The NBC5 blog, Ward Room, has an interesting post which puts some perspective behind the 2nd Ward's drastic change in the remap:
In 2007, Bob Fioretti achieved a Chicago first.By winning election as 2nd Ward alderman, he was the first white politician to take over a ward from a black politician. The 2nd Ward had a special place in African-American political history. The city’s first black alderman, Oscar DePriest, won the seat in 1915. But beginning in the 1990s, white condo owners began to displace blacks in the South Loop. The result was a white alderman. Fioretti ousted Madeleine Haithcock. A year later, he took over the committeeman’s post, when Rep. Bobby Rush stepped down.On Thursday, Fioretti got his reward for ousting a pair of black politicians: his ward was mapped out of existence. There will still be a 2nd Ward, obviously, but it won’t be in the South Loop. It won’t be the historic 2nd Ward of Oscar DePriest. Instead, the 2nd Ward has become the most abominable monster in the history of Chicago mapmaking. It looks like a digital character in the old video game Tempest. Beginning on the Gold Coast, it wanders west into Lincoln Park, then across the Kennedy Expressway into Wicker Park, uniting neighborhoods that have nothing in common but white voters.
I'm pretty disgusted with the whole process of re-drawing the wards. I thought we lived in a post-racial society...yet we have to divide the wards on racial lines? Why can't the wards simply have street-defined borders that make sense? I just hope this doesn't get in the way of any of the great development we've seen in the sloop recently.
ReplyDeleteThis whole thing is disgusting. Black wards? Hispanic wards? Isn't it time for Chicago to be less obvious about its reverse-racism and ignore race all together?
ReplyDeleteI haven't always agreed with Fioretti's actions or policies, but this redistricting was retributive, vindictive and racist. Neither he nor the residents of his ward deserved this.
ReplyDeleteFioretti for 3rd ward alderman in 2015?
ReplyDeleteBlack Caucus to South Loop residents: "You will have a black alderman (or two), and you will like it!"
ReplyDeleteThere are a lot of reasons this happened. Some Alderman get places in new wards where they can't raise funds, others are put in areas where they can't intrude on upcoming projects, while others are placed by the machine or union lobbiests so that in exchange for staying out of the way of big projects, they get a portion of the PAC money, or exchanges of promises of positions, or favored projects. Time will tell what Alderman Dowell traded - just watch the PAC contribution funds for now to see your answer.
ReplyDeleteThe 2nd Ward may continue to be the hot bed of big projects (private and public), so it is no surprise that the cronnies needed to move out a meddling Alderman Funny how the new 2nd Ward ooks like a big middle finger sign.
I don't care if the alderman is white or black, I even have a favorable opinion of my new alderman, but buy splitting up the neighborhood in the way it has been it will be much harder to get neighborhood wide improvements done. If they wanted to screw Fioretti out of his ward, at least they could have given us a more unified ward instead of making the neighborhood a series of political peninsulas for other neighborhoods' wards.
ReplyDeleteYou aren't understanding how this works. If they kept the South Loop neighborhood together in one ward, they wouldn't be able to guarantee that the ward stays in the hands of a black alderman. This new map makes it harder (impossible?) for South Loop residents to elect an alderman of their choice, since we are spread across multiple wards, each comprised of varied neighborhoods, residents, and interests.
ReplyDeleteWe are screwed.
ReplyDelete