Gov. JB Pritzker and Mayor Lori Lightfoot will talk about calling the National Guard into Chicago during a 3 p.m. press conference.

I'll live tweet it. Follow for updates and let me know if you have questions. https://blockclubchicago.org/2020/05/31/chicago-calls-in-national-guard-after-night-of-protests-damage-downtown/

Pritzker: "As governor, it's my job to respond when our municipalities ask for assistance, so I have activated 375 members of the Illinois National Guard to carry out a limited mission to assist local law enforcement with street closures. With regard to protesters who are ...

"exercising their First Amendment right, the Guard has explicit direction not to interfere. They will operate under the most stringent orders under use of force ... ."

Pritzker: Chicago and other Illinois cities are mourning George Floyd and "the countless others who have been killed for being Black in America."

Pritzker: At the same time, Illinois is coming off a peak of coronavirus, which has disproportionately claimed lives and jobs in the Black community. "These are enormous weights that nobody should have to carry. It's not lost on me that the peaceful protesters who have been ...

"out over the last few days weighed the risks of the pandemic agains coming out to speak their truth, and they chose to gather, anyway. To them, I want to say: I see you. I hear you. I understand why you made the choice you made. I encourage anyone who took to the streets to ...

"make their voices heard to now isolate to avoid potentially infecting the people that you love."
Those who show symptoms of COVID-19 should get tested for free.
"For much of the day yesterday, the protests here in Chicago were beautiful, massive, peaceful. That is as much a ...

"part of the city of what's happening in this city, this country, as anything else. But late in the evening yesterday, the protests became about violence and damage. That changes the conversation away from the terrible acts that took George Floyd's life, away from the ...

"insidious racism that we all have a role in addressing."

Pritzker: "I see the pain of this moment written on the faces of my Black friends and colleagues and staff. I know that peacefully protesting is only one part of the expression of that pain. I know that they need to see action, which includes real criminal justice and policing...

"reform, as well as a sustained economic investments in Black and Brown communities. I know that they need to see complete and full justice for George Floyd and his family, something we have not seen yet. I know that one of my most sacred obligations as your governor is to ...

"take actions that build trust, and that takes time. I also have an obligation to this state and to the city of Chicago to keep people safe, even as we are dealing with this destructive pandemic we have never curtailed people's right to peacefully express themselves. But the ...

"virus is still out there, and we cannot forget that."
"I'm imploring people to not force a difficult second rebuilding on our small businesses in the course of expressing your justified pain."

Pritzker: "We cannot fix things that we decide not to see. So let's go forward with our eyes wide open and our heart open to actions that back up our words."

Lightfoot: "One of those difficult decisions yesterday was, after a lot of conversation with the superintendent of police and assessing the circumstances on the ground, reaching out to the governor and asking for the support of the Illinois National Guard."

Lightfoot: "The Guard is here to support our Police Department. They will not be actively involved in policing or patrolling; they're here as needed support."

Lightfoot: "To be clear, we all support and cherish the First Amendment and the right of us as residents to express ourselves in peaceful, non-violent protests. I've certainly marched in a number of protests myself."

Lightfoot: "We do have an obligation, also, to protect life and liberty and property. And that's exactly what we did and will continue to do. We are a strong city and a proud people. This is our home. This is the city that we built, and we will always protect our city because ...

"this is the home that will provide for all of us for generations to come."

Lightfoot thanks the governor, first responders and city employees.

Lightfoot: "This is a time for us to unite. Even from the destruction that we've seen, what I choose to focus on is not what we lost but what we can and will gain in this moment as we come together as a city and move forward, as we turn our pain into purpose and continue the ...

"hard but necessary work of building a more inclusive, equitable and just city. This is who we are as Chicago, and we will not let a small element pervert us, try though they might. We will stand and rise above this moment."

Illinois National Guard Adjutant Gen. Richard Neely: "Our soldiers and airmen from the Illinois National Guard come from the Illinois communities. They are proud community members. They are us."

Neely: "The soldiers of the Illinois National Guard who will be helping protect the people and property in this limited capacity ... the battalion has been specially trained as military police and is fully qualified to perform these duties and jobs in support of law enforcement."

Neely: Some of the soldiers in the battallion are police officers, mechanics, students, etc. "We are a slice of Illinois and we are a slice of this city. We are here to carry out a limited mission at the request of Mayor Lightfoot and the governor to help manage street ...

"closures so those protesters will not interfere with those who want to exercise their First Amendment right. In fact, we are committed to protecting every citizen to ensure their rights are not stepped on whether here in Illinois or while deployed overseas."
They've already ...

arrived and are "fully equipped to protect themselves."

