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CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- Demolition continued Friday morning on the old Crawford power plant on Chicago’s Southwest Side, following the implosion of the smoke stack two months ago that send dust over a wide area; and there was a violent confrontation when protesters blocked traffic.
About three dozen protesters, along with some children, walked onto Pulaski Road outside the demolition site, blocking traffic. The carried signs, some reading, “We Can’t Breathe.”
There was no police in sight and a truck driver was having none of it. He jumped out of his cab and confronted them. He pointed and pushed through the group that included small children, shouting "shame on you." The crowd chanted the same thing back at him.
"Shame on you. Shame on you."
The man knocked a woman to the street in front of her children, and then he punched a man in the face and he staggered backward.
Activist Laura Ramirez was shocked.
"We just feel so assaulted, and I think when we think of violence, I mean seeing this man get out of his truck and push a woman to the ground while her two children watched. She's only here trying to protect them so they can breathe. And then when she gets up, trying to walk away, and he tried to punch her in the face," Ramirez said.
The truck driver got back in his cab and turned off Pulaski onto 36th Street and disappeared.
The work that resumed Friday was manual demolition, with water spray to keep the dust down.
That wasn't enough for the protesters who believe the project is poisoning the neighborhood during a respiratory pandemic.