Sun-Times: The city could still make a play to keep the Bears

Former South Works site

Did someone read my thoughts on the Bears' stadium issue? The one where I propose the Bears come down to the former U.S. Steel South Works site that is waiting for further development? Well I'm not naieve enough to think that I'm the first to come up with, however, I didn't even see this being discussed.

Anyway from a recent Sun-Times editorial:

We could imagine, for instance, a Bears stadium on land owned by the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority at 35th Street and Shields Avenue, just north of the White Sox’s ballpark. Part of that deal could include the proper redevelopment of the 70 acres of surface parking — also owned by the ISFA — that surround the ballpark.

Or, if the Bears would prefer another lakefront stadium, the city could offer a piece of the 500-acre former U.S. Steel South Works site. To do that, City Hall would have to bring the land’s owner, U.S. Steel, to the table. But the steelmaker might be wise to listen, given that two decades of redevelopment plans for the land have fluttered and died like Jack Concannon’s forward passes.

At the U.S. Steel site, the Bears would enjoy a nearly blank slate to build on and the result, if done right, could greatly benefit the working-class South Chicago neighborhood.

“So I just ask you, with all the priorities you have of lifting up communities, which is where the priority has to be, let’s not give up on trying to find a place to keep these guys in Chicago,” [Ward 48 Ald. Harry] Osterman said to Cox.

The planning department did not respond to Osterman’s suggestions, other than reissuing a statement from Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s office. “The mayor,” the statement said, “has said numerous times, our door in City Hall remains open to engage the Bears.”

Ald. Osterman wasn't suggesting any sites for the Bears to consider within the city, but he does want the city to work further on keeping the Bears from going to Arlington Heights, Illinois. I'm glad to see that someone at the Sun-Times sees the former South Works site as a potentially viable option for whatever the Bears want to do around a new NFL stadium.

Time will tell as far as whether or not the Bears will pull a trigger on moving from Soldier Field. Who knows what effort the Mayor of Chicago would make or even if she would be successful in keeping one of the historic NFL franchises from leaving Chicago. 

BTW, I hardly pay attention to the NFL anymore but I wish I had seen their routing of the Las Vegas Raiders.

Editorial: The Avenue could again become magnificent #Ward09

The Chicago Neighborhood

This editorial from the Chicago Sun-Times makes reference to last year's fire at the former Gatelys Department store on the Michigan Avenue shopping strip south of 111th Street. It's probably time to redevelop that corridor, especially in time for that Red Line extension whenever it gets funded and construction starts.

Keep an eye on the Roseland neighborhood’s Michigan Avenue, once a retail strip so popular it was called Chicago’s second Magnificent Mile.

Shoppers could find anything from school supplies to furniture to brand new cars.

Rocked by two devastating extra-alarm fires within the last year, and now slammed by a pandemic that’s likely to change forever how we shop and gather, the faded and struggling commercial strip faces a tough future.

But “The Avenue” — as this stretch of Michigan Avenue between 115th and 107th was called in its heyday — now is being targeted by the city for possible redevelopment.

The plans were in place before the coronavirus broke out and they’ll need to be modified. But given that the COVID-19 pandemic has hit all traditional retail strips hard — have you seen the boarded up stores on North Michigan Avenue these days? — saving The Avenue should be even more of a priority.

When neighborhood shopping dies, neighborhoods die.

The Avenue’s day as a regional commercial giant are not likely to return. People just don’t shop in brick-and-mortar stores the way they used to, and the street’s major retailers, such as JCPenney, are long gone.

But the buildings still stand and could be reused in potentially exciting new ways. And if done correctly, the lessons learned here could be applied to troubled commercial streets in neighborhoods elsewhere on the South and West sides.

Probably excerpted a lot more than I should've so I'll stop there and hope that you'll read the whole thing.

The editorial itself makes reference to this strip's proximity to the Pullman National Monument. How could the businesses and the community leverage that. The Avenue - at least for those old school residents might refer to the strip - might not return to the glory days. I still would like to see what plans could develop with revitalization. What entrepreneurs can become successful in this area.

EDITORIAL: The next mayor of Chicago must bring back the middle class #ChiMayor19

Perhaps Preckwinkle & Lightfoot will have an answer to this Sun-Times editorial as they head to the their April run-off.