Neely: "We will not during this teleconferece today discuss those guidelines or policy."

Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx: "It is a rather somber day for me in that it is the first time I've been in the city since March 18. As someone who was born and raised in this city, born in one of the toughest neighborhoods in this city, a community that was, fair to ...

"say, had been on the margins, who had seen all of the inequities as we are talking about this week, driving into this city with a piece of hope in my heart and my heart broke when I saw the boards on our windows. This is a tough day."

Foxx: "When I look at that video, and I made the mistake of looking at the whole thing, and I watched that man with his knee in that man's neck, hand in pockets, and the casual disregard for his life in broad daylight while being filmed without a concern in the world as to ...

"what would happen to him — that we would be inclined that it's just the murder of George Floyd that has our streets filled, what I remember feeling in that moment was the casualness of all of the things that we have experienced in this county, that we are dealing with ...

"COVID-19, the casual acceptance of racial disparities in health care ... and we just accept it. The casual acceptance that those who were losing their jobs in the midsts of this pandemic, our frontline workers, our essential workers, are Black and Latino and going into ...

"grocery stores and being clerks and being the last paid — we casually accept that. We casually accept with a hand in our pocket that the last time there were major riots in the city of Chicago, in the '60s, in the West Side, where we see burnt-out buildings that remain and ...

"economic disinvestment continue, ... ."

Foxx: "To watch a man casually take the life of another under the color of law as a law enforcement professional, and as a Black woman and a child of Cabrini, my heart broke. What we have seen in this country are broken hearts and anger at the continual cycle that we have seen...

"of the casual acceptance of systemic racism in this country. People are angry. I am angry. What is not acceptable is what I saw last night. That there will be those who will try to exploit the anger and the mourning and, as the mayor has said, the righteous indignation of ...

"what has been happening in this country ... ."

Foxx: "We are working with our partners int he Chicago Police Department, who are demonstrating extraordinary restraint. I've watched the national coverage. I've seen other cities. And I remind us this is a test. That restraint is what is required. And we've met that test here."

Foxx: "We will hold accountable those who are seeking to exploit this moment."

Foxx: "I don't want our Twitter fingers to only tweet about the images that there are some who only want us to see. Because we will continue in this perpetual cycle. WE will continue this thing we do, this sensationalism, and this, ladies and gentleman, is awful. This is our ...

"home. And these people will come in to try to disrupt that — the organized element who care not about systemic issues but shoes ... . When we look back at this time, years from now, I have four teenage daughters who are frightened out of their minds, and I tell them what this...

"is about. ... If we continue to talk about that fringe element who's tried to hijack this and not about the men and women who died in the systems that have allowed their deaths to go unpunished, we will have learned nothing from this."

Foxx: "We conflate protesters, looters. They're two different groups."

Foxx: They will hold accountable people who are trying to cause harm.

Lt. Gov Juliana Stratton: "As an American, an Illinoisan and Chicagoan, I know that so many of you share the feelings of exhaustion, frustration and anger that I have in the wake of George Floyd's murder. And I stand with those who have taken to the streets to peacefully ...

"protest and raise their voices against police brutality, white supremacy and anti-Blackness."

Stratton: "Those nine minutes symbolized centuries of oppression, a history of disenfranchisement, lynchings and murders. It symbolized decades of disinvestment ... . It symbolizes that George Floyd's death is stacked on top of the tragic deaths of Breonna Taylor, ...

"Ahmaud Arbery, Laquan McDonald, Eric Garner, Sandra Bland, Tony McDade and so many others."

Stratton: "Even so, our angst must be expressed peacefully. There is a message to be heard, and it should be heard loud and clearly. It should be heard without the destruction or disruption of the few who tank the goal of the many."

Stratton: "We must use the power of peaceful protest to demand true justice, safety and the ability to breathe."

Lightfoot: "The planning for yesterday started days before. We had canceled days off, used overtime. There were a number of police out on the scenes over the course of yesterday. We've now also shifted to 12-hour days, three watches. But what happened yesterday over the course...

"of a long day, and the governor I think described it well, we moved from peaceful protest to an element that was in the crowd that was clearly there for a fight. You don't bring a claw hammer or shovel or bottles of urine or accelerant, Molotov cocktails, unless you're up to ...

"something other than peaceful protests. Dealing with that element certainly became a challenge and then, on the heels of tamping that down, we saw literally people coming by the carload and with U-Haul vans to loot and destroy and damage our businesses."
"What I can tell you ...

