Category Archives: Politics

Chicago mayors Daley, Washington and Emanuel, President Obama and the national scene

The hard work of making Jackie Robinson West happen

Politics, Race, , ,

rahmquinn This is a piece I read for Tuesday Funk last night. It’s a reading series at Hopleaf on the first Tuesday of each month at 730pm. Last night was a particularly eclectic mix of poetry, fiction and non-fiction. Normally when I do a live reading, I favor something with some humor interspersed. This was the first time I ever read a piece without any of my usual tricks due, in part to developing this for both Tuesday Funk and an op-ed on the Sun-Times’s website. (The version that appears below is a little longer.) It was great to do something new in a live setting and to get this piece out there in a couple different forms.

—

Over the Labor Day weekend, I was thinking about it means to do hard work. Hard work is filled with lots of little details that eventually pay off in the long-term, but aren’t much fun to hear about until you see the results.

I’d been thinking about what hard work looks like because of some news stories about Jaheim Benton and his South Side teammates from Jackie Robinson West, this year’s United States Little League champions. Benton scored five runs in the series, including the winning run in the championship game. In a month of news stories dominated by violence in African-American communities here in Chicago, in Ferguson, Missouri and elsewhere, the story of a group of young, inner-city black boys represented the pinnacle of American athletic accomplishment and contradicted an all-too-familiar narrative. This was a feel-good story on the scale of a big-screen movie, playing out in real life.

Just days after the team’s victory, the Sun-Times reported Benton, along with his mother and father, had been sleeping in the homes of friends and family for the past few months. They were homeless. Both parents work, but have been unable to pay their rent on two part-time salaries. Benton’s mother recently had her hours cut as an in-home care worker with Catholic Charities.

The story was a stunning contrast to the events of a few days before at a homecoming rally for Benton and his teammates at Millennium Park. Many of Chicago’s most powerful – the mayor, the governor, the State’s Attorney General and others – took the stage to praise the Jackie Robinson West team for its skill on the field. All were happy to celebrate the win and connect their names to a Chicago victory.

The question on the minds of many was whether any of the politicians who shared the stage with Benton earlier in the week would step up and be there for him now that his family needed help.

They didn’t. But the neighborhood did.

Leak and Sons Funeral Home offered to pay the family’s rent for a year. A South Side institution that has seen the effects of violence firsthand, Leak and Sons is no stranger to helping those in need, often providing discounted or pro bono funeral services to those who can’t otherwise afford it. In a story on ABC7 News, Spencer Leak Jr., said “I would hope that this rent turns into a mortgage that turns into homeownership for them,” said Leak Jr. In a separate Sun-Times story, he was quoted as saying “My dad always say a setback is a setup for a comeback. We’re going to try to help them come back.”

Other offers of assistance followed from various South Side businesses and institutions, including one from Leo High School in Auburn-Gresham, which offered Benton’s mother a job.

It’s easy to show up to a victory rally. It’s harder to show up when there’s lots of work to do and no cameras around. But the politicians were silent even though an offer of help would have been an easy win for them. Would it have been an obvious piece of political grandstanding? Sure. But no moreso than their appearance at the rally.

The reason they didn’t is simple: People in power only like to take credit for a win, not blame for a loss.

The South Side has seen plenty of loss in the last year. Twenty out of the 49 Chicago Public Schools were closed in this part of the city. It also sees a higher proportion of gun deaths and shootings. Many of these neighborhoods are starved for economic resources as well. These facts are all interrelated and help to explain why a family like Jaheim Benton’s would be homeless.

The politicians who shared in Jackie Robinson West’s win don’t want to acknowledge their part in preventing any of the above.

In the same way that electing one black man President doesn’t make racism go away, sending one South Side baseball team to the Little League World Series doesn’t alleviate the problems of poverty, violence and homelessness in the neighborhoods of Chicago. But it definitely shows what happens when you provide the right tools to combat them.

Jaheim Benton’s family has a solution now. But what about all those other families who are on the brink, but don’t have the benefit of a Little League World Series victory to bring attention to their plight? The young men of Jackie Robinson West either live in or live close to neighborhoods that make headlines due to gun violence. But they’re also supported by families, churches and schools. Their victory and the offers of help from Leak and Sons and Leo High School show what is possible when we stop thinking there are either “good” or “bad” neighborhoods.

