Never content, Black Lives Matter activists will reportedly terrorize holiday shoppers for the second season in a row beginning Black Friday (yes, we too see the irony there).
Thus far reports confirm that shoppers attempting to enjoy Chicago's luxurious retail strip along North Michigan Avenue will instead be met by human chains and chants of racial and social justice. Crain's Chicago Business reports:
The effort, planned by a diffuse network that includes Black Lives Matter, the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression and area churches, seeks to draw attention to a wide range of issues, including police shootings, racism and economic inequalities that keep Chicago's South and West sides mired in poverty and violence.
The organizers say they hope this year's turnout will be larger than last year's, when hundreds of people temporarily obstructed access to retailers along Chicago's most famous shopping strip and cost some stores a reported 50 percent of their sales on Black Friday.
"We're expecting a bigger turnout this year, though this is not an exact science," one of the self-identified organizers, Frank Chapman, a field organizer with the Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, told Crain's. "The reason we're looking for a bigger turnout is that Trump is the president-elect and, boy, are people pissed."
Chapman said protesters remain angry about the Chicago police shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, and about what they say is Mayor Rahm Emanuel's ineffective police accountability legislation. But he also said that the protesters were not defined by race alone. "We've been calling everyone who has a grievance: the African-American community, Latino people, the white working class," he said. "I'm not going to write the white working class off as racist."
The hubris of fringe groups denouncing so-called police shootings, while our law enforcement members are being targeted for assassination in our streets near-daily, is beyond the pale.
But facts have never mattered to these well-funded miscreants -- I mean activists -- who sadly managed to obtain an official permit for the day's disruption, which will also include the Chicago Teachers Union, the American Federation of State, and County and Municipal Employees.
"One of the cornerstones about why we're boycotting on Black Friday is to attempt to redirect people to businesses owned by people of color and women, and explain why it's important to patronize these businesses," Kimberly Veal of Black Lives Matter told Crain's.
Oh really? Like the black owned businesses that were looted and ransacked by Black Lives Matter rioters in Ferguson and other black neighborhoods around the country? Those are the businesses Veal is so concerned about promoting?
Intellectual consistency never has been the Left's forte.
Meanwhile, businesses along Michigan Avenue must now relinquish their most lucrative day of the year to thugs. In 2015, Crains reports that hundreds of protesters blocked entrances to the Apple, Ralph Lauren, Banana Republic, Neiman Marcus, Tiffany, Saks Fifth Avenue, Disney and Brooks Brothers stores.
"We don't have any information yet," said John Chikow, CEO of the Magnificent Mile Association. "We're waiting for a briefing from Chicago police" within the next 24 hours.
In a statement, General Growth Properties, which co-owns Water Tower Place, said the mall "incorporates a 24/7 safety and security team and is in close partnership with CPD as well as the Magnificent Mile Association. At any given time, there are a number of professionally trained security officers on site at the shopping center."
A spokeswoman for Macerich, which owns the Shops at North Bridge on Michigan Avenue, did not respond to a request for comment.
While one source told Crain's they believe the protests might fizzle out due to general fatigue, consider that many protesters are paid and mobilized by the likes of George Soros, who pledged another $10 million to his subversive crusades:
