By: Diane Benjamin
h/t a reader
Below is a short clip of a discussion before the meeting started last night. Chris Koos was not going to allow all the people who showed up to speak, he wanted Public Comment limited to 30 minutes. He also had no intention of letting them speak at the beginning of the meeting, even though Stan Nord suggested it.
Koos lost control when the one speaker who told the Town he was going to speak on an agenda item didn’t. The Town’s Public Comment rules were broken at least 3 times with Koos approval, they are now immaterial.
You may have to turn the sound up to hear the comments, Koos planned to play tyrant and failed:
Koos had the opportunity to show compassion and take credit for it but he chose otherwise. Plus he looks at people who want to speak to the council as they are trying to “game the system.” He does not understand they were there to have their voice heard, NOT “game” his B.S. rules.
Here is the transcript (Starts at 0:1:20)
KOOS “Kathleen, Stan. Um. They want to let everybody speak, and there’s about 11 people. I’m going to go ahead and let them do it at the end.”
LORENZ “Which will be about 30 minutes.”
NORD “I would recommend letting them [speak] at the beginning.”
KOOS “Oh not, not at the beginning, at the end of the meeting…there’s only one person speaking at the beginning.”
NORD “For Jelani?”
KOOS “He’s gaming us. You watch.”
LORENZ “Okey-dokey”
Koos was right about one thing the Normal leadership was “gamed”. This was an opportunity for BLM and all the local race baiters to use the death of one of their own to score political points. Being “George Floyded” should become a new term to describe the tactics of the new political left. Would the outrage be as great if Day was a different skin color? Would the same people have shown up to try to disrupt a meeting? Doubtful. Read “Civil War 2” by Tom Chittum and get back to me. Also, find out the circumstances of Day’s death first. Feel sorry for the immediate family.
Happy that Koos used the phrase “gaming us.” Mouth, meet foot. Communists are usually not that bright, especially in the language department, and will likely only comprehend the word “game” — as in, Koos said their concerns are just games. Which could very well been the intent of his statement.
Sadly, the DSA, Democrats, BLM, and town elites will ignore Koo’s disrespectful actions around the death of this young man. At the next election, they will help any democrat running for local office regardless of what atrocities they have done.
This reminds me of the story of the tyrant who plucked all the feathers from a chicken, causing intense pain for the bird. Then he put the chicken on the ground and the bird came back to him for food. Some people will never learn.
How sad Mayor Koos sees this for exactly what it is, “He’s gaming us.” In my petition to the public access counselor at the Illinois Attorney General’s office in 2017 appealing the 45 day rule, this is exactly what I said would happen if current rules were allowed to stand in Normal. When channels of communication are restricted by public officials in an effort to shield them from public accountability or criticism, people will seek alternative forms of communication that will often be interpreted as inappropriate. That’s what happened last night and the harder this Council fights back with restrictive public comment rules, the worse this problem will get.
It is not that no one cared about the death of Jelani
It’s just that Big Media just felt the white girls story was a better distraction from the Biden/Kabul airport fiasco and had a better ratings upside.
Nothing personal , it’s just how the media business works.
If you think Jelani’s story didn’t get the appropriate coverage , you have local journalists to thank for that