Victory Girls Blog By Kim Hirsch
The Englewood neighborhood of Chicago is one of the most dangerous areas of the city. As of this writing, the South Side ‘hood has racked up 42 homicides so far this year, with 179 people wounded. Englewood was also the site of the police shooting of a 20-year-old that preceded the chaos of Monday morning.
So you might think Black Lives Matter demonstrators would be welcome there. But you’d be wrong.
On Tuesday evening, activist groups came to Englewood via car caravan to protest a South Side police station. These included demonstrators from Black Lives Matter Chicago, Southsiders Organized for Unity and Liberation, and Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression. When you have groups that include the words “Liberation” and “Racist and Political Repression” in their names you know that they’re not planning to discuss issues over coffee. They wouldn’t mind stirring up some trouble.
So what do these groups want? Oh, the usual: defund police, remove police from schools, and more money for social services.
But neighborhood advocates didn’t want any of it. Things got heated between the BLM groups and two Englewood men who are trying to improve neighborhood relations with the police. The outside agitators would just cause more tension, they reasoned.
One man, 42-year-old Duane Kidd, accused BLM of “throwing a party.”
“This is propped up. They’re throwing a party.”
Then, added Kidd, the protesters will go home and “they’ll be sipping sangria.”
Kidd also fumed that agitators shut down the main street, making movement difficult for elderly residents of Englewood:
“They got the streets shut down. What about the elders that have to get up and down 63rd Street? Now they got to take the side routes.”
Did the BLM groups bother to think about their elders? Or anyone else in that neighborhood?
Darryl Smith, Englewood resident and president of a local political task force, argued that agitators upset a fragile balance in the neighborhood.
“When they leave, the police are going to be pulling us over. The police are going to be pulling our kids out of cars for no reason. Because the police are bitter now. You come and shut down 63rd Street, all this extra manpower, they’re mad.”
Smith raged at the outsiders, asking them where they were when nine Englewood children were shot. He tore into both the “white n******” and “black “n******” and “bozos” who came unannounced into his neighborhood. It wasn’t eloquent or safe for work, but it sure was some glorious shade.
But some of the demonstrators from a Chicago group called “GoodKidsMadCity” complained at Twitter that “aggressive agitators” tried to provoke “a violent confrontation.” Instead, these kids were there to “spread love.”
Tonight we didn’t participate in the rally/protest because aggressive agitators were being disruptive & tried to provoke us into a violent confrontation. We live in #Englewood & we welcome @CAARPRNow @BLMChi @SOULInChicago & others working to #DefundCPD & make our hoods safe! pic.twitter.com/5UUHq7DQDV
— GoodKidsMadCity (@GKMC18) August 12, 2020
Oh, give it a rest. Especially because the girl complaining in the tweet is Miracle Boyd. And I wrote about Ms. Boyd just last month.
Miracle is a veteran of other recent incidents in Chicago. In fact, she earned some scars at the Battle of Grant Park when agitators tried to tear down the Columbus statue.
That’s when a police officer clocked her.
WE ARE SO FUCKING ANGRY!!! OUR MEMBER MIRACLE WAS BEATEN UP BY THE POLICE TONIGHT AND THEY STOLE HER PHONE!!!
.@chicagosmayor A RECENT CPS GRADUATE WAS ATTACKED BY CPD! SHE DIDNT DO ANYTHING WRONG! THIS IS HOW YOU TREAT BLACK GIRLS!?
Justice for Miracle!!!#DefundCPD pic.twitter.com/F8ZONH5ZWi— GoodKidsMadCity (@GKMC18) July 18, 2020
However, Miracle had been antagonizing police, and she tried to interfere with an arrest. So I didn’t shed any tears over her missing incisors.
But that’s not all. Miracle also bragged about breaking windows in downtown Chicago during protests in May. No wonder the local neighborhood advocates don’t want her or her ilk around.
Yet Englewood police officer Cmdr. Larry Snelling had good words to say about Darryl Smith and Duane Kidd:
“These guys right here come out when a community member is hurt, when someone is robbed, whenever someone does violence to another person, they are always out here. And they’re not getting paid for this, they’re doing this because they’re invested in their community.”
“I think it just upsets them when they have a group of people who just walked into their community, with misinformation, and decide what the problem is in their community.”
Kudos to these good people of Chicago who see through the phoniness of Black Lives Matter. BLM cares more about political power than the security of people in poor neighborhoods. While Kidd and Smith may not always like what the local police do, they do understand that Englewood needs those men and women in blue around.