CHICAGO, IL — After Walmart announced plans to close 4 store locations in dangerous Chicago neighborhoods, Chicago Mayor-Elect Brandon Johnson issued a dire warning that this will leave many Chicagoans with fewer places to shoplift.

"Citizens of this great city have the fundamental right to steal merchandise in their own communities without resorting to traveling to other neighborhoods," said Johnson at a local protest against the store closings. "If our youths don't have a safe place to work, shop, shoplift, loot, fight, do drugs, terrorize citizens, and smash windows, they may participate in riskier shoplifting, looting, and drug-consuming in affluent communities where cops will actually bother to arrest them until my Soros-funded DA lets them back out on the street. We can't let this happen!"

Walmart executives insist the move is nothing personal. "We're just tired of our cashiers and store greeters getting beaten up and every store losing millions of dollars," said district manager Darnell Monahan. "We'd prefer our workers not get beaten up and robbed and all that stuff. Sorry!"

At publishing time, civil rights leaders had warned that if Walmart goes through with the move, they will encourage Americans to boycott shoplifting there entirely.

When guns are finally banned in the coming utopia, you may still need to defend yourself on the rare occasion.