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Comment by tedivm | Hacker News Reader

I live here, and Pritzker says the right things then does the wrong things. He sent the Illinois State Police to help protect ICE from protestors as Broadview, freeing up their resources to attack and kidnap people. In half the videos you see out there his state police as assisting ICE. We have Chicago Aldermen out in the streets and in the hospitals getting arrested and assaulted, we have candidates for congress like Kat Abughazaleh being indicted for protesting, and then Pritzker is giving speeches and going on podcasts while not even stopping his own thugs from helping ICE.

He doesn't have a spine, he has an election strategy.

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Right now, I agree pretty strongly with this. In particular: Pritzker is the command in chief of the Illinois State Police. But the ISP is very conservative and fairly MAGA, and ISP has staffed protests pretty aggressively. Pritzker has in theory the ability to reorient ISP away from policing protesters and towards protecting them from DHS, and he has pointedly not done so.

Even if he's just OK, doing a replacement-level competent job of being a governor dealing with a problem he himself did not have a hand in creating, this is his opportunity to demonstrate leadership during a crisis, and he's flubbing it. He's asking (we assume) for the highest job in the land, so he doesn't get to ask to be graded on a curve this time.

(Not a fan of Kat Abu, though).

It's kind of too late for quick action. You're not going to turn the attitudes of Law Enforcement on a dime. We need a decades long effort to eliminate MAGA, White Supremacy, gangs, lawlessness and thuggery from thousands of local and state police forces nationwide. These attitudes have so thoroughly infiltrated policing for so long, it's going to take deliberate restructuring of these institutions and personnel replacement to resolve.

That attitude sounds like a really good way to be Brandon Johnson, the least popular mayor in the United States.

Pritzker can either solve the problem or he can't. It's fine if he can't. I couldn't solve it. Few could! But if he can't, he's not qualified to be President, a job that will send him harder problems than this. It's fine for him not to be President. Most people (waves at the Oval Office right now) shouldn't.

Curious about the random Kat Abu comment at the end there? I know nothing about her background, but it certainly seems like she's using her campaign to actively help her local community directly and immediately. And in times like these, we could certainly use more political candidates who are willing to be tossed around by DHS.

What negatives am I unaware of?

She doesn't represent the district. She picked it off a map, while living in (I think?) DC, hoping to replicate what AOC had done in New York --- knocking off a geriatric institutional Dem in a safe blue district. What really got me was that she moved to Chicago to run for CD9, and didn't even move to the district --- she moved to the Gold Coast (IIRC?), far outside CD9 (which is Rogers Park, Evanston, and the near north suburbs).

There's a word for this (carpetbagging).

Then more broadly there's the question of what a Representative is for. Is it "designated protester for the district"? If so, she's the leading contender. It's my belief that "most effective on-site protester" is not in fact the job of a congressional representative.

It'd be one thing if the choice was between Kat Abu and a staid machine Democrat. But CD9 is naturally progressive, and she's up against Daniel Biss, a progressive with a real track record of getting things done (and unquestioned ties to the district). What I think she's really going to do, best case, is split the progressive vote.

Good to know, thanks!

One thing to consider though - while I would normally agree with you on the job description of a congressional rep, there are some moments in history where performative-protest-as-candidate can do more good than ill. I think we're in one of those times, and I'm glad she's able to use the congressional platform to put the executive branch's policies and actions on display.

No, she moved there some months after her boyfriend Ben Collins became the CEO of The Onion, which is headquartered in Chicago. This is very easy to verify, they're not secretive about their relationship.

I don't care. She had never once lived in the district before declaring her candidacy for it, and only somewhat recently moved into the district --- after starting her campaign for it. I don't care who her partner is.

Think about the message that campaign sends: nobody, in one of the most progressive districts in the country, is as qualified to faithfully represent its progressive ideals as Kat Abu, who has neither ever lived there nor ever held elective office. To me, that's a campaign of contempt for the district.

I've seen the videos of her getting shoved at Broadview. Her immigration politics seem in line with the district. My response to that is: stand on Noyes and Sheridan and throw a rock. You'll hit someone who has identical immigration politics to her.

IL CD9 gets to decide, not me (I'm in CD7). But I do have an opinion!

The fact that everybody has just become okay with the fact that police forces are actively far right agitators is outrageous. If cops are desperate to smash skulls because they hate brown people then we need to completely dismantle and rebuild all of the police forces from scratch because it is impossible for them to be anything but violence machines.

We have violent hate gangs staffed with military equipment, with the authority to kill, and with minimal care for the actual law.

I think the reality is far scarier - he doesn’t have nearly as much power over ISP as he should.

If he doesn't, he needs to be forthright about it in his speeches and podcasts. "The ISP is disobeying my direct orders."

Until then, he bears responsibility for their actions.

The NYPD all but threatened to kill Bill de Blasio's daughter when he tried to bring them to heel. I'm limiting myself to being furious at the fucking freaks terrorizing my city instead of creating new shit to get mad about. There's plenty as is.

Sure, I don't mean this to arouse anger. I point it out for the Democratic primaries in March. https://ballotpedia.org/Illinois_gubernatorial_and_lieutenan...

He does not. People working in public service law could have told you that long before Trump won the election. That's sort of not on him; it's its own political power center. But that's his problem to solve now.

ISP enjoys support from the white rascisty southern part of IL as a bulwark against the Chicago Police and all of the brown people there.

> He sent the Illinois State Police to help protect ICE from protestors as Broadview, freeing up their resources

You're literally saying the quiet part out loud.

So many people here are complaining that ICE is arresting US citizens, but you literally admit that they're interfering. And yes, it's illegal to "forcibly assault, resist, oppose, impede, intimidate, or interfere" with a federal officer. See https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/111

You can do up to 1 year in prison for minor offenses, or up to 20 for using weapons and causing injuries.

Don't put words in my mouth.

When we say they're arresting US citizens I'm referring to the brown people they're picking up off the streets purely for being brown. The lawncare guy they picked up the other day, on film and with paperwork, wasn't protesting or interfering with anything.

You're just making things up to justify this fascist take over.

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