Be Loud - for America - Governor Pritzger

[Amaryllis]

https://contrarian.substack.com/p/be-loud-for-america

Be Loud — For America
By Governor JB Pritzker
Sep 19, 2025

I have spent the last few weeks addressing and preparing for a military invasion by the President of the United States. No, I’m not a soldier or a foreign adversary. I’m the Governor of Illinois, one of our nation’s largest and most prosperous states.

This is the reality we face, and it is not acceptable. Even though there is no emergency or insurrection, Donald Trump has put blue states that he considers his enemies in the crosshairs for political punishment. As we work to overcome his Medicaid and SNAP cuts, grow our economy despite his new tariff taxes, balance our budget, rebuild our roads, and help students learn, we must now face a new reality. We have to support our communities as Trump’s ICE agents run rampant on our streets with impunity and detain U.S. citizens—while at the same time navigating the ongoing threats of sending in the National Guard.

I am not surprised. Trump has held onto an obsessive hatred for Illinois since before his first term, and he’s been disparaging Chicago—the most American of cities—since long before he built Trump Tower Chicago. He knows our city is too great, too beloved, and too resilient to ever embrace a small-minded wannabe dictator like him. Everything Trump stands for upsets our collective Midwestern values of hard work, kindness, honesty and caring for our neighbors.
“Be Upstanders for our Democracy”

I could tell you how Chicago’s homicide rate has dropped by nearly 50 percent since the summer of 2021 and is not even in the top 25 most dangerous cities in the U.S; or how Illinois ranks in the top half of states for lowest violent crime rate and has invested more than $250 million violence prevention programs that actually work. I could tell you how Illinois ranks 6th nationally in per capita investments in our police force. And that even with all of this progress, we still have work to do. Indeed, that’s what we’re doing—every single day.

But we all know that Trump’s campaign to militarize Chicago isn’t about crime.

So the question remains: What is this about, and what are we going to do about it?

snip

Our country has survived darker periods than the one we are going through now—but that only happened because good people refused to stay silent. The attacks must end with Chicago. So I’m asking you, my fellow Americans across the nation: instead of being bystanders, be upstanders for our democracy.

Unlike Donald Trump, most Americans believe in the ideals our nation was founded upon. Now is the time to stand up for those noble ideals.

Much More at link

[Kid Berwyn]

1. Another Democrat who makes us proud.

“Unlike Donald Trump, most Americans believe in the ideals our nation was founded upon. Now is the time to stand up for those noble ideals.”