Convicted Jan. 6 rioters have won sweeping pardons from President Donald Trump. They may nonetheless soon lose their ability to hold Chicago government jobs.
The City Council Workforce Development Committee advanced a measure Wednesday to ban anyone convicted for participating in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol Building from working for the city. The ordinance, slated for a final full City Council vote next Wednesday, marks yet another instance of Chicago politicians airing their disapproval with Trump’s presidency.
“We witnessed a violent and shameful attack on our democracy. A mob fueled by lies and conspiracy stormed the very heart of our government,” said Ald. Gilbert Villegas. “This was not patriotism. This was not democracy in action. This was an insurrection.”
Villegas, who served in the Marines, sponsored the ordinance, alongside Ald. Matt Martin, 47th, and the City Council’s two other current and former military servicemen, Ald. Chris Taliaferro, 29th, and Ald. Bill Conway, 34th.
The measure directs the city’s Human Resources commissioner to “reject or disqualify” anyone applying for city work “who was convicted of a crime as a result of participation” in the riot.
The convicted-then-pardoned rioters showed who they were when their group attacked police, vandalized property and threatened lawmakers, Villegas said. Their conduct makes them unfit to work in government, he added.
Ald. Andre Vasquez, 40th, praised the ordinance. He argued there is a difference between the violent Capitol riot and the conduct of protesters recently targeted by Trump for deportation.
“I think it is frightening when we think about where we’re at as a nation that folks who literally stormed the Capitol were then just let go and we are in a moment right now where if you speak out publicly against the federal government, you can get snatched up,” Vasquez said. “That is where we have slid.”
Martin called the measure “commonsense.”
“When you attack government, whether it’s at the national level, the state, the county, the local government, you lose the right to earn a paycheck,” he said.
Martin noted Gov. JB Pritzker led a push to install a similar ban at the state level in January, “immediately after President Trump issued these horrible pardons.”
“It’s now time for the city to do it, albeit a few months too late in my opinion,” he said.
But not all aldermen supported the measure.
Ald. Nick Sposato, who in the days after Trump’s victory rolled into City Council chambers with a Trump flag attached to his wheelchair, was the lone vote against the measure.
He called the attacks against the police “despicable and disgusting.” But he added that many people at the protest were not fighting with police, while many protesters in Chicago have in recent years.
Plenty of attendees were simply trespassing, and Jan. 6 was not an “insurrection,” he argued.
“It was a protest, turned into a riot,” Sposato said. “Why not the Black Lives Matter riots? Why not the attack on the Columbus Statue? Why not those people?”
Sposato later said he thought the people who attended the riots were being “idiots” and disagreed with them that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.
“I just think we’re cherry-picking here,” he continued.
But Villegas fired back. Alongside the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Jan. 6 was the only day he thought about putting his Marines Corp uniform back on since being discharged, he said.
And it was an “insurrection,” he added.
“I took an oath to defend this country against all enemies, foreign and domestic. And that oath does not have an expiration date,” he said. “If you overthrow the government, sorry, you’ve lost your opportunity to work for government.”
The measure passed in a voice vote with Sposato in opposition.
