Festivals

We just read this about an Urban festival (which appears to be a cover for a muslim festival) from Shaved. We are also in the midst of the Puerto Rican fest.

Why does it matter?

Hundreds, if not thousands, of police officers are being sent to these events from districts citywide. We are certain that the 22nd district is not immune to it. These festivals are being held in neighborhoods that already have a plethora of police in them. And guess what? You and us are paying for them. Most of us are probably not be going to them because we fear us or our children getting caught up in a gang fight or gunfire, but we sure are paying for them.

Hold the phone, we are paying for festivals that we do not attend and we are paying our police to go to these festivals to leave us unprotected on the homefront. In a logical world, this would not make any sense.

But we live in Chicago.

At least we get this groundswell of police every year during the Southside Irish Parade....er... Fuck, they took that away from us too. The one event that is meant for our neighborhood that we felt safe going to has been removed from our neighborhood. Why did they do this? Because of the minor disturbances and fighting that occured.

Have you been to some of these other festivals? We guess that means that Bud Billiken, Mexican Parades, Puerto Rican fests and every other neighborhood festival will be cancelled based on this criteria. We mean, people get shot at these other festivals, which has to rise well above the level of 'chaos' observed during the Southside Irish parade.

Nope, we get fucked in more than one way here. And we sit here and take it.

We hope our politicians are at least taking us out to dinner first. We hate feeling used.