CHICAGO (WLS) — A war of words is heating up over a controversial social media post by Chicago Alderman Ray Lopez.
The incident originates from last week’s shooting involving a young couple at the Jewish Museum in Washington, accompanied by claims that Lopez falsely identified someone as the shooter on the internet.
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Lopez, the representative for the 15th Ward, is standing by his post, asserting that the real issue lies in the mistaken interpretations others have made about it.
However, Alderwoman Rosanna Rodriguez Sanchez, whose colleague has been wrongly pointed out in this matter, is prepared to escalate this battle to a legal setting.
Lopez, who was recently seen wearing a shirt that read, “Curb Your Antisemitism,” is at the center of a firestorm over a post on X from last week.
In a 2018 United Working Families photo, Lopez circled the faces of four politicians, including 33rd Ward Alderwoman Rodriguez Sanchez, with lines connecting them to a man in the middle, her former chief of staff. Some believe Lopez misidentified that man as Elias Rodriguez, who shouted “free Palestine,” after he was arrested for the Washington, D.C. shooting of a Jewish couple, and was later charged with their murders.
“All I called them were birds of a feather. What we have seen since is all kinds of implied inferences that they’ve come up with that have nothing to do with anything that was posted in the tweet,” Lopez said.
“I mean, I think that it is obvious what the alderman was trying to do because the picture was shared multiple times, and people pointed at Chris as if he was the shooter,” Rodriguez Sanchez said.
On Tuesday the lawyer for Rodriguez Sanchez sent a letter to Lopez, demanding he take down his posts, saying, due to them and comments he made on a radio station “she predictably has faced a deluge of hate mails posts…” which “…caused the Alderwoman to fear for the safety of herself and her staffers.”
“I can’t control what people do or don’t do. I think that if I said something like that and accused somebody of something so terrible, I think that it would be appropriate to apologize to the person,” Rodriguez Sanchez said.
Rodriguez Sanchez stirred her own controversy after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, posting “from the River to the sea, Palestine will be free,” which many Jewish people consider antisemitic.
Lopez says he won’t take down his posts, or apologize.
“Why do I have to apologize? Why do I have to step back? Because they’re offended now that they’re finally getting called out for their nonsense that they’ve been spewing for several years,” Lopez said.
Lopez says his lawyer said he is on solid legal ground with his posts. Rodriquez Sanchez and her lawyer say the next step could be a lawsuit. But, for now they are just weighing their next steps.
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