Speech to the Waukegan City Council on August 5th, 2019 (Second Draft)

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. The Waukegan Music Festival Controversy

3. Young Waukegan Residents Urged to Join Police Force

4. Council Tolerates Poor Set of Local Career Opportunities

5. Why the Council Urges Cooperation with the Census

6. Census Carries Deportation Danger

7. Local and State Government Must Avoid Betraying the People
8. Religion in the Public Square
9. Conclusion

Content

1. Introduction

     My name is Joe Kopsick, I'm originally from Lake Bluff, and moved to Waukegan a year and a half ago.

     When I last spoke here, on July 15^th, I talked about garage sales, the census, immigration, and permits. I meant to explain my criticism of the casino approval, but I didn't have time then, so I'll address it today. But not before sharing my thoughts about the Waukegan Music Festival.

2. The Waukegan Music Festival Controversy

     At that last city council meeting, a citizen shared her concern that it might be a case of illegal taxpayer fraud, that the mayor appears in advertisements for the Waukegan Music Festival. I feel that that citizen's concerns were not adequately explained.

     Please imagine, for a moment, that someone else is the mayor of Waukegan. We don't know the person's name. But they're facing re-election, like all mayors do. If the mayor's name, likeness, and/or title, appear in advertisements for public events, then it's reasonable to expect that that incumbent mayor would get an edge in the election, because of that ad, right?

     We should not blame the current mayor personally for the fact that he has appeared in advertisements for public events, because – as he explained - this is a tradition which was started by an earlier mayor. But we can blame the mayor who started it (if indeed this is an improper and illegal use of taxpayer funds). We can't blame Mayor Cunningham for starting this tradition, but we can blame him if he doesn't end it.

     Elected officials – or at least those whom are incumbents and are actively running - gain an unfair advantage from being allowed to appear in ads for public events. The issue of whether this constitutes taxpayer fraud, should best be decided by either the Illinois Supreme Court, or by the voters gathered here in this room; not through a shouting match between the mayor and an alderman.

     The city council allowed the mayor to be his own judge, and acquit himself, without any charges being filed. The mayor should have done the legally appropriate thing, and recused himself from this controversy, seeing as he is a party to it. Either the state Supreme Court should be consulted on the legality of this matter; or if there is no question about the illegality of these ads, then charges should be filed against the mayor (and/or the city department that plans public events).

     The appearance of incumbent candidates in advertisements for public events, unfairly hurts the election chances of new candidates who wish to unseat incumbents, whom should have the same chance as the current mayor to get elected. Finally, the name of the festival should not contain the name, nor title, of any public official, for all the reasons I have explained above.

3. Young Waukegan Residents Urged to Join Police Force

     I have to express my concern about the city council congratulating high school students, who have their whole lives ahead of them, to sign up to be police officers. Eighteen-year-olds may be adults, but they are not old enough to decide whether to sign up to work as police officers and soldiers.

     What would you sacrifice to make sure that your child has a good career? Would you sacrifice their very health and safety? Police and military recruits are often subjected to being pepper sprayed and tased. Military recruits are injected with strange mixes of chemicals that they're never told what it is.

     Do Waukegan parents really think that whatever their kids are getting paid, is enough to offset the emotional and medical cost of enduring beatings in the military, and an onslaught of poisonous chemicals? Is this what you're willing to put your kid through, in order to secure them a job?

     We're told that we're supposed to be proud when young adults – especially racial minorities – join the police force. “Make the police look like the communities they serve”, they tell us. Well, it just so happens that tyrannical regimes throughout history, have co-opted the local communities, and found members of them who were willing to sell all the others out, and chalked it up as a mark of social progress and racial equality.

     For example: European colonizers got African tribal chiefs drunk, and bribed them into letting the colonizers round up their people as slaves. Other colonizers got Native American tribal chiefs drunk, and bribed and defrauded them into letting them claiming the land and kick everybody off. When the Nazis conquered Ukraine, Poland, and Western Russia, they found local military leaders who were willing to compromise with the Nazis. Similarly, the Jewish Ghetto Police enforced Nazi rule over the ghettos (with some degree of Jewish self-governance), while maintaining communications between imprisoned Jews and Nazis.

     Tyrannical regimes co-opted native peoples they conquered, and used the fact that a representative has been chosen from among them, to pretend that that conquered people has given their consent to be ruled. It is a lie, and the idea that more minority police officers will improve a deeply racist, intrinsically violent law enforcement mechanism, is a complete hallucination.

     We should not be encouraging our children to join the police force, especially not at such a young age. God forbid they get shot to death at the age of 18; not even in a war zone, but on the streets of America while doing their job (when they could have chosen any other job, most of them much safer for a young adult whom, again, has their whole life ahead of them).

     Lastly, I must note that I find it laughable that the city noted that the students present, decided to become police officers because of their feeling that “being a cop isn't just for the stupid kids”. I mean, if these are the smart kids, I'd hate to see the stupid kids! Especially the ones who want to become cops. By the way, I hope the city council warns those students against becoming police officers in New Jersey, where courts have ruled it's legal to refuse to hire police applicants if their I.Q. is too high. Because I'm not so sure that the world has any need for smart cops; not until we start training them to de-escalate violence (instead of escalate it) in the course of carrying out orders.

