We sent this to our readers and contributors, and have been collecting responses for the last couple of days.
In hearing that Mayor Daley is not going to run for office again, AREA feels we have come to the end of an era. We are wondering what you - our friends, readers and allies - have to say. What did Mayor Daley represent to you and what kind of vision do you have for Chicago's future now that this break with the status quo has occurred?
Here are folks' responses:
Daley has been mayor for almost as long as I've been alive. I felt that we needed a new mayor, but part of me couldn't really imagine what that would be like. When I heard that he wouldn't run and realized that the next election could actually mean a different mayor, I felt like a law of physics had changed. Suddenly I could hazily imagine a more open and equal Chicago, as well as more pessimistic possibilities of our future. In my entire life as a citizen of Chicago, I've never been able to feel this sense of possibility--positive or negative--about city hall. Now, this barest hope of a normal democratic election feels like a revolutionary change. I hope that we can make the next generation of citizens feel this every four years. - Simon Swartzman
Subject: Daley's timing
On the one hand, Chicago's bankruptcy will erupt in the next couple years. The city's finances will implode like a stepped on beer cup.
On the other hand, there's nothing left to steal. - Neil Rest
Daley oversaw the privatization of parking meters, public housing land, public schools to charter schools, the skyway and a continuously corrupt local government. He used his one and only veto in 22 years to shut down a living wage campaign.... Simply put, his administration represents the local manifestation of a generalized attack and punishment of working people. Chicago deserves better and I hope that the people can use all of their creative power, stifled for so long by stagnant political landscape, to envision a future for the common good of all people in our region. - Daniel Tucker
Jason Reblando
To me, Mayor Daley represented complacency in Chicago. The feeling that "things are just how they are" and that we can't actually change anything because things are either too corrupt or bureaucratic. This complacency split Chicago into two halves, those that had enough power and money to go "legit" and make moves and those that had to go underground and bend the law just to follow their dreams.
My hope for Chicago is that it regains the spirit of a "city on the make", and actually execute on that promise and support true independent economic, artistic, and cultural growth of the city. A place where people flock to and stay, and are proud of because they feel amazing things can happen here and their dreams can come true - not because "well, it's a very practical and affordable place to live." - Farsheed
The huge web of legal (and illegal) corruption, including vast inefficiencies of sweetheart deals to politically connected contractors, was difficult enough to maintain during the boom years. It became untenable the moment any economic storm clouds appeared, let alone the "Great Recession."
Over and over again City resources were misappropriated so as to pursue political agendas, such as when top Legal Department personnel and high-priced outside counsel were used to pursue trivial cases against anti-war activists, rather than other cases which might presumably have a greater effect on protecting the taxpayers' bottom line. The Mayor's autocratic style and virtual extinction of any internal opposition meant that small problems festered into big ones because everyone on the inside was afraid to say that the emperor had no clothes -- this was the systemic root of such multimillion dollar boondoggles as the Millennium Park construction fiasco, the Great Loop Flood, the Hired Truck Scandal, etc. Even absent this systemic graft, the structural impediments to reestablishing financial health are enormous, made worse by the state's and county's insolvencies.
Yet perversely, this financial dysfunction was the key to Daley's hold on power. Over and over again, "representatives" (really, business elites) of key constituencies -- gays, Blacks, whites, Latinos, etc. -- were bought off through contracts to private businesses and non-governmental organizations. And thus not only was the fiscal structure perverted, but democracy itself. The illusion of a rainbow supporting the Mayor was regularly trotted out to mask the key class component of Daley's rule, and genuine issues of racism and other forms of oppression trivialized by this fake rainbow of big business supporters.
Your community center might get City funding if you played ball with the Mayor and his pals, but if you were working class and a victim of racist and/or anti-gay police misconduct, at best all you got was the stonewall. What else would you expect from a man who as Cook County States Attorney and later Mayor spent nearly two decades covering for racist torture by former Police Commander Jon Burge and his crew, let alone countless lesser crimes? From education to employment to the environment, those who were connected got the inside track, while the vast majority of Chicagoans were screwed.
