The City Council fiddles with foreign policy while Chicago burns
I'll never forget the day back in 2017 I walked into the Chicago Cultural Center. Upon entry, I was surprised to see a rather startling display of handicrafts. Apparently, there had been some kind of contest or competition to create tapestries of sorts that were violently opposed to the president of the United States, who at that time was Donald Trump serving in his first term. Given it was a public building I found this somewhat odd, even in a deep blue state that tax dollars would be used to support clearly partisan speech.
So I inquired of the woman who seemed to be in charge what exactly was going on. She responded with a heavy Spanish accent with some sort of word salad that was not memorable, so I asked her whether or not she was an American citizen. It turned out she wasn't — she was from Spain. I didn't ask under what circumstances she was here; I got the impression that she had some sort of work or tourist visa. I left wondering how it had come to pass that my tax dollars were funding a blatantly partisan display run by a foreign national.
I never really pursued the matter. If memory serves, I wrote a letter to the editor of the Chicago Tribune, which probably never saw the light of day. (Regrettably, there was no conservative outlet like Contrarian around in those days).
So I wasn't surprised to see a story in today's Tribune about another controversial exhibit at the Cultural Center, which is summarized below:
A routine Chicago City Council hearing spiraled into chaos Tuesday when Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez (25th) was ejected after appearing to call Ald. Bill Conway (34th) a “white supremacist” during a heated debate over a controversial pro-Gaza puppet display at the Chicago Cultural Center. Sigcho-Lopez, a close ally of Mayor Brandon Johnson, later backtracked, claiming he had said, “This is a white supremacist” rather than directly targeting Conway.
The dispute capped a four-hour debate over the display, which depicts bloodied caricatures of Uncle Sam and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu alongside condemnations of U.S. financial support for Israel. A majority of the Council (28 aldermen) signed a letter denouncing the display as antisemitic hate speech, while others defended it as free expression.
During the exchange, Conway pressed the city’s cultural affairs commissioner about the exhibit before Sigcho-Lopez interrupted, accusing Conway of disrespect. Tensions boiled over, leading Special Events Committee Chair Ald. Nicholas Sposato (38th) to order Sigcho-Lopez out of the chambers without a formal vote. The two later met privately, where Sigcho-Lopez reportedly apologized, and a prayer session took place.
The incident underscores the deep divide in Chicago’s government over the Israel-Hamas war, coming nearly a year after Johnson cast a tie-breaking vote calling for a Gaza ceasefire. It also highlights the broader ideological clash in the Council, where far-left figures like Sigcho-Lopez push radical rhetoric while mainstream and moderate members attempt to maintain order.
Despite pressure to remove the puppet display, the cultural affairs commissioner defended its presence, arguing censorship would be “anti-American.” Ald. Debra Silverstein (50th), the Council’s lone Jewish member, refuted this, arguing that taxpayer-funded spaces should not host inflammatory material. The committee ultimately took no action on the exhibit.
Sigcho-Lopez, already under scrutiny for his past appearance at a pro-Palestinian rally where an American flag was burned, continues to be a lightning rod for controversy, once again demonstrating the Council’s inability to conduct civil discourse without descending into ideological grandstanding.
The degeneration of The Cultural Center into some sort of People's Republic propaganda palace is of course particularly tragic to lifelong Chicagoans of a certain vintage who recall when the Cultural Center was formerly the headquarters of the Chicago Public Library. As youths, many of us made pilgrimages down to what my honors English teacher at Mount Carmel High School, the late, great Thomas E. Townsend, used to call “the great grey edifice” to hone our research skills that served us well throughout life at least until the invention of the internet. When the library moved to its much more august, if somewhat over-designed, new digs in the South Loop, rechristened as the Harold Washington Library, its old home, having been designated a landmark I imagine, was turned into a Cultural Center with a fairly ambiguous mission. It has now has morphed into a disgraceful anti-Semitic Exhibit hall.
Progressive politics have played a tragically, toxically aggressive role in driving the best and brightest Chicagoans out of the city and into the suburbs and beyond for the last 75 years. The city’s population peaked at just under four million in the 1950s; it is under three million and declining now, a shell of its former glory.
The current anti-Semitic bent of the city's government and academic institutions is now threatening to drive out one of the most loyal, vibrant, and economically productive segments of the population, the Jewish community, which has been incredibly, loyally cosmopolitan across three centuries. However, it would be hard to blame them for concluding that they are no longer welcome in this city based on the callous, downright bigoted posture its government and academic institutions (including Northwestern University, De Paul, and to some extent the University of Chicago) have taken toward them since the tragic events of October 6th, 2023.
This latest imbroglio, however, is just the most recent symptom of a much deeper disease.
Sigcho-Lopez, or as I call him, the Notorious BSL, is one of the 20 percent of the City Council that has been captured by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).
The DSA is as close to the Communist Party as you can come without actually being the Communist Party of America. They are radical leftists bent on defunding the police, decarcerating all criminals, abolishing the prison system, and other radically extreme positions.
Knowing that they could never be elected were they to reveal their true colors, they run for and are elected to office as Democrats. The sheep-like electorate of our fair city will vote for anything that has a D after its name. Thus, it has come to this: One out of five of our aldermen is in effect a communist. First and foremost among them of course is the notorious BSL.
And that, my friends, is how we've managed to turn our city into a dumpster fire.
What is to be done?
First of all the, 28 Alders who had the sense to vote to remove the abominable, racist exhibit that is defiling our Cultural Center should organize themselves into a caucus. Their first order of business is to refuse to slate candidates for the City Council who are DSA members on the Democratic ticket. These DSA members should be forced to run as DSA members and not masquerade as Democrats because it's deceptive. It's a deliberate and unfortunately successful attempt to fool the voters of the city into thinking they're voting for reasonably moderate Democrats, when indeed they're voting for radical quasi-communists. That's why a lot of our voters find themselves shocked at what's coming out of the City Council — they had no idea they were voting for this kind of platform (if you want to see what kind of platform I mean, just Google "Democratic Socialists of America" — I imagine you will be alarmed at what you find).
Second, we the people must be very diligent when we vote. In primaries, we must research the folks who run for City Council, and we must vote against DSA members in the primaries to the extent that they're held or even run or encourage others to run against them.
Third, and perhaps most importantly, we have to organize a sensible center party that provides a political home for people of sound mind blessed with common sense who want to govern the city rationally, restore budget sanity, public safety, and the business community so that the city doesn't go bankrupt! That party cannot be branded as Republican. Chicagoans have been brainwashed beyond redemption against the GOP. So it either has to be the Democratic Party excluding the radicals of the DSA and their fellow travelers, or it has to be a new brand. Perhaps we should have a contest for the name. I personally favor the Common Sense party but perhaps that's too conservative.
How about the Reform Party? Our slogan: Chicago is ready for reform (with apologies to the infamous Paddy Bauler).
In any event, the Netanyahu puppet controversy is a useful teaching moment. It holds a mirror up to show the city what it has become — a foolish, ugly, bigoted, hateful shell of its former glorious self.
Perhaps it’s an opportunity to rally the millions of voters who in all likelihood have no use for the DSA and organize leaders of goodwill and integrity as personified by Paul Vallas to lead us out of this wilderness and back into the promised land of a prosperous place which respects all of its citizens regardless of their faith, and confines itself to the business of running one of the largest cities in the world, leaving foreign policy to higher authorities.
We've got enough problems without trying to solve the crisis in the Middle East.
