B and B

Obama, Chicago, and Harold Washington

My political roots are in the Chicago of the 1980s, the interregnum between the Mayor Daleys when racial politics threatened to tear apart the city.  National politics -- Reagan, Iran-Contra, etc -- flew at the edge of my political radar, but I was extremely attentive to the ongoing saga of Chicago city politics.  Harold Washington, Chicago's mayor from 1983 through 1987, was my first and strongest political icon.  I was, and remain, extremely proud that the very first vote I cast in my life was for his re-election in the mayoral campaign of 1987.  Washington's substantial victory that year -- after squeaking to victory in 1983 against a previously unknown Republican, whose late surge to near victory was driven by racist fears of a black mayor by much of the white population of Chicago -- represented to me the defeat of the forces of racial divisiveness.

My formative years under the spell of Harold Washington's anti-machine, reformist, and racially unifying administration may help explain my affinity towards Barack Obama, whose career began in that same place and time.  I was reminded of all this by a recent article in Salon by Edward McClelland, which is a very interesting look at Chicago's, and Harold Washington's, influence upon Obama during those years. 

Here is an excerpt:

Ironically, Chicago became the political capital of black America because it was so racist. For most of the 20th century, it was the most segregated city in America. Blacks used to have a saying: "In the South, the white man doesn't care how close you get, as long as you don't get too high; in the North, he doesn't care how high you get, as long as you don't get too close." During the Great Migration, the refugees who rode up from Mississippi on the Illinois Central Railroad were crowded into the Black Belt, the South Side ghetto portrayed in Richard Wright's "Native Son." Because the black population was so concentrated, white politicians couldn't gerrymander it out of a congressional seat. One of De Priest's successors, William Dawson, was the most powerful black politician in America. He helped boot out the predecessor to Mayor Richard J. Daley, the current mayor's father, who bossed Chicago from 1955 to 1976. In return, Daley's machine rewarded Dawson with control of the entire South Side.

The politician who truly set the stage for Obama's rise was also a South Side congressman: Harold Washington, who was elected mayor of Chicago in 1983, beating two white opponents in the Democratic primary -- incumbent Mayor Jane Byrne and future Mayor Richard M. Daley. In the general election, the difference between Washington and his Republican opponent was black and white -- and nothing else. When Washington campaigned at a church in a Polish neighborhood, he was greeted with the grafitto "Die, Nigger, Die."

In New York, Obama read about Washington's victory and wrote to City Hall, asking for a job. He never heard back, but he made it to Chicago just months after Washington took office. In his memoir "Dreams From My Father," he wrote about walking into a barbershop and seeing the new mayor's picture on the wall. (It's probably still there. To this day, Washington's image is as revered by South Side blacks as St. Anthony of Padua's is by Italian Catholics.) The old men, who'd suffered a lifetime of slights by white mayors, saw in Washington a sign that the black community had finally arrived as a citywide power. Blacks may have run things in their own neighborhoods, but they were still crammed into dreary housing projects, and they sent their children to overcrowded schools -- while white schools just across the color line sat half empty. And of course, the big political jobs -- the state's attorney, the County Board president, the mayor -- had always been controlled by the Irish.

"Before Harold," the barber said, "seemed like we'd always be second-class citizens."

After too many triple cheeseburgers and deep-dish pizzas, Washington dropped dead of a heart attack in his second term. But the confidence he instilled in black leaders became a permanent factor in Chicago politics. His success inspired Jesse Jackson to run for president in 1984, which in turn inspired Obama, who was impressed to see a black man on the same stage as Walter Mondale and Gary Hart. Washington also strengthened the community organizations in which Obama was cutting his teeth, says Ransom. Obama's Project Vote, which put him on the local political map, was a successor to the South Side voter registration drive that made Washington's election possible.

"Everybody owes something to Harold Washington, because that was something they never thought could happen," Ransom says. "If Harold can be mayor, what can't we do? Obama talks about the audacity of hope. That audacity has grown into the notion that a black man can be president of the United States."