The comments sections of our local news sites are replete with those who sneer at the notion that the 20 year old kid who was just arrested for shooting someone could be described by his mother as a “good kid.” But the distance between a good kid and a bad kid is short. Maybe only the distance between their home the nearest baseball field. And if we’re going to talk about the importance of baseball to the youth of Chicago, it’s worth talking about what happens to youth baseball when those cameras aren’t around.

In a piece for Substance News, George N. Schmidt notes that most Little League play isn’t affordable for kids in vulnerable neighborhoods. So this leaves baseball fields at the school or park district fields. The frequent rains this summer showed that most Park District fields weren’t maintained well enough to withstand the weather, with flooding a constant problem. As for the school fields, we’re back to those 20 closed South Side schools. If there’s no school, there’s no field. Schmidt also notes “Chicago’s public schools do not have frosh, and frosh-soph baseball programs because the funding to pay the coaches for these programs has been eliminated.” Nevermind all the other issues that plague Chicago’s youth: we haven’t even managed to invest in the very thing our city and state leaders just finished praising.

Even if the most celebrated young men in our city aren’t immune to the city’s larger problems, investment in their neighborhoods may be the key to solving them. Local businesses are present in a community for more than just the exchange of goods and services and public schools are a lynchpin of safety and stability for families with an uncertain home life. When we don’t work to create strong networks of both in our neighborhoods and instead save those tax dollars for downtown, we aren’t investing in our city’s long-term future.

This story is also a reminder that a systemic problem in any of Chicago’s neighborhoods – violence, poverty, failing schools or homelessness – is a problem in our own.

It’s something the politicians at Jackie Robinson West’s victory rally should remember, too: The victories of our youth come only when we take the steps necessary to prevent the losses. It’s hard work that starts long before anyone takes the stage.

Photo via Quinn For Illinois, CC License

Confusing the symptoms of Chicago’s violence with the disease

Chicago, Media, Politics, Race

7452178210_4424a362a0_mI swear this blog isn’t going to become “Our Man In Chicago On Crime” but it’s probably going to be on my mind for a couple weeks.

I’m trying to understand the mayor’s mindset when he does things like this:

Emanuel attended an anti-violence vigil in Roseland Monday evening where he said everyone — from parents to police to federal lawmakers — must play a role to curb bloodshed in Chicago.

“A lot of people will say where were the police … and that’s a fair question, but not the only question,” Emanuel said. “Where are the parents? Where is the community?

First of all, I don’t know how you stand there at a anti-violence rally in a community that lost one of its own in a drive-by shooting two nights prior and ask “Where is the community?” That takes some gall.

I also don’t know how you read about the father of the 14-year-old boy shot in a separate incident and ask “Where are the parents?”

“What happens to kids when they’re not with their parents?” said Susan Diaz, whose daughter married into the Rios family. “The kid was 14 years old. The parents do the best that they can. When the kid walks away — he goes to school, the beach, the park, the library — the gangbangers are hanging around waiting to recruit them. … That’s just the way it is.”

When the mayor asks “Where are the parents? Where are the communities?” it implies neither exists where there is gun violence. That’s reductive. And wrong. Especially when the underpinnings of those communities have been ripped apart by lack of economic investment. Gun violence doesn’t start because a kid wakes up and decides not to listen to his parents. It starts when he thinks a gun keeps him alive. And that happens when crime seems like the best – and safest – possible way to earn a living and keep on living.

More police aren’t going to solve the problem. But pointing a finger at parents without talking about why parents aren’t around? Or the economic reasons why parents alone aren’t enough to shout down the other voices kids hear on those streets every day? Not helpful.

When you’re the mayor, your rhetoric frames the way people view a situation. Your words make headlines, they lead the evening news. Demonizing an entire community gives fuel to those who think “those people” are all criminals. It lays the blame for crime at the community’s collective feet, helps keep “them” at arm’s length and convinces people that crime is something that exists in other neighborhoods and won’t affect them.

I’m reminded of last week’s shooting in Lakeview:

The Pride parade revelers who had filled the street earlier were gone, Lane said, and a younger crowd replaced them.

“I doubt any of them was over 30,” Lane said. “A lot of them don’t live around here. They come from other neighborhoods. It’s just the attitude they have, the mentality.”

[snip]

Neighbor Juan Chavez, who’s lived in the area since 2007, said “the majority of people who cause trouble don’t live in the neighborhood.”

People in “safe” Chicago neighborhoods really will go to great lengths to convince themselves that crime isn’t a problem where they live. Saying “they come from other neighborhoods” suggests there’s a leaky faucet of crime you can just turn off and fix the problem.

