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The 24th Ward: Lotta Need, Lotta Names, but who's got the skills?

(this is an extended version of a piece on the 24th Ward that appeared in Streetwise)

The needs of Chicago's 24th ward are basic and urgent: jobs, homes, streets you can walk down without fear. What they really need is a voice after years of neglect. The ward, which slices through most of North Lawndale and parts of Austin, Little Village, & East Garfield Park, is littered with empty lots, abandoned factories, and boarded-up buildings; many have stood empty for over 40 years. The people of the 24th ward are poor, mostly African American, with a smaller portion of the Hispanic population (some recent immigrant families), and an even smaller number of mostly poor whites. Needless to say, this poor, mostly black area has been ghettoized and ignored by the city for generations.

I live nearby, in Little Village, where a sharp line divides the 'hoods along lines drawn by aging men years ago, maintained by 15 year olds by spraypaint & intimidation. Lawndale is one of those place that white people tell you not to go to, it's a "bad neighborhood". It's a heartless and cowardly attitude, but there's some sense to it; the shit you see there ain't pretty. I will never forget the little old man who got on the bus after having fallen down an open manhole. The poor guy was dressed in a stylish, formal suit and was terribly embarrassed to have to be getting on a bus stinking of sewage, apologizing profusely to his fellow passengers, but he didn't seem particularly ambulatory and certainly must have been in a rush to get home. As I was talking with him I asked if he'd call the city, and he said yes, that the person on the other end of the phone told him he "shoulda stayed down there". Nobody on the bus batted an eye at this.

You wonder how much longer the status quo can hold: how much longer will Chicago's miserable poor be ignored?
This year's aldermanic race is full of people who say they want to save their ward. Many of them seem to really mean it. The 24th ward is host to a crowded race for alderman this year, as it has in years past, with all 20 candidates promising change, which is what politicians do. I spoke with a few of the contenders.

I met up with Melissa Williams at a crowded, noisy McDonald's down Kedzie in Lawndale. Then we thought better of it and drove down the street to a little restaurant on Pulaski. The place was decorated with photographs of African American political leaders, so it was kinda a perfect setting for a sit-down with an ambitious candidate.
Williams stresses communication in her campaign. In a K-town forum posted on youtube, she emphasizes this repeatedly, "I'm running to be your representative. I'm not running to be that person that just runs out ahead of you and leaves you and leads you and doesn't come back and talk to you, explain things to you, and listen to your ideas...we're gonna be communicating constantly". She even plans to create a youth council.
All the candidates say it at some point; the common refrain in a campaign in which the previous (and yet, still current) contenders are accused of hiding in their offices, ignoring their constituents, and not doing enough for the Ward.
Williams said she started getting involved in the ward when she was 16 (attending Whitney Young); her stepfather was a pastor in a North Lawndale church, and she remembers marching to get abandoned buildings torn down. Then she went away to study law & political science at John Marshall and Bradley. But she never forgot about her community. "I would come back home to visit and then eventually move back home and saw that not much had improved,things pretty much had gotten worse". Williams has worked in housing. She is frank, energetic, passionate. She indicates she will fight for increased funding of social services, even if it means raising taxes.
According to Williams, "in order to prevent the community from being completely turned over and gentrified, to prevent some of the people who have lived here forever from being pushed out, we have to take a stand as a community."
Gentrification may seem a long way off from the far-west former Chicago ghettos that are still Chicago's ghettos. A slice of ( Fucking Kickass Journalism by Steve Bogira attacking the subject of segregation was published in the Reader last month. So, y'know, if you ever want to read some actual good journalism, go check out the Reader.)
But it's already creeping into the ward from the West Loop, where stubborn yuppies and their corporate overlords (aka parents) are attempting to turn the city's remaining slab of hogbutcher to the world, the meatpacking district in a manufacturing heavy area near downtown into a hip spot for young, loaded professionals. That combined with spillover from UIC and the city colleges, including artsy-fartsy Columbia students & their hippie & hipster friends, is slowly pushing out to the south and west. White people have swarmed down like locusts on Pilsen, which will push out residents like a crowd swarming backwards, hopefully without too many violent gang readjustments. In the 24th, East Garfield Park is the place to watch, but with the economy still in a slump the threat level is only at Atomic Tangerine.
I asked other candidates what they thought about gentrification, how they could promote integration instead of displacement. Nobody seemed to have a concrete plan for resolving the problem; the refrain is that people need to communicate, have pride in their community, and build up their own skills, create their own businesses in the neighborhood. But nobody proposed a specific ordinance or game plan for keeping affordable housing in such an eventuality. And after all, the current focus is making the ward more habitable for those already living there.
"We need to develop the people who are here to take advantage of those opportunities" says Valerie Leonard, "you know, there's always gonna be survival of the fittest and the good thing about people who are here is they are survivors. The thing is, we need to make sure that people receive the education they need."

When Valerie Leonard speaks she unravels encyclopedic knowledge of TIF funds (if you don't know what TIF funds are, read Joravsky), business structure, and strategies. She is very practical in her approach, with lots of elaborate plans and strategies that she makes easily available to anyone who want to know. It's no suprise- she's been active in various community campaigns, particularly when it comes to TIFs. She appears to already have a basic outline for what committees she will form in order to organize the community. Of all the candidates I spoke with, she was the only one to criticize the idea of forming a council of one's appointments, saying that she wouldn't want to create an "elite group"; smart thinking. She is a vocal critic, as are many aldermanic candidates of late especially in underserved wards like the 24th, critical of Daley programs like Renaissance 2011, which she was was just "shuffling the chairs on the titanic".
Leonard describes her candidacy as a "spiritual journey". When I ask her something along the lines of how can the impoverished side of Chicago can gain leverage in City Council, She says that "when Gandhi moved it was with powerless people when Martin Luther King moved it was with poor powerless people, many of whom were youth. so it's not always money power it's people power, being able to organize... and make people realize their power within." Leonard is endorsed by both the Tribune & the Sun-Times.