Before Washington, a black Chicagoan pol's highest aspiration was U.S. representative. After Washington, it became senator, and finally, president. Plenty of other cities have had black mayors -- Detroit, Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, New York, Los Angeles, Cleveland, Baltimore -- but in none of those places have blacks achieved as much statewide political success. Chicago has two unique advantages, says political consultant Don Rose. First, it's in Cook County, which contains nearly half of Illinois' voters. Second, the local Democratic Party is a countywide organization. After Chicago's Carol Moseley Braun beat two white men to win the 1992 Democratic Senate primary, precinct captains in white Chicago neighborhoods and the suburbs whipped up votes for her in the general election.

"They had to go out and sell the black person to demonstrate that the party was still open," says Rose, who sees "direct links" from Washington to Moseley Braun to Obama.

"It was a hard-fought thing. If you use Harold Washington's election as the pivot point, what you begin to see is black politicians making challenges to the regular organizations, and then the organizations having to support them."

 

For much more on the the tumultuous, transformative, years of Harold Washington's tenure in Chicago, listen to a great program from Ira Glass' This American Life, that was first aired in 1997 on the 10th anniversary of Washington's death.

By the way, on that website, I learned that the Washington-Obama connection is embodied in David Axelrod, "a political advisor to Harold Washington during Washington's second mayoral race and who is also chief political and media advisor to Illinois Senator (and Presidential candidate) Barack Obama."

Bringing the San Antonio Riverwalk into the 21st century

Extending and improving our city's famous Riverwalk has been talked about for many years, and the project has always appeared to me to be a priority of our civic leaders.  Lack of money has stood in the way.  Now, the campaign to get this done appears to be ramping up.  From today's Express-News:

It takes money to make money.

That's the idea behind a new study that says the $198 million San Antonio River Improvements Project, once completed, could have an annual economic impact of almost $1 billion on the region's economy.

The study by TXP Inc. was commissioned by the San Antonio River Foundation, which will use it to bolster a campaign to raise an additional $50 million from the private sector to fund public art and other amenities for a 13-mile linear park along the San Antonio River.

The report suggested the completed park, running from the Witte Museum to Mission Espada, would add $12.5 million annually to the area's tax base, increase property values adjacent to the open space along the river, and create close to 10,000 permanent jobs.

...

While the city, county and Zachry search for middle ground that would allow construction to begin, County Judge Nelson Wolff said that regardless of the increasing costs, the river project is "the most important public project we have going right now, and we have to push forward."

While I wouldn't take the word of this study, commissioned as it is by an interested party, I have little doubt that its fundamental conclusion is correct. 

Reading this first part of the article, I started thinking about my hometown Chicago's Millenium Park as a recent example of how an extensive improvement to a city's public space can be a tremendous boon to a city and its residents, despite the high up-front cost.  If only we here in San Antonio could follow that example with even a fraction of that success.  Apparently I wasn't the only one with those thoughts, as the article continues:

Sonny Collins, the river foundation's president, compared the improvements project with Chicago's Millennium Park, which has seen the value of surrounding land increase $1.4 billion, with increased tourism expected to bring in another $2.6 billion over the next decade.

That success will allow Chicago to pay off $285 million in bonds it issued to help pay for the park three to five years early, Collins said.

"The numbers are mind-boggling," he said. "We'd love to think we could emulate that."

The river foundation's job now is to emulate the successful private-giving campaign Chicago initiated to complement the public money spent on the park. Chicago raised $235 million for public art and other amenities within Millennium Park. Private money for the river project will go for enhanced landscaping, overlooks and public art.

Will San Antonio's corporate citizens do their part?

To see what is envisioned for the long neglected parts of our city's namesake river, see the San Antonio River Improvements Project website, where the illustrations accompanying this post came from. 

