When my editor, Salem, asked if I’d write a column on rats in Chicago, I said, “Hell, yes!” I immediately created a top-three list of Danny Solis, John Christopher, and William O’Neal. Then I realized—wait! Salem meant rats of the four-legged variety. Which, by the way, I could write a book about, having encountered one, […]
Category: On Politics
Posted inOn Politics
NU’s Streisand effect
Content note: This column contains mention of hazing and sexual assault. Northwestern University (NU) may not win many, or any, football games this season. But, man, when it comes to cynical acts of duplicity and deceit, they may already be the champs. Oh, where to start with the football hazing scandal that gets more scandalous […]
Posted inColumns & Opinion
Lessons from Harold and Rob
Editor’s note: Robert Mier (1924-1995) was a professor of urban planning and public administration at University of Illinois Chicago and a leading expert on urban economic issues. Mier founded the University of Chicago’s Center for Urban Economic Development in 1978. During Mayor Harold Washington’s first term, Mier became the City of Chicago’s director of economic […]
Posted inOn Politics
The Delmarie plan for the Bears’s new stadium
In a case of perfect timing, the MAGA six handed down their decision annihilating affirmative action in the name of “meritocracy” as another local municipality offered the Bears a handout they, the Bears, didn’t need, deserve, or earn. Proving, again, that meritocracy doesn’t exist in the real world—only in the fantasies of MAGA Supreme Court […]
Posted inOn Politics
High grades
In the aftermath of presiding over his first City Council meeting, Mayor Brandon Johnson gave himself the highest grade possible. “If you’re keeping score, I believe it was 41 alderpersons voted for it,” Johnson told reporters. “I would consider that an ‘A’ grade. I mean—I don’t know what a brother’s gotta do to get a […]
Posted inOn Politics
Lemming city.
Quick—name Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s first chief of staff! You probably can’t—unless your name is Mick Dumke. I mention Mick (a Block Club Chicago editor and my former writing partner here at the Reader) because he actually knew the answer when I asked him about it the other day. Then he sort of apologized, apparently a […]
Posted inOn Politics
Karen’s plan
At the risk of making you think I’m weirder than you may already think I am . . . Sometimes when walking alone late at night, I talk to friends and family who have died. Been doing it for a couple of years now. Going back to the pandemic when the streets were so deserted […]
Posted inOn Politics
Mr. Self-Promotion
As one of the old guys still standing from the Daley days of yore, I suppose it’s up to me to tell the rest of you a thing or two about Paul Vallas, the man Chicago seems eager to elect as its mayor. Back in the 90s, Vallas was Mayor Daley’s hand-picked boss of the […]
Posted inOn Politics
The Tunney-Vallas Alliance
I realize we’re in the silly season of the mayoral race, as candidates bombard us with propaganda we know we shouldn’t believe. But the recent commercial in which Alderperson Tom Tunney praises mayoral candidate Paul Vallas for being on the front lines in the fights for LGBTQ+ and abortion rights is particularly misleading even by […]
Posted inOn Politics
The Vallas surge
Back in our country’s less enlightened days that have, of course, long since passed (ha, ha, ha), there was a concept in boxing called the “great white hope.” That was a white boxer (any white boxer) who was viewed as the defender of the race’s wounded pride and honor when he fought a Black boxer […]
Posted inOn Politics
Chaos theory
One of the more revealing scenes in City So Real—Steve James’s insightful documentary about Chicago politics, takes place in a Gold Coast penthouse. It’s 2019. And James, chronicling the last mayoral election, is filming a dinner party hosted by Christie Hefner. They’re talking politics and one of the guests—Norman Bobins, a retired banker—opines that no […]
Posted inOn Politics
The early days
With roughly seven weeks to go until round one of the mayoral election, here’s what we know so far from the latest polls. If the election were held today, the winner would be . . . Karen Lewis! OK, I’ll get to that. But, first, a word or two about a recent “poll.” It was […]
Posted inOn Politics
Baby steps
It’s that time of the season where I measure a year’s worth of political progress by comparing steps forwards and steps back, in the hope that overall we’ve made progress. I could fill this issue with many examples of elections, budgets, and spending plans from 2022. But I’ll settle on a few items. Starting with […]
Posted inOn Politics
Good riddance
As my mother used to tell me, if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all. Wonderful words of wisdom that she herself rarely practiced, though often preached. So I was tempted not to write a word about 14th Ward alderperson Ed Burke, who decided not to run for reelection after over 50 […]
Posted inOn Politics
The Florida strategy
Poor Darren Bailey. The Chicago City Wire, the so-called newspaper intended to scare people like me into voting for him, arrived on Election Day, a week after I’d already voted early for someone else. Blame it on the U.S. Postal Service, Senator Bailey. In fact, I was paging through the City Wire while the results […]