4. Council Tolerates Poor Set of Local Career Opportunities

     And what career opportunities the graduates of Waukegan High School have these days! Why, they can volunteer for the police, and get pepper sprayed and tased as part of training! Hell, why not bring police training directly to the high school, as one town down south did? Why not tase and pepper spray these kids right in their classrooms!? God knows that school security officers have tased and pepper sprayed younger children in public school classrooms in recent years; why stop now?

     But suppose the kid doesn't want to be a cop. They can go to Great Lakes Naval Station, and sign up to be in the military! And be injected with mysterious chemicals, and routinely beaten up as part of basic training, for a very difficult to determine amount of money. Fantastic.

     If your kid doesn't want to be a cop or a soldier, luckily, that new casino is coming to town! Your 17- and 18-year-old daughters can take this opportunity to work at the casino, dealing cards or serving drinks to older men. Men who will probably leer at them, and get away with it because your child will be expected to flirt with them as part of earning tips. Swell.

     Don't want your kid to be a cop, soldier, casino employee, or bartender? Well, she can work at Medline, or a cement company, or the local Sterigenics plants. Why not help her make some money polluting the air that we all have to breathe?

     Waukegan City Council, you are not protecting us. You're not protecting our job opportunities, because none of them are any damn good. You're not protecting public health, nor public safety. And you're not protecting our children's prospects for a clean environment, and a future with decent, honest, respectable careers.

5. Why the Council Urges Cooperation with the Census

     Anyone who was paying attention during the last meeting, will remember exactly why the city council urged us to cooperate with the 2020 U.S. Census survey. The first reason was that a court ruled that the Trump Administration could not include the citizenship question on it. But I ask the members of the city council: What will you do to protect us, if the administration insists on including it anyway (whether they figure out how to do it legally or not)?

     The Constitution authorizes the federal government and its census takers to collect no information other than the number of people. All questions about ethnicity, race, religion, country of origin or birth, and citizenship, are thus illegal, and laws providing for those questions to be asked are unconstitutional. We cannot legally be obligated to answer any of those questions, and I urge residents not to answer them.

     The second reason why the city council urged us to cooperate with the census, is that our elected officials use the census to make money off of us. Making sure that everyone participates in the census, is how government makes sure that congressional districts have equal numbers of people. But the number of people in the district also secures that district federal funding, as part of its “equal share” of federal funding. Of course, it matters to almost nobody that spending and the tax burden are not shared anywhere near equally by the districts and states. But the fact that equality is not furthered in determining where these districts lie, should show that the census's main purpose is to secure whatever funding the district can manage to get.

     This is nothing more than a scam to defraud us, the voters and taxpayers and residents, of our financial power (through our right to those funds), and our legal power (through allowing our elected officials to take away some of our power of attorney, and in so doing, to appropriate more of those federal funds towards themselves and their own offices than towards We the People).

6. Census Carries Deportation Danger

     Aside from the census being a money-making scheme for our legislators, it is also a plot to track us, and harvest our private personal information. Government-regulated credit rating agencies and banks routinely lose millions upon millions of people's personal information; do you really trust government to handle your personal information wisely?

     Moreover, the census could potentially be used as a way to round-up non-citizens and other “undesirables” or “enemies of the state”. I repeat, what do you – the city council – plan to do, if the Trump Administration goes forward with its plan to include a citizenship question on the 2020 Census (whether legally or illegally)?

     Well, I know what you're going to do; You're going to urge cooperation at all times, because to do otherwise would be against the law, and the opposite of what you're supposed to do as elected officials. Which is to urge faith in all public institutions at all times. And you might think that elected officials and police have an obligation to do their jobs, and do as ordered.

     But if your job is to threaten force against people who entered this country illegally but without threatening force themselves, then your job is immoral, and you doing your job conflicts with the public's moral obligation to peacefully resist unjust laws.

     The Waukegan City Council should urge Governor J.B. Pritzker to instruct the Illinois National Guard, and all public police in Illinois, to refrain from cooperating with federal authorities. And that goes for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.), and agents of the 2020 census, alike. That's because the vast majority of these agencies' activities (and questions) are unconstitutional.

     Under no circumstances should the Illinois public be urged to cooperate with federal authorities in pursuit of these unconstitutional aims. The governor should immediately issue an order nullifying the federal law which authorized I.C.E.; effectively removing the authority of I.C.E. to operate legally within the boundaries of the State of Illinois. If necessary, Illinois National Guard troops should be mobilized to arrest federal troops or agents, and/or prevent more of them from entering the State of Illinois, if they insist on enforcing unconstitutional federal laws.

7. Local and State Government Must Avoid Betraying the People

     Just as the Waukegan City Council is doing its residents no service to help them find a clean environment or decent careers, it is also doing them no service to recommend that they cooperate with the Trump Administration.

