Getting around downtown Chicago is a challenge at the best of times.
Back in the days when Chicago was known as "The City that Works" - a generation ago, at least - the city fathers took great care to minimize any event that threatened to jeopardize that title.
At about 3:00 p.m., thousands of pro-Hamas protesters - both pedestrians and vehicles - converged on Chicago's downtown, centering around the intersection of Ida B. Wells Drive and Michigan Avenue, mere blocks to the east).
In recent years, it has become common enough for people to drive around Chicago with a full size Mexican flag - or flags of other immigrants' homelands - sticking out of the sunroof of a car, driving down our city streets, or even sticking out of a side window, presumably held in place by the passengers.
Add in all this random fabric flapping in the breeze, and traffic slowed to a crawl, as even our most confident Chicago drivers had to hesitate at every intersection, taking each turn more slowly than usual, from fear of hitting a car or pedestrian because of such obscured sightlines.
Every hour of unnecessary additional traffic in Chicago costs the Chicago business community - that means their proprietors and clerks, cashiers and musicians, bartenders and waitresses - hundreds of thousands of dollars at least, but more likely, millions of dollars.
That's what its organizers costs us, and therefore, what our city leadership cost us by failing to properly enforce the permitting requirements and location limitations traditional for Chicago.
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