'It is time to call for calm'
Pritzker declares disaster in nine counties, calls up more guardsmen, blasts Trump’s ‘incendiary rhetoric’
Gov. Pritzker calls for calm during a news conference Monday at the Thompson Center. (Illinois.gov)
By Ted Cox
The governor issued a disaster proclamation for nine counties — including Chicago’s Cook County — and deployed another 250 members of the Illinois National Guard Monday in a bid to quell violence and looting across the state in the wake of peaceful protests against police brutality.
But Gov. Pritzker also called out President Trump for “incendiary rhetoric” that he said had “fanned the flames” and made a bad situation worse across the country.
Citing “a surge of destructive action — notably looting — over the last 24 hours,” in cities almost statewide, Pritzker said he’d signed a disaster proclamation for nine counties: Champaign, Cook, DuPage, Kane, Kendall, Macon, Madison, Sangamon, and Will. He said that would enable the state to “operate flexibly” in deploying the additional guardsmen and 300 state troopers to take preventive measures against continued looting.
“It is difficult to put into words, the damage that has happened to our communities over the weekend,” Pritzker said at a late-afternoon news conference at the Thompson Center in Chicago. He said that threatened to require a “second rebuilding” of small businesses already struggling to overcome the “pandemic-induced economic strife we’re living in.”
Pritzker said, “It has to stop. We have to take care of our people.”
Pritzker drew a sharp line between the legitimate protests against police brutality and systemic racism prompted by the death of George Floyd last week at the hands of Minneapolis police, and “those who have taken advantage of this moment to loot and smash,” charging they were out to also “steal the voices of those expressing a need for meaningful change.”
Trump came in for harsh criticism, as the governor expanded on his remarks reported earlier in the day in accusing Trump of “inflammatory” rhetoric, calling on governors in a conference call to “dominate” protesters.
“We live in some extraordinary and difficult moments now,” Pritzker said. “This has something to do with the leadership in this nation. … I don’t want to dominate peaceful protesters who have legitimate grievances.
“The president has fanned the flames instead of bringing peace and calm,” Pritzker said. “It is usually the job of the president to stand up in these circumstances and try to bring down the temperature. That’s not what this president does.”
Saying he found Trump guilty of “inflammatory rhetoric” in the face of the national crisis — which has seen even the White House under attack — he added, “I wish that the president would hold his words. If he can’t say something that is going to help us across the nation to bring the temperature down, then he shouldn’t say anything at all.”
Ideally, Pritzker said, Trump should “speak to the pain that’s being experienced by people all across the country — African Americans, people of color, who have been subject to situations like we’ve seen,” such as the Floyd killing. “I really think it is time to call for calm, around not just the city of Chicago, but the entire state of Illinois and the entire country. That is in part the job of a president. This one hasn’t done it.”
Brigadier Gen. Richard Neely, commander of the Illinois National Guard, added that he wanted to “echo the governor’s call for peace.”
“We’ll do what’s necessary here,” Pritzker said, “first of all to allow the peaceful protesters to do the kind of protest that’s appropriate, and then to catch the bad guys.
“We will meet the challenge,” the governor said. “We have the capability to meet the challenge. The people of Illinois have the capability. And again I would ask for people to step up and call for calm and peace in our streets.”
Soon after Pritzker’s news conference, Trump staged one of his own in Washington, D.C., saying he was deploying troops to quash violence. Pritzker immediately rebuffed that on CNN, saying, “I reject the notion that the president can send troops into the state of Illinois.”
He made no apologies for the hard criticism of the president, saying, “We have to express our values. What I said is an expression of the values of the people of Illinois.”