Part I: Introduction
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.
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 17th,
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 6th,
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.