     Even if the administration doesn't use the census to carry out deportations, it's deporting peaceful undocumented immigrants now. I.C.E. is hassling Hispanic-Americans who were born in America now. Seasonal farm workers are being trapped in America at the end of harvest season, and mocked and driven into the shadows for being here illegally (through no fault of their own), now. Immigrants are being funneled away from points of entry where they could easily declare asylum, and instead are forced to trek through dangerous desert, now.

     Whether the Trump Administration's immigration, deportation, and census policies going forward, will be legal and constitutional or not, why should you urge us to cooperate with those “authorities”? Aren't you supposed to protect public safety? The city government is supposed to work for the people, not the other way around.

     If the police and National Guard of Illinois do not come to the aid of all non-violent residents (not just citizens who pay them) during deportation raids, then neighbors will come together to protect vulnerable residents of Illinois who are in the United States without proper permission.

     And if that happens, then it will be the members of local government – of this city council - who will have urged resident and police cooperation with federal authorities, whom will be remembered as the people who urged cooperation with a blatantly authoritarian regime, and nearly suckered us into becoming fascist collaborators (in turning-in our undocumented neighbors).

     The Waukegan City Council is either against fascism and for its own people, or else it is against its own people and it is enabling the fascist Trump Administration and the companies that are polluting our air and our social culture. Now is the time to choose.

8. Religion in the Public Square

     Finally, I must express my dismay at the fact that these city council meetings begin with a public prayer. Participating in the prayer may be voluntary, but for some 98% of audience members to stand at being urged to pray for the officials here gathered today, should by any reasonable person's standards constitute at least the appearance of government endorsement of religion (even if not some particular religion).

     The people should not be instructed to pray for their legislators. If it is a legislator's job to be concerned with the problems and salvation of the people, then if anything, it's the legislators who should be instructed to pray for the people, not the other way around.

     Residents, look at the way your elected officials are gathered before you. How was Jesus displayed when he was crucified? He was elevated, as a mark of sarcastic reverence towards someone who was said to be a king. Well, your elected officials are elevated in front of you too. Of course, modern legislative chambers and courtrooms are modeled after royal courts; so it should be obvious that this was done intentionally. Under monarchies, kings got their power from God, and everyone below the king (including judges) got their power from the king, who got it from God.

     Fellow citizens, I came to the Waukegan City Council meeting on a Monday evening. I did not come here to pray. I did not come here to watch 98% of you turn this place, intended to promote civic engagement, into a place where we pray for our king as if we were in feudal times, ask the government to answer our prayers, agree to sacrifice our own neighbors for the sake of federal funds and the illusion of civil order, and agree to sacrifice our children's health and safety for the sake of humiliating jobs and depreciating money.

9. Conclusion

     Waukegan City Council: You have no intention of protecting us against fascist federal authorities enforcing unconstitutional deportation orders. You are poisoning your people physically and morally. You are behaving as if the public commons were a church. You are thus a usurpation of God. Everything you are doing is wrong and has no authority, because it comes from neither God nor the people.

     I urge the people to arm themselves, and to resist the census. The federal government has the authority to establish a uniform rule of naturalization, not to enforce it, nor to establish any other types of immigration policy; and the federal government has no obligation to collect census data in addition to the number of people.

     Moreover, the governor would be fully within his right to nullify I.C.E., deportation orders, and additional census questions, and in so doing make Illinois a “Sanctuary State” (although I would not recommend that this designation be made in a way that secures Illinois federal funds). Thus, I also urge the people, and the police, to refuse to cooperate with federal authorities enforcing all immigration laws.

     The Waukegan City Council, and Governor J.B. Pritzker, have a decision to make: Whether they are on the side of freedom and the American people, or whether they want government to be a religious cult, in which we may trust nobody to solve our problems, except for the elected officials who happen to be in charge at the moment. And those officials may only attempt to solve those problems by enforcing whatever set of laws happens to be on the books.

     The Waukegan City Council does the youth of this community no service, by ruining their respect for the importance of civic engagement for the remainder of their lives, by blindly urging cooperation with - and trust in – government, even when the officials and laws we are expected to trust have authoritarian and fascist intentions.

     But even if the city council does put a generation of young adults off of the idea that the government deserves to be trusted, then frankly, so be it; it's not such a bad thing after all. Because government doesn't work - more bad untested laws and more violent enforcement don't work – and so, we should not teach young people to trust the government. If we do, then the next thing you know, their baby is missing, and they've been pepper-sprayed in the eyes, injected with toxic chemicals, and handed a wad of cash.

     Until the Waukegan City Council can start offering more than words when criticizing the Trump Administration's desire to implement legislation they know damn well is unconstitutional – if the council could offer condemnation and plans for action – then it could show a generation of young Waukegan residents that America is about not only civic engagement but also freedom and resistance to tyranny, and that the American people stood up to fascism, and will stand up to it again.

Written on July 30^th, 2019

Based on "Public Officials Should Not Appear in Ads for Public Events:
Speech to the Waukegan City Council on August 5th, 2019"
(which can be read at the following address:
http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2019/07/taxpayer-funded-local-events-should-not.html)

Edited on August 19th, 2019