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The hatred and reverse racism of the protests
Mayor Lori Lightfoot has again taken the side of injustice, marginalizing the violence of the looters, arsonists and even killers who attacked business and police in order to play politics with the emotions and violence of the Black Lives Matter protests following in the wake of the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Originally published in the Southwest News Newspaper Group on June 17, 2020.
By Ray Hanania
Black Lives Matter can’t claim that they are fighting for justice, but then remain silent when looters, arsonists and criminals destroy small stores and vandalize historic American statues.
Last week, vandals defaced a statue of George Washington. The week before, they destroyed and burned down dozens of small businesses. The week before that during the “protests,” they destroyed dozens of cars.
Have any of them been arrested?
Why would we expect them to be arrested when politicians pandering to the emotions of their affinities are cheering them on like Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, a politician who is ruling Chicago not by the Rule of Law but rather by the rule of emotion and mobs.
Last week, a group of Chicago Police Officers were videotaped sitting in the offices of do-nothing Congressman Bobby Rush. Rush is one of the most incompetent worthless politicians ever to hold office and I am embarrassed to say I helped him get elected to his first term as Congressman.
Rush and Lightfoot and the so-called Chicago Police Superintendent berated the police officers based on the video tape that showed them relaxing in the congressman’s office, including making popcorn.
How many times did Rush make popcorn while ignoring the needs of his Congressional District which was drawn specifically to ensure that he could get elected not because of talent or leadership, but because of his race?
The tragedy of the guilty until proven innocent mentality of the mob justice that rules City Hall is that we don’t get to see the truth about any events anymore.
All we see are the videos that disparage the police officers, not the circumstances that led up to the popular tragedies that have fueled the protests and the rioters.
No one deserve to die because of a misdemeanor or non-violent felon y violation. George Floyd’s life was wrongly taken. The punishment of death for his refusal to obey the orders of a police officer was unjust.
Worse is that if you dare to challenge the Black Lives Matter activists, you are slandered in the protests and libeled on social media as a racist by people who have embraced their race over the Rule of Law.
No one is allowed to speak out against the looters, the rioters, the arsonists and the criminals without being denounced as being “racist.” Politicians like Lightfoot and protest leaders have soft-balled criticism of the looters, the rioters, the arsonists and criminals.
I heard President Obama proclaim that the “scary events” we see today is a wakeup call to this young generation. But believe me, he wasn’t speaking to the taxpayers, the homeowners, the parents of children who don’t use drugs, who don’t carry weapons, who don’t disobey the police and who are at home at night and not wandering the streets at midnight have crazed on drugs and hate.
The mob justice that has targeted the destruction of the statues of Christopher Columbus should be treated as a hate crime against Italian Americans. The people who defaced and vandalized and destroyed those statues should be arrested and prosecuted.
But hypocritically, that’s not what many are seeking. Instead, they are prosecuting police, not prosecuting the looters, the arsonist or the criminals. They are not prosecuting the gang-bangers and the criminals who think it is ok to take justice into their own hands – a sense of self-justified vengeance driven by revenge and hatred, to destroy statues, police vehicles, burn down police stations and yell so loudly and threateningly that they want to “defund” police agencies.
I interviewed three of a dozen families who watched as their grocery stores in Chicago were looted and destroyed. Several were burned to the ground as police stood by on orders to not confront or provoke the “protestors.”
“They stood there and did nothing,” the owner of one store that was looted twice cried when I interviewed her. But she is Arab American and the racism against her is apparently insignificant to Lightfoot or Rush who said nothing about those tragedies. There was no drive to arrest the criminals involved.
They are the ones who have done nothing. They are the ones whose failure to crack down on the rioters, the looters, the arsonists, and the criminals allowed for the destruction of businesses and lives that they represent. Store owners who had nothing to do with George Floyd were made to pay for the crime because it is convenient.
I thought the coronavirus was a threat to our lives. But I realize the COVID-19 virus doesn’t even come close to the threats that racist hypocrisy and anti-police stereotypes pose to law-abiding Americans who follow the law but just happen to be of the wrong color, the wrong race, and the wrong ethnicity.
(Ray Hanania is an award winning former Chicago City Hall reporter and political columnist. This column was originally published in the Southwest News Newspaper Group in the Des Plaines Valley News, Southwest News-Herald, The Regional News, The Reporter Newspapers. For more information on Ray Hanania visit www.Hanania.com or email him at [email protected].)
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Hanania also writes about Middle East issues for the Arab News, and The Arab Daily News criticizing government policies in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Hanania was named "Best Ethnic American Columnist" by the New America Media in November 2007, and is the 2009 recipient of the SPJ National Sigma Delta Chi Award for column writing.
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