Black Women’s Magic in The Windy City
Commentary by Chitown Kev
Three weeks from today, Chicago residents will return to the polls in order to vote for one of the top two finishers in the February 26, 2019 mayoral election.
Soon after the polls close on April 5, 2019, the third largest city in the United States will have elected the second black mayor in its history, the second female mayor in its history, the first mayor in its history who is a black woman and, possibly, its first lesbian mayor.
To say that Chicago’s upcoming mayoral election will be “historical” solely in terms of its’ candidates is an understatement.
But remember...this is Chicago; a place where the politics are as rough as its colder, snowier and Hawk-ish winters. And the mayoral contest between former Chicago Police Board President Lori Lightfoot and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle is no exception to that rule.
Candidate Histories
Lori Lightfoot
You can peruse Ms. Lightfoot’s Wikipedia page; I prefer the summary provided in the Chicago alternative weekly, the Chicago Reader:
Raised in a struggling working-class family in southern Ohio, Lightfoot credits her mother, now 90—a health-care aide who served for 25 years on the local school board—as her role model, someone who "truly was fearless," who taught her "not to shrink from a challenge, to take on hard fights" without concern for the consequences.
After college Lightfoot worked in the Washington office of the local congressman. Then she went to the University of Chicago Law School, where her independence came to the fore. That time was "really tough," she told me recently. Despite growing up in a small segregated town, she said, "I never felt more conscious of my race than I did in my three years in Hyde Park." Each year saw major racial incidents "created or exacerbated" by the law school's administration. In her third year, when she was president of student government, a friend complained about racist and misogynist comments by a recruiter for Baker & McKenzie. Despite the fact that the law firm was one of the biggest in the world—and a major benefactor of the law school—Lightfoot led a successful fight to have its recruiters banned from campus.
Lightfoot spent six years at the white-shoe law firm of Mayer Brown; in two stints there she's worked on two lawsuits brought by Republicans challenging congressional redistricting. She now argues her interest was in promoting greater Latino representation, but in 1991 all parties agreed to a new Latino-majority district; in 2010, "Lightfoot's filings and arguments in the case clearly contend that the map was unfair to Republicans," according to Crain's.
While Lightfoot has not served as an elected official , she has held several governmental positions including the Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, Chief Administrator of the Chicago Police Departments Office of Professional Standards and, most prominently, was appointed to be the President of the Chicago Police Board by Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
Toni Preckwinkle: Again, you can read Preckwinkle’s Wikipedia bio; I prefer this narrative from the black oral history website, The History-Makers
Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle was born in St. Paul, Minnesota on March 17, 1947. She attended Gorman Elementary School and Como Park Jr. High School. Preckwinkle graduated from Washington High School in St. Paul in 1965. She then moved to Chicago to attend the University of Chicago, where she graduated with her B.A. degree in general studies in 1969. Preckwinkle graduated with her M.A.T. degree in teaching from the University of Chicago in 1977.
After being hired as a history teacher for Chicago Public Schools, Preckwinkle began her career in politics with two unsuccessful bids for the City of Chicago’s 4th Ward aldermanic post in 1983 and 1987, respectively. In between these bids, Preckwinkle was appointed development officer for the Hyde Park Neighborhood Club in 1984. From 1985 to 1988, she served as an economic development coordinator for the City of Chicago. Preckwinkle was eventually named executive director for the Chicago Jobs Council in 1988. In 1991, Preckwinkle won the 4th Ward aldermanic seat, defeating a 17-year incumbent by 109 votes. She would go on to serve five terms, overseeing the redevelopment of the Kenwood, Oakland, Douglas, Grand Boulevard and Hyde Park neighborhoods. During Preckwinkle’s nineteen year aldermanic tenure, she became known as a Chicago City Council’s progressive member and a champion for affordable housing. Preckwinkle was also a co-sponsor of the living wage ordinances that passed the City Council in 1998 and 2002.
Preckwinkle’s political service earned her Best Alderman Award from the Independent Voters of Illinois-Independent Precinct Organization (IVI-IPO), a not-for-profit, multi-partisan, independent political organization, in 1993, 1995, 1997, 1999, 2005 and 2008. She was also the recipient of the 1997 and 2009 Leon Despres Awards, named after the legendary, iconoclastic Chicago alderman. Starting in 1992, she also served as the Democratic Committeeman for the 4th Ward. Preckwinkle declared her intention to run for Cook County Board President in 2008. Two years later, she won a hotly contested democratic primary for the seat. Preckwinkle swept through the November 2010 general election, becoming the first female to serve as President of the Cook County Board of Commissioners….
