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Community Leaders Say 'No Thanks' To Shrieking Protesters In Their Neighborhood

Ellie Bufkin
Ellie Bufkin  |  August 13, 2020 2:15 PM

(Graphic Language Warning)

Community leaders in Chicago told off a group of Black Lives Matter activists when they amassed to protest the shooting death of an armed suspect over the weekend in the Englewood neighborhood. 

About 75 BLM protesters showed up in the neighborhood calling for racial justice, defunding the Chicago Police, and justice for the armed criminal that was gunned down as he threatened to kill cops. But some longtime residents of the community weren't hearing it. 

"Y’all don’t come out when a kid gets shot!" president of the Englewood Political Task Force Darryl Smith shouted into a megaphone. "Y’all come out when it’s got something to do with the f------ police."

South Side community activist Duane Kidd also had a problem with the group of social justice warriors who descended onto his neighborhood to protest police activity, but not the rampant violent crime that has plagued the city in recent years. Chicago, like many major American metropolises, has also seen a sudden spike in homicides and other violent crimes amid civil unrest this summer.

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So far in 2020, 38 children have been shot to death in the city of Chicago.

"None of these motherf-----s are gonna be here tomorrow," Kidd said. "That’s why I got a problem." Kidd also castigated the protesters for totally ignoring the community when they chose to come down for the protests. They took over the neighborhood for their rally, he said, but didn't seem to care about the welfare of the people that actually lived there. 

"They didn’t let the community know. They didn’t put flyers on peoples’ doors,” said Kidd. “If they would’ve gotten something incited with the police, who’s gotta deal with it tomorrow? The community. Not them. They’ll be somewhere sipping sangria somewhere. I’m telling you like it is."

Smith said the notion that the widespread Monday looting and rioting in downtown Chicago started because of the shooting in his neighborhood was preposterous. He said the protesters didn't come from the neighborhood and had no right to interfere with their relationship with the police. He called the visiting activists "opportunists."

"We're tired of Englewood being a black eye for any and everything that happens," Smith said to reporters. 

He worried that the persistent anti-police rhetoric being spewed by the activists across the nation would encroach on his good relationship with the precinct commander and that when the protests left the next day, the police would take it out on residents. 

"If your issue is with the police, take it to 35th and Michigan," Smith said, directing protesters toward the Chicago Police headquarters. "Don’t come in Englewood with it ... if the people on 56th Street want to come over and protest the police, they can do it. But no one from the North Side or Indiana or any place other than Englewood can come here and do that."

More than 100 arrests were made on Monday after stores across the Magnificent Mile in the Chicago Loop were vandalized and looted. Chicago Black Lives Matter organizer Ariel Atkins condoned the behavior saying the looted merchandise was "reparations" for the people who stole and the business owners would be covered by insurance. 

Rioters also significantly damaged a children's hospital charity, the Ronald McDonald House, in Streeterville, preventing a 2-year-old stage four cancer patient from being able to travel home for his birthday.