What's Wrong In Naperville?
One of Chicagoland's largest suburbs has become a battleground over one of our country's fiercest debates, that over the issue of censorship
Almost 70 years ago, in the spring of 1954, our country was in the throws of the McCarthy hearings.
Nationally televised, the hearings were the culmination of four years of “Red Scare” investigations led by Joe McCarthy, a senator from Wisconsin. McCarthy became infamous when he alleged hundreds of Communists had infiltrated the U.S. government and federal agencies.
In June of 1954, the “Red Scare” movement came crashing down around McCarthy.
During a hearing involving a U.S. Army draft case, McCarthy went after the reputation of an attorney representing the Army. He accused the young man of having communist ties. Another attorney, a man named Joseph Welch, fired back at McCarthy, saying "until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness.”
That didn’t stop McCarthy continuing to slander the young man. When McCarthy continued, Welch said, "Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator; you've done enough." McCarthy again went on, to which Welch interjected, famously: "Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"
(This audio clip is inserted in the R.E.M. song “Exhuming McCarthy,” off the band’s 1987 politically-themed and musically-brilliant album “Document”).
The exchange between Welch and McCarthy was nationally broadcast and marked the end for McCarthy and his anti-Communist witch hunt.
As a country, we are well past the “Red Scare” era of the early-to-mid 1950’s. We have moved on to other battles that don’t involve fear-inducing narratives about the spread of world communism. But lessons of that sad chapter in American history can be carried forth today. We have other issues raising our collective level of anxiety. One of those issues involves censorship.
Front and center are the shenanigans going on in the largest suburb in Chicagoland, Naperville.
The Mayor of Naperville, population 150,000+, is a man named Steve Chirico. As mayor, one of Chirico’s jobs is to make appointments of residents to all sorts of boards.
One advisory board in Naperville is the Special Events and Cultural Amenities Commission. The organization is tasked with overseeing and making recommendations to special events and “artistic cultural experiences” in Naperville, according to the city’s website.
These appointments are typically rubber stamped and are made with little to no fanfare. But a volcanic online furor erupted when news leaked recently that Chirico interviewed Shannon Adcock for a potential appointment to the commission.
Adcock is the Founder and President of Awake Illinois, an non-profit advocacy group. Launched one year ago, Awake campaigns, according to its website, for “issues affecting our communities, our children, and our liberties” and states “our advocacy is waking up Illinoisans each day while empowering citizens to elevate their voices on topics of education, equality, legislation, civic involvement, and social welfare causes.” The organization has dozens of satellite chapters throughout the state with Naperville the charter chapter.
Awake and Adcock, a Naperville resident, criticized Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker for his use of executive power in ordering masks on school children and for quarantine/exclusion policies. Members of Awake were very public at school board meetings throughout Chicagoland, questioning school board members and administrators for their adherence to unlawful public health guidelines.
Adcock herself was front and center at highly attended board of education meetings in Naperville last summer and fall. She unsuccessfully ran for a D204 board seat in 2021.
Chirico, the Naperville mayor, had to know some – if not all – of Adcock’s background when he decided to interview Adcock for possible nomination to the SECA board. It’s not unusual for those in charge of such appointments to consult lists of names of people who ran for public office previously.
“I’ve got a long list of people who have run, lost and ...are now serving on our boards and commissions from both parties,” Chirico told the Naperville Sun newspaper in an article published April 26. “I think that having all those voices brings about better policy and different points of view. Otherwise, why have a board?”
The problem for Chirico is a small but vocal group of individuals in Naperville who disagree with his view on ‘better policy’ and ‘different points of view.’