Instead, we – all of us – need to support crime prevention and economic improvement efforts for all Chicago neighborhoods. Not just our own. That’s not easy, I’ll admit. But it’s the cause of the problem, not a lack of morality or parents or community.

Or to put it another way: morality, parents and community are what get infected by the disease of violence and poverty.

Image via Don Harder/Creative Commons

Chicago 2013: A year in review

Media, Politics
Roger Ebert, newspaperman

Many of Chicago’s big events in 2013 were the “part two” of something that happened in 2012: IL’s marriage equality bill, Whittier’s teardown, the parking meter changes and Tribune’s bankruptcy emergence to name a few. Others were unique to 2013: the Sun-Times laying off most of its photography staff, Roger Ebert’s death and Everyblock’s shutdown.

This week I discussed the year in review on WGN Radio 720 (with host Amy Guth) and WBEZ’s Afternoon Shift (with guest host Justin Kaufmann). Since neither show is available online – holiday weeks operate on a skeleton crew – here are some of the stories I found notable in 2013.

The following isn’t meant to be a definitive list. It’s merely a compendium of stories I found compelling this year. (Crain’s has a good month-by-month list here if you want something more comprehensive.)

POLITICS/CIVIC ISSUES

Gun violence
We started the year with the murder of Hadiya Pendleton and ended it with an 18 percent drop in the murder rate compared to last year. Whether the overtime needed to make it happen is sustainable is one question as Chicago is still tops among major cities.

Marriage equality bill passes the Illinois legislature
Cardinal George  rang in the new year with a letter describing gay marriage as a violation of “natural law”  because it is not open to procreation between a man and a woman (nevermind that heterosexual adoption and marriage among the elderly are too, according to that definition).  After a few stops and starts, Illinois passed a bill in November extending marriage to all. History is speaking.

Parking meters get worse
Most news stories on the June parking meter changes led with the “Free Sundays!” part, which obscured the bad news of extended hours until 10pm or midnight.

Whittier fieldhouse teardown
Taking a page from Mayor Daley’s playbook, Mayor Emanuel sent in a surprise demolition crew under cover of darkness to tear down the Whittier School fieldhouse (without a permit).  The mayor claimed safety issues required him to act quickly but it wasn’t clear why. Even if it was true, tearing down the disputed fieldhouse didn’t strengthen his position.

Bill Daley runs for governor, sort of
It turns out running for – and being! – governor takes some work. Despite a lifetime in politics, this was news to Bill Daley. Maybe, unlike his brother, he’s not used to being “scrootened.”

Transit: Good news for Red Line riders, cyclists; bad news for Metra 
The CTA proved it can undertake a project as big as the Red Line rehab and bring it in on-time and on-budget with alternate service functioning as promised. An increase in bike lanes and the launch of Divvy increased Chicago’s bike-friendly city cred. And somehow the mass resignations at Metra over “hush money” didn’t dent Mike Madigan one little bit.

CULTURE

The death of Roger Ebert
I said about all I have to say on the topic here but this was easily the biggest real story in Chicago outside of the continued  gun violence problem.

People finally realize R. Kelly is a bad dude
Years after his trial on child pornography charges, (white) people finally started to realize R. Kelly’s shtick isn’t all that funny in the larger context of his life thanks to a Q&A with Chicago music critics Jessica Hopper and Jim DeRogatis. It’s tough to keep the art and the artist separate when his art involves sex and his idea of sex involves rape. A comprehensive discussion of the topic plus the recent backlash of coverage of his new album by the mostly-white press made people take notice in a way they hadn’t before.

Live lit really explodes in Chicago
Yes,  it’s a lot of the same people everywhere. But as the scene gets more diverse and each event finds its personality, more new folks will find their way in.

The whole Rachel Shteir thing
I spent multiple nights arguing with people over this whole thing but I’m tapped out on discussing it any further. Take the wheel, Atlantic Cities.

Taste of Chicago made money this year
A really underreported story. It went from losing 1.3 million dollars in 2012 to making a $272K profit.

Persepolis was banned from CPS reading lists
This was weird. Also weirder was that The Hunger Games stayed on the list.

Dennis Farina dies
Another Chicago avatar lost. Rick Kogan’s obit says almost everything. This roundup of his best vulgarities says the rest.

Cameron Esposito on Late Late Show 
I loved this. The former Chicagoan now ensconced in Los Angeles has every comic’s dream appearance.

