It's hard to imagine someone as incompetent as Maria Hadden
In the early morning hours of March 19, Sheridan Gorman, an 18-year-old Loyola University student, walked on a pier at Tobey Prinz Beach on the North Side accompanied by some friends to see the northern lights. As they looked towards the heavens, a masked illegal alien from Venezuela hiding behind a small lighthouse, Jose G. Medina, brought forth hell instead, allegedly shooting Gorman in the back as she ran away from him. She died instantly.
The next day, the alderman for the area where Gorman was murdered, Maria Hadden (49th), a self-described leftist and the co-chair of the Chicago City Council Progressive Reform Caucus, offered Fox Chicago one of the most callous displays of victim blaming ever before even a suspect had been identified
“The kids were out doing normal things people do in the neighborhood and it sounds like this might have been a ‘wrong place, wrong time,’ running into a person who had a gun, they might have startled this person at the end of the pier, unintentionally.”
Here’s a big “tell” regarding Hadden’s heartless comments. Regarding the killer, she said it was a “person who had a gun,” not a shooter or even an assailant. Hadden’s wokeness prevents her from even demonizing a murderer.
Chicago, of course, has some of the strictest gun laws in the nation.
Anti-police alderman
Clearly the voters of Rogers Park -- the boundaries of the neighborhood closely match those of the 49th Ward — didn’t send the best among them to represent them in the City Council — or even close to that.
Perhaps Hadden is betraying her belief to Chicagoans -- and the world -- that the city is a dangerous place, even at a spot most people assume is safe, a beach on a chilly March night.
Hadden, who has been a member of the City Council since 2019, has a perpetual smirk on her face, probably because she believes she is better than everyone else. Clearly, she’s not.
In my 2024 Chicago Contrarian article about Hadden, I exposed her anti-police views. Specifically, her opinion on law enforcement, by her own admission, differs from the opinions of her constituents. Hadden believes more “social services” is the answer to criminality. Here’s what she said -- in a smug manner, of course-about that in 2020, while a guest on the Bourbon ‘n BrownTown podcast.
“We can’t keep funding police in the way that we operate. And especially not at the expense of, right, other social services. And also, there are large percentages of residents who don’t know what else to do, and so they want more policing, right? We’ve got like, what is it, 200 to 300 years of this type of police structure — it’s going to take us a minute.”
As I wrote in that article, Hadden’s “minute” has long passed. And if you were alone in a park at night and you were confronted by a masked gunman, you would feel much safer with a cop at your side instead of a social worker.
Hadden’s right time and right place for criminals
On the other hand, Hadden clearly favors a “right time, right place” for criminals. Her response to the botched police raid of Anjanette Young was a proposed ordinance, thankfully was never passed by the City Council, which would have banned no-knock arrest warrants.
In 2023, Hadden’s ward newsletter promoted “The People's Ordinance” which was suggested by a community group. It called for two street gangs not to fire guns between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. How naïve.
In 2024, Hadden sided with the minority when she voted against extending the city’s contract with ShotSpotter, a gunshot detection system used in Chicago’s most violent neighborhoods. Mayor Brandon Johnson, who, by the way, waited five days to acknowledge the murder of Gorman, vowed to veto the bill to keep ShotSpotter in place, but the company decided to end its operations in Chicago instead.
As of this writing, CWB Chicago, in its “Brandon’s Bodies” tally, has counted 79 people found dead who could have been saved had ShotSpotter’s Chicago contract not ended.
Not results-oriented
Prior to her election to the City Council, Hadden worked as a mediator and mediation trainer. Yeah, whatever. Her undergraduate degree, from Ohio State University, is in international peace and conflict studies. That explains her smirk. Unfortunately, many members of Chicago’s City Council and many other elected officials in Illinois have similar backgrounds in non-results-oriented occupations. Which is why in Illinois either nothing gets done or what is accomplished is often a catastrophic mess, such as the state’s no-cash bail SAFE-T Act.
Gorman’s accused murderer was arrested in Chicago on a shoplifting charge in 2023. He never showed up for his court dates. And then nothing happened to him. And don’t forget, Medina is in this country illegally.
Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus was a best-selling book in the 1990s. But progressive aldermen like Hadden are from Pluto. Not only because it is so far away from Earth, but also because Pluto is cold -- just like her “wrong place, wrong time” comments about the murder of Gorman.
Mayor Johnson, Hadden, and the other 49 members of Chicago’s City Council are up for reelection next February.
Perhaps Hadden’s smirk will then disappear forever. Along with some others belonging to destructive aldermen.
Hopefully, 49th Ward voters have had enough of Hadden.
“We’ve had enough of Hadden” will make a great bumper sticker. It can fit on a t-shirt too.
