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With President Donald Trump threatening to “straighten out Chicago” and flood the city with federal law enforcement, local groups in the city are preparing to respond.
Organizers in Chicago already had plans for a “Workers over Billionaires” rally — one of nearly 1,000 similar rallies taking place across the country on Labor Day — long before Trump announced his intention to militarize American cities. But now those threats have become the focus.
The Chicago Teachers Union, which is leading the rally, has prepared a plan that includes educational materials so residents know their rights, a family safety network and a patrol.
“I’ve seen L.A., and I’ve seen Washington, D.C., and the pretext is always this phantom undocumented individual. And then after they established the pretext, they set up shop in Black communities, and they violate the constitutional right of Black citizens,” CTU President Stacy Davis Gates told MSNBC.
Davis Gates said she mostly fears for the safety of the city’s youth should a federal takeover happen, which she said would be “scary.” She added that the Trump administration’s plans would not serve the community.
“The federal government can do a lot to help Chicago,” Davis Gates said. “We’re not asking for a militarized force. We’re asking for SNAP benefits to be restored. We’re asking for the Department of Education to be funded and resourced so that special education children have recourse when their school districts fail to educate them appropriately.”
The Trump administration has reportedly already requested that a military base near Chicago be available to provide support for immigration operations in the area.
As of Thursday, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said he received “no calls from the White House, from the federal government, from anybody who might be in charge of some sort of troop movement.”
Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul told MSNBC’s Ana Cabrera on Wednesday that “there are prerequisites to federalizing the National Guard” and said “no circumstances exist that would require Trump to send the National Guard into Chicago.”
“We didn’t elect a king,” he added. “We elected a president.”