Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is engaging in another “Let them eat cake” moment by telling “traumatized” tamale street vendors, who are being terrorized by criminals in the Windy City, that they should just go cashless to avoid crime, forcing many to pay gangs for protection.

“Someday, historians will untangle one of the biggest mysteries that we’re living through, which is why would our leaders want to make our society more dangerous? Why do they want more rape and armed robbery and murder? Clearly, they do want that,” Fox News host Tucker Carlson said kicking off a segment of “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”

“Why? We don’t know. We can only chronicle the effects. Lori Lightfoot has made Chicago intolerable for people and so dangerous. That’s intentional,” he continued. “She banned police from chasing criminals on foot, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera and as a result, the poorest people are suffering the most. Street vendors robbed all the time.”

Street vendors are especially vulnerable to the city’s crime wave and they are not happy with Lightfoot over her laissez-faire attitude toward their plight.

(Video Credit: Fox News)

Evita Duffy-Alfonso, who is a reporter for The Federalist, laid out the woes of the vendors on Carlson’s show Tuesday. She spoke with some of the tamale vendors to get their take on the situation and how they feel about Lightfoot’s advice.

“All of the vendors that I talked to said that is just not a possibility,” she told Carlson. “We work on a cash-only basis. Our customers are on a cash-only basis. This is very normal for impoverished communities, especially ones that have a lot of illegal migrants in it. And Lori Lightfoot would know this if she cared about them remotely. But the vendors that I talked to said she doesn’t care.”

According to the reporter, many of the street vendors stay up all night making tamales. They get up very early to prepare food to sell to blue-collar workers. It’s hard work and if you throw in the risk of being robbed, it’s also incredibly dangerous. Many have been beaten and robbed at gunpoint.

“All of the vendors that I talked to were absolutely traumatized,” Duffy-Alfonso asserted.

One of the vendors recounted an attack where he was assaulted and the robbers took what “little change” that he had on him.

“So it was four guys. … They just came with their guns and pointing them on me,” he said recalling the terrifying incident.

Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood is located in the 10th Police District. There has been a 13 percent jump in robberies there in 2022 alone with 477 robberies occurring according to public data.

The situation has led to a lucrative protection racket run by the gangs whom the vendors are turning to in desperation.

Lightfoot ridiculously told businesses to avoid using cash, if possible. Instead of empowering police to crack down on the offenders without fear of prosecution, she’s telling these impoverished tamale vendors to suck it up and somehow not use cash.

Chicago Mayor @LoriLightfoot says to avoid getting mugged, don’t carry cash. This is no different than telling a woman to avoid getting raped, dress modestly. The law-abiding should alter their behavior to accommodate the criminals?!?#Chicago

— Larry Elder (@larryelder) January 25, 2023

“We have been in Little Village working with those street vendors, understanding what the nature of the crime is, making sure that we’re doing things in concert with them to help them make sure that their money is secure, not use money, if at all possible, using other forms of transactions to take care of themselves.,” Lightfoot cluelessly stated while appearing on ABC7 Chicago for a mayoral debate.

Duffy-Alfonso pointed out the irony in the elitist advice given by Lightfoot and leftist District Attorney Kim Foxx, who claim to protect minorities while doing anything but that.

“It’s gotten so bad that they’ve had to rely on local community organizations, but also local gangs for protection, which is the kind of thing that you see in Third World countries, the kind of countries that these people fled from,” she noted.

“Lori Lightfoot and Kim Foxx are all day preaching to us about equity and making policies around equity. And yet the people that are being hurt the most by the way that this city is run are poor minorities. They came for the American Dream, and what they found is a Lori Lightfoot Chicago nightmare,” Duffy-Alfonso concluded.

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