Speech to the Waukegan City Council Regarding Former Mayor Sam Cunningham (February 3rd, 2025)

Part I: Introduction

      Approximately half of the following speech was delivered to the mayor and aldermen of Waukegan, Illinois, at the February 3rd meeting of the Waukegan City Council.

     What follows is the full speech that I would have given, had I not been constrained by the city council's three-minute time allotment for public comments.

     This speech is based, in part, on an article I published on July 25th, 2021, titled "Former Waukegan Mayor Sam Cunningham Excused Joe Biden's Child Molestation, Then Physically Assaulted my Friend". That article was published eight days after that event occurred.

     I also expanded the article, several times in October and November 2023, to reflect the fact that, originally, I neglected to mention that Cunningham shoved my friend to the ground, and neglected to mention how that occurred.

     While I regret the omission, I stress that I did not embellish the story, nor did I make any errors. The only reason why I forgot that Cunningham shoved my friend - and forgot to mention the reason why my friend subsequently sat on the sidewalk - was because of the stress which the event induced in the moment.

     I have recently discovered that undergoing stress causes the release of the hormone cortisol, which shrinks the hippocampus (which plays an important role in memory). The release of cortisol during the stress response is probably the most important factor contributing to diminished ability to remember said stressful and traumatic events.

     My original account of Cunningham's shoving my friend to the ground on July 17th, 2021 can be read at the following address:

     http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2021/07/former-waukegan-mayor-sam-cunningham.html

     Additional articles I have written that mention Sam Cunningham can be accessed at the links below:
     [Note: Despite the fact that two of these articles' titles begin with the word "speech", they were not actually delivered.]
     http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2019/07/taxpayer-funded-local-events-should-not.html
     http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2019/07/speech-to-waukegan-city-council-on_31.html
     http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2019/07/speech-to-waukegan-city-council-on.html

Part II: Unabbreviated Speech

     My name is Joseph W. Kopsick. I have lived in Waukegan for eight years.

      On February 24^th and April 1^st of this year, 2025, the eligible voters of Waukegan are called to decide who will be the next mayor of this city of 90,000 people.

     I rise this evening to inform the community that one of the candidates in this upcoming mayoral election, committed an act of physical battery, in an act which may also have constituted voter intimidation.

 

     On the evening of July 17^th, 2021, an activist friend and I went to the public sidewalk out in front of what was then the Democratic Party Headquarters of Lake County, at 118 Genesee Street.
     I was holding a sign that read either, “The president is a pedophile” or “The president is a child molester”. I had made this sign to refer to an incident that occurred on January 6^th, 2015, when then Vice President Joe Biden pinched the nipple of an 8-year-old girl, while the girl’s uncle, Steve Daines, was being sworn-in as Senator from Montana. This act was broadcast live on C-SPAN2, footage of it can still be found, and I can produce that footage if asked.

     I brought that sign to the front sidewalk, out in front of an active meeting of the Lake County chapter of the Democratic Party, in order to call local Democrats’ attention to Biden’s inappropriate behavior.

     Around 6:30 P.M., my friend and I noticed that two men were standing in front of the “A Cuban Experience” cigar store across the street. One of them was white, and the other was tall and African-American.
     My friend quickly noticed that the second person was Sam Cunningham, and he drew this to my attention. As soon as we were able to confirm that it was actually him, Cunningham – from across the street - noticed my sign, – which, again, read “the president is a child molester” – and he shouted, “That’s part of the job!”

     [I suppose the case could be made that he was “just joking”, but at the same time, this is arguably not a topic that it’s appropriate to make jokes about.]

     So I said, “Molesting children is part of the job of being president!?"

     Then my friend said, excitedly, “Is that disgraced former mayor Sam Cunningham?” My friend said this loudly enough for Cunningham to hear him.

     [As an aside:

     To say that my friend was in the wrong here, would require arguing that it constitutes “fighting words” to call someone who’s twenty feet away from you, “disgraced”. But my friend did not, at any point, dare Cunningham to fight him, or ask him to cross the street.

     As for the reason why my friend called him “disgraced former mayor”: As I’m sure many of you know, Cunningham had gotten in trouble for allegedly taking too much personal credit for the “Mayor’s Music Festival” and for allegedly working with his mother to attempt to get a man named Mike Morales kicked out of his public housing unit as retaliation for posting a photo of Cunningham and his mother with devil horns.]

     Hearing my friend call him “disgraced former mayor Sam Cunningham”, Cunningham marched across the street, and got up in my friend’s face. I should note, here, that my friend was a full foot shorter than Cunningham in height.

     Cunningham said, “What’d you say?”, pointed his finger at my friend’s chest, and then gave him either a shove, or a hard, firm, long, poke in the sternum. This caused my friend to fall to the ground, onto his backside.

     My friend then stood up, but sat down again, to show that he had been put there by Cunningham, and to show that he was not fighting back. At no point did my friend lay a hand or a finger on Cunningham.

     Before we knew it, Cunningham was allowed to go inside to where the meeting was happening (even though he had just been seen committing battery), and then his mother Mary Ross Cunningham – as well as a white woman inside the Democratic Party meeting – both called the police on us, claiming that there were “people laying down on the sidewalk" (as if Cunningham had not put my friend on the sidewalk by knocking him over during an instance of illegal battery).

     My friend and I left just as the police were arriving. We arguably should have stayed, and explained what happened, but we did not want to be in the position of appearing to resist arrest or contradict police in attempt to convince them that they were acting based on a false police report; nor in the position of having to convince the several people at the nearby La Casa de Samuel who witnessed and filmed the shoving, to hand-over their cell-phone videos (which, by the way, only captured what happened immediately after my friend was knocked to the ground, and thus would not be useful to the police in terms of showing who started the fight, even if they could be recovered).

     Numerous people saw Sam Cunningham there that day. I would be willing to testify in court that the preceding testimony is true, to the best of my recollection. I based tonight’s speech on a longer, more detailed account that I wrote right after it happened. Unfortunately, the police have told me that the statute of limitations for reporting Cunningham’s act of battery, have passed.

     I am not asking you to believe my account unquestioningly; and I would be glad to answer questions. I am simply inviting you to ask yourselves whether you think Sam Cunningham – six-foot-tall Sam Cunningham, whom has been accused of corruption before multiple times – has it within him, to have committed the act I have described.

     And if the answer is yes, then I invite you to consider that that sort of intimidation and battery is not the type of behavior that we should expect from someone who is running to be a servant of the people - as part of a civic obligation to create a more polite, peaceful society, where we sort out our differences calmly using words, rather than through violence – and consider that someone who has been credibly accused of such things should not be deemed a worthy candidate for mayor.

     Cunningham’s opponents are Ann Taylor, Keith Turner, Miguel Rivera, Kenneth Smith, and Harold Beadling. Choose wisely.

Part III: Link to Video

     Video of me delivering part of this speech is not yet available online. However, it may become available in the future, at the City of Waukegan's official YouTube account, which can be found at the following address:
     http://www.youtube.com/@WaukeganTV/videos

Parts I and III written on March 17th, 2025
Part II written on February 2nd and 3rd, 2025.

Based on an article written on July 25th, 2023
and edited in late October and early November 2023.

Published on March 17th, 2025.