A Chicago City Council meeting adjourned early Wednesday, leaving business unfinished after Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Alderwoman Jeanette Taylor engaged in a tense exchange on the council floor.
Lightfoot moved to have the council take up her appointment of Celia Meza for corporation counsel, which reportedly diverged from the regular order of business and to which Taylor and Alderman Raymond Lopez objected.
Taylor and Lopez reportedly moved to delay consideration of the appointment of Meza on behalf of Anjanette Young. Meza filed a motion to dismiss a lawsuit against the city brought by Young, who sued after she was subjected to a botched raid by city police in 2019.
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Young said June 16 she felt “betrayed” by the Lightfoot administration’s motion to dismiss.
“This was about the mistreatment of Anjanette Young. Nothing more, nothing less,” Taylor said during the Wednesday meeting.
“At the end of the day, corporate counsel needs to remember they work for the constituents of the city of Chicago and stop siding with the mayor, and we should not get up and have tears and say we would hate it if this was our mother or this was our daughter, then turn around and do something different,” Taylor added.
Lightfoot called for a recess and walked back to where Taylor was sitting and confronted her.
Images from the meeting showed Lightfoot and Taylor face to face and apparently arguing. Another showed Lightfoot walking away looking disgruntled.
“She was pointing her finger in my face, telling me I disrespected a woman of color or I cut a woman of color. Don’t try to do that. What you’re doing to Ms. Young is wrong,” Taylor said.
“She was doing the yelling. I told her to get her finger out of my face and to stop yelling at me. I’m not a child. I don’t work for Lori Lightfoot,” she said. “We are co-workers. The sooner she understands that, the better off she’ll be. … You don’t do that to people. I would never do that to her — ever.”
The meeting proceeded with confrontation over procedural rules, with Lightfoot chiding Alderman Edward Burke for interjecting to defend a fellow alderman’s motion.
“Standing up and yelling without seeking recognition is not something that’s appropriate,” Lightfoot said.
Lightfoot put out a statement after the meeting adjourned, calling out a “small group of aldermen,” who she said “brazenly created a spectacle and did a disservice to their constituents” and blamed them for the failure to complete council business.
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“Someone explain to @chicagosmayor it was HER FLOOR LEADER that moved to adjourn. It was HER ALLIES that voted to leave. It is HER FAILURES AS MAYOR on full display today,” Lopez wrote on Twitter.
“Mayor Lightfoot is our presiding officer. It’s clear she needs to take a training on Robert’s Rules and how to properly chair a meeting,” Alderman Carlos Ramirez-Rosa wrote on Twitter. “She consistently abuses of her [sic] chair position to ignore or block motions that are in order.”
The Wednesday incident is not the first clash between an alderman and Lightfoot, who, in 2020, told Lopez he was “100% full of s***” during an argument about the city’s response to looting.
“F*** you, then,” Lopez responded. “Who are you to tell me I’m full of s***?”
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Tags: News, Chicago, city, Government, Mayor
Original Author: Jeremy Beaman
Original Location: Heated Chicago City Council meeting adjourned after Lightfoot and alderman clash on floor
