Let’s get one thing clear. The city of Chicago is not one bit intimidated by Rahm Emanuel’s style. In fact, we kinda like it. It speaks to how we see ourselves and how we see our city. We see through bull—-. And we don’t take no s— from anybody. Get to the point and we will understand clearly. Nothing’s perfect in this world. We expect some hardships in life. That’s just how it is. Every winter we plow through mountains of snow. Every summer we swim through oceans of tears. We won’t allow anything to hold us back. Not senseless killings. Not economic nor social depression. Our whole city is resilient … and beyond resilient, some might even call us gangster. We are an entire city of Bosses. You should know that, and you should act accordingly.
So we don’t really mind Emanuel and all his blustering. We appreciate even more that he’s demonstrated the power to back it up. Here’s the thing though … and everyone should remember this moving forward. The people of Chicago have power too. We are the base that allowed for the Daley reign. We are the original progressives who elected Harold Washington as the mayor of Chicago. And though they’ve been chipping away at our foundation for years, as of right now, we still have a good amount of power. And now Emanuel knows it. And the whole world knows it, too.
Now … what we don’t like is Emanuel’s politics, and his policies to be more precise … and we don’t like Bruce Rauner’s policies either, so somebody tell him he’s on a slippery slope. Rauner got in this last time because he was something different, and just enough people had grown tired of the old nonsense, that they were willing to try something different. Now that Rauner’s in office, and we’re beginning to see how his different is not nice for us, he should also know that his days are numbered, unless he does something drastic, or something drastic happens to the people of Chicago. Which brings us all the way back to Emanuel and the coming April 7 election. Forgive me. I got so passionate that I almost allowed it to take me off course.
Had enough of us known what Daley was really hiding behind the curtain, we would have stepped in and had more blatant city infighting about what he was setting us up for. Truth is, he acted kind of like a coward, but he knew the political ramifications of decimating the working class people of this city so blatantly on his watch. See, that’s why the city didn’t trip too hard about what Daley did to Meigs Field. Working class people never used Meigs’ Field anyway. Draw an X on it if you want to. If you own a plane in the city of Chicago, then you can afford to fly somewhere else. No elites and no terrorists are gonna jeopardize our Midwestern way of life.
While the city was still split up in ethnic thirds, with Black people being the most populous third of the city’s overall population, you would never think of closing almost 50 Black schools in the city. There would be political hell to pay. You can’t leave whole sides of the city unplowed for more than a day. That lack of attention is going to come back to haunt you. We understand that we’re working at a disadvantage. But don’t keep the lanes of our disadvantaged streets so snow covered that we can’t get up out of them. You can’t just zip, cut and zoom wherever the hell you want to … especially when we can’t. We just don’t get down like that.
See, there’s a bunch of stuff that is always brewing in the hearts and minds of a community organizer, but when you disrespect the majority of a people, you get things working in the minds of the middle class and the blue-collar workers who are the longtime political, economic and cultural base of this city. Chicago refusing to rubber stamp Rahm Emanuel in his second campaign for mayor of this city is really a rebuttal to the overzealous corporate elites and all those very real “special interest” groups who are imposing a South Park like death grip all over this country, across the seas, and all over this world.
If you’re trying to take us down, you need to know that, as a city, we won’t take that bull—- lying down. We are a city of Bosses … and we will man up when we have to. If you want to get things done ‘round these parts, you’re going to have sit down, you’re going to have talk to the right people, and you’re going to have to be willing to make the right deals. There are things that we care about, and here are just three. We care about our people, our place, and our culture. Both Rahm Emanuel and Jesus “Chuy” Garcia now recognize that. Real Chicagoans won’t ever down without a fight.
