I thought I would throw a couple of cents in on this fray. Obviously the timing of prayer is well known and a dignified approach might be to sequester ones self along one line not moving or even choose to avoid being "in play" at the aforementioned "known" time. Choosing the high road would mean making it a practice to represent ones overt demonstration of faith in a manor most suited to the objective. This would mean, as I best gather, that the personal effort to pray would be accomplished with out causing any disturbance.
I have observed the parking and double parking of taxi's along the roadways past the spitters. I have also seen line after line where a taxi has been abandoned in the moving line, I have pictures and I have seen the disruption and mild confusion it causes.
Are the tickets justified, sure it's the law. That is why the city writes the tickets. By the way, do you think every employee wants to add to the already conflicted situation by doing their job and writing tickets? No way. They want to avoid being told to write the ticket, but by their hand - it is their job. Just like by the hand of the prayer gathering drivers who put their cab and park and took the keys out of the ignition in the non parking location.
No matter what the excuse - scheduled or unscheduled, that's bad form. The area that all of the cars congregate is tight and very high exposure for incident. Every one of the Three Cab lanes, the short trip line and the two or three operating Limo lines all compress into one lane just past this "convenient" No parking area. That is the reason it is a "No Parking Area", to keep all of the lanes open. It's commerce and congestion all bundled up into one area. Add 10 or 15 cabs parked or double parked and the potential is clear. Not to mention the cars left in what moments before were stationary cab lanes.
It starts with just a few folks and ends up with a multitude. Possibly those drivers who park in the drive lanes are "jumping" their fellow congregation members? Pulling thru when they are needed in the terminals (how else do they get there?), then "staying" a while. Looks a lot like "special treatment" for sure. Maybe the answer lies in the behavior, I think it's in the minds and hearts of those men. This is a major transportation hub and the lot is well planned and executed process which provides for many a traveler and driver a like. Would parking and prayer on the North West end avoid conflict, be a quieter location and afford less conflict? Everyone caught behind an empty cab in the moving line would agree a different location might be better. It's not Muslim cabs getting ticketed, it's not a consideration being forgotten - it is a consequence of the first persons action(s). Let's plan for this in the future - seems like the effort to complain might have been better spent making a solution which works for the field and driver population as a whole.
Who was that genius who figured out that the best place to put the prayer facility is next to one of the busiest intersections at O'Hare and not make room for the taxicabs anyway?
No one thought of the fact that the worshipers, being taxicab drivers would bring their taxicabs?
That's sure to earn a Congressional Medal of Boner.
We call this town the "City of the Big Shoulders":
Not because of Carl Sandburg's poem:
CHICAGO
Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders:
They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I
have seen your painted women under the gas lamps
luring the farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it
is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to
kill again.
And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the
faces of women and children I have seen the marks
of wanton hunger.
And having answered so I turn once more to those who
sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer
and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing
so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.
Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on
job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the
little soft cities;
Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning
as a savage pitted against the wilderness,
Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Building, breaking, rebuilding,
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with
white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young
man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has
never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse.
and under his ribs the heart of the people,
Laughing!
Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of
Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog
Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with
Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.
(by Carl Sandburg)
Blogger's note: We call this town the "City of the Big Shoulders" because they don't call this town the "City of those who think things through to the end."
And why might that be so?
Respectfully submitted by,
-wjw-
It is clear enough that the City isn't going to push this issue far/into the courts. This is the kind of matter that is a loser on constitutional grounds for DCS.
The open offer for free representation in the Circuit Court of Cook County to anyone ticketed for praying while parked appears to have been sufficient to assure my Muslim cousins the opportunity to worship as their faith requires without being tormented.
That open offer stands.
Donald Nathan, Esq.
