At Long Last, The Honorary Trump Street Signs Are Down
By Stephen Gossett in News on Dec 7, 2016 6:43PM
In what proved to be a no-that’s-not-awkward-at-all prelude to Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s Wednesday morning meeting with Don Donald, the city finally removed the remaining honorary Trump Plaza street signs over the weekend, the Sun-Times reports.
The campaign to remove the offending bits of visual litter began in October, when Ald. Brendan Reilly (42nd) introduced an ordinance to take down the honorary signs, which marked a stretch of Wabash Avenue near Trump Tower.
“Chicago’s honorary street signs are meant to recognize Chicagoans who have made us a world-class city,” Reilly told Chicagoist at the time. “Given Donald Trump’s recent rhetoric against the city, women and minorities, he does not deserve that special distinction.”
The City Council voted in favor of the ordinance last month, but even after getting the thumbs up for a teardown, the city hadn’t removed the signs until this weekend. (One of the three signs had already been cleared away by a vandal enterprising nobleman.) The other signs were finally, unceremoniously stripped away at around 8 a.m. on Sunday morning, Michael Claffey, CDOT spokesperson, told the Sun-Times.
A week after the ordinance was introduced, Emanuel was joined by a gaggle of local politicians and lawmakers in front of Trump Tower where they alternated verbal smackdowns against the now-president-elect. There, Emanuel said he supported the removal of the Trump signs. (Emanuel received a $50,000 political donation from Trump in 2010, a sum which Emanuel has not returned.) Emanuel further pushed back on Trump more recently with his pledge to maintain immigrant rights in Chicago. When the two met face-to-face on Wednesday, Emanuel urged Trump to not cut funding for DACA, the federal program that assists immigrant children.
As you may recall, during the campaign Trump made one or half a dozen unflattering references to Chicago, in terms of crime and corruption. Since Trump's election, protesters have staged several large-scale anti-Trump demonstrations in the city.
Meanwhile, Ald. Anthony Beale, for one, seems fed up with honorary-street-sign talk in general and wouldn't mind seeing a pause on the practice altogether, according to the Sun-Times.
Still, we're pretty down with the Trump signs getting taken down. Now if we could just do something about the Trump Tower sign itself. Heard any good ideas?