Windy City

Good Luck Jon and Stephen! (October 30, 2010)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment

Stewart_Colbert

It’s a big political day today, sort of like a Super Bowl for the Washington set.

In this corner, we have President Obama, returning to my hometown of Chicago for the first rally in the Windy City since the historic evening in November of 2008 when he became America’s only President of color. My husband and I were fortunate enough to be at Grant Park that night, and no matter how the administration rates now, nothing can ever take away from the emotional significance of that evening. I am often critical of the Commander-in-Chief, but he is a gifted and moving speaker. The rally, “Moving America Forward” is part of a series being held as the President attempts to boost the flagging morale of the Left, encouraging them to get to the polls on November 2nd. “Just Say No to the GOP” and all that. The stakes are high.

If it is possible to upstage the party of a sitting President (and it apparently is), Comedy Central hosts and comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are holding their own “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear” on the Washington Mall in the nation’s Capitol this afternoon. The event, which will begin any minute now, is a deadly serious tongue-in-cheek answer to conservative commentator Glenn Beck’s late August “Restore Honor” rally, which was attended by over 87,000. Many liberals, and quite a few centrists, objected to the timing of Beck’s call-to-arms, which also happened to be the 47th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech.

Stewart’s soiree, per the organizational website, has but one mission: “We’re looking for the people who think shouting is annoying, counterproductive, and terrible for your throat; who feel that the loudest voices shouldn’t be the only ones that get heard.”

Further: ” Ours is a rally for the people who’ve been too busy to go to rallies, who actually have lives and families and jobs (or are looking for jobs) — not so much the Silent Majority as the Busy Majority. If we had to sum up the political view of our participants in a single sentence… we couldn’t. That’s sort of the point.”

A rally for good old fashioned, hard working, common sense. How can I not get behind that? In some ways I am sorry it takes two men who get paid to crack jokes on a cable channel to organize a visible response to the caterwauling of the extreme Right, but whatever works. Break a leg guys!

Supreme Court Son of a Guns (July 1, 2010)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment

dc_handgun_ban_main

I am both pro-Bill of Rights, and anti-Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley. While the latter has done much to beautify and invest in the City’s downtown/lakefront infrastructure, his tenure, at 21 years and counting, has gone on way too long, and is one of the best arguments for term limits I have ever encountered. While Daley Jr. has ushered in the reversal of a decades-long pattern of affluent urban flight, he has presided over the all-but-crushing of the City’s poor who no longer find transportation, housing, City fees, parking, gas and a whole host of other necessities within their reach.

Having been born and raised in the Windy City, I can clearly remember a time when middle class families (my father a clerical worker, my mother a nurse) could buy a single family home on the Northwest Side, and make plans to get ahead. This is a distant dream for that same class in 2010. The cause of this can be traced to one very complicated factor: systemic corruption, waste and incompetency at the highest levels of the Daley machine.

Yet that said, and despite my rampant distaste for the Mayor, we find ourselves on the same side of a very important issue: gun control. As you may be aware by now, the Supreme Court on Monday cleared a path to overturn the City’s ban on handguns — among the toughest in the U.S – by remanding an earlier Federal Court decision to uphold the law back to its source for reconsideration.

As I mentioned in the first sentence, I am a big fan of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights that acts as the centerpiece to protecting our civil liberties. I understand that one of those rights, whether I choose to exercise it or not, is the right to bear arms, protecting my person and my property. Whether I feel that this right is as necessary in 2010 as it may have been in the late 18th century is another argument for another time. I accept that the Bill of Rights is for eternity, and that is as it should be.

However, I can’t help but find myself in agreement with Chicago Alderwoman Freddrenna Lyle, who was quoted as saying, “If the City can pass a dog ordinance that can protect the public from a dog bite, we should be able to tighten handgun regulations.” Well said, Ms. Alderwoman. Dogs are not illegal, but as they can be somewhat unwieldy under the wrong circumstances, they must be regulated: leashes, licenses etc. Why is the same not applicable to potentially lethal weapons?

