Jerry Partee brought Chicago’s tally of deaths so far this year to 67 on Sunday afternoon.
Cops say the 48-year-old was gunned down in a drive-by shooting at 2:23 p.m. not far from the United Center on West Walton St. Partee took bullets in the chest. No one has been arrested.
This does not seem to bother hyper-progressive Mayor Brandon Johnson. But this should all sound chillingly familiar to you.
The city’s former Democratic mayor Rahm Emanuel told talk show host Bill Maher that the Windy City — plagued by one of the most dismal homicide rates in the U.S. — was languishing on the rocky shores of wokeness.
Chicago’s leadership, Emanuel said, was “fixated on niche liberal issues” like transgender bathroom policies. Hmmmm.
Those identity politics issues are sucking the air out of the room instead of having local pols targeting soaring crime rates and plummeting educational standards. Sound like somewhere we know?
“I don’t want to hear another word about the locker room, I don’t want to hear another word about the bathroom. You better start focusing on the classroom,” Emanuel told Maher and liberal pundit Fareed Zakaria.
Emanuel said a city’s main priorities should be “safe streets, strong schools, stable finances. Focus on those three things and your city’s going to be fine.”
Those things have not been Chicago’s strong suit and nor are they biggies in Mayor Olivia Chow’s Toronto. There are simply “too many niche liberal issues.”
Naturally, Chicago boss Johnson was swept away with George Floyd fervour in the summer of 2020. He said he liked the political catchphrase “defund the police” as a “real political goal.” But outside of activist circles, the real world was mortified and he walked the phrase back.
Chow, too, is susceptible to every nutty notion spewing out of the faculty lounge.
“We’ve gone through five years where people became way too permissive as a culture – which is why everything is locked up at CVS and Walgreens, and that’s a disaster,” Emanuel said.
The numbers tell the tale. Chicago cops say auto theft, aggravated battery, theft and murder have all jumped since 2022. Neither Johnson nor his predecessor, Lori Lightfoot, were interested in discussing Black-on-Black crime in the city.
Sound familiar?
Maher asked Emanuel: “Why doesn’t anybody talk about that? Why aren’t there a hundred giant Black celebrities, who would have the respect of those people, saying, ‘What are you doing to yourselves? Why are you killing each other?’”
That’s a familiar tune.
Emanuel also noted that educational standards have also been obliterated in the Second City.
“We have the worst reading scores for eighth graders in 30 years, and nobody – not a governor, not a mayor, not a president, not a secretary of education is talking about it. We’re all wrapped up,” he said.
“Look, in seventh grade, if I had known that I could have said the word ‘They’ and got in the girls’ bathroom, I would have done it.”
Sounds like Toronto!
Even reliably liberal Zakaria agreed: “If you look at Democratic cities, they are terribly run.”
Yes, that sounds very much like Toronto.
@HunterTOSun