As 4th Ward alderman, Ms. Preckwinkle also had the distinction of being the alderman of President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama. Ms. Preckwnkle’s role in the political rise of Barack Obama was featured prominently in Ryan Lizza’s 2008 New Yorker feature about Obama:
Preckwinkle is a tall, commanding woman with a clipped gray Afro. She has represented her slice of the South Side for seventeen years and expresses no interest in higher office. On Chicago’s City Council, she is often a dissenter against the wishes of Mayor Richard M. Daley. For anyone trying to understand Obama’s breathtakingly rapid political ascent, Preckwinkle is an indispensable witness—a close observer, friend, and confidante during a period of Obama’s life to which he rarely calls attention.
Although many of Obama’s recent supporters have been surprised by signs of political opportunism, Preckwinkle wasn’t. “I think he was very strategic in his choice of friends and mentors,” she told me. “I spent ten years of my adult life working to be alderman. I finally got elected. This is a job I love. And I’m perfectly happy with it. I’m not sure that’s the way that he approached his public life—that he was going to try for a job and stay there for one period of time. In retrospect, I think he saw the positions he held as stepping stones to other things and therefore approached his public life differently than other people might have.”
On issue after issue, Preckwinkle presented Obama as someone who thrived in the world of Chicago politics. She suggested that Obama joined Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ for political reasons. “It’s a church that would provide you with lots of social connections and prominent parishioners,” she said. “It’s a good place for a politician to be a member.” Preckwinkle was unsparing on the subject of the Chicago real-estate developer Antoin (Tony) Rezko, a friend of Obama’s and one of his top fund-raisers, who was recently convicted of fraud, bribery, and money laundering: “Who you take money from is a reflection of your knowledge at the time and your principles.” As we talked, it became increasingly clear that loyalty was the issue that drove Preckwinkle’s current view of her onetime protégé. “I don’t think you should forget who your friends are,” she said.
Quite a few aspects of that 2008 New Yorker article seem ironic, now, considering that Ms. Preckwinkle, herself, is considering higher office and some of the criticisms and controversies regarding her tenure as Cook County Board President.
The Issues
The issues pages of both Lightfoot’s and Preckwinkle’s websites are very comprehensive and deal with a variety of issues affecting the city of Chicago. Note that both Lightfoot and Preckwinkle are explicit in placing their own various identities front and center in terms of how they view the issues facing Chicago; both candidates must address the racial/class inequalities that have widened under Emanuel’s tenure as mayor; inequalities that are, in large part, responsible for the African American exodus from Chicago.
I did note that Lightfoot explicitly placed cannabis legalization and immigration on her issues page. FTR, Preckwinkle is for marijuana legalization. While Lightfoot (unlike Preckwinkle) explicitly calls for the abolishment of ICE, Preckwinkle, from what I can tell, would pretty much greatly limit Ice’s role and operations with the Chicago Police Department and will act to protect the immigrant community in Chicago
Related: Side-by-side: Lori Lightfoot and Toni Preckwinkle’s plans for Chicago by the Sun-Times Editorial Board
And Remember...this IS Chicago…
The attack ads are coming fast and furious...here’s an example
Chicago Tribune: Lori Lightfoot campaign launches attack ad against Toni Preckwinkle
Look...I live north of Howard Street and, therefore, I cannot cast a vote in the Chicago mayoral election.
And if I could, I doubt that I could tell you who I would vote for.
Both Toni Preckwinkle and Lori Lightfoot have strengths and weaknesses but either would be a fine mayor, IMO.
I have been paying increasing attention to this race not because it is, almost literally, in my backyard, but the very idea that two black women are vying to take on one of the most complex municipal jobs in the world; in a city that continues to be known for, in part, a complicated racial and racist history, and, in another part, a city that has a reputation for bare-knuckles politics.
Frankly, I wish that one coul become mayor and the other become vice-mayor; I rather like both women.
But for the next three weeks I will sit back and enjoy the 2019 mayoral race with a smile.
I think that most people will be able to understand why I am smiling.
