You. I like you.
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Seriously. At this point what is the advantage over a PNG?
They have been, steadily for some time now. Lots of economic development on the South and West sides too. Only people who get their ‘news’ from someplace like Fox wouldn’t know those facts.
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I guess those numbers are acceptable?
I’m happy it isn’t another Daley.
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Well said.
As Baltimore is doing a wonderful job of demonstrating right now, a black women is just as capable of being a corrupt weasel.
I remember a candidate for a federal office in the 2016 race ran on a “drain the swamp” platform. Hasn’t exactly worked out the way one would have expected.
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Special thanks to the Chicagoan who posted here.
I am trying to stay hopeful for Chicago. As a city, it’s had such truly bad problems. I won’t list them here, they are easy to find on any halfway competent search engine.
Let there be light.
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@j9c It’s a wonderful, amazing, heartbreaking, lovely, terrible city. Like most any city in America depending on what neighborhood you live in and how much money you make it’s Disney World or it’s really, really rough. The news tends to focus on crime and violence rates that are absolutely real but also concentrated in underserved and underresourced areas. That of course gets national attention more than anything else.
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Spent my early years in Evanston and North Chicago, as a child of two student-visa immigrants who flouted U.S. miscegenation laws while pursuing graduate degrees at Northwestern. I remember not feeling too terribly different than anyone else who was walking around in Chicago. This was not how I felt I was treated when our family moved to St. Louis. And I still feel like there’s a noticeable difference in two cities’ racial climates.
From my childhood, I remember every neighborhood being a world unto itself. So much diversity, so many immigrants, all packed together block by block. So many interesting little groceries and so many different languages to listen to. So much freedom with the L (or El) for us kids who couldn’t drive yet. Kids were empowered, or at least, if we had fare, we felt that way. We were free-range kids before that term existed.
From my childhood, I remember many hours in the dead of winter (and I do mean dead super effin’ cold winter) spent at Shedd and Field and of course the Art Institute. I used to carry a small sketch pad and pencils.
I remember the wind off of Lake Michigan making my legs sting, my tears freeze in my eyes, and how thankful I was to be able to get out of the wind in a doorway or alcove of a building. I remember sitting on the radiator waiting for my butt to thaw.
I agree.
And honestly, I believe all Chicagoans deserve better than:
And yet…
(NB for non-Chicagoans: This American Life is based in Chicago and started out as a broadcast on WBEZ. I include this because I feel these pieces have been made with an effort to go deep and not just yell yell yell about how bad things are.)
Chicago is not alone in its struggles against corruption.
We can do better.
We must. As humans. In all places.
I do remember feeling hopeful when Harold Washington took office, a watershed moment…
… and how sad I was that he died at his desk, working for the people.
I’d be happy if people just agreed to be decent human beings to each other in a really interesting city–a big city I hope still made out of a lot of little neighborhoods. I hope Chicago will be well-served by an intelligent, honest, civic-minded human whose aspirations leave room for both compassion and duty.
ETA: deleted redundant link, added a better explanation re This American Life
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Great post! I think one of the difficult things for me is how incredibly quickly and sometimes viciously neighborhoods have been gentrified and whole swaths of people have been given the boot, with a lot of aldermen being complicit and paid off in all the usual ways. I was a bit ahead of the curve in some of the neighborhoods I’ve lived in before they were ‘hip’ and have seen rents double and a lot of the things that made those parts of town ‘desirable’ and ‘cool’ bring in all of the things that ruin it. I’m super curious if a lot of the new city council is going to start pushing back on some of the carte blanche TIF and TOD nonsense and include more affordable housing, etc. Probably worth a whole other post it’s a big subject…
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Oh heck yeah, I’m super curious too.
If you are able, I hope you can update us / chime in / keep us posted. Thanks in advance.
And welcome to bOINGbOING btw. 
I am also loosely tracking how Chicago addresses the affordable housing thing, which is a big deal here in Austin too. So far it has not been working out too well for us. Not calling dibs…most all of us need affordable housing.
With luck, there’ll be more good news to report, and I hope the bOING will track noteworthy developments in Chicago, the good and the bad. I remember learning about Homan Square and what a gut punch it was for me, from miles away.
Thanks to bOING for these:
and these:
and the OP (“Chicago’s first gay, Black, woman mayor won all 50 wards…”)
ETA: grammar
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