It seems as though outgoing Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, having been kicked to the curb by voters -- who in turn brilliantly selected a more radical replacement who's likely to deepen the problems that has fueled so much public discontent -- might feel a bit liberated to say what she really thinks. She hasn't exactly been known for her soft-spoken nature, but now that she's no longer courting leftist voters in her city, perhaps there are some 'now it can be said' juices flowing. She teed off on weak, crime coddling policies and prosecutors, offering her critique late last month in our nation's crime-riddled capital city, appropriately enough:
Ousted Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot called on Democrat mayors to “speak the truth” on violent crime in their cities amid the crime spike in Chicago. While speaking on a panel at the African American Mayors Association Conference in Washington, D.C., on Friday, Lightfoot called on Democrat mayors to address the growing crime in their cities. “As Democrats, if we do not speak the truth about violent crime in our cities, we will be the worse for it,” Lightfoot said. “I come to this conversation as a former federal prosecutor. I come to this as a former defense attorney, I am the sister of a returning resident,” Lightfoot continued. “But I know that there are people in my city that are wreaking havoc every day and need to be off the streets. That’s reality.” “What do we say to, not only the victims of crime, but the people who are terrified about crimes in their neighborhood, most of whom look like us. If we say, ‘yeah, the police department is spending all this time and resources to arrest, put a case on,’ and the judges and the prosecutors say, ‘you know what? We’re going to let you out on electronic monitoring to wreak havoc again.’”
Many critics will understandably ridicule this apparent pivot as too little, too late -- but it still might be useful to get the transcript of her remarks to members of the DC city council. Lightfoot is also blasting away at teachers unions on her way out the door. While she avoids a direct smackdown of top union boss Randi Weingarten in this commentary, Lightfoot hammers school closures, calls out the unions for impeding the return of in-person learning (even when it was crystal clear that the science supported that course of action), and notes that Weingarten's public statements about wanting to get schools open did not reflect unions' actions in major blue cities:
“Schools are about children. We demonstrated over and over again that our schools were safe,” she continued. “We put $100 million into retrofitting classrooms, making sure that they had the PPE [personal protective equipment], making sure that every single classroom had filters to make sure that the air was safe. Deep cleaning of every single building. But fundamentally, we know that where children learn the best and where they are safest is in the classroom, and in-person learning, and none of our parents signed up to be homeschoolers. And the learning loss is real.” “The union needed to work with us and they never did that,” Lightfoot said...Weingarten testified April 26 before the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic that the union “spent every day, from February on, trying to get schools open” and that remote learning was detrimental for children. Lightfoot argued she may have believed that at the time, but did not take the steps to reopen schools in practice. “That’s not the reality that was happening on the ground in cities like Chicago, like Los Angeles and other places,” Lightfoot continued. “We needed to get our kids back in school, and I’m unapologetic about the fight to make sure that we put our kids and our parents first.”
Chicago's union was one of the very worst in the country, ferociously resisting reopening, keeping kids locked out of classrooms for longer than almost anywhere else in the country, then going on strike shortly after in-person learning had resumed. While Lightfoot may have sidestepped a head-to-head confrontation with Weingarten, the editors of the Wall Street Journal were more than happy to expose the latter's breathtaking dishonesty in Congressional testimony last week:
Leading the amnesia parade is Randi Weingarten, the American Federation of Teachers president who attempted to erase two years of Covid history in testimony last week to the House of Representatives that was, literally, unbelievable. “We spent every day from February on trying to get schools open. We knew that remote education was not a substitute for opening schools,” she told the House. “We know that young people learn and connect best in person, so opening schools safely—even during a pandemic—guided our actions, which I will describe in detail.” Alas, her “detail” omitted a few things. Such as her description in July 2020 of the Trump Administration’s push to reopen schools for in-person learning that autumn as “this reckless, this callous, this cruel.” That summer she also endorsed teacher “safety strikes” if unions deemed local reopening protocols to be inadequate. Hundreds of private and charter schools did open that fall without the surge of illness that Ms. Weingarten claimed to fear.
...She also left out the detail that local union affiliates were the most aggressive opponents of school reopening throughout 2021 and even into 2022...After Gov. Ron DeSantis ordered Florida schools to reopen in autumn 2020, the Florida Education Association sued the state to keep them closed. The schools opened—much to the benefit of students who learn far better in person according to all the evidence. We could cite many other union quotes and efforts. Ms. Weingarten and others are trying to rewrite history because they realize now, far too late, that their lockdowns are unpopular. The public can see the damage in lost learning and livelihoods. The lockdown lobbyists want everyone to forget it all happened, but it’s important for democratic accountability that they don’t get away with it.
“Illinois continues to lose residents to other states as IRS data shows 105,000 residents moved out of state in 2020, taking with them $10.6 billion in income.” https://t.co/I4U265zP8P
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) May 1, 2023