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Jordan Nixon is only 17, but she’s already hit the scholarship jackpot by being awarded $1.6 million in scholarship money.
Nixon, who is a senior at Douglas County High school in Atlanta, Georgia, told CBS 46 that her goal is to attend a school with a diverse student body while majoring in International Business. The scholastic teen has applied to a total of 50 schools and is still receiving acceptance letters.
“The crazy thing is, I’m still waiting on decision letters, but I was not expecting that at all,” Nixon gushed in her interview with CBS. “It’s shocking, each and every time, you’re taken aback every time you open one.” So far, all of Nixon’s college applications have returned with the same response- “Yes!”
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Members access the space, located in Central Brooklyn, by having their fingers scanned and giving a passcode. Upon entering, they find a lounge, complete with couches, a barber chair and books on finance. The spiral staircase leads to an area with workstations.
Inside on a recent day, a man who works as a consultant helped five others get businesses certified. Another launched a campaign to run for City Council, engaging members to assist in outreach. An author presented research in a forum. The Gentlemen’s Factory brought them all together.
As one of the very few spaces in New York City exclusively for men of color, The Gentlemen’s Factory began as a middle ground between work and home for men who need a venue for networking and socializing.
“They’re going through a divorce, or they have mental health challenges, or they’re going on an interview but they don’t know how to ask for a salary increase,” said Jeff Lindor, the club’s founder. “There wasn’t an outlet for them to be.”
Mr. Lindor, clad in a custom-made Prince James suit (the designer is a Gentlemen’s Factory member) noted that members contribute to making the space their own, whether it’s the Malcolm X art above the leather sofa or the magazines near the coffee table.
Born in Petit-Goâve, Haiti, Mr. Lindor was raised in a Coney Island housing project. The son of non-English speaking immigrants, Mr. Lindor and his family were wedged between a wealthy, white community on one end of the neighborhood and an impoverished and predominantly black population on the other. He asked himself: Why does my community look like this? Why does blackness look like this?
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Haiti is running out of fuel — again.
Gas stations are stockpiling and rationing gasoline. The poor are running out of kerosene to cook. Private power suppliers, out of diesel for the past 11 days, are reducing or ceasing production — taking Haiti’s already desperate electricity issues from bad to worse.
Twelve months after Venezuela stopped delivery of cheap oil under its energy-assistance PetroCaribe program, forcing Haiti to buy all of its petroleum products on the Caribbean and U.S. spot markets, Haiti’s energy woes have grown into an almost monthly panic as the country’s bankrupt government insists on maintaining control of fuel imports despite its inability to pay.
“It’s become a mess for [them] to deliver,” said Pierre-Marie Boisson, a Port-au-Prince economist and founder of Société Générale de Solidarité (SOGESOL), one of Haiti’s three largest microfinance companies.
The latest symbol of the dysfunction: Since Feb. 27, about 150,000 barrels of gasoline have been sitting in a ship off the coast of Port-au-Prince in international waters awaiting more than $37 million in overdue payments from the Haitian government’s Bureau of Monetization of Programs and Development Aid, or BMPAD.
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Tall and well-groomed, Brian Rochester has eyes that smile when he talks about the fellowship he says exists between Chinese immigrants and Trinidadians of African or Indian descent at the Grace Chapel church in the heart of Port of Spain, the capital of Trinidad and Tobago. Rochester, in his mid-30s, has for the past three years been pastor of the church, home to a Chinese Christian Fellowship congregation where 50 members regularly meet. But look beyond the church, and things appear less rosy.
Small Chinese businesses are cropping up throughout the Caribbean, bringing with them concerns ranging from who they employ to whether they adhere to local standards and laws. Chinese immigrants usually open family-run businesses where they employ other workers from China, instead of locals, says Ramchand Rajbal Maraj, president of the Couva/Point Lisas Chamber of Commerce in Trinidad. On the other hand, he concedes, they do provide significant rental income to locals. Dwyer Astapahan, a businessman and former government minister in the neighboring island nation of St. Kitts and Nevis, is clearer: Chinese immigrant businesses are hurting his country. Where they all agree is that the Caribbean is witnessing a silent flood of new Chinese immigrants that’s showing no signs of abating.