This is an idea I've been excited about ever since first hearing about it years ago.  This plan follows the century-old advice of legendary city planner Daniel Burnham (to throw in another Chicago reference):  "Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood and probably will not themselves be realized."   It would be great to see this "no little" urban river plan begin to come to fruition sometime in the near future.   

Chicago snow

Chicago got a big snowstorm of 9 or 10" over the last couple days.  Now I haven't lived in Chicago since 1990, but I did spend the first 21-plus years of my life there, and this strikes me as a sizeable snowstorm for the place.  But Chicago Tribune columnist Mary Schmich claims that Chicagoans are getting a bit wimpy about snow:

Early this week, with a little snow in the forecast, the former hog butchers to the world started twittering as if we lived in Tucson.

Snow, snow, scary snow was coming! Batten down the parking spots!

Shortly before the scary, scary snow started falling, I heard a woman in the supermarket line tell the clerk she was there to stock up on provisions before the snow hit. Oh please. That's what they do in Atlanta. In Orlando. In cities that have the winter muscle tone of squids.

In places with real winter--the kind of place this used to be--people walk 5 miles in the snow to get provisions so they can brag about it later.

But our little patch of global warming has turned us into winter weaklings. We've had so little snow for so long that former Olympic shovelers have been reduced to amateurs, their winter muscle atrophied, their winter gumption gone.

Shoveling once a year is like jogging once a year. It leaves you whimpering and limping. This is particularly dispiriting to us Sunbelt transplants for whom winter--the physical demands, the mental focus--required years of special training.

The news reports crowed that this week's snowstorm was the biggest since January 2002. So? That just goes to show how wimpy our winters have become.

Yes, little children, sit still while your elders tell you how about those great backbreaking, character-building snows of yesteryear.

Way back in the last century, kiddos, winter was so nasty that a mayor got elected because the previous mayor couldn't clear the snow. Winter was once so bad that not only did it snow up to your ears, it sometimes stayed up there until May.

...

We pretend to like the pampering, but in our hearts Chicagoans are uneasy with winter ease. This city stakes its reputation on its brawn. It didn't get those big shoulders by lounging around in bikinis. It got them from trudging through snow. From slipping on ice. From scraping, defrosting and shoveling.

Now I definitely find the idea that Chicagoans could be starting to resemble Texans about snow to be very unsettling.  Fortunately, though, I don't think it's true. 

First of all, the only real evidence Schmich presents is the comments of an anonymous woman in a supermaket, and I wouldn't be surprised if this woman was indeed a transplant from Atlanta or Orlando, or perhaps even my new home town of San Antonio.

Second, while Chicago snow has been somewhat less abundant than the long-term average for last few years, this is nothing unusual for Chicago.  In fact, based on this chart at this website, it is the huge snow years of the 1970s that were the true anomaly.  An anomaly that has strongly colored all Chicagoans' memories, especially those of us who grew up there during that period, but still an anomaly.

The pattern of snowfall amounts over the last 20 Chicago winters greatly resembles the pattern of the 73 winters from 1885-86 through 1957-58, with most years having somewhat less than "average" snow, with the occasional very snowy year thrown in.  From 1958-59 through 1984-85, Chicago had an abnormally snowy period.

The late 1970s really stands out, with the two snowiest years on record, by far, coming back to back, in 1977-78 and 1978-79.  These are the snowy years Schmich refers to, "way back in the last century."  (Poor Mayor Michael Bilandic didn't have a chance of getting all those record amounts of snow cleared and subsequently lost the 1979 Mayor's race to Jane Byrne.)  I remember those years very well, and for a 10-year old kid like myself, it was great fun to play in the huge snowdrifts, and to clamber over them as I walked back-and-forth to school (uphill both ways, of course). 

By my college years in the late 1980s, I was lamenting the relative lack of snow myself.  Alas, I didn't realize that those late 1980s years were much more "normal" for Chicago than what I grew up with in the 1970s.

So, unless pre-1958 Chicagoans were soft about snow, I see no reason to fear 21st Century Chicagoans becoming so.