Palos Township
Brannigan recently targeted by activists after comments on Muslim immigration
A Palos Township trustee whose controversial Facebook comments about Middle Eastern immigration sparked protests earlier this month has stepped down from her post on Cook County’s Commission on Women’s Issues, a county spokesman said.
Sharon Brannigan, a Republican who ran against U.S. Rep. Dan Lipinski in 2014, took heat recently for Facebook posts suggesting the area’s schools were filling with Middle Eastern students in the U.S. illegally, asserting that local Muslims often failed to integrate into the community and questioning what Lipinski had done to “stem the flow of Middle Eastern immigration into our beloved United States while we are at war with Islamic extremists.”
More than 100 activists rallied outside Palos Township offices to condemn Brannigan’s remarks and demand her immediate resignation from the township board prior to that panel’s July 10 meeting. She has thus far refused to step down from that board.
Brannigan did, however, relinquish her seat on the county’s women’s commission shortly after Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle called for her resignation from it, county spokesman Frank Shuftan said.
She had served on the commission since May 2016 after being appointed by County Board Commissioner Sean M. Morrison.
“Such viewpoints certainly do not reflect our values nor, in my opinion, the kind of representation we want on the Commission,” Preckwinkle said in a statement released July 12. “Ms. Brannigan is the appointee of Commissioner Sean Morrison. I ask that Commissioner Morrison seek Ms. Brannigan’s immediate resignation.”
A staffer from Morrison’s office confirmed that Brannigan had resigned from the county women’s commission but said it was related to her difficulty making it to downtown meetings from the south suburbs and not Preckwinkle’s demand for her to step aside.
Brannigan had been phoning in to meetings for the past few months but ultimately decided even that was interfering too much with her small business and notified Morrison that she planned to relinquish the position, staffer Chris Provenzano said.
“(Preckwinkle) called for her resignation that wasn’t even needed because she could no longer commit the time to serve on the women’s commission,” he said. “If the president’s office would have called and spoken with us, we could have let them know.”
On July 14, Morrison sent the commission’s chairwoman, Peggy Montes, a letter in which he stated that Brannigan had advised him on July 1 that she would need to withdraw from the commission.
“Ms. Brannigan had been concerned that she could not give the proper attention to the Commission and had indicated her desire to no longer serve due to the time her professional and business commitments demanded,” Morrison’s letter states. It makes no mention of the controversy over Brannigan’s Facebook comments.
Provenzano said Morrison had no comment on his appointee’s statements.
“He’s not jumping into any of these local issues. That’s for Sharon to explain and to handle,” Provenzano said, adding that Brannigan was a “strong advocate for taxpayers” and “watches carefully the allocation of tax dollars.”
Brannigan did not return requests for comment on the matter.
She has since taken down her Facebook page where the controversial comments were made but has not apologized for them. She defended the statements at the Palos Township board meeting in July, citing her First Amendment right to free speech, and said she would not resign.
The activists who protested Brannigan at the July meeting said they would continue attending the monthly meetings until she resigned.
“For us, the outcome that the Muslim and Arab community wants is very simple,” activist and organizer Rush Darwish said after the July 10 meeting. “This trustee must resign. Must resign her post. And until that happens, this crowd you saw here tonight, you will continue seeing until that result is met.”
