The City Council rejected a push Monday to strip Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez of his Housing Committee chairmanship for a protest speech he made in front of a burnt American flag last month.
After more than two hours of often-heated debate that touched on First Amendment rights, appropriate behavior for elected officials and the increasingly divided nature of the council, aldermen voted 29-16 not to punish Sigcho-Lopez, a progressive ally of Mayor Brandon Johnson.
Images of the Southwest Side alderman speaking in front of a charred American flag at a March 22 protest spread across social media, spurring 15 of his outraged colleagues to ultimately call for Monday’s special meeting. Sigcho-Lopez, 25th, said he did not see the burnt flag and was not at the rally when a veteran torched it in protest of the federal government’s support of Israel’s war in Gaza.
In the buildup to Monday’s special meeting, Sigcho-Lopez remained defiant as council critics publicly discussed censuring him, then escalated to try to strip him of his chairmanship — a position that comes with the power to control what housing-focused legislation is considered and that includes over $200,000 in money budgeted for staff salaries.
As Sigcho-Lopez arrived in the council’s chamber Monday, he turned to several cheering supporters, slowly turning back and forth to them as he clapped for several minutes before finally sitting.
Speaking first, Sigcho-Lopez blasted the attempt to push him out of the chairmanship as “pandering” that distracted the council from more important Chicago-focused work, and criticized the aldermen behind it for sparking threats against his family.
“One thing I’m not going to do is condemn a veteran for using his First Amendment right,” he said. “I make no apologies for standing for First Amendment rights. I think some of my colleagues need a lesson on what First Amendment rights mean.”
The contentious tone Sigcho-Lopez struck was underscored by the removal of several protesters who repeatedly disrupted the meeting with shouts supporting or opposing him.
Just after Sigcho-Lopez’s fiery speech, Marine and Army National Guard veteran Ald. Chris Taliaferro, 29th, argued the backlash against the alderman wasn’t about whether or not anyone has the right to burn a flag, but rather the standard elected officials must meet.
He criticized Sigcho-Lopez for speaking alongside a protest group calling for broad resistance against the U.S. government and raucous demonstrations at the Democratic National Convention in August. Sigcho-Lopez joined the call for the DNC to be canceled at the protest, citing a lack of federal support for immigrants.
But Taliaferro went on to say he and the embattled alderman met over the weekend, where Sigcho-Lopez apologized for offending veterans, a gesture he repeated in his remarks Monday. Taliaferro in turn renounced his calls for Sigcho-Lopez to be removed, and apologized for any threats Sigcho-Lopez received.
“I forgave him for what I had in my heart, what I believed to be an improper action. So it’s with that that I accept his apology and say that is enough for me, before removing him from this position,” Taliaferro said.
Still, some aldermen continued to insist Sigcho-Lopez should be stripped of his committee chairmanship, accusing him of effectively endorsing an extremist group. Ald. Bill Conway, 34th, an active Navy reservist, said Sigcho-Lopez’s claim that he didn’t see the burnt American flag he stood only a few feet in front of “strains credulity.”
“But the scarier part seems to be that he did it at the invitation of an organization whose goal is to create chaos and incite violence at the forthcoming Democratic Convention,” he added. “This job isn’t about elevating people who want to burn things down. It’s about bringing people together to build communities.”
Conway said Sigcho-Lopez, who earlier accused Conway of inciting threats against him, had “wagged his finger” earlier in the meeting.
“In the aftermath, he seems to have reveled in the division and fanned the flames of those who wish to incite violence in the city,” Conway said.
But Sigcho-Lopez’s critics were outnumbered by aldermen who opposed the effort to strip him of his chairmanship. The push only heightened division and harmed aldermen’s ability to focus on more important issues, they argued.
Ald. Brian Hopkins, 2nd, said he did not support Sigcho-Lopez’s behavior, but voted against the resolution to curb the mounting ill-will spreading at the council.
“We’re going in a direction where we can no longer be a functional government,” he said.
Ald. Maria Hadden said the council must not return to the gridlock it saw during the “Council Wars” of the 1980s, when a group of white aldermen moved to block all proposals and appointments made by the city’s first Black mayor, Harold Washington. Hadden, 49th, said the concerns over Sigcho-Lopez’s appearance with the burnt flag were fairly held, but should have been settled privately instead of in a special meeting.
“We’re doing it together,” she said. “Can people please think before you speak?”
The decision Monday follows several contentious debates regarding the war in Gaza, including a late-January vote to call for a ceasefire that required Johnson to break a tie.
And in another indication of the increasingly strained relations in the body, aldermen in November came close to censuring Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, 35th, after Ramirez-Rosa was accused of bullying and threatening colleagues while he was chairman of the council’s Zoning Committee. The controversy caused Ramirez-Rosa to lose his chairmanship, but Johnson cast the tie-breaking vote to save his close ally from the symbolic dishonor.
jsheridan@chicagotribune.com