TECH/MEDIA

There was good news in Chicago print media: Crain’s expands, DNA Info Chicago launches a print product for Lincoln Park, The Dissolve launched and RogerEbert.com expanded. But most of the big stories focused on continued upheaval in the media industry.

The death and rebirth of Everyblock
It was gone earlier this year and seems poised for a return. Why no one from NBC was able to walk down the hall and have a conversation with the folks about Comcast about buying it – before now – is confusing to me. Unless this was the plan all along but they wanted to cut all the staff first and this is how they chose to do it. Speaking of…

The Chicago Sun-Times cuts its photography staff
A local story that went national immediately in part because of the poorly-timed “iPhone training memo” that followed. On one hand was the argument that legacy contracts were making it difficult for the Sun-Times to become the nimble, digital organization it wanted to be. On the other is a quick and dirty way to cut costs. Maybe a little of both. But the S-T lost a lot of goodwill in its efforts (as was said above, it matters how you do things) and the move still haunts their efforts months later. Its chairman Michael Ferro isn’t helping.

Tribune layoffs, emergence from bankruptcy and a double down on TV 
A year after the emergence, a clearer picture of the future of the Tribune has emerged. But it’s a rough start, according to Crain’s.

1871 hires Howard Tullman
This is one of those stories that starts one year and has a big impact the next. Expect Tullman to shake things up and take 1871 from a pretty co-working space to a place that’s known for making new things and creating new sustainable businesses. Or else.

And finally…

The Check, Please host search and the media pile-on trend
The overcoverage of the Check, Please host search was crazy. I wrote about this specific issue earlier this year. When it was finally announced, every news outlet had to have their own exclusive host interview; DNA Info, Tribune, S-T.  It was indicative of a larger trend of all publications trying to get a bite at every story.

2013 was the year of the great news pile-on: Everyone tries to cover everything that trends in social or search or has its own micro-audience. We saw this in other local stories, too. Everyone is covering fine dining, for example. Eataly is only the most recent story that got the pile-on. Sure, that’s a reflection of more folks going to fine dining restaurants. But the takes on it are all remarkably similar. A publication ought to tailor its approach to its audience. I found Redeye Chicago’s gallery of crazy-expensive food products spot-on for them and a good way to approach the topic in a unique way.

But in some cases, there’s no way for a pub to own a story. In a year when Chicago rap conversation dominated, I’m still trying to figure out why Crain’s did a history of Chicago hip hop.

This isn’t just a Chicago thing either and it gets worse when the topic is breaking news or something that’s big in the social space and a news organization thinks it will look hip by covering it. The worst approach is when nobody adds anything new and they’re just parroting what someone else has reported. This happens often with breaking news when there’s nothing to move the story forward. We saw this especially in the end of the year with Elan Gale, Justine Sacco and Duck Dynasty. Or it’s just mindless opinion like Duck Dynasty or Miley.  As Esquire put it, this was the year we broke the Internet.

There’s also something in here about Twitter, the nature of privacy in public and whether tweets by private citizens ought to be used for publication.

But I think I’ll save that for 2014.

Why does Alderman Fioretti want a Chicago City Council hearing on the CTA’s Ventra mess?

Politics, , , ,

This morning, I made a snarky comment about the possibility of a Chicago City Council hearing on the CTA’s Ventra problems. One of the main proponents of this, Chicago progressive caucus member Alderman Bob Fioretti, responded and we had a brief discussion on his goals for the hearings.

Continue reading Why does Alderman Fioretti want a Chicago City Council hearing on the CTA’s Ventra mess? →

A Silk Road to ruin: The Paper Machete – 10.05.13

Internet, Politics, ,

I’ve said this before but one of the reasons I like performing at The Paper Machete is its hard-and-fast deadline and word count. The show starts at 3pm. If I’m going to make it to The Green Mill on time to read my piece, it needs to be written no later than 130pm. There’s no bargaining, no extension unless I want to piss off the good people who run it. And unless I want to disrupt the flow of the show, I can’t go on and on for thousands of words.

Deadlines and limits make you creative. They force you to go places or try things you might not otherwise to get to your goal.

If I had more time to work on this piece, I probably would have made the ending seem less depressing or inevitable. I’d have found a middle ground. But it was 130pm and I had hit my word count and I still ended up with a piece I was really happy with.

—

Whatever you think of the FBI, you have to admire its flair for marketing.

