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LOCAL News :: Peace

Chicago City Council Committee OKs call for Iraq pullout

A City Council committee on Monday weighed in on the war in Iraq, hearing emotional testimony on both sides of the issue before advancing a resolution calling for an "orderly and rapid" withdrawal of American troops.
If the full council approves the measure, Chicago would be one of the first big cities in the country officially to urge the federal government to end the war, said Ald. Joseph Moore (49th), a lead sponsor of the resolution, already endorsed by 40 of the council's 50 aldermen. The council will consider the measure Wednesday.

And what heft might Chicago's opinion have?

"When you have a city as diverse as Chicago is and large as Chicago is weighing in on this important issue, I think it will have real impact," Moore said. "We are not Berkeley, Calif., or Madison, Wis., that routinely passes this sort of resolution. We are from the heartland."

San Francisco apparently is the only other big city so far to have called for a troop withdrawal, though some smaller towns have taken similar action.

A similar resolution was passed in an 8-1 vote by the Evanston City Council late Monday. About 150 people overwhelmingly in favor of the measure crowded the council chambers, where aldermen voted on the measure at 11:30 p.m. Monday.

Jordan Lome, with a local group called Neighbors for Peace, said before the council meeting that "people are here because they want to speak out on the war and against the [Bush] administration. These are regular people with regular voices."

But a handful of people said they came to the meeting to urge the council to vote against the resolution.

"For war to end, there must be a side that will unconditionally surrender to the other," said Gene Salamon of Evanston. "Should the resolution before the City Council pass, to whom would the city of Evanston and those with similar bearing wish to tender their white flag?"

Ald. Edmund Moran (6th), who voted against it Monday, said during the meeting that everyone wants the troops to come home, but the country has to "stay the course. The terrorists have their eye on our resolve," Moran said.

"Enough is enough," Ald. Ann Rainey (8th), who supported the measure, said before the meeting. "Over 1,800 lives lost for a reason I'm not certain of. That's why I am supporting it."

Chicago's council from time to time has voiced its opinion on national and international issues. Before the start of hostilities in Iraq, it voted 45-to-1 to oppose an invasion.

The council's Human Relations Committee, which considered the resolution, has received a letter of support from Cindy Sheehan, the anti-war activist and mother of a soldier who died in Iraq.

Another mother, Ginger Williams, whose son is an Army lieutenant serving in Iraq, told the committee that she wants Chicago "to send a message" to politicians in Washington who have sent young people to war without ever having served themselves.

Some people say that while troops are in combat "everybody has to shut up," Williams said. "Well, this mother doesn't have to shut up."

Jim Frazier, of St. Charles, told the committee that he talked about the withdrawal resolution by phone on Sunday with a buddy of his 24-year-old son, Jacob, who was killed in combat in Afghanistan in 2003. The friend is deployed in Iraq, Frazier said.

"His immediate response was, `And let everybody who got killed over here count for nothing? No way.'"

Kirk Morris of Gurnee, whose son, Geoffrey, 19, died in Iraq last year, said he has been in touch with about half of the 97 Illinois families who have lost loved ones in the war.

"Not a one of them would support this resolution. ... This resolution does not support our troops," Morris asserted.

In other City Council action, meanwhile, Ald. Dorothy Tillman (3rd) called for the removal of Lehman Brothers from a $1.5 billion city bond deal after a senior Lehman official at first downplayed historic connections to slavery by the firm and its predecessors, only to acknowledge under questioning that involvement was more extensive than previously reported.

When a new round of research is completed soon, the company will amend a required disclosure statement filed with the city earlier this year "to reference we were involved in a more direct way ... in the cotton trade," Joseph Polizzotto, Lehman's general counsel, told the council's Finance Committee.
 
 

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