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Monday
Poetry is for when life gets tough, I used to tell my students, and when life got tough for Chicago, Judge Sara Ellis turned to Carl Sandburg’s famous homage to the city. Ellis recently cited “Chicago” as she issued an injunction against “Operation Midway Blitz” from using riot control weapons like pepper balls and tear gas without adequate justification and warning.
According to Capitol Hill Illinois, Ellis
said she’d seen “ample evidence that agents … intended to cause protesters harm” during a number of clashes between the feds and members of the public that ended with the deployment of tear gas and left bystanders fearful and, in some cases, injured.
“I see little reason for the use of force that the federal agents are currently using,” the judge said Thursday. “Pointing guns, pulling out pepper spray, throwing tear gas, shooting pepper balls and using other less-lethal munitions do not appear to be appropriate.”
According to the journal, Ellis catalogued more than a dozen incidents in which immigration agents used excessive force against members of the public.
I haven’t been able to find a transcript of Ellis’s comments and so don’t entirely know how she used “Chicago.” Capitol Hill Illinois claims that she read the entire poem, which makes sense since the poem is set up as a response to the kinds of accusations the Trump administration has been making. Here it is:
Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders:
They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again.
And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger.
And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.
Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities;
Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness,
Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Building, breaking, rebuilding,
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse, and under his ribs the heart of the people,
Laughing!
Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and Freight
Handler to the Nation.
Whoever the “they” was in 1914, there are plenty of Trumpists attacking Chicago now. Indeed, the bullshit level has been turned up to 11. Trump recently said,
“I don’t know why Chicago isn’t calling us, saying, please give us help when you have over just a short period of time, 50 murders and hundreds of people shot. And then you have a governor that stands up and says how crime is just fine. It’s, it’s really crazy, but we’re bringing back law and order to our country,” Trump said.
Meanwhile the Department of Homeland Security, under Kristi Noem, claimed that it was targeting “the criminal illegal aliens who flocked to Chicago and Illinois because they knew Governor Pritzker and his sanctuary policies would protect them and allow them to roam free on American streets.”
Interestingly, the accusations that Sandburg concedes as having some truth for Chicago (“wicked,” “crooked,” “brutal”) apply far more to the Trump White House than to the city. While Chicago politics were once notoriously corrupt, now it is the president and the Congressional allies who are wickedly covering for pedophiles (including possibly the president himself). Now it is the president who is crookedly and openly fishing for bribes, extorting law firms, media companies, and universities, and pardoning criminals in exchange for favors. Now it is the Trump administration that is brutally contributing to the wanton hunger of women and children (and of men too).
For its part, Chicago has cleaned up its act. Yes, murder is still a problem, although not more so than in many American cities and a fair amount of that is due to Republicans’ refusal to pass common sense gun laws. But Condé Nast Traveler‘s prestigious Readers’ Choice Awards has Chicago first on their list of Best Big Cities in the U.S. for the eighth straight year, and Chicago was recently listed as one of the world’s best cities for culture by Time Out, the only U.S. city to make the list. The real problem, as Donald Trump sees it, is that Chicago is a blue city in a blue state with an outspoken Democratic governor.
For her part, Ellis didn’t make any of the concessions that Sandburg makes, observing that it “simply is untrue” (as the Trump administration charges) that “Chicagoland area is in a vice hold of violence, ransacked by rioters and attacked by agitators.”
“From Aurora to Cicero, and Chicago to Evanston to Waukegan,” she said, “this is a vibrant place, brimming with vitality and hope, striving to move forward from its complicated history.” Having caught out U.S. Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino in some outright fabrications, she asserted that the Justice Department “lack[s] credibility.”
Given all that the city is currently suffering, imagine how powerful it would be for Chicagoans to hear a judge read from the bench,
So I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive…
Past Posts on Judges Citing Literature
Judge Invokes Handmaid’s Tale in Ruling
Citing Orwell, Judge Rules against Trump
Incoming Judge cites Maya Angelou
Trans Student Gavin and a Poetic Judge
A Judge’s Love Affair with Marcel Proust
Shakespeare in the Courtroom
Trump Wants to Kill All the Lawyers
The Bard’s Defense of the Law and Lawyers
Marc Antony for the Prosecution