Shortly after it was revealed Chirico interviewed Adcock, a petition on Change.org went up discrediting her and Kevin Coyne, a potential nominee to the city’s Library Board. The petition is titled, “Inform Naperville Mayor and City Council that Adcock and Coyne are wrong for City Boards” and labels Adcock:
Founder of far-right, anti-DEI, anti-Black History, anti-mask, and anti-LGBTQ Awake IL, Shannon has personally attacked many people who do not agree with her (including attacking friends and family of those people) and has threatened to have teachers fired. Several members of the LGBTQIA and BIPOC communities have already voiced the fear of their families' safety and well-being if Shannon were to be appointed to ANY position of any capacity in the city of Naperville
A counter Change.org petition in favor of Adcock and Coyne titled “End Cancel Culture…Naperville Supports Shannon and Kevin” soon went up online and says of Adcock:
She is a kind and loving mother who is dedicated to community volunteerism. Upon engaging in transparent advocacy on issues of education and civil rights, a very worrisome contingent of extremists in the community began to threaten, harass, and defame her beginning early 2021. It’s been happening for over a year.
That petition goes on to all-but-accuse the smear campaign against Adcock to a group of women called the “Naper Gals.” The post makes several charges against the group ranging from election rigging (dating back to Adcock’s 2021 run for school board) to harassment of her family and how “teacher union activists and area democrats staged numerous attacks on Shannon's name and reputation.”
For those who want more information on dizzying back and forth between both camps, there are plenty of places online to find that information. Many of you reading probably have already taken sides and drawn your own conclusions by now.
Full disclosure…I have had social media interactions with Adcock. I support many of the missions of Awake, especially the call for more transparency in government and the vitality of parental engagement in helping to shape their children’s schools and holding powerful people in politics and education accountable. Anyone who goes hard after Pritzker, as they do, is a winner in my book. But the problems run deeper than Springfield. Adcock and Awake fundamentally know that and are taking action by affecting change and not being afraid to get their hands dirty (after all, there are a lot greased palms in this state).
I do not know any of the women in the “Naper Gals” group and had never heard of them until I was alerted to the situation in Naperville this weekend. It’s not clear who originated the Change.org petition (someone called “Concerned Citizen” is listed as having started the petition. According to a Monday post on the Awake blog, a woman with ties to the “Naper Gals,” Melissa B. Gross, is the author of the petition) but it’s easy to track individuals spearheading the campaign to remove Adcock from consideration for SECA board. They are aggressive and clearly going after Adcock in what amounts to a personal assailment campaign.
From the April 26 Naperville Sun article, Chirico refers to Adcock as a “controversial candidate” so we know he’s aware of the online uproar. Chirico appears to be setting the stage for a continuance on any decision on Adcock (originally expected at a May 3 city council meeting). Also in the article, Chirico expresses reticence at the appointment of Adcock, stating how ‘he works hard…to foster diverse points of view and make the city a safe place for everybody to be able to share what they feel and incorporate those types of ideas and thoughts into policy recommendations.’
But here’s the money quote from Chirico:
We can’t be more inclusive if we exclude somebody. That doesn’t work
Bingo.
The comment reveals the Catch-22 for Chirico.
He certainly didn’t want this very public disagreement to occur, but the social media squabbling in Naperville represents a small nerve center in one of most important fights facing our country today, that over censorship. In more jingoistic terms, Naperville officials must decide whether a vocal group of leftist zealots have the power to “cancel” another individual from a city-appointed volunteer position to an arts commission.
Here’s the question – can those who oppose the right to speak freely in public spaces garner enough political influence to silence those who express beliefs they do not agree with?
That’s the fundamental argument the folks in Naperville are making in championing against Adcock; that yes, we can and we will try to suffocate any voices we deem counter to our ideology.
They could save everyone involved a lot of time and social posturing by just releasing this joint statement:
We don’t like Adcock’s worldview. We use terms, popularized by those who make these kinds of accusations, labeling her value-system; terms like racist, bigot, anti-black, etc. By doing so, we attempt to amplify our perceived mission of diversity and inclusion. Under the guise of ‘diversity and inclusion’ what we are really doing is censoring opinions counter to our orthodoxy and by doing so, disavow the ethos and intentions of the 1st Amendment
Adcock is taking a beating on Twitter from accounts that claim to be in favor of “progress” or building a “culture of compassion.”
