Evanston, Illinois, is a scenic, wealthy, and mostly white town on the western shore of Lake Michigan, just 30 minutes north of Chicago. It’s also the home of Northwestern University and is therefore — like other elite university towns such as Cambridge, Ann Arbor, Austin, Boulder, and Berkeley — just chock-full of leftist virtue signalers.

So it’s not so much a surprise as it is an outrage that the city has canceled its Independence Day festivities while embracing celebrations for Juneteenth and Gay Pride Month.

“The city commemorated Juneteenth after President Joe Biden signed a bill making it a federal holiday last week, holding a parade and musical performances at a local park,” reports the Washington Examiner. “The city also has a gay pride parade planned for later this month.”

But as for Evanston’s annual 4th of July celebration, the city pulled the plug back in February due to — what else? — COVID-19 fears. According to a statement:

Based on concern for public health due to the unpredictability of the pandemic’s impact, vaccination rates, and in cooperation with our local authorities, the Trustees of the Evanston Fourth of July Association voted to cancel the Fun Run, Parade, Palatine Concert Band performance and Lakefront Fireworks show on July 4, 2021. However, we are committed and already working toward an Independence Day celebration that will be safe, creative and build community.

As of this publication, however, Evanston had yet to announce any plans for that community-building Independence Day celebration, despite the holiday being less than two weeks away.

Why not, we wonder, given that back on April 21, President Joe Biden gave all of us his conditional permission “to celebrate our independence from this virus on July 4th with family and friends in small groups,” so long as we all “mask up until the number of cases goes down, until everyone has a chance to get their shot”?

And why not, we wonder, given that Evanston did just that? The city didn’t report a single new COVID-19 case last week for the first time since the pandemic began, and 87% of its residents age 12 and over have now received at least one dose of the vaccine.

Jamie Black, organizer of the city’s Fourth of July Association, blamed the cancellation on “deadlines for permits and to secure the fireworks, as well as taking applications for the parade that happen early in the year.” Said Black: “We erred on the side of caution. If things weren’t better, we would have been criticized for being a super spreader event.”

Maybe Evanston’s authorities simply believe that Juneteenth should be the nation’s new “Independence Day,” since it commemorates that date, June 19, 1865, on which slaves in Galveston, Texas, were finally told of their emancipation. After all, this is the same Evanston whose white-guilt-ridden city council, as we reported back in March, voted 8-1 to pay reparations to the city’s 16 eligible black households.

Evanston is clearly blazing a bizarre trail. Time will tell whether other left-leaning college towns choose to follow.