Scenes from the Reopen Illinois Chicago Memorial Day Rally
Last week, I saw a Facebook event listing advertised across my news feed. Anthony Delmedico, head of a Scotsdale, Arizona based company that;s apparently a big deal in the apparently lucrative niche of insurance restoration roofing, decided to produce a a documentary about how COVID-19 lockdowns are unconstitutional. And he decided to organize a Reopen Illinois rally in Chicago. What a business owner from Arizona is doing organizing a rally in Chicago isn't really clear, but with the help of Facebook, he managed to bring in... I would say about 200 people is a fair estimate.
The rally was near Buckingham Foundation in Grant Park, an iconic centerpiece of an equally iconic park.
While some people observed social distancing
and wore masks
Most didn't wear masks at all
And the social distancing shrank the closer one got to the stage.
They had a line-up of speakers,
but the only one I recognized was Illinois State Representative Darren Bailey (R-Xenia) who has been trying to make a name for himself as the face of the anti-stay-at-home orders, trying to sue the state to have the order declared unconstitutional and refusing the wear a face mask during the Illinois General Assembly's "COVID-19 session" in violation of the temporary rules, just so he could get himself kicked out and come back wearing a mask the next day.
Bailey is currently running for the Illinois State Senate (in Illinois, each Senate district is made up for two House districts, and Bailey is following a well-trodden path of state reps running for a Senate seat in the district their House seat is a part of). During the rally, I spotted some people wearing his campaign gear.
Speaking of campaigning, there was a table of people collecting signatures to recall Pritzker.
As it has been pointed out elsewhere, it's not clear whether those signatures have any legal weight, since, under Illinois constitution, any attempt to launch a recall needs to have support from 10 state senators and 20 state representatives, and no more than half of the support can come from one party. At this point, there are only four Republican representatives backing it.
Because this was happening on Memorial Day, there was a lot of talk about soldiers and sacrifices and honoring those sacrifices. And while some speakers talked about how the rally was nonpartisan, there was an awful lot of conservative rhetoric. And some red hats.
I saw many things I expected. A sign that compared a Jewish governor to a Nazi
A reference to QAnon conspiracy theory (see the guy on the left)
Kids
A sign that stops just sort of swearing
And someone trying to make a buck off a rally (a truly bipartisan constant)
But there were also some surprises. Members of a south suburban church I saw speaking out against abortion at a rally for gun control.
A black guy and two white protesters bonding over the evils of the New World Order (right after the black guy complained that protesters like them never come to black communities to support what he's trying to do)
And a woman with a sign that referenced Handmaid's Tale. She even told me that she would have wore the Handmaid outfit (the kind that has become a staple of any pro-choice rally/protest/counterprotest) if the weather wasn't so hot.
I came there at around 12:30 PM, half an hour after the rally's scheduled start time, and left shortly before it was scheduled to end, at 2:00 PM. Lori Lightfoot claimed that the Chicago Police Department broke up the rally, but I can tell you that, while I was there, the event went on in full view of the cops who stood several meters away. Over on the event listing, Delmedico claimed that nobody shut down the rally and that it lasted until 3:00 PM, which I'm not sure is true either.
Overall... More then anything, I was just annoyed about all the talk of oppression and tyranny. At one point, I said out loud what I've been thinking. "You silly Americans. Is this what you think oppression is. Being allowed to leave home whenever you want? Being able to protest without interruption? The only thing you can't do is shop and have a meal, and Phase 3 [of Pritzker's Restore Illinois Plan] starts in less than a week, so what are you even complaining about?"
That got me into a long back and forth about how they were Americans, and it was their duty as Americans to stand up to any sign of tyranny, or They will take the mile. After a while of going like this, I asked the woman who did most of the talking how she feels about government restricting abortions.
"I mean, if the woman was raped, she should be able to have an abortion," she responded. "You just don't know what it's like, unless something that horrible happens to you."