"at this point is we are in partnership with the FBI, the U.S. Attorney's Office, the ATF ... there's no question that both the people who were fighting, who brought the weapons, that was absolutely organized and choreographed. It seems also clear that the fires that were set ...

"both to the vehicles and buildings, that, that was organized. It wasn't opportunistic. As well as the looting that we saw."

Lightfoot: "I think what we saw last night was very different from NATO." After Laquan McDonald: "People took to the streets. People protested. People shut down Michigan Avenue on Black Friday. But all of that, all of that was done peacefully. This was something different. And...

"there were clearly efforts made to subvert a peaceful protest and to turn it into something else. ... I'm confident we will get to the bottom of it and be able to explain in a more (?) way what happened; but make no mistake, this was an organized effort ... ."

Lightfoot: "What I'll say is this. The governor and I were in frequent contact throughout the course of the day yesterday, and he has frequently offered us the use of the National Guard. As the evening wore on and we saw the criminal element that we've now talked about at ...

"length really arising, and thinking about what our deployments were going to be, the superintendent and his leadership team made the call last night, early this morning and indicated they believed it would be helpful ... ."

Pritzker: "The National Guard, the decision by the mayor to ask for National Guard late last night, and the mayor knows I really don't sleep that much, anyway, so I was up and ready for a call and called Gen. Neely, who jumped on it. They acted quickly. We had 125 immediately ...

"engaged and others on their way; 375 in total."

Pritzker: They won't be on the "front lines. ... They're really there to provide a perimeter so the center of the city doesn't get overtaken the way it seemed to certain times" last night.

Pritzker: 375 National Guardsman, another hundred state police.

Lightfoot on if she's worried National Guard could enflame issues: "No, I'm not. ... They're as every bit as well trained as our officers are. They are trained to come into these circumstances. The particular assets that are going to be initially deployed are military police ...

"officers. I have ever confidence they are going to show the same kind of restraint that our officers do."

Lightfoot: "The FBI is very much involved and they have been with us really every single day and beforehand in preparation. We're working in partnership with the FBI, the U.S. ATtorney's Office, the ATF ... it's too soon in the course of this investigation for us to be able to...

"say definitively, one way or the other. ... There's no question that some of the destruction that happened last night, particularly the arsons, were absolutely organized and coordinated. We'll learn more about this over time as the investigation takes its course, but I'm ...

"confident of that so far."

Lightfoot on how Phase 3 was supposed to start Wednesday: "I think we have to have a lot more conversations, first and foremost, with our public health officials. And we started those conversations very early this morning. I'm very concerned about the fact that, while I think ...

"the vast majority of people that gathered in the streets were wearing masks ... but the fact of the matter is there were thousands of people int he streets, in very close proximity to each other, who were not social distancing. We know from both the governor's guidance and ...

"transparency around how COVID is spread, certainly ours as well, there's a number of asymptomatic people out there. I'm worried. I'm absolutely worried about a potential outbreak as a result of what we saw yesterday. Thousands of people ... cheek to jowl in small spaces is ...

"exactly the opposite of what we have been preaching now for 10 weeks time. ... We are still on track for reopening Wednesday; if that changes, we will certainly let people know as quickly as possible."

Pritzker on curfew: "It seemed to be helpful to the police, to Chicago Police last night, as the curfew really kept people, most of the people off the streets. The people who were breaking the curfew were, of course, the very people who were doing the damage that was done."

Pritzker: "I am deeply concerned that when you gather people together in large groups of people, even when they're wearing masks, in very small or large groups in spaces that they can't socially distance and don't, we do run that risk. We'll have to look at this going forward....

"At the moment, we're not heading backward, but I think that it is a warning to everybody that is protesting just to, if you could have the decency to spread out in the process of doing it."

Lightfoot: "We've had this accumulation without seeing progress. Again, I have to credit the State's Attorney, the casualness with which this individual killed George Floyd, with his hand in his pocket, knowing he was videotaped without a care in the world. That is such a deep...

"offense and so unnecessary. If you see the piece of the video that have now surfaced, he wasn't resisting. I still don't understand why he was down on the street, let anyone with somebody with a knee on his neck as he is literally gasping for life and then watching the life ...

"leave him there on the street, the callous way in which he was treated even in death. That's a hard thing to bear for anyone. And as a Black woman, I can't even begin to describe yet because I'm still processing it what that did to me."

Lightfoot: "People have a right to be angry and frustrated."

STORY: https://blockclubchicago.org/2020/05/31/protesters-are-not-looters-kim-foxx-says-fringe-element-trying-to-hijack-black-lives-matter-movement/