Pro-Immigrant, Pro-Palestinian Murals And Southwest Side Restaurant Vandalized — CAIR-Chicago
The attacks terrified the victims, Chalisa said.
Murals denouncing the Israel-Gaza war and expressing support for Palestinians have specifically been targeted and vandalized, unlike other longstanding murals along West 16th Street, said Lucia Moya Calderon, chief of staff for the 25th Ward office.
The delay in holding the woman responsible adds to people’s concerns that police are not protecting minority communities, Chalisa said.
“If this is the process every time somebody faces a hate crime, I can understand why so many of them end up going unreported,” she said.
Organizers with the Chicago Council on American-Islamic Relations have also called for the attacker to be charged with hate crimes amid a rise in anti-Palestinian and anti-Islamic sentiment nationally and in Chicago.
The nonprofit has received more reports of anti-Islamic and anti-immigrant acts, Legal Director Heena Musabji said at last month’s press conference. In this climate, police must “take full action to make sure that hate-based violent actions are taken seriously and charged as crimes,” Musabji said.
‘I’m Here To Contribute’
A few miles south of Pilsen, the owners of Venezuelan restaurant Entre Panas, 3448 W. 47th St., found the restaurant’s windows and a truck had been defaced with an anti-immigrant message last week.
Owner Michelle Padilla said surveillance footage from July 7 shows a person wearing a mask walking on 47th Street in the direction of the restaurant.
The person stopped at the restaurant and painted over one of its surveillance cameras. The person then proceeded to tag the front windows with an anti-Venezuelan message, video from the other surveillance camera shows, Padilla said. Later, the masked person walked to the back of the business, where the person tagged a parked food truck.
“It was shocking,” Padilla, who is Venezuelan, said in Spanish. “But I’m not going to let one person’s message stop me. I came to this country to work.”