China’s excess capital has focused global attention on the heavy investments — from stadiums to highways — its government is making in small nations everywhere. But in the Caribbean, there’s also a parallel takeover quietly underway: thousands of Chinese individuals are wading into the region, setting up small businesses and supermarkets, and reshaping the economies and societies of a region traditionally closer to the West and Taiwan.
In the first half of 2017, Chinese investors constituted more than half of all applicants to Antigua’s Citizenship by Investment program — for those immigrants seeking citizenship by promising to invest in the country, the latest data suggests. According to a 2014 Observatory on Migration report, approximately 200,000 Chinese nationals are smuggled into the region annually to work at Chinese-run establishments. Many send money back home. In 2016, China was the second-largest recipient of remittances from Suriname, according to World Bank data compiled by Pew Research.
Dominica, St. Vincent, St. Kitts and Antigua — each with populations ranging from 16,000 to just over 100,000 — now host between 200 and 300 Chinese migrants, says Cecilia Green, an associate professor at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School who has recently researched the subject. Dominica’s president, during a 2015 visit to Beijing, publicly wooed Chinese immigrants and investors to his nation.
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Media coverage of the crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 framed a horrifying accident in appallingly familiar ways. The Atlantic: The Western Erasure of African Tragedy
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On Sunday morning, an Ethiopian Airlines jetliner crashed shortly after leaving Bole International Airport in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, en route to Nairobi, the capital city of neighboring Kenya. Minutes after takeoff, the Boeing 737 Max 8—the same model of aircraft that went down in Indonesia several months ago—lost contact with air-traffic controllers. Soon after, the aircraft crashed; all 157 people on board Flight 302, including the crew, died.
According to a list shared by Ethiopian Airlines following the crash, these passengers hailed from 35 countries. Several nations suffered more than five casualties—among them, Kenya, Canada, Ethiopia, China, Italy, the United States, France, the United Kingdom, and Egypt. In the hours following initial reports, the corners of Twitter, WhatsApp, and Facebook frequented by African users were filled with shock and horror, mourning and disbelief. The crash seemed senseless, and its human toll devastating.
But in the aftermath of the tragedy, many Western media outlets reported the news with unevenly rationed compassion. Some stoked unfounded suspicions about the caliber of the airline itself. Others stripped their reporting of emphasis on Africa almost entirely, framing the tragedy chiefly in terms of its impact on non-African passengers and organizations.
On a broadcast of the Turkish channel TRTWorld, for example, the British anchor Maria Ramos asserted that Ethiopian Airlines had a “poor safety record historically,” a baseless claim that the British aviation analyst Alex Macheras challenged on air, even after Ramos suggested that a 1996 hijacking attempt made the African airline categorically unsafe. (Macheras also contextualized Ethiopian Airlines’ record, by comparing it to that of American and European carriers such as United Airlines, Air France, and American Airlines.) On Twitter, the Financial Times’ East Africa–based reporter pondered in a now-deleted tweet whether “questions may well be asked about the pace of the carrier’s rapid expansion since 2010,” despite acknowledging that the reasons for the crash remained unknown.
Elsewhere, Western publications engaged in selective reporting about the deceased. The Washington Post, for example, led its homepage coverage Sunday with a headline that informed readers only that “Eight Americans among 157 people killed in Ethiopian Airlines crash.” (The Washington metropolitan area has the largest population of Ethiopian descent outside the country itself.) In a tweet about the national background of the deceased, the Associated Press listed eight nations affected by the crash. Not one of the countries mentioned in the AP’s list is populated by black Africans. This, despite the fact that Kenya topped the list of the deceased, with 32, and nine Ethiopians were on board. On CNN and BBC News, the presence of American and British nationals respectively is what drew narrative prominence. (In a brutal irony, the Nigerian writer Pius Adesanmi, author of You’re Not a Country, Africa, was among those on the flight.)
For many African readers, and other black people across the diaspora, it is perhaps unsurprising that Western media outlets would fail to report on a tragedy as devastating as the Ethiopian Airlines crash as—first and foremost—an African tragedy. Both the impulse to question the largest African air carrier’s credibility and the hyper-focus on Western passengers are consistent with the pervasive, long-running Western disdain for—or simple inability to empathize with—people of African descent. Since the advent of the transatlantic slave trade, Africa has been treated largely as a repository for the Western world’s fears (and during the colonial era, as the site of Europe’s most dangerous and banal desires). Africa’s residents and descendants, then, are more often portrayed as threats than as people.
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