Activists Plan Victory Lap At Ousted Palos Trustee's Last Meeting

PALOS TOWNSHIP, IL — The southwest suburban Arab American community and their allies are taking credit for ousting embattled Palos Township Tr. Sharon Bannigan, who lost her bid for township assessor against incumbent Robert Maloney in the April 6 election. Maloney, garnered 3,909 votes to Brannigan’s 2,351, according to unofficial election results.

“We screamed with joy, we were so relieved,” activist Hasam Marajda said, who led the #ByeBrannigan get-out-the-vote effort. “After four years of going to monthly township meetings, when she wouldn’t resign, we voted her out.”

For almost four years, Arab American residents, activists and other residents attended the Palos Township board’s meetings on the first Monday of the month, demanding Brannigan’s resignation over remarks made in 2017 on her Palos Township trustee Facebook page. Brannigan, a Trump republican, questioned why the township’s public schools were “filling with Middle Eastern students without proper documentation? What is Dan Lipinski doing about it?”

Brannigan later apologized for her “poorly crafted words” in an attempt to clarify what she intended as a discussion on the “political issues of immigration.”

“I am not anti-Arab. I am not anti-Muslim. I am not anti-immigrant. I am the granddaughter of immigrants who came to this country from Ireland and Italy through Ellis Island with a dream of prosperity and goodness,” she said in a statement to Patch.

There were other bizarre moments over the long four-year campaign to oust Brannigan. The second year, self-avowed neo-Nazi and holocaust denier Arthur Jones showed up at a township meeting after he landed by a fluke as the sole GOP candidate in the 2018 Illinois 3rd Congressional District race.

"I never met the woman," Jones said in a post-meeting interview with Patch. "I didn't go down for my campaign, I came to offer Sharon Brannigan my support because she's getting no support from her colleagues.”

Brannigan rejected and condemned Jones’ candidacy for Congress as well as his support for her plight. At another meeting in 2o19, five activists were arrested during a board meeting on misdemeanor criminal trespassing charges. The case was later dismissed.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in March 2020, the Palos Township meetings moved to Zoom. Activists and their supporters led car caravans around Brannigan’s block. They also picketed in front of her flower shop in Orland Park.

Brannigan told Patch that she hasn’t posted on Facebook for two years, and has since taken herself entirely off of social media, except for her website.

"People have to be shown and examples to be set, I am the example that is shown,” Brannigan said. “I can’t understand their reason for carrying on.”

The other township board members — including Maloney — ran together on the Palos Township Independent Party slate. Brannigan’s fellow board members said little about her words or the growing outcry by activists and residents who labeled the embattled trustee a racist.

Rather than address four years of constituents’ concerns about an alleged white supremacist in their midst, the incumbents’ slate, sans Brannigan, posted numerous videos of protesters disrupting the Pledge of Allegiance. They blamed outside agitators for disrupting their monthly meetings. The videos posted on the slate's Weebly page singled out Tammy Georgiou, one of the activists arrested in 2019, who ran and lost against the incumbent township clerk, Jane Nolan.

Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi endorsed Maloney for town assessor in a tweet: “Bob Maloney stands in stark contrast to his opponent, who is notorious for many bigoted attacks on Arab Americans and other neighbors. Let’s make sure Bob wins on Tuesday, April 6.”

Marajda said the #ByeBrannigan campaign made over 20,000 phone calls to Arab and other voters in the township, and knocked on close to 5,000 doors, calling on residents to “vote against racism and white supremacy.”

“To be honest, Robert Maloney would have won without the efforts of #ByeBrannigan,” Marajda added. “We told people to vote for Maloney not because he was great but to vote against Brannigan.”

#ByeBrannigan is planning a final victory lap with a car caravan and rally at Palos Town Hall, 10802 S. Roberts Road, Palos Hills, for “lame duck trustee” Brannigan’s final township board meeting. Arab American neighbors and their supporters will start gathering at 5:30 p.m. Monday, April 12.

“We had the right to be angry when you call us barbaric and violent. All these things stem from racist stereotypes,” Marajda said. “Hate crimes don’t happen out of nowhere. It’s the result of hate speech allowed to hide behind freedom of speech, and it doesn’t protect Brannigan from the consequences of her speech.”

“We’re sending a message to a lot of people in the area. You can’t say hateful things and get away with it. We’ll come after you.”