Congressional candidate apologizes for suggesting attack on Catholic school in satirical video

A Democrat running for Illinois’ 6th Congressional District seat apologized Friday for releasing a video in which he satirically proposed killing the students at an all-girls high school in Chicago with a missile strike, saying he was trying to draw attention to a similar attack in Iran.

Candidate Joey Ruzevich, who’s challenging U.S. Rep. Sean Casten in Tuesday’s primary, filmed the roughly 96-second video outside Mother McAuley Liberal Arts High School in Chicago’s Mount Greenwood neighborhood. Text accompanying the video on one social platform read, in all capital letters: “WE NEED TO BOMB GIRL'S SCHOOLS IN ORDER TO LIBERATE THEM.”

In a lengthy statement emailed to the Daily Herald, Ruzevich acknowledged picturing their children being harmed “is deeply unsettling” for any parent “and can evoke a powerful emotional response.”

“My sincere apologies to anyone who felt frightened or distressed by these thoughts,” said Ruzevich, who lives in the same neighborhood as the independent Catholic school.

A Mother McAuley spokesperson declined to comment.

Ruzevich released the video March 8, which was International Women’s Day. It was about a week after a missile strike destroyed an all-girls school in Minab, Iran, at the start of the U.S.-Israel war on Iran. An estimated 180 people — mostly children — were killed. Media investigations have concluded the U.S. likely was responsible for the strike.

A smiling Ruzevich starts the video by wishing viewers “Happy International Women’s Day” and identifying his location. He then asks, “What if we just killed all the girls that go to this school with a missile explosion? What if we did that? Wouldn’t that be so liberating?”

Ruzevich goes on to say the students are living under “this oppressive Catholic ideology” and under what he called “the oppressive Trump regime,” and he asked if Russia attacking the school with missiles would be liberating.

Ruzevich then shifts to a more serious tone and says “Of course not, right? That’s ridiculous.” He then talks of the Feb. 28 strike on the Iranian school and accuses the U.S. and Israel of murdering the girls there. Eventually he pledges to stand up against the military industrial complex and urges viewers to vote for him.

Ruzevich has deleted the video from X, the platform formerly called Twitter, but it remains elsewhere on the internet. In his statement to the Daily Herald, Ruzevich said he didn’t intend for the video to frighten anyone.

“It was to help people consider what it would be like if the death and destruction inflicted by the U.S. government happened here,” he said. “Parents in Iran lived through an unimaginable horror. Every child’s life has equal value, whether that child lives in Chicago or in Iran.”

Ruzevich, who is Catholic, said he was appalled by the way some elected officials dismissed the Iranian girls’ deaths. “My first thought was, ‘What if that had happened here?’” he said.

The Casten campaign declined to comment.