Nelly Martinez attends a November 2020 protest to demand Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot deny the final permit that will allow General Iron to move from Lincoln Park, a mostly white neighborhood, to the Southeast Side, which has a mostly Latino population.
Pat Nabong | Sun-Times file
It’s mystifying to us why Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who campaigned on a promise to treat all neighborhoods with fairness and equity, would even consider allowing known polluter General Iron to set up shop on the Southeast Side.
But after community protests, a hunger strike and intervention from by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the mayor is now asking a question she could have posed from jump: Is a metal scrapping facility needed in an area of the city already overburdened with a host of environmental issues?