On October 1st, the FBI arrested and subsequently put a name to the man behind a website called Silk Road. Silk Road was a two year old website through which one could buy and sell drugs. An internationally-known marketplace where approximately 1.2 billion dollars were exchanged over its life. Before it was shut down, the site had a user base of 900 thousand and had earned its owner – a man known only as The Dread Pirate Roberts – approximately $80 million in commissions and a writeup in Forbes, the first two words of which referred to Roberts as “an entrepreneur.”

That’s a big deal. And naturally if you’re the FBI you’d want to make a big deal about something like this. Now, criminal investigations are complicated things. They’re a mix of tireless work over long hours and a lot of luck. You don’t always get to pick your shots.

So perhaps a signed complaint asking a judge for an arrest warrant just four days before a government shutdown – which would curtail the FBI’s ability to, say, post a press release on its website about the arrest is entirely coincidental.

It’s entirely possible that the timing of the Dread Pirate Roberts’s arrest had nothing to do with the conclusion two days prior of America’s most beloved series about a murderous drug kingpin who poisons children. (OK, to be fair, it was just the one.)

I’m just saying an organization that maintains a list of “America’s Most Wanted” and produces daily radio shows has a flair for the dramatic.

Purely as a matter of scale, the shutdown of Silk Road is interesting. But it’s also interesting because of the technology that powered it. Silk Road users maintained their anonymity through the use of two technologies: a piece of software called Tor which allows everyone from journalists to NGOs to, yes, criminals use the Internet without revealing their actual, physical locations. And all Silk Road transactions were conducted using something called Bitcoin, a purely digital currency that uses cryptography and a series of electronic ledgers to blah blah blah nerd talk sci-fi Star Wars magical unicorns of money.

As interesting as the technical aspects of this story are, you came here for a mix of current events and social commentary mixed with some showmanship and bitcoin is like the band that plays before the burlesque dancers so I’m just going to skip to the parts where the gloves start coming off.

So big drug marketplace shutdown and an interesting statement on somewhat obscure technical tools for conducting anonymous, often illicit activities. But who cares, right? Tor, bitcoin, pirates. It’s hard to take something seriously when it sounds like a game of Dungeons and Dragons. None of you are looking to create a billion dollar drug empire…OK, maybe that guy. Also, Chad The Bird. I mean, obviously.

At first blush, the real impact of the Silk Road story is that the era of the Internet as a haven for criminal anonymous activities is over, especially with the NSA listening in on every message just short of “Do you like me, Circle Yes or No.”

No, the real lesson here is “The mythical permanent record we were all warned about in grade school has finally become real and it’s the Internet.”

You see, the government figured out the Dread Pirate Roberts is actually a guy named Ross Ulbricht. According to Ars Technica’s report on the government’s criminal complaint, the first mention of Silk Road was made by a user on a website called Shroomery.org. This same user posted a comment in a Bitcoin forum back in 2011 asking for some help with the nascent digital currency. This user’s account had an email address attached to it: “rossulbricht at gmail dot com.” This same Gmail address was attached to a Google Plus account which listed some of his favorite videos, some of which were from a place called the Mises Institute, which is named after an economist whose theories the Dread Pirate Roberts frequently cited as the basis for the larger philosophical ideas behind Silk Road. Similar references to these economic theories were also found on a LinkedIn account registered to Ulbricht.

For someone who masterminded a small drug empire using an untraceable digital currency, Ulbricht didn’t exactly cover his tracks very well. You could rightly argue that if you’re going to start selling drugs on the Internet, you shouldn’t do it with the same email address your aunt sends all her “THE TRUTH ABOUT OBAMA’S MUSLIMNESS” emails to.

It’s a little hard to blame Ulbricht for this behavior. After all, he’s no different than anyone else who leaves bits of his or her interests and views in various corners of the Internet. We used to be able to think of our lives as different circles of friends and family but for most people, the dream of keeping our personal lives and our professional lives separate died in a Facebook argument about the President’s birth certificate between a significant other and an aunt we never see. You can leave a job, but your former co-workers will continue to follow you. And it’s a lot harder to get over that bad breakup when someone’s Instagram account is just clicks away.

And thanks to the current nature of the Internet’s cloud architecture it’s all tied into a central username or email address for sheer convenience if nothing else. Argue, if you like, that Ulbricht was an idiot and if you and Chad The Bird were going to start a criminal enterprise, you would at least go to the trouble of creating a second email address. But who gets on the Internet for the first time thinking they’re going to create a criminal enterprise? Or cheat on their girlfriend? Or need to lie to their boss about calling in sick that day?