Which was... an interesting way of looking at it, but at least there was some ideological consistency.
During the rally, there was a lot of talk about how Pritzker is treating Illinoisians like babies.
And it occurred to me that, by the same token, one could say that the protestors were like teenagers who got grounded and complain about how their parents were being SO UNFAIR.
The rally was near Buckingham Foundation in Grant Park, an iconic centerpiece of an equally iconic park.
While some people observed social distancing
and wore masks
Most didn't wear masks at all
And the social distancing shrank the closer one got to the stage.
They had a line-up of speakers,
but the only one I recognized was Illinois State Representative Darren Bailey (R-Xenia) who has been trying to make a name for himself as the face of the anti-stay-at-home orders, trying to sue the state to have the order declared unconstitutional and refusing the wear a face mask during the Illinois General Assembly's "COVID-19 session" in violation of the temporary rules, just so he could get himself kicked out and come back wearing a mask the next day.
Bailey is currently running for the Illinois State Senate (in Illinois, each Senate district is made up for two House districts, and Bailey is following a well-trodden path of state reps running for a Senate seat in the district their House seat is a part of). During the rally, I spotted some people wearing his campaign gear.
Speaking of campaigning, there was a table of people collecting signatures to recall Pritzker.
As it has been pointed out elsewhere, it's not clear whether those signatures have any legal weight, since, under Illinois constitution, any attempt to launch a recall needs to have support from 10 state senators and 20 state representatives, and no more than half of the support can come from one party. At this point, there are only four Republican representatives backing it.
Because this was happening on Memorial Day, there was a lot of talk about soldiers and sacrifices and honoring those sacrifices. And while some speakers talked about how the rally was nonpartisan, there was an awful lot of conservative rhetoric. And some red hats.
I saw many things I expected. A sign that compared a Jewish governor to a Nazi
A reference to QAnon conspiracy theory (see the guy on the left)
Kids
A sign that stops just sort of swearing
And someone trying to make a buck off a rally (a truly bipartisan constant)
But there were also some surprises. Members of a south suburban church I saw speaking out against abortion at a rally for gun control.
A black guy and two white protesters bonding over the evils of the New World Order (right after the black guy complained that protesters like them never come to black communities to support what he's trying to do)
And a woman with a sign that referenced Handmaid's Tale. She even told me that she would have wore the Handmaid outfit (the kind that has become a staple of any pro-choice rally/protest/counterprotest) if the weather wasn't so hot.
I came there at around 12:30 PM, half an hour after the rally's scheduled start time, and left shortly before it was scheduled to end, at 2:00 PM. Lori Lightfoot claimed that the Chicago Police Department broke up the rally, but I can tell you that, while I was there, the event went on in full view of the cops who stood several meters away. Over on the event listing, Delmedico claimed that nobody shut down the rally and that it lasted until 3:00 PM, which I'm not sure is true either.
Overall... More then anything, I was just annoyed about all the talk of oppression and tyranny. At one point, I said out loud what I've been thinking. "You silly Americans. Is this what you think oppression is. Being allowed to leave home whenever you want? Being able to protest without interruption? The only thing you can't do is shop and have a meal, and Phase 3 [of Pritzker's Restore Illinois Plan] starts in less than a week, so what are you even complaining about?"
That got me into a long back and forth about how they were Americans, and it was their duty as Americans to stand up to any sign of tyranny, or They will take the mile. After a while of going like this, I asked the woman who did most of the talking how she feels about government restricting abortions.
"I mean, if the woman was raped, she should be able to have an abortion," she responded. "You just don't know what it's like, unless something that horrible happens to you."
Which was... an interesting way of looking at it, but at least there was some ideological consistency.
During the rally, there was a lot of talk about how Pritzker is treating Illinoisians like babies.
And it occurred to me that, by the same token, one could say that the protestors were like teenagers who got grounded and complain about how their parents were being SO UNFAIR.