Here are some examples of the language used by those lobbying Chirico against Adcock’s appointment:
Reviewing these tweets, a few commonalities and inter-relations jump out.
They come from pseudo-anonymous accounts. We don’t know who the identity of the flesh-and-blood person authoring the tweets.
(Eliminating pseudonym accounts is a reported priority of Elon Musk’s Twitter. He has vowed to “authenticate all real humans.”)
They are threatened by free speech.
They want to censor those that express any countering thought.
This is dangerous for our country.
That’s why what’s going in Naperville is about more than the appointment of seats to an arts and library board.
We have a class of people in this country deeply invested in the idea of censorship.
They will attempt to impose their views by whatever means necessary. It’s a deeper societal problem that punches up in class than from the lowbrow, unenlightened anti-speech activists in Naperville – nationally, they stratify more towards the progressive wing of the professional class. They know they are outnumbered (they represent about 1/3rd of the population, the working class about 2/3rd) and that most Americans don’t share this radical ideology. But the professional class wields significant institutional power and are attempting to protect themselves from the census gap through anti-speech activism.
How they maintain power is through censorship, potency they won’t give up that easily.
Naperville represents a microcosm of this larger national power struggle going on in America today.
(And I have to feel sorry for Kevin Coyne, the library board nominee. A former Naperville councilmen, he’s just being used in this political teeterboard as a pawn to demagogue conservatives. These Cultists will use whatever weapon at their disposal to destroy civil liberties.)
Almost 70 years ago, an attorney named Joseph Welch all-but-ended the “Red Scare” when he asked the bullying Sen. McCarthy “do you have no sense of decency?”
He exposed McCarthy for his lack of humanity and pathological partisanship.
Steve Chirico and the Naperville City Council, in the spring of 2022, are faced with their own cultural touchstone moment.
Do they support the views of a portion of their city’s population fundamentally antagonistic towards the freedom of expression? Will they validate authoritarianism disguised as inclusion?
Or will they allow for differing points of view to be represented within their community, as they claim they do?
Our country needs a resurgence of free speech and a diminishment of censorship.
Naperville, you are on the clock.
For story ideas, article comments/feedback, media inquiries and more, drop note to jon@jonjkerr.com, or @jonjkerr on Twitter.
All the rivers have been engineered to flow in one direction. The people hanging on refusing to "go with the flow", are met with Extortion tactics, "So...You don't support Equity? Are you racist?". And, "You don't believe in covid restrictions? You want people to die".
I can only speak for myself, but I was raised to believe, everyone is entitled to their opinion, and the bigger person must keep composure and do everything to not stoop the the opposition's shallow level. Keep the argument grounded, and shrug off the more radical statements coming from the opposing side.
But in a world where ESG Scores and Emotional Feelings Reign Supreme, opposing viewpoints are met with HARSH CONCIQUENCES. This nonsense needs to stop before we all destroy eachother. This level of toxicity is reaching a boiling point to where it's irreversible.
Jon, thank you for bringing these issues to the forefront. This is extremely alarming. I saw first hand the same drama in our last school board election. Early on in the election, a rumor circulated that the leading candidate (that I supported), was at the DC capital on 1/6/21. We had his sign in our lawn, and we received several emails and letters telling us our position is WRONG from the community. He was adamant that the rumors were untrue, but I personally did not care either way. I liked his position on managing public schools, so he was my guy, but unfortunately he did not stand a chance.
If anyone responds to this negatively....I DON'T CARE!!!!!!
How in the world did we get here? It's difficult for me to process. And this is for library and art(?) boards? Wow. Civil discourse is no more.
I hadn't heard about this local (to me) situation though I don't live in that city, till now, so thank you Jon.