We’ve held our fire until now on the controversy surrounding Chicago Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez, 25th, and his speechifying in front of a previously incinerated American flag, all part of an aggressive protest by an outside group of agitators against the actions of the Israeli government in Gaza, among other matters.
It’s our long-standing view that burning the American flag, as offensive as it is to many, is a form of speech. As hard as it may be to swallow, the defense of what that flag stands for must always include the right to express a dissenting opinion by destroying its own symbolic status. Being willing to make that defense is precisely what living free means and many patriots have given their lives for that great cause. Thus we don’t think that Sigcho-Lopez should have been summarily removed as chair of the City Council’s Housing Committee for anything to do with the Stars and Stripes. Why stoop so low?
But living free also means that those who burn the flag, or take part in an event where a flag is burned, are subject to the speech of those who find their acts disgusting. Sigcho-Lopez is on the receiving end of such opprobrium now and, well, he is reaping what he sowed on March 22.
The alderman has claimed that he did not see the remains of the burned flag just a few feet away from where he opened his mouth and was not present when it was burned. Some members of Chicago’s City Council, including Ald. Bill Conway, 34th, have said that the first part of that statement strains credulity, given the symbolic and proximate prominence of those charred remains, and we would share that skepticism. For the the sake of argument, we’ll take Sigcho-Lopez at his word.
The bigger issue here involves the group that was burning said flag and at whose March rally the alderman was speaking, a fringe, far-left group called Behind Enemy Lines that is, among other aims, trying to get Chicago to cancel the upcoming Democratic National Convention. Here is part of its mission statement:
“Rather than engage in routinized protests that threaten no one or begging the rulers for concessions, we envision a militant anti-imperialist movement that throws wrenches in the gears of the war machine, develops anti-imperialist consciousness far and wide, deprives the empire of loyal soldiers, and aims to stop new imperialist wars through mass resistance.”
All such views, even those that aim to throw wrenches in the gears of government, are protected speech, as long as they don’t break U.S. laws. But any American should be wary of a group that denigrates “routinized protests” and, in effect, the democratic process of lobbying those in positions of power. WBEZ called those aldermen who were troubled by these events “conservative City Council members,” but we’d argue that plenty of old-fashioned liberals in that body and beyond have an issue here too. As well they should.
The main problem faced by Sigcho-Lopez is that he is now an elected official with significant responsibilities in a major American city and thus, in the worldview of his friends at Behind Enemy Lines, actually one of the “rulers.” But he is still behaving like an activist throwing stones. At his own body.
Behind Enemy Lines is an extremist group favoring rhetorical language broadly drawn from anarchist philosophies, Marxist dogma and the jargon of armed revolution. It’s one thing to watch them protesting in the streets; it’s another when their featured speaker is a powerful alderman with a burned American flag as a deniable prop. Sigcho-Lopez clearly has failed to see this problem and this week has defiantly held to his myopic view that there should be no difference between an activist and an elected official.
We see this problem as going beyond Sigcho-Lopez, as anyone who read the words of his defenders over the last couple of days can see. Mayor Brandon Johnson is still taking shots at those who opposed the Bring Chicago Home ballot initiative, whereas, as mayor of all Chicagoans, he would be better advised to stick to, “the voters have spoken and we must now move forward.” On a national level, we said at the time that it was a mistake for President Joe Biden to stand on a United Auto Workers picket line and take sides against the automobile companies. Sympathy for union workers is one thing, but using the bully pulpit of the presidency to stand on a picket line only empowered the lower-level likes of Sigcho-Lopez; it signaled that ideology trumps all, that everyone must take a side in all matters, that one side is good and the other evil and that there are no leadership figures left in America to act as honest brokers.
These are transgressions on the left, but we could just as easily focus on the right, especially Donald Trump, whose words are frequently ill-chosen and divisive. Trump does not just propagate right-wing extremism; he creates the kind of physics reaction that energizes and normalizes it on the left, too.
Johnson should tell Sigcho-Lopez to stop with this immature nonsense and behave like a public official whose constituents and city come first. Chicago is not going to cancel the DNC and the last thing we need is violent disruption from a group that believes reasonable protest doesn’t go far enough.
We’re still waiting for an adequate apology from Sigcho-Lopez and a pledge to do better as one of this city’s leaders. In its absence, voters of the 25th ward will do well to keep this mishegoss in their memory bank.
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