Here’s the challenge for the next mayor of Chicago: Bring back the middle class. We don’t mean save the middle class. That would mean Chicago has one, the @Suntimes editorial board writes. https://t.co/9ojXyBWz9D

— Chicago Sun-Times (@Suntimes) March 2, 2019

A city without a middle class is no place to be. It is a ladder with a few rungs at the top and a few at the bottom — and none in the middle. It is a place where the social mobility essential to a democracy — the ability to climb the ladder of success — becomes prohibitively difficult, if even possible.

The next mayor of Chicago may argue that the biggest challenge facing our city is getting its finances in order, or improving its schools, or curbing violent crime. But all those challenges must be met in ways that pull the whole city along — that create opportunities for the poor to move up and for the last of the middle class to stick around.

Or what’s the point?

I would like to refer you to a previous post which involved a piece from WBEZ regarding Chicago's shrinking middle class.

EDITORIAL: Ed Burke scandal presents Chicago with a grand opportunity for reform

After the search warrants executed on Ald. Burke's ward & city hall offices last year, federal authorities have finally charged thenow former finance committee chairman with corruption. I would like to share some stories about this at a later time. Meanwhile, how about an editorial:

On Friday, after Ald. Edward Burke resigned his chairmanship of the Finance Committee, Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced that Ald. Patrick J. O’Connor, as acting chairman of the committee, will lead an effort to reform how the city runs its secretive $100 million-a-year workers compensation program.

Most basically — and this is an excellent development — the mayor wants to strip the program from the Council’s Finance Committee, where Burke apparently ran it as a personal political favor bank, and move it to the city’s finance department, where it belongs.

We enthusiastically support this reform, for which we made a case just two weeks ago, with one big caveat: The city inspector general should be granted full oversight over the management of the program. For that matter, the inspector general should be granted true oversight over all agencies under the mayor’s control, along with the ability to defend its subpoenas in court.

As things work now, the IG must rely on the mayor and city law department to defend its subpoenas.

Tribune: Race, poverty and fair housing: Chicago's landmark Gautreaux case winds down

Just wanted to share this with you. Housing and real estate has been a frequent topic of this blog over the years. And this is probably something you might not know much about.

A federal judge, several lawyers and representatives of the Chicago Housing Authority on Friday formalized a special date: July 31, 2024. If all goes as planned, that last Wednesday of July more than five years from now will close out one of the nation’s longest and most impactful housing discrimination cases.

Dorothy Gautreaux, an Altgeld Gardens resident and lead plaintiff when the case was filed in 1966, died two years later at age 41. But her activism had helped launch a movement extending beyond the landmark legal battle that originated in Chicago: Her cause, housing fairness, also had broadened the goals of the civil rights movement. The anti-discrimination marches of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had come to embrace equal access to housing as a national cause.

For more than 40 years and with countless twists and turns, CHA has been trying to reverse what the U.S. Supreme Court determined in its 1976 Gautreaux ruling: Federal and local housing authorities in Chicago were violating the constitutional and civil rights of public housing tenants by concentrating and isolating them in low-income neighborhoods.

Over time, the court’s ruling slowed the purposeful crowding of black tenants in concentrated high-rise developments and accelerated the distribution of housing vouchers to integrate black families into communities throughout the city and suburbs. That remains the case today.

The Supreme Court decision also spurred CHA to build and renovate thousands of units and scatter them in more prosperous areas of Chicago. And it nudged a housing revolution, led by former Mayor Richard M. Daley, that included the teardown of the notorious Cabrini-Green public housing complex and others comparable to it.

BTW, the Sun-Times also wrote about this recently.

Congressman Rush: S. Side Target customers looking for economic justice, respect #cutthecard #notanothercent

Before I share the editorial published Nov. 16th from our long-time Congressman Bobby Rush I do understand what he is going for here. He seems to be making a racial appeal as far as the closing of Target stores in two predominantly Black areas of the south side.

There are some who will note that in different years Target has closed many stores around the nation. Also the retail landscape is different today and many retails don't wait too long before they pull the plug on any location.

