Tribune: A rift, then split between Lake Shore Drive protest organizers over planned shutdown of Kennedy Expressway

So evidently there is a disagreement as far as another highway shutdown to protest gun violence in Chicago's troubled neighborhoods!

Less than a week after a coalition of South and West side community leaders orchestrated a protest that shut down part of North Lake Shore Drive, march organizers Tio Hardiman and the Rev. Gregory Livingston have decided to go separate ways, a split both say resulted from differences in ideology.

The rift comes after Livingston, a West Side pastor and activist, announced a plan to shut down parts of the Kennedy Expressway bound for O’Hare International Airport on Labor Day. In a Tuesday statement, Hardiman said plans for the upcoming protest — an escalation of the tactic organizers used for the Aug. 2 Lake Shore Drive protest — were made without his approval. As a result, he and Livingston will no longer work together.

“We fell out over this; he used me,” Hardiman, head of the Violence Interrupters, said in his release. “He is trying to use this as a stepping stone for this own career.”

Hardiman, who has run for governor twice, said Livingston’s plan to shut down the Kennedy is “ludicrous” and would result in protester arrests. He refuses, he said, to allow marchers to participate in tactics that could prompt “aggressive force by law enforcement authorities.”

“He hijacked my movement,” Hardiman said of the Lake Shore Drive protest. “Everybody out there knew that was my idea — except for him.”

In a phone interview Tuesday, Livingston said he invited Hardiman to participate in the Aug. 2 demonstration and that Hardiman came up with the idea of the Lake Shore Drive protest. Livingston said he introduced the idea of marching to Wrigley Field. Though they successfully cooperated in the past, the two had differences in their thinking, he said.

“He had his ideas, we had our ideas,” Livingston said. “At some point, we realized we had different ideas.”