Word on the street is that Mayor Daley, an outspoken critic of gun access, reacted “angrily” to the Supreme Court decision, motivated by reasons for once loftier than simply having his unchecked authority questioned. Our Mayor is not a well-spoken or gracefully mannered man. I would have given a year of my life to be a fly on the wall for the initial outburst.

But I digress. Chicago, need I tell you folks, is a violent City, and growing more so all the time. Rampant gang activity and a debilitating economy breed a sense of despair and hopelessness which quickly morphs into lawlessness. In 2009, the Windy City’s murder rate was approximately three times higher than that of New York City. That is a very telling statistic in a calendar year in which lakefront citizens were unable to buy handguns. This of course begs the question: once these weapons are available on the open market, what then?

State and local governments already squeezed budgetarily do not have the resources to step up the pursuit of violent criminals. Are we naïve enough to believe that predatory crime syndicates are not ten steps ahead of the rest of us, preparing to use this development to advantage?

So what is the answer? I don’t have it, and clearly, neither does Mayor Daley, and the Supreme Court justices deliberately chose to be hands off. Their job is to locate legislation that doesn’t jibe with the Constitution and undo it. Fine. Understood. Be that as it may, we are all, at the end of the day, responsible to a degree for each other. That is another foundation of the loose confederation of these States.

Children playing in the streets of Chicago are already being killed at an alarming rate. How do we explain to them that grown-ups have the right to own any kind of gun they like, even ones that have no use for other than killing, and they just may have to get used to the occasional death of a friend?

Seems Un-American. The Bill of Rights offers some implicit right to safety, does it not? By protecting our rights to speech, arms, and against unreasonable search and seizure – these fall under the umbrella of security. The Supreme Court’s black and white interpretation of Chicago’s ban against handguns makes all of us in the Windy City less safe.

Illinois is the New California (May 27, 2010)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment

blagojevich-sucks-photo3

Despite what appears to be the inevitable ascent of the Chicago Blackhawks to Stanley Cup Glory (!), those of us in the Prairie State don’t get a win that often. In sports, we are a long suffering people. The Bears have not won anything since 1985, the 1990s glory days of the Chicago Bulls are long gone, The White Sox brought it home in 2005 (but honestly, say what you want, the Sox have never been “Chicago’s Team”), and the Cubs? Well, let’s not go there.

We are the State that brought you the bootlegging empire of Al Capone, as well the long reign of Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley and “outfit” politics. We are the land of unionized crime, and the entity that has sent two of its last three Governors to Federal prison (once the legal formalities of Blago are complete). Last Fall, we also suffered an embarrassing first round exit from the IOC’s final decision making process to determine the host City of the 2016 Summer Olympics. Ah yes, we have much to be proud of. No wonder we are also known for our drunkeness.

If it appears that I am guilty of conflating Chicago with the State as a whole, that is by design. Downstaters can howl all they want about Illinois being more than just the Windy City, but facts are facts. Chicagoland (City and suburbs) represents more than 75% of Illinois’ population, and roughly the same percentage of its economy. Take Chi-town out of the equation, and we’re left with just another agriculturally centered Red-leaning state.

However, it is not our legacy of losing, corruption, crime and other forms ignominy that I wish to write about today. As a career advocate for human services in Illinois, I would like to call attention to the sorry, pathetic state of lawmaking, and the attempts by the legislature to pass a fiscal year 2011 budget that make the more publicized financial problems of California and New York appear tame.

The Illinois State Senate is preparing to vote on a package, likely by the end of the day, that does nothing at all to address a badly needed increase of revenues. A 1% income tax hike, responsibly proposed by Gov. Pat Quinn, has been shot down over and again, not because lawmakers feel the funds are not needed, but instead because it is considered politically disadvantageous to stand up and do the right thing. The solution, according to these officials, is to attempt to balance the budget, and catch up on backlogged bills, by placing the burden squarely on the shoulders of the social services community – providers who care for children, the aged, the mentally ill, the abused, the homeless and substance abuse addicts. Yes, kick the weak and overworked while they are down. Brilliant!