Though I will note that the opposition to Target's closing especially in Chatham is likely driven by their own work in bringing Target to the community. For those community activists who worked to get the Target that opened during the holidays of 2002 the coming closure is certainly seen as a slap in the face.

Meanwhile a brief snipped of Rush's editorial and please read the whole thing

When Target made public its callous decision to close its stores in Chatham and Morgan Park, many residents of Chicago’s South Side were shocked and angered. After all, they were loyal Target customers who spent their hard-earned money in these stores, conveniently located in their communities. Their anger grew into action and as their congressman and resident of the South Side, I joined them as they demanded Target Corp. keep the stores open and work on a turnaround plan.

Simply put, the residents’ demands of Target are about economic justice and respect. Their position is deeply rooted in the innate self-dignity and self-esteem they have for themselves and their community. The idea that residents are “begging” Target to stay is ill-informed, insulting and rooted in a sense of pride, a sentiment that leads to destruction as is stated in the ancient biblical proverb.

We have seen the truth of this proverb born out in communities throughout the South Side. Retailers come to these communities and take our money, often against the backdrop of poor customer service. Then, they leave in the cover of night, with little or no warning and with little or no explanation. In the wake of their departure, neighborhoods are left with abandoned, defunct structural eye-sores and fewer and fewer retail and grocery choices. This is why the engaged and focused South Side residents understand their fight is about Target specifically and disinvestment in general.

Of course let's bear in mind, Congressman Rush was involved in the Black Friday boycott of our local Target store, so in addition to this editorial he's definitely on the front lines. 

Who can be the next Harold Washington? #ChgoMayor2019

Here's Harold!

This editorial was published over the weekend of the Chicago Tribune. It seems many in Black Chicago have been looking for the next Harold Washington and unfortunately no one has come close yet. Will it likely happen?

The Tribune's Dahleen Glanton attempts to answer.

The kind of perfect storm that came together to elect the first African-American mayor in 1983 doesn’t happen by accident. It requires a well-thought-out plan and a multicultural chorus of united voices to form a movement that changes the face of politics.

In Chicago, Harold Washington was the first to show us what that kind of energy looks like. We saw it nine years later with the election of Carol Moseley Braun to the U.S. Senate and again in 2008 when Barack Obama first ran for president.

When an African-American candidate is on the verge of winning an important race, there is excitement in the air. It’s hard to explain, but there’s an overall feeling that this is our time and that we’re on the verge of something momentous.

During those elections, you could barely find a home on the West or South sides that didn’t have a sign in the yard with the candidate’s face on it. You couldn’t have a conversation that didn’t lead to talk about the first black mayor or the first black female senator or the first black president. There was a tingle in the pit of your stomach.

That kind of energy isn’t brewing in Chicago right now. In fact, 35 years after Washington’s election, it seems impossible that black people would rally around a single mayoral candidate.

That’s not to say no one is qualified for the job. Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle certainly is. So are Cook County Circuit Clerk Dorothy Brown, state Rep. La Shawn Ford and attorney Lori Lightfoot, if you’re looking only at experience.

None of these candidates, though, have the charisma of a Harold Washington. They can’t fire up a room with a simple phrase like, “You want Harold? You got ’em!” None of them make us feel like we’ve got this in the bag.

Unfortunately, personality has a lot to do with winning elections. But beyond that, there are other more complex issues.

If I recall my history since I was really too young to remember the events leading up to that history 1983 mayoral election, there was an appetite in the Black community for a Black mayor of Chicago. As it turned out Congressman Harold Washington was also the right man to be mayor of Chicago. On the other hand I always gotten the impression that Blacks who have ran for mayor in the succeeding years since Mayor Washington's sudden and unexpected death were often running for Mayor of "Black Chicago".

 Who in the current crop of mayoral candidates can truly be the mayor for all of Chicago? And who in the future can be seen as the mayor for all of Chicago?

Editorial: Target's abandonment of the South Side

Target's recent decisions to close their locations in both Chatham and Morgan Park are still being discussed in the community. I want to share with you an editorial by Chicago Tribune's Kristen McQuery

Target, which descended on the Chicago area with its Greatland outlets in the early 1990s, is closing six stores next year in Illinois, New York, Tennessee, Wisconsin and Minnesota. Two Illinois locations are closing and both are in South Side neighborhoods, Chatham and Morgan Park. So those red splotches on the Chicago map will be mostly on the North Side come February.

