These People Really Don't Want Trump Campaigning At UIC This Friday

By Sam Stecklow in News on Mar 8, 2016 5:28PM

Building off of the momentum started by students at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who began a petition to bar Donald Trump from holding a rally at the UIC Pavilion on Friday, multiple groups have come out against UIC hosting the rally. A coalition of Latino politicians and community leaders, including U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez and Alds. George Cardenas, Raymond Lopez, and Gilbert Villegas, said Monday that they plan to hold a counter-protest.

"We want to raise our voices because the city of Chicago has an incredibly proud tradition of being inclusive, of bringing people together," Gutierrez told the Tribune. "And Mr. Trump has the tradition of division, of hatred, of bigotry, of prejudice. We are asking all of Chicago to stand up."

Separately, 180 UIC professors signed a letter addressed to chancellor Michael Amiridis that reads in part:

We are deeply distressed that this event threatens to create a hostile and physically dangerous environment to the students, staff, faculty and alumni who come out to express their opposition. We base this claim on what happened recently at another public higher education institution, Valdosta State in Georgia, where university security ejected a group of peaceful protestors, all of whom were students enrolled at the university, who were seeking to attend the rally being held in a campus venue.… A range of reports in both the alternative and mainstream press have provided credible evidence that people of color and individuals with values opposed to those touted by the Trump campaign have been verbally and physically assaulted by not just the crowd attending Trump rallies, but also by the security forces staffing them. This maltreatment has extended to journalists. Some have been violently removed from rallies, despite having done nothing uncivil, let alone illegal. Donald Trump has been quoted as saying something to the effect of being willing to defend in court anyone who finds him or herself in trouble for reporting or expelling dissenters from his rallies and speeches. There is evidence that members of his audience have treated visible racial or religious markers as grounds for expulsion and that security and police have been enlisted to assist them. All of this amounts not only to a refusal to defend the rights and protect the safety of those targeted individuals, but more importantly as a direct affront against those rights and that safety. It also compromises the integrity and mandate of the officers assigned to maintain order and safety. We believe that these actions suggest that an incitement to violence is very likely and must be planned for and stopped if UIC is going to allow the rally to move forward. We believe these examples also constitute sufficient evidence to justify canceling the event to protect the physical safety of the UIC community.

The anti-Trump sentiment is widespread throughout the city. As many on social media have noted, a pro-Trump billboard at Ogden & Western in Lawndale has been defaced.

Good morning Chicago. We of course would never ever condone anything like this.

Posted by Riot Fest on Tuesday, March 8, 2016

The latest Tribune poll, conducted last week, has Trump beating Ted Cruz by ten points in the Illinois primary.

Note: A previous version of this story said the UIC Pavilion is located in the 11th Ward; that is incorrect.