by Michael L. Watson
A Tale of Two Cities: images of two different neighborhoods in Chicago - Forest Glen (top), located on Chicago's affluent and predominantly white North side, and Woodlawn (bottom), located on Chicago's less affluent and predominantly minority South Side.
I love the city of Chicago, but like so many long-time residents living on the south and west sides of the city, I don’t always feel that Chicago loves me. On September 9, 2010, in the century that humankind acknowledges nature as God’s path to eternity, former Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley, in God’s ordered steps, announced to a stunned city that, after 23 years in office, he would not be seeking re-election in the spring of 2011. It would be a mistake to think that prior to this historical event you could work hard and become successful in Chicago’s “tale of two cities” without paying homage to the political machine. The same can be said even today. Those rich and powerful enough to pay to play can still enjoy the Chicago that is glamorized in the movies. Otherwise, for the most part, the scraps of the “haves” and those employees anointed by City Hall are divvied out to the “have nots” in just enough portions for us to live and die in neighborhoods assigned according to income and race. It is no wonder that every aspect of the long reach of Chicago politics, in controlling every dollar that enters the city limits, has been and is currently being investigated, court decreed, and civilly and criminally litigated.
Richard J. and Richard M. Daley were at the helm of Chicago and its politics for most of my childhood and adult life. There is no doubt in my mind that both Richard J. and Richard M. Daley love(d) the city of Chicago. There is a time and place for everything and the MayoralCitizenry Bridge had not been constructed during their leadership terms. The heartache of those of us who were excluded from equal employment and housing opportunities within Chicago must confess to the Daley Midas touch. Chicago, unlike other dying metropolitan areas in America, endured both good and bad economic times with the sound, firm, and powerful minds of the Daley family. To this day, Chicago’s downtown and lakeshore areas, attractive to citizens around the globe, evoke pride in being called a Chicagoan. However, the Daleys’ primitive materialistic virtues, which enabled them to be great builders of this large and magnificent city, also caused them to ignore some of the neediest citizenry of Chicago. If the MayoralCitizenry Bridge had been around during their illustrious tenure, they may have considered that all Chicagoans deserved to share equally in the rights, opportunities, and privileges that our hard work, and one of the highest tax rates in the nation, afforded us to enjoy. During the Daleys' reign, the city of Chicago remained one of the most racially segregated cities in the United States, making Chicago a “city that does not work for all its citizens.” If one takes a tour through Chicago, it is evident that, a decade later, very little has changed.
Consider Richard M. Daley’s transformation for the Chicago Housing Authority’s high and midrise concrete fortresses of self-contained crime and despair. Though possibly not the intended aim, the city, with Mayor Daley at the helm, allowed them to be poorly managed and maintained with political cronies, many who lacked housing experience. Some, but not all, of these political allies served the lower gods’ preferences to destroy any hope of raising the living standards for those less fortunate “political prisoners” who dared to envision a better life for themselves and their families.
God humbled me by giving and taking away a job in this same housing authority, a job that required having the courage to challenge the established political machine by making a
difference in the lives of residents of my childhood Ida B. Wells Housing Project. I helplessly witnessed a systemic, deliberate lack of effort to improve the living conditions and safety standards for the African-American and Latino residents who were living in squalor on valuable prime location real estate. Much needed resources for the elimination of drugs, violence, and crime on the streets or efforts to increase employment opportunities and improve education were diverted to city image projects and higher tax contributing neighborhoods. Richard M. Daley’s transformation plan for the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) was filled with empty promises that were hidden by loyal city workers who promised pipedream futures of modern replacement housing to current residents. By doing so, the mayor eliminated substantial organized resistance to planned demolition; new housing in prime locations would accomplish Mayor Daley’s planned gentrification of these once-blighted areas.
"Much needed resources for the elimination of drugs, violence, and crime on the streets or efforts to increase employment opportunities and improve education were diverted to city image projects and higher tax contributing neighborhoods."
To accomplish Mayor Daley’s planned CHA transformation, thousands of residents were given Section 8 vouchers forcing them to find housing in surrounding neighborhoods and cities already distressed with crime and poverty. When added to Mayor Daley’s bold initiatives to improve neighborhoods by incarcerating established gang leadership without improving education and employment opportunities for young people with absentee fathers, this measure overwhelmed single mother head of households who were living in blighted, dangerous neighborhoods. The only chance of escaping the reality of mean streets was unrealistic dreams of sports stardom or entertainment. With nowhere else to turn, far too many young teenagers opted for easily obtainable kingships of gang affiliations.
From May 2006 to October 2009, Mayor Daley, still without constructing a MayoralCitizenry Bridge, brought to bear between 48 and 100 million dollars from corporate commitments, wealthy philanthropic Chicagoans, as well as the cerebral brain trusts of a wide range of corporations, celebrities, communities, and government leaders, to unsuccessfully bring the 2016 Olympics to Chicago. Yet in 2010, all the mayor could muster to save the valued lives of police officers and hundreds of innocent children were marches and tears. How many future athletes could resources of the magnitude directed toward Chicago’s Olympic bid have saved from injuries, deaths and long prison sentences. In Chicago’s poorest and most underfunded neighborhoods, how many scientists, doctors, teachers, and honest hardworking future taxpaying citizens could the billions of dollars earmarked for the 2016 Olympics by corporations and government officials have produced? To this day, many neighborhoods on the south and west sides of Chicago suffer from a lack of adequate investment and attention.
To be successful, a mayor must construct a MayoralCitizenry Bridge in order to bring the needs of the neighborhoods’ citizenry in parity with their aspirations to be the “boss” of the great city of Chicago. In time, the feeling of inclusiveness will create an atmosphere of good will throughout our great city so that police officers, innocent children, and adults won’t have to leave us so soon.
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