In other words, the South Side loses again. Hundreds of workers will be displaced. Nearby stores that rely on Target as an anchor will suffer. And left behind? Two vacant behemoths, each the size of three football fields.

Here’s the extra salt: Target is expanding and building on the North Side. The developers of a $58 million Target mall expected to open at the Edens Expressway and Foster Avenue secured $13 million in tax increment financing from the city. So Target is abandoning two South Side stores while taking taxpayer money to build anew on the North Side. That’s greedy.

Nationally, Target is renovating hundreds of locations and opening retail hubs to serve college towns and metro areas. The store planned along the Edens Expressway looks like an architectural gem with soft lighting and rows of landscaping, not the brick boxes built elsewhere.

But lopsided treatment is something to which South Siders, including myself, are accustomed. We’re stuck in the marketplace of low expectations. It’s not unusual to be pushing a shopping cart that is missing the lower rack where ordinarily you’d toss cases of water or pop. Company executives apparently have determined, based on my address, I might sneak items through the checkout without paying. So they rig my shopping cart. 

And let me share this with you also:

Ald. Carrie Austin, 34th, helped bring Target to the Morgan Park location and fought organized labor’s “big box” ordinance at the time. The ordinance would have required large retailers to pay a higher minimum wage. She knew Target wouldn’t come unless she blocked it. She also acquiesced on the size of the store, the grocery component and alcohol sales. The neighborhood didn’t want a superstore, but Target wanted it. And her ward needed the economic development.

She learned of the store closing via news release. Same for U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush, who has been holding community meetings and talking about a boycott. He led a protest Monday at a Target store in the West Loop.

“The killer for me is you (Target) want to capture the Christmas dollars and then you’re gone,” Austin said. “That is just such heartbreak for me. We fought to keep you and keep you and keep you. And now you say you’re not making enough money. And then no warning. They didn’t tell the store managers or tell us until they gave out a press release. How do you dog people like that?”

I want you to read the whole thing when you get a chance.

Also from Worlee Glover's Concerned Citizens of Chatham. The Chatham Avalon Park Community Council is behind a boycott of Target on Black Friday though it still seems with or without this boycott the decision isn't likely to change on Target's end.

 

Editorial: Will the next mayor get Chicago its cut of a booming economy?

If this economy is booming right now shouldn't Chicago have already gotten a piece of it? From a Tribune editiorial:

Under Emanuel, the city attracted major employers, experienced a building boom and boosted tourism. He bolstered O’Hare and Midway airports and kept a shine on downtown, the lakefront and many neighborhoods. He made little progress helping the underdeveloped South and West sides, besides recruiting the oft-mentioned Whole Foods to Englewood. Yes, he got the Barack Obama Presidential Center for Jackson Park, but that was a gimme — imagine the scandal if Obama had taken his library to New York. Will Emanuel cap his tenure by winning Amazon’s second headquarters? We’ll know soon.
What connects the mayor’s accomplishments as bond salesman and corporate recruitment cheerleader is his commitment to the cause and ability to speak the language of business and finance. Emanuel, who did a turn as an investment banker, made economic and urban development a priority and went hard at CEOs to convince them to locate in Chicago. With each of those HQs came good-paying jobs.

We’ve echoed the desire of Emanuel’s critics to see private-sector investment spread evenly across Chicago. But Emanuel understood that money invested in an already healthy downtown does a lot more for all Chicagoans than if that money went to Atlanta or Dallas.

So how about the next mayor? America’s economy is booming. Will Chicago get its share? Who among the candidates understands the city’s potential, and who can best balance competing needs to achieve the greater good?

The bond market people will have opinions. So will CEOs and developers. But voters, hiring a mayor who can win their trust is up to you.

A guaranteed basic income in Chicago...

And it's something that's being proposed on the city council according to this editorial from Internation Business Daily (IBD):

Apparently not satisfied with the already disastrous condition of its finances, Chicago this week said it would like to experiment with a universal basic income, a socialist pipe-dream that pops up every few years as a "new" idea. It's not. And it will never work.

