police? And again, even if you assume the worst about the police incident, how is looting an appropriate response?
Encouraging young black people to go out on looting sprees is making them completely unemployable in any professional job and ruining whatever chance they might have had for high paying jobs and careers. The demonstrators shout “black lives matter” while they destroy black lives by the hundreds or thousands.
We are witnessing the complete dead end of the progressive movement in Marxist idiocy.
Mr. Menton Hands Things Back to Mayor Lightfoot
You have gotten where you are by mouthing trendy progressive mumbo jumbo. What’s your next move?