Under this budget providers will be forced to operate where contracts and funding levels can be changed or cut at any moment. Key points include:

• An Emergency Budget Act that makes funding even more uncertain by giving the Governor unprecedented power (until January 2011) to make additional cuts.

• No human service organization will know about contracts to take affect July 1 for several more weeks, thereby dumping the costs of a quick shut down on the community, clients and staff.

• The Governor will be able to cut budgets at any time.

• There is no solution to late payments; they are simply kicked further down the road.

• There is no comprehensive solution to inadequate human services funding, or the larger issue of the State’s slow descent into insolvency.

If we slice through the political jargon here, what this basically means is that a budget will pass, but no one will know know anything about it until the Governor decides how the money will be allocated. Huh? Last time I checked, the State was not a monarchy. Unacceptable. Don’t we have a right to know where our tax money is going and how it is being use?. Isn’t the point of a budget process to sort all that out upfront? Nope, instead, weak and scared lawmakers are passing the buck right back to Quinn and telling agencies to lobby him for some of those lump sum dollars. What did we hire these people for?

Let’s not wait for the November elections to tell these turkeys how we feel. Call you legislator TODAY and demand better. If you don’t know who your district reps. are, you may access the following website to figure it out:

http://www.elections.state.il.us/DistrictLocator/DistrictOfficialSearchByAddress.aspx

In our cynical age, activism is often derided as both nerdy and pointless. That’s what they want you to believe because if you stay quiet, the status quo can continue unmolested. Let’s demand better Illinois! Let’s show the rest of the nation that we may produce a lot of silly headlines, but we have some backbone too.

Colder Than the Mood at Tiger’s House (December 10, 2009)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment

cold

Before any of you wiseacres post comments, yes, I realize how phallic this image is. Hee hee. Beavis and Butthead would be proud.

Well now, winter has arrived hasn’t it? There can be no doubt about that. As I headed into work this morning wearing tights, jeans, wool socks, boots, my ski jacket, a hat, scarf and gloves (which still wasn’t enough), I told myself for the millionth time that I will, in fact, get out of here one day and move to Miami. Chicago has me caught in such a terrible Catch-22. From a culture, cleanliness and population density perspective, nothing can beat the Windy City. It’s just unfortunate that the damned place is uninhabitable for seven months a year. Though I do love to take the piss out of the elderly, I will likely join them before I turn 40. Each year I grow less tolerant of shivering.

I am sure all of us have some cold snap snafu stories for the day, but here are a couple of anecdotes from my end:

1. Eddie drove our car to the office in Oakbrook this morning. I had a bad feeling before he left the house. Call me the trivial psychic. Sure enough, he popped a tire on I-294 near the O’Hare Oasis. That was at 8:30 AM. It is now 3:35 – seven hours later. He had to wait two hours for a tow truck and three hours for the garage to have time to change the tire. A whole’s day lost plus $500 in towing and replacement expenses.

2. It may have cost less money, but it was no easier for those of us on the CTA (is it ever?). The Brown Line train I took downtown stopped several times due to “equipment failure” – i.e. a frozen door. The train then decided to turn into an Orange Line bound for Midway at Merchandise Mart. A whole herd of the frozen cattle (including myself) disembarked to huddle together for the next approaching Brown Line. I was relatively blase about this. However, many of my fellow commuters had choice words for the conductor as we alighted. I silently cheered them on. I try to behave with some decorum, but am a nostalgic anarchist in my heart of hearts.

I hope all of you are staying warm somehow, whether that involves calling in sick to work or ambling over to the nearest happy hour spot for an old fashioned hot toddy. Snuggle a loved one tonight. Start a blaze if you are lucky enough to have a fireplace. Or if not, grab your partner and make some sparks of your own (see image above). Frigidity lends itself to loving. Can I get an amen?