The problem isn’t that Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t care about your privacy, it’s that we think we can hide in the sheer volume of conversation happening online right now. The Internet’s ubiquity has made everything we do on it seem ephemeral. A phrase like “the Internet of things” and gear like FitBit or Google Glass means we have – in a relatively short amount of time – gone from thinking of it as worldwide network of blogs and websites – to something we can wear on our faces or wrists or clip to our belts. Because it’s everywhere there’s the sense that no one will see us if we jot down a few thoughts in a notebook we literally tuck into our pocket, only showing them to a few people we know. Conversations on Facebook, Twitter or in comments sections have now become so ubiquitous they’ve come to feel like little more than a conversation we’re having with a friend on the bus or the train. We lean over and chat conspiratorially with a friend, confident that the stranger seated in front of us can’t hear and so what if they can anyway? Our stop is up next and we’ll be gone.

So while the details of the time you sat at a bar in college and rambled on about some obscure economic theory is…long forgotten by the time your 401K breaks $500, there’s usually a trail when you do the same thing online. And someone with the time and motivation to look for it can find it.

I’m not sure what the end game looks like here. Either we’re all going to end up truer, more honest versions of ourselves or everyone is going to end up hiding their online selves behind Tor and Bitcoin and the Internet will become the least social version of social media ever.

Why you should care about what happened with Texas’s SB5 bill

Politics, , ,

Yesterday, a senator in the Texas legislature named Wendy Davis attempted a thirteen-hour filibuster to prevent the passage of SB5, a bill that would have placed such onerous restrictions on clinics providing abortion services that it would have caused most of them to close thereby preventing many women from getting other basic health care services in their area. You can read more about it here.

This was not a threatened filibuster. This wasn’t even a read-the-dictionary filibuster. This was a stand-up, keep-talking, stay-on-topic, no-leaning, no-breaks-for-food/water/bathroom, good-old-fashioned, give-’em-hell-Harry filibuster during which Davis read testimony from and about women – constituents! – who would be affected by the bill. Even if you’re against making abortion legal, you should have concerns about the unintended effects it would have had on women’s health coverage, particularly for low-income women.

Around the eleven-hour mark, Davis stopped speaking due to objections by her colleagues who said some of her comments were not germane to the bill. One comment included a discussion about sonograms. You can decide for yourself whether a discussion about sonograms is germane to a bill about abortions, especially when many legislatures require women to get one before getting an abortion.

What followed in the next two hours was some of the most inspiring political theater and voice-of-the-people democracy I’ve ever seen. From Davis’s fellow legislators using procedural debate to extend the discussion past the midnight deadline for passage to Leticia Van Der Putte – a female legislator who spent the day at her father’s funeral – who asked the Senate President “At what point must a female senator raise her hand or her voice to be recognized by her male colleagues?” to the fifteen minutes of cheers from the gallery which refused to subside and therefore delayed the vote past midnight.

If ours is truly a government of, by and for the people, last night was a shining example.

Until…

Until the Senate President called an illegal vote on SB5 at 12:02am – which passed – and he tried to convince thousands of people that the measure was now law. At one point, even the AP reported it as such. Eventually, it became clear that the bill had not passed due to the deadline. The Texas Tribune reports on what happened over a tense few hours in the middle of the night.

Keep this in mind: At its height there were 182,000 people watching this play out via a live video stream. Thousands of people were discussing it on social media platforms. We watched as the deadline passed. Yet the Senate President felt empowered to literally ignore the voices of his colleagues and constiuents and call an illegal vote and then say it passed.

What’s astounding about what happened here is the bill could have been called in another special session. Or brought up in the next regular session. But rather than do that, the Senate President decided to hold an illegal vote and try to convince everyone who saw it that they didn’t see it.

If ever there was a moment that demonstrated the need for a participatory democracy, if ever there was a time when we saw the need for open goverment, if ever you needed proof that some politicians think they’re above the will of the people – especially when it comes to issues affecting women and minorities – this. was. it.

Regardless of your feelings about abortion and whether you’re angry or relieved that SB5 didn’t pass you should be angry at the way a small group of legislators tried to hold this illegal vote and lie to their constituents and people all over the country about it. You should be outraged that these people have such contempt for the rule of law.

When it comes to our government, we all need to pay attention. We need to watch. We need to participate. We need to have a debate. We need to raise our voices. We need to hold our leaders accountable. And we need to support the reporters who cover these issues and bring them to light like the folks at the Texas Tribune, which provided the live video stream of the proceedings.

