Democratic Ally Subpoenas Blog Commenters

Flying Debris has twice written about the recent attempts by the Democrats of Chicago's Uptown community to silence opposition to their disgraceful policies, here and here. The major policy in question gives $60 million to a developer to build even more low income housing on former Chicago Transit Authority land a half mile from Lake Shore Drive at a cost of over $400,000 per unit.

Today the Chicago Journal has reported that the developer, a Mr. Holsten has subpoenaed Google for information on commenters on two Uptown blogs, Uptown Update, the fantastically named and now defunct What the Helen and two community group message boards. Chicago Alderman have a long held and well deserved reputation for withholding city services to those they don't like making this a real threat to many commenters.

This blog has been linked to by at least three of the four subpoenaed blogs and I have left comments on three of the four blogs, they are attempting to stifle my First Amendment right to free political speech through intimidation. Why participate if your garbage doesn't get picked up or your block starts to lack public services?

I do not live in Uptown, I get along well with my Alderman (I was an early supporter) so I am not affected by the threats however they are attempting to subpoena records on me, EL Rider. So on a day we get news that the Secret Service searched the home of a man with an anti-OBama, anti-abortion sign on his car we get news of Chicago Democrats attempting to intimidate Chicagoans exercising their First Amendment rights by leaving blog comments.

Hat Tip: Uptown Update

More on Connected Chicagoans Who Threaten Bloggers - $400,000 per "Low-Income" Condo on Subsidized Land

Here is a video put out by the Fix Wilson Yard organization (FWY), the organization that filed the suit against the city of Chicago and Wilson Yard developer Peter Holsten. Mr. Holsten is the developer whose legal team has subpoenaed Uptown bloggers and community organizations. The FWY charges outline a disgrace, the city has promised to give the developer over $60,000,000 in tax revenues and their question is very simple, why does this guy need a subsidy for land that is a 1/2 mile from Lake Shore Drive and a 1/2 mile from Wrigley Field? I also must ask why, other than trying to get more votes for Alderman Shiller, the Uptown neighborhood should be further subjected to the problems of low-income subsidized housing? The neighborhood has more than enough problems with gang banging street dealers as it is. For this subsidy the developer has apparently promised condos for low-income families that cost over $400,000 - on subsidized land. What kind of business are we talking about here?




The discussion over how to proceed with the redevelopment of Wilson Yard started after the Yard burned down in 1996, I lived near Wrigley Field at the time and you could smell the odor of embers for weeks afterwards but the stench of Chicago politics has lingered over the Yards for more than a decade.

Hat Tip: Chicago News Bench

Chicago Bloggers Threatened!

The bloggers at the fantastic Chicago blog Uptown Update and the now defunct blog What the Helen have been subpoenaed by a developer of the notorious Wilson Yard project in the Uptown neighborhood. Additionally two Uptown community groups have recently been subpoenaed, the Uptown Neighborhood Council and the Buena Park Neighbors. The Wilson Yard issue involves the subsidized development of a former Chicago Transit Authority rail yard that has been under what could best be described as negotiations for what seems like a decade. The city and the CTA reached an agreement with the neighborhood and the Alderman for a development that limited further subsidized low income housing that the area is chock full of. Well the Alderman up there, Helen Shiller gets herself reelected every four years with the support of the far left and the poor, the numerous homeless shelters in the neighborhood have voting participation levels that would make Kim Jong Il happy so there has been an ongoing dispute over the number of subsidized units that would be part of the development and the role of a local TIF (tax increment financing). The TIF program has been controversial in its own right and its use in this project using former public property has only added to the Wilson Yard controversy.

Flying Debris wrote about Uptown and Helen Shiller in Could This Possibly Be Legal? Chicago’s 46th Ward:

During the 1980s and into the 1990s Shiller was helped by her then sidekick Walter “Slim” Coleman, a Marxist hazard from Harvard who is now a Methodist Minister and is providing “sanctuary” to Elvira Arellano at his Aldalberto United Methodist Church here in Chicago. Slim helped Helen perfect the strong-arm fraudulent politics that has become the norm in the Uptown neighborhood. It really is a shame because the neighborhood has some very beautiful housing stock and it runs along the shore of Lake Michigan. Don’t even get me started on the confluence of gangs, heroin, shelters and the powers that be in Uptown. Let me put it this way, between McCormick Place and Waukegan, a distance of over 45 miles of lake shore the least expensive property near the lake is 7 ½ miles north of McCormick Place in Helen Shiller’s 46th ward. It has been common knowledge that for Uptown to get past its problems that there needs to be a political change in the 46th Ward.

It is very interesting to note the comment left on that post by her last opponent, Democrat James Cappelman several months after the election:

A week before the election, just as we expected, Shiller campaign literature was distributed to the CHA and HUD high rises suggesting that I was a member of the Klan; that I wanted to round up all the neighborhood children and have them arrested on the spot; that I called for the closing of the local high school; that I was against all affordable housing; that I was against all job training; that I thought all poor people were a "waste of space"; and that I represented the worst of the Republican Party. It was all the usual tricks she has done at every election.

(snip)

As a former Franciscan friar who took in people off the street, as a social worker at a children's hospital located in a poverty-striken area on the Southside, as a recipient of the Dr. Martin Luther King Humanitarian Award, as a co-founder of a homeless shelter, as an openly gay man who understands discrimination first-hand, and as a very liberal Democrat, I hardly think that there is a risk I would suddenly lose all my values of being an advocate for others when elected alderman. However, you would never know it from listening to the rhetoric spewed out from Shiller's campaign.

Sadly for James and all of us who live in Chicago we will likely see more such campaigning, especially if Helen's side wins this round by intimidating their opponents.

Update: thanks to Professor Reynolds for the link from Instapundit.