New York City’s Municipal ID Program Offers Model For Circumventing Immigration Inertia (October 22, 2014)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment

immigration-law-picture

I have a close friend who’s more like a little sister. We both live and work in Chicago, the third most populous city in the United States. In the Windy City, home to almost three million people, the shifting demographics of the nation have already become a new normal. As of the 2010 Census, just 45 percent of Chicago’s residents self-identify as exclusively Caucasian. Of the remaining ethnic categories, African Americans, and those of Hispanic or Latino descent, represent the largest groups.

I highlight these numbers in order to drive home the resigned frustration associated with incidents like the following. My friend, a beautiful woman of mixed racial heritage (half Caucasian, half Haitian Creole), works in a customer-facing position with a large banking chain. She’s also possessed of far more patience than most, which I suppose is a major driver of her professional success. She recounted the following dialogue between herself and a client earlier this week:

Friend (to Customer): Wow. There are a lot of people in our system with the same name as you.

Customer: Well, I’m sure you wouldn’t know this since you’re not an American, but…

Friend: How am I not American?

Customer: Because you’re of Latin descent.

Friend: I’m not. But I’m still confused as to why I wouldn’t be American.

Chicago has many flaws as an urban community, but on the whole, its citizenry skews liberal. It is not a Tea Party stronghold and for the most part, the city eludes the sort of redneck militia reputation that is often pinned on the Midwest. Yet the encounter described above is far from rare. My pal considered herself lucky that the “gentleman” assumed her immigration (of course she was born locally) is legal. This is what counts for a good encounter with the presumptive, threatened white male.

This trying anecdote was front in center in my thoughts as I read “Membership’s Perks, for Immigrants, Too” from The New York Times Editorial Board this week. Though the piece reports on The Big Apple’s introduction of a citywide identity card that “will tell everybody that its owner is a bona fide New Yorker,” the sting of truth is felt in the short opinion’s last paragraph:

“The longer it takes for Congress to act on immigration reform, the more it will fall to cities and towns to keep America’s welcoming spirit alive. Municipal IDs are signs of confidence in the benefits of integration — the belief that when strangers rub shoulders, when outsiders are welcomed and absorbed, the community flourishes.”

There’s an unwritten rule that neither side of the political aisle wants to discuss real issues in the run-up to an election. And Congress is certainly not to going to make any moves. With the midterms less than two weeks away, it seems Ebola finger pointing and Obama repudiation is as deep as any candidate is going to get. It was midsummer, during the height of the Central American child migrant border surge, that we last had any serious discussion about our broken immigration system.

So let’s be grateful to New York City for keeping this mess in the headlines, for trying to find real ways to work around the inertia on Capitol Hill to bring people together, even if it takes a little self-interested carrot dangling. That’s the American way! Per the editorial:

“The city has designed the card to include side benefits, like free admission or discounts at 33 cultural institutions, including the Bronx Zoo, Lincoln Center and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Those perks are meant to entice nonimmigrant New Yorkers to sign up, too.”

It won’t be much longer at all until Chicago’s bank customers, such as the one who plagued my friend, will be forced to keep their ignorant observations to themselves. The judgment of one’s Americanness based on skin color is already antiquated, and with a little more time, social norms will act as a further barrier. The presumptive, threatened white male’s verbal aggression is in the death throes in the Second City. The sensation is palpable – and one of the reasons we can share these stories with something approaching pity and humor.

But for the millions of undocumented workers forced to remain on the fringes in cities and towns across the country, our nation’s failure to act is no laughing matter. Let’s not wait until after the midterms to renew calls to action. It’s well beyond time to overhaul a system that benefits from underpaid labor while sneering at the hardworking people who provide it. And if Congress won’t budge, I hope my city and many others will consider following New York’s lead.