Chicagoans are tough, says Cat Conway, a Democrat campaigner who now lives in London
Many people took the post from Donald Trump on his Truth Social platform as a joke. An AI-generated image riffing off the film Apocalypse Now, with his head superimposed on an army officer’s body and helicopters over Lake Michigan.
“Chipocalypse Now,” the caption read. “Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR. I love the smell of deportations in the morning.”
That is, until he actually sent Blackhawks into the city’s South Side to infiltrate a residential apartment building, break down doors in the night, ransack family homes and detain young children.
I’ve lived in London half my life, but Chicagoland is where I was born and raised. It’s where I vote (Democrat). It’s the home of the best pizza in the world. And it’s somewhere Donald Trump is – rightly – reluctant to go.
In March 2016, Trump’s planned campaign rally met with so much backlash that he cancelled it. He has not campaigned there since. Chicago is a Democratic Party stronghold, where Hillary Clinton was raised and where Barack Obama’s presidential centre is being built at the east end of Midway Plaisance on the city’s South Side.
For his part, Trump has named this current operation “Midway Blitz”.
Illinois governor JB Pritzker, who has the kind of billionaire money Trump dreams of, in August said: “Mr President, do not come to Chicago. You are neither wanted nor needed here.”
Trump doesn’t get Chicago. He built a tower that blights the skyline and pollutes the river. He claims the city is a “hellhole” beset by crime that its Democrat leaders cannot manage, despite police data showing the number of murders and shootings have declined year-on-year.
He has yet to learn not to trifle with this city, whose descendants of the Great Migration created an epicentre of economic and cultural institutions, giving Chicago an indomitable spirit matched by generations of immigrants – predominantly Mexicans – who choose to call the city home.
This is a city built, maintained, and protected by tough people.
In 2003, former mayor Richard M Daley ordered the Streets and Sanitation Department to bulldoze Xs overnight on an airstrip he wanted to turn into a park against the wishes of the Federal Aviation Authority. It is now a park.
In 2012, mayor Rahm Emanuel, a chief of staff in the Obama administration, refused to allow fast food chain Chick-Fil-A to open stores because of its anti-LGBT policies, saying: “Chick-fil-A values are not Chicago values”. Chicago has the third-highest LGBT population in the US.
This kind of swagger isn’t limited to Chicago’s authorities. Since Trump ordered jackboots on the ground, bicycle couriers have been caught on camera taunting his Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents before cycling away, unharmed.
Communities are forming neighbourhood watch groups, protecting and warning undocumented immigrants of Ice’s presence with whistles and group chats. Local politicians are putting their bodies in the way: Jessie Fuentes last Friday was forced into handcuffs at a hospital while checking on a detainee injured during an immigration arrest by Ice.
On Saturday, Ice agents teargassed members of the Chicago Police Department after firing on protesters who boxed in agents’ cars.
“They are taking police resources that should be in our neighbourhoods, serving Chicagoans, and diverting them to deal with the chaos they are causing,” said mayor Brandon Johnson. “We need Ice out of our city.”
I know who I’d put my money on.
It is incredibly naive for Trump to think he can break the spirit of this city. If you want a civil war, Donald, you would do well to learn who won the last time: the Anti-Slavery Union, led by a president from Illinois.
