* Derek Douglas, President of the Civic Committee and the Commercial Club of Chicago, speaking today at the governor’s press conference…

Deploying federal troops or federalizing the National Guard without engaging state and local government, business, philanthropic and community leaders – the ones who understand Chicago’s needs and are on the ground working daily to make our city safer – is unprecedented and unwarranted.

The Civic committee formed a public safety task force in 2022. And when we formed that task force, we reached out to the organizations and the leaders who are working in the public safety space for so many years. And we committed to standing by them in the good times and the bad to try to make this city as safe as possible and to identify ways for the business community to contribute to creating a safer Chicago for all with an emphasis on gun violence reduction.

Through those efforts, we work closely with the city, the county and the state, CPD, Chicago’s criminal justice system, and leaders, philanthropy and community-based violence intervention organizations in what we call a one table approach, and as many of the previous speakers have mentioned, we are making incredible progress on reducing gun violence in our city, even though we have a ways to go.

That said, we do believe there is a critical role for federal support that could benefit our city. What we need is aligned action. That’s what we have going on in Chicago.

What we don’t need are disruptions to our economy and our businesses. Active duty military patrolling the streets of our city sends the wrong message and risks slowing our economy and disrupting the progress we’ve made together. It will impact businesses’ bottom lines and ability to operate efficiently. It will impact tourism and employees getting to their jobs. It will impact morale.

The kind of sweeping, uncoordinated, indiscriminate action being threatened sets a dangerous precedent, and we stand with our city and all Chicagoans to encourage the administration to productively engage with us, to help us continue to make progress on this critical issue.