Tough, compassionate Regina D. Lewis, a foster mother of five (grown), once turned her home into a shelter, Ashunti House; and has for the past 19 years been CEO of Ashunti Residential Management Systems (ARMS). She says she's "not scared of the Mayor", and I believe her; but, like many of the candidates, politically inexperience; it's hard to imagine her wrangling with some of the slimiest legal minds in the city, although she has rehabilitated "ex-offenders, homeless, drug user...mental, bipolar, you name it I have housed it." (K-Town Forum). She is a Biology Major (Jackson State), and her focus is on "human and social development", rehabilitating ex-offenders, and job training; a focus on this is so laser-like that I wonder at times why she doesn't just specialize in that. She also stresses communication and has been working tirelessly with various community organizations such as the NAACP, CAPS, and the Westside Ministers Coalition for years. Regina Lewis is someone who has earned respect as a community leader. She says her office on Pulaski will always be open to those in need (a profile of her can be read in the North Lawndale Community News).

Talking to political candidates is difficult for me at first, not just because of my overwhelming social anxiety but also because I don't know how I can trust them, so I just don't. I know I'm not as smart as some of them, I don't know shit about how a fucking budget works (numbers? what?) or anything, but yet I have to scratch out some sort of truth otta the bastards. Still, speaking to someone like Regina Lewis in her bustling office full of admirers on a strip of tiny struggling storefronts, vacant lots, trash-strewn streets, I feel my claws instinctually detract some. For all I know Lewis is a secret bastard like Mother Theresa, but I don't believe that. I believe that Lewis, Leonard, Williams, and many of the other candidates love their community and want to help it. I want to believe that they want to change things. But it's a tough job. Especially if the fortune tellers are right and we get another tough mayor. We need aldermen who can stand up against that.

Talking with the candidates, the main problems of the community were clearly outlined to me over and over again as we both worked to make sure we hit our talking points. Housing? It's not affordable, so it stands vacant while people struggle with homelessness. Education is inadequate, better schools with a more localized approach are needed. Money is needed for local schools. Schools need to be safer. Education is key to finding jobs. Crime? CAPS is failing. Cops need to get along better with the community in order to get the community to work with them. Crime will persist until people can find employment. Jobs? They're scarce, and the people in the community are under-qualified for many of them. They need job training.
Sensing a theme here?

Vetress Boyce says her decision to run is "based wholly upon the cry of the people". That cry? Jobs, jobs, jobs." A businesswoman, Boyce's "number one focus is killing poverty". She says increased police on the streets would be "a band-aid on a gunshot wound... it's poverty that we need to tackle, not locking people up".
Other candidates, like Williams, expressed a similar sentiment. It's no secret that Chicago cops treat minorities in troubled communities with an attitude ranging from disdainful to illegally violent; as a result, the community becomes distrustful of cops and even more invested in the underground economy, which for many is the best job prospect they have. Talking with candidates, I hear over and over the saying that some of the men standing out on the corner don't want to be there. I'd wager that the man who wanted to be out on that corner was rarer than that.

Frank Bass says he would like to see Chicago cops walking a beat, getting to know residents. Bass worked as a cook county lobbiest for ten years, and brags (at the K-Town forum) of getting things done for his neighbors by calling up friends at City Hall. He says that he is "opposed to all taxes". He is a Chairman on the Board of the North Lawndale Community News.

Shavonda Fields, an Associate Minister at Familiy Altar E.B. Church. She'll tell you that she's worked as minister, a missionary and a preacher (apparently, even at political events provided they're held in a church, although she says she will keep these roles separate). Fields overcame homelessness at a young age, and to this day she and her family will bring homeless people soup and hot chocolate on cold days. She says her priority in the ward is public safety. She wants to see people "create culture" in the ward.
She's referring in part to the lack of entertainment venues in the area. Melissa Williams puts it this way; "we need to be creative in our community", rolling off a list of possibilities for the ward: sit-down restaurants by locals, a skating rink, a banquet facility... Development is a key word in this campaign.

Sondra Spellman has had a life-long passion for politics, working as a campaign worker, poll watcher, and judge of elections. She once worked on Chandler's campaign but says he "lost his way". She says the 24th ward can gain strength through increased voter power. She calls on City Hall to invest in the area, saying "if the neighborhoods are falling apart, what does it mean to have a beautiful downtown area?"

Also running are Incumbent Sharon Dixon, former alderman Micheal Chandler, former NBA player Wallace E. "Mickey" Johnson, retired H.S. principle Julius Anderson, Wilbert E. Cook III, Donielle C. Lawson, Martivius Carter, Chauncey L. Stroud, Jimmy Lee Lard, Jeffery D. Turner, and Larry G. Nelson. Patricia Marshall and Roger L. Washington (a preacher/cop with a youtube campaign in which he shows off a brief Obama bodyguard stint and showcases the endorsements of his students) were knocked off the ballot (all the candidates were challenged; kinda reminds me of another brilliant Joravsky article) are running as write-ins.
All candidates spoke of TIF reform, salary cuts, and standing up to the mayor. Time will tell the sincerity of these claims. One thing's for sure- the 24th ward needs change, and many here are willing to fight for it.