Otherwise they’ll break the law right in front of your eyes and call you a liar for saying so.

A different kind of leaning in: The Paper Machete 3.30.13

Politics, , , , ,

You can listen to me read this piece here on The Paper Machete/WBEZ podcast of the show. (I start at 4:31)

Here’s my piece from The Paper Machete this weekend. Deadlines are tough; I finished this minutes before I left to go to The Green Mill so the ending isn’t quite what I had in mind, but it works.

I’m also a little concerned this piece drifts into mansplaining but it’s at least grounded in fact, even if it has a healthy dose of barroom argument to it. There are lots of views on this topic so it’d be great to hear some comments on it.

If you liked this piece, please like The Paper Machete on Fcaebook or follow it on Twitter and attend one of its Saturday afternoon shows at The Green Mill. It’s the best weekly live event in Chicago and deserves your support.

—

On Tuesday, President Obama appointed Julia Pearson to head the Secret Service. She’s the first woman to ever lead the agency charged with protecting the life of the President, the Vice-President and other high-profile people in government. This historic change followed CIA director John Brennan’s selection of a woman to be acting head of the the agency’s Clandestine Service, the part of the agency that goes barreling into the most dangerous parts of the world, risks the lives of its members and can never tell anybody about it. And, of course, this past January the Defense Department lifted the ban on women serving on the front lines in our armed forces.

In short, 2013 has been a great year for putting more women in positions of power so long as those women don’t mind getting shot at. This is probably not what Sheryl Sandberg meant by “Lean In” but so be it. Finally, the decades-long struggle for equal treatment under the law has been fulfilled. If you want to express your support for this, you can change your Facebook profile picture to an image of Jessica Chastain’s character in Zero Dark Thirty.

On the one hand, it’s impossible to downplay these achievements. According to the Washington Post, the CIA’s Clandestine Service has “long been perceived as a male bastion that has blocked the career paths of women even while female officers have ascended to the top posts in other divisions.” The same is true of women in combat. It isn’t so much that women should have the right to stand alongside men in the most dangerous combat environments – although they should – but because those positions afford women the best opportunities for advancement and salary in the military. One might call it a “camouflage ceiling”…but only if one wanted to be rightfully mocked for sounding like a jackass.

As for the Secret Service, the image of it – both in reality and in the larger culture – has been wholly male. According to the New York Times, women make up only ten percent of all special agents, which is lower than most law enforcement agencies. Think of the Secret Service and the first image to pop into your head is a dude in a dark suit and dark sunglasses talking into his sleeve, thanks in part to TV and movies. Think of the Secret Service movie In The Line of Fire and you remember Clint Eastwood more readily than Renee Russo. Though a major motion picture gave us a black president at least ten years before it happened in real life, we didn’t get a movie with a woman as the head of the Secret Service – in this case, Angela Bassett in Olympus Has Fallen – until last week. The week before it happened for real.

This coincidence seems minor but it got me thinking that pop culture is replete with roles where women are President yet we’ve never had one in real life. Of course then I remembered when Hillary Clinton got a little choked up on the Presidential campaign trail in 2008. There was talk for days afterward about whether or not she was crying and if she – and, by extension, a woman – was tough enough to be President. Does Pierson as head of the Secret Service put that notion to rest? One would hope. After all, you’re probably tough enough to be the President if you’re tough enough to take a bullet for one.

While putting women in powerful/dangerous positions within the federal government and military puts the lie to the notion that women don’t have the temperament for certain kinds of work, it would be nice if we didn’t wait to put them there until after a bunch of guys turned it into a shit show.

If you’ll recall, the last time the Secret Service made big news was in 2012 when a group of special agents were preparing for the President’s visit to Cartagena. And when I say “preparing,” I mean “having sex with prostitutes” and subsequently arguing over price which is really depressing because you’d think an agency that was originally part of the U.S. Treasury would have a better understanding of currency exchange rates.

Also, the CIA hasn’t exactly been running the tightest ship either recently with former director David Petraeus resigning last year because had an affair with someone and people found out about it because he used Gmail to exchange secret messages with her instead of using Snapchat like really good spies do.

