‘What Are We Going to Have Left in Our Community?’ Aldermen React with Panic, Sorrow to Unrest

[Editor’s Note: We highly recommend you click here to listen to the full audio.]

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WTTW News obtained a recording of an online conference call held by the mayor’s office to brief all 50 aldermen on the city’s response to the unrest touched off by the death of George Floyd in the custody of Minneapolis police.

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The recording begins with Ald. Michelle Harris (8th Ward) wondering how she could convince businesses like Walmart and CVS to rebuild on the South Side after the destruction.

“It’s like, what are we going to have left in our community?” Harris asks her colleagues before answering herself. “Nothing.”

The Chicago City Council’s Black Caucus criticized Lightfoot’s decision to use 375 members of the Illinois National Guard to block off the Loop and the central business district starting Sunday morning, making business corridors on the South and West sides an “easy target” for looters and criminals because they “did not have the same level of protection.”

Lightfoot dismissed that criticism as “illogical and not true” on Wednesday.

Ald. Pat Dowell (3rd Ward) said she felt helpless to protect older residents, who she said were struggling to buy food and get prescription medicine.

“I’ve worked really hard over the last seven years and now I feel like I am five feet back,” Dowell said.

“I feel like I am at ground zero,” Harris responded. “My major business district is shattered. Why would Walmart or CVS come back to our communities?”

Ald. Emma Mitts (37th) said her West Side ward was like “the wild, wild west out there.”

Nearly five minutes into the call, Lightfoot speaks for the first time. {snip}

Lightfoot begins by defending her response to the unrest, telling the aldermen that criticism that she protected downtown at the expense of the West and South sides “offends me deeply, personally, in part because it is simply not so.”

“We’ve been working our a– off,” Lightfoot said. {snip}

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Lightfoot said officers were in “armed combat” with those intent on committing crimes on the West Side only making progress after bringing in “heavy equipment and stronger pepper spray.”

Lightfoot said a crowd of 30-40 people gathered outside a clothing store near 111th Street and Michigan Avenue as a “dude with a sledgehammer” broke into the store to allow it to be looted.

“I don’t know about you, but I haven’t seen s–t like this before, not in Chicago,” Lightfoot said.

Lightfoot vowed to launch a “Herculean effort” to convince businesses to rebuild and reopen.

Lightfoot said she had no choice but to shut down the CTA after reports buses were being “commandeered” by “anarchists.”

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Ald. Derrick Curtis (18th) said he had called 911 to report looting, and got no answer. Rich Guidice, the director of the Office of Emergency Management and Communications, acknowledged that the system was overwhelmed.

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Organized groups of criminals were responsible for the majority of looting in Chicago, prompting nearly 65,000 calls to the city’s emergency operations center, Lightfoot said

Ald. Susan Sadlowski-Garza (10th Ward) broke down while pleading with Lightfoot for help.

“My ward is a s–t show,” Sadlowski-Garza said, adding that cop cars and banks were burned. “They are shooting at the police.”

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“This is a massive, massive problem,” Lightfoot said. “People are just f—–g lawless right now.”

Ald. Raymond Lopez (15th Ward) demanded that Lightfoot develop a plan to stabilize Chicago’s neighborhoods for five days, calling his Southwest Side ward “a virtual war zone” where gang members armed with AK-47’s were threatening to shoot black people.

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Lightfoot told Lopez he was “100% full of s–t.”

“Well, f–k you then,” Lopez responded.

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Lightfoot ended the call with one last request of aldermen: “Pray for us all.”