Chicago alderman Ameya Pawar has already proposed legislation that would give 1,000 families $500 a month. The bill looks like a shoo-in, garnering support already from a majority of the Windy City's lawmakers. Pawar is reportedly already working on the design of the program with Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

Chicago is the largest city yet to toy with this bad idea. There are many things that would help the working poor climb out of poverty. But a universal basic income (UBI), also called a guaranteed government income, isn't one of them.

Another city in California no less has also been flirting with the idea of a universal basic income. Where is this extra money supposed to come from? California had their own issues with finance and if you know in the above paragraph so does Chicago.

h/t Newsalert

Tribune: A lower black jobless rate. Somebody tell Illinois.

A recent Tribune editiorial, you might hit a paywell before you're able to read the whole thing:

The U.S. economy is in the ninth year of expansion. It will become the longest on record, surpassing the 1990s boom, if it reaches the second half of 2019. Growth, which had been unspectacular, perked up during President Donald Trump’s first year in office because businesses are investing more. Attribute their optimism to the tax reform deal and the administration’s focus on removing regulatory red tape.

With growth and investment come hiring: Employers added nearly 2.1 million jobs in 2017, the seventh year above 2 million. The benefits, though, aren’t equally shared. At 6.8 percent, the black unemployment rate nationwide is nearly twice as high as the 3.7 percent rate of white unemployment. Cue that 10-percent rate of black joblessness here: As more African-Americans in other states come off the unemployment rolls, many of those who live in Illinois are left behind.

In Chicago, the job situation in hollowed-out West and South side neighborhoods is dire. Manufacturers left long ago. There are few retail and restaurant jobs. All the economic activity is located miles away in the Loop and elsewhere in metropolitan Chicago. Too many young people have inadequate job training and … nothing to do. According to the Great Cities Institute at the University of Illinois at Chicago, more than 40 percent of 20-to-24-year-old black males in Chicago are out of work and out of school. Does a booming national economy ever touch Chicago’s most impoverished neighborhoods? Can young people be drawn out of urban isolation?

On a slightly related note via CapFax, I really can't believe the statements coming from Gov. Bruce Rauner. Does he really believe Michael Madigan has so much control of this state, as a mere state house speaker? Madigan is a bottle neck through the legislature, but he really thinks Madigan is in control of this state?

Rauner says solution to high black unemployment is getting rid of Madigan https://t.co/sRtRe66hVV

— Rich Miller (@capitolfax) January 16, 2018

Anyway, can we solve the issue of few opportunities in the neighborhoods on the south and west sides of Chicago?

Capitol Fax: Sun-Times has a tax hike freak-out

Rich Miller believes based upon the screencap of the Sun-Times' front page the "adults" need to intervene and then notes the response of the editorial page which it appears Miller agrees:

Mayor Daley and, for his first term Rahm Emanuel, allowed Chicagoans to live in a fantasy world where they didn’t have to pay for the services they received. And they were enabled by the city’s media and, particularly, its editorial boards which endorsed those guys at every turn.

The question to ask here is whether or not you all agree?

Crain's: Why so many young Chicago men pull the trigger

Go Falcons!

One attempt to get a handle on the issue of gun violence in Chicago's crime ridden neighborhoods. At one point in time this blog strived to avoid issues of crime even though I recognize it as a reality in our fair city.

Regardless the fact that a shooting and the volume of them is news not just locally but nationally also is problematic. We all hope for a solution to save our young people. No easy answers, but something has to be done about the violence.

Also for this, there will be three parts to this series. I hope to be able to share the other ones as they're published.

Washington Post: Yes, 14th Street may be better these days, but something vital is missing

Last week I shared a story about Englewood to become host to a Starbuck's store right next to the coming Whole Foods Market on 63rd/Halsted. I often like to post a link to one of the posts here "The dreaded G word" in light of the coming Whole Foods.

This article discusses a Black community in Washington, DC eventually succumbing to gentrification. With the changes occurring in some of Chicago's Black communities, I sincerely hope that those neighborhoods here will prove to be the exception with gentrification.

I was walking along 14th Street NW in midtown Washington the other day and was impressed by the new look of the once-infamous strip. Where abandoned buildings and vacant lots had blighted the surrounding neighborhoods for decades, there were now chic new boutiques, home-furnishing stores, restaurants and condominiums.

But something vital was missing. There used to be thousands of black residents living and working along 14th Street. You could hear laughter and music. People sitting on the front stoops would shout greetings to passersby. There were children playing, young adults flirting and hardworking people trying to get a toehold on the economic ladder and claw their way up.

For years, the struggles of middle- and working-class black people animated life on 14th Street. Now all of that is gone. It’s been replaced by a stultifying air of aloofness. The millennial newcomers — most of them white — jog, bike and walk about the city as if in a trance, oblivious to the lives that helped form the place they now call home.

Read the whole thing.

Is it time for McCarthy to go?

As the new chairman of the city council's Black Caucus, 6th Ward Alderman Roderick Sawyer has been making some waves:

The chairman of the City Council's Black Caucus, Alderman Roderick Sawyer, told FOX 32 News that his group may call for firing Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy.

African-American aldermen plan to meet Wednesday afternoon. Sawyer told FOX 32 that a majority of his colleagues want a new top cop.

South Side Ald. Roderick Sawyer said a series of conversations with his City Council colleagues in the last two days showed that "there is great discontent with Supt. McCarthy."

The Fox Chicago article above noted an editorial from Crain's. I wanted to excerpt from it, but it would be more beneficial if you go over to Crain's to read it yourself. That editorial says it's time for McCarthy to go.

The main thing to ask is whether or not you think it's time for him to go?

There should be an elected school board

http://www.cpsboe.org/

It took me a while to come to this conclusion but I've finally decided that there should be an elected school board in Chicago. Not saying that this is the best solution for our schools in Chicago, but it's an idea that should be considered.

The only caveat that I've considered is that there must be a hybrid board where the people can elect members and the mayor can appoint members. This has always been my thought however the Chicago Sun-Times solidified this much further in an editorial.

This Tribune editorial makes further points about the various points of school boards whether hybrid, elected or totally appointed. To be sure, I have little problem with the Mayor of Chicago having some form of direct influence on the Chicago Public Schools. This is one reason I support a hybrid board.

I also believe that the most important interest group - the parents need representation to influence the decisions of the Chicago Public Schools. I propose that a majority of the members can be elected to the board of which there are currently seven members. Therefore four members should be elected and three should be appointed. In addition those four elected should be from districts divided up at least four ways throughout the city. The mayor can appoint the people he wants on the school board with their expertise and the people can elect who they want on the board of ed.

Furthermore I recognize how at time public education can be very politicized. Unfortunately the public schools have borne a lot of negative press over the years and this may cause more politicization. I hope that future members of the board of ed can recognize that the most important thing they have to do is ensure that the youth of the city of Chicago are educated and ready for the world.

Crain's: Where does Chicago's black middle class live?

Click for larger resolution

In April of this year we posted an animated map showing Chicago's vanishing middle-class. It was from the City Notes website who's author - Daniel Kay Hertz - wrote a recent op-ed to Crain's Chicago Business. That earlier map was interesting as it tracked the income of the many census tracts that make up the City of Chicago.

Now with the map you see above we show a different tact: Where does Chicago's Black middle-class live?

To be sure, the Black middle-class lives throughout the city. They no longer just live in Chatham or Pill Hill although perhaps they were never the exclusive home of the Black middle-class. The maps shown in the Crain's op-ed seems to show the Black-led middle-class households but mainly measures them as a percentage or as numbers. Also they show maps of Asian, Latino, or white middle-class households in Chicago.

Even Mr. Hertz will admit that the maps provided are misleading and it's hard for me to believe that in some of the community areas there are Black middle-class people in those areas that aren't largely Black. The map you see above I would consider much more accurate.

Hertz offer these brief notes:

A FEW NOTES ON THE WHOLE THING

1. The black middle class exists in Chicago. In large numbers. This shouldn't really be news, but speaking in my capacity as a white person who knows a lot of white people and other people of various ethnic backgrounds from the North Side and suburbs and other parts of the country/world, it really is.

2. Perhaps even more important, the vast majority of Chicagoans who are both black and middle-class live on the South Side and, to a lesser extent, the West Side.

3. The concentration of middle-class households varies dramatically from one black neighborhood to another.

4. Still, the majority of Chicagoans who are middle-class and black live in neighborhoods that are mostly not middle-class — as opposed to Chicagoans who are middle-class and white, for whom the opposite is true. In this way, Chicago is pretty similar to the rest of the country.

The takeaway for me is that these maps contradict two of the biggest lies — or, if we're being kind, misconceptions — about the social geography of Chicago. The first is that the black neighborhoods of the South and West sides are an undifferentiated landscape of economic hardship. This is false in a couple of ways. For one, though there are many people who are suffering for want of a decent wage in these areas, there are also many thousands of households that are not (though they are likely still disadvantaged by other consequences of segregation, including poor access to jobs and basic amenities, higher crime, lower-performing schools, etc.).

And here's another good point:

 From a governance perspective, there are lots of reasons you'd want the people in charge of a city to have an accurate impression of the communities they're governing before they start making up policies for them. But also, from a purely social point of view, the fact that most non-black Chicagoans — and the vast majority of non-Chicagoans — can't distinguish between the poorest pockets of the city and places like Calumet Heights or Park Manor means that they won't ever visit, spend money and certainly won't consider living in neighborhoods that they likely would find generally pleasant. In short, it's hard to build much of a local economy in a place that 75 percent of the population shuns without even thinking about it.

Something to think about. Even then, what could residents of these "shunned" communities do to attract people to their neighborhoods even to just visit?

You should read the whole thing when you get an opportunity.

Editorial: Why won't a grocer set up shop in South Shore?

We've been all over the story with the empty Dominick's store in South Shore on 71st & Jeffrey. Now the alderman over that location 5th Ward Alderman Leslie Hairston writes an op-ed highlighting her struggle to get decent retail in her community. This is something worth reading because in some way it affects everyone living in a predominantly Black community. She is right about one thing: "Our money is green like everyone else's."

BTW, do you think when major retailers do open in our communities are they doing us a "favor"?

Sun-Times: Rahm, voters need strong challenger in mayoral race

This editorial from the Sun-Times takes into account county board Prez. Toni Preckwinkle formally announcing her withdrawal from the 2015 mayor contest. Preckwinkle already stated that she had no plans to run but many polls had her leading Rahm Emanuel in a potential contest.

Preckwinkle opted against running for mayor, a decision that may be good news for the mayor but the same may not be true for democracy in Chicago.

Every politician needs a strong opponent to keep them on their toes, to make them answer the hard questions. It’s good for the incumbent and, more important, it’s good for the people they represent. In the latest Sun-Times Early & Often poll released Monday, Preckwinkle was leading with 55 percent to Emanuel’s 31 percent in a one-on-one matchup.

Preckwinkle, Cook County Board president, did the noble thing (and the safe political thing) by removing her name as a contender for next February’s mayoral race, saying she still had work to do reforming the county’s criminal justice, health care and pension systems.
...
The current mayoral field poses no significant challenge to the mayor — a status quo that would deny voters a spirited debate on the many meaty issues facing their city. But there is still time.

The Early & Often poll put Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis, who is seriously considering a run, ahead of Emanuel by 9 percentage points. The poll also put Ald. Robert Fioretti in the hunt, distantly. He’d have a lot of catching up to do with a 14 point deficit and 24 percent undecided.

Polls, of course, are snapshots in time and this poll came just days after a bloody Fourth of July weekend. And despite some strong opposition, Emanuel remains popular and praised in many quarters, with many accomplishments under his belt, not to mention millions in the bank.

Well it's not that long before candidates can file petitions for all city officers Alderman, Clerk, Treasurer, and Mayor. Will anyone step forward against Rahm Emanuel?

Editorial: Chicago's plastic bag ban is a step back in clean-city efforts

If you have signed onto Ald. Roderick Sawyer's campaign e-mail list you may have gotten wind of this editorial the Alderman wrote with his colleague Ald. Nick Sposato recently published by Crain's. Earlier this month the Chicago City Council banned the use of plastic bags by businesses. Sawyer and Sposato argue that this ordinance is bad for business! What do you think?

Also because the editorial is likely behind a paywall over at Crain's chicagobusiness.com website, you can also read the full editorial here.