(I’m summarizing the Petraeus thing for the sake of brevity. You can read a full account of it at my website WhyWereWeSoObsessedWithThisFourMonthsAgo.com / SeriouslyWhoCaresNow )

So while putting women in these positions is great, they’re burdened with both the assumption that their presence alone will clean up institutions that have been old boy’s clubs for decades and the equally unfair expectation that because they’re the first they’re representing all women everywhere. Nobody assumes the next head of the CTA is going to bang his memoirist, for example, but when Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer stops letting people work from home it somehow has less to do with whether that’s a smart decision as a CEO trying to turn around the culture of a company best known for hosting your parents e-mail address and more to do with demonstrating to the larger world how a woman can “have it all” even though “all” is different for everybody and most people wouldn’t “want it” anyway.

Similarly, Sheryl Sandberg’s been taking it on the chin for her book Lean In, which discusses the structural and institutional barriers that keep women from getting ahead in the workforce. Rather than judging her arguments on their merits, most of the criticism centers on whether she’s properly representing the outlook of all working women, rather than just those at Fortune 500 companies.

Is Sandberg writing from a position of wealth and privilege? Sure. And there’s an argument to be made that her experience does not resemble every woman’s but I don’t think that was her intent. I’d even be OK with this line of criticism if it meant we were then making room on the bookshelves for women who make 30-50K a year or work at Target or are stay-at-home moms and sending them on extensive press tours. But somehow I don’t think that’s going to happen.

All of which brings me back to the woman who’s the new head of the CIA’s Clandestine Service. I have to keep saying “the woman” because most people don’t know her name. The reason for that is because she’s undercover. So while she’ll still be the first woman in her position, she’ll likely be judged more on her work and not her name or her background. After watching the press treatment of Mayer and Sandberg over the past few months, she’s probably pretty thankful for that.

Meigs Field’s destruction, 10 years later

Politics, , ,

“The reason he did it that way was because he knew he had to cheat to win,” Whitney said. “The fact that the mayor would do something illegal like this was shocking. But, in a sense, it wasn’t because the mayor had gotten so desperate and obsessed with this concept. He said it was terrorism, but he always wanted to close it for a park. And frankly, the park is not that much to write home about. After 10 years, it’s kind of disappointing.”

via 10 years later: The nighttime raid that destroyed Meigs Field – Chicago Sun-Times

I’ve read quite a few criticisms of former Mayor Daley but “He had to cheat to win” has got to be in the top 5 harshest reviews.

Also, I don’t normally recommend reading comment sections but the one from a former president of the Friends of Meigs Field makes a cogent argument for why the greater crime was the mishandling of Meigs Field as a monetary asset that might have helped close some budget shortfalls.

OMIC roundup: Taken 2 edition

Comics, Fatherhood, Internet, Media, Music, Politics

Have felt somewhat creatively bereft this week so here’s a roundup on the topics this site’s most often devoted to:

Comics: Part of me still wants to reserve judgment on The Superior Spider-Man, the new Marvel title arriving in the wake of Amazing Spider-Man #700; a story arc in comics can’t be judged from one issue. But all my concerns about this new direction seem to have come to bear and a new one’s risen: the idea that Doc Ock is burdened with responsibility is jettisoned for a literal deus ex machina. I won’t spoil it here but if you thought Peter’s death lacked weight before… *

The other Marvel relaunch I checked out recently was Fantastic Four. I really liked where Hickman was going in the previous series so a Reed who charges ahead without considering his family first – or bringing him into his plan – is a step back. Again, we’ll see.

All this was enough to make me pick up last year’s Spider-Men crossover, which was excellent and touching and therefore recommended.

Fatherhood: Last night I watched Taken 2 while I assembled a small pastel table and chairs for Abigail – a gift from her grandmother. I’m sure many fathers mentally see themselves as Liam Neeson, willing to do whatever it takes to save their families from enemies both foreign and domestic. Let’s be honest though: Most of the time fatherhood means assembling a pastel table and chairs at 11pm on a Saturday night while you drink scotch, eat beef jerky and watch Taken 2. I am perfectly fine with this.

Internet: This video of a Fisher-Price record player spinning a bootleg “Stairway to Heaven” blew my mind.

Here’s the backstory (via @SennettReport).

Media: Alpana Singh is leaving Check, Please so the show is looking for a new host. This sentence from a report on the move caught my attention:

“The station hopes Singh will continue to appear occasionally on Chicago Tonight, WTTW’s nightly newsmagazine, where she answers viewers’ wine and beverage questions posed by host Phil Ponce in the “Ask Alpana” segment.”

Hopes? Has there not been a conversation about this yet? Is this high school? “Yeah, I know we’re broken up and everything but I’m really hoping we can still be lab partners without there being all kinds of weird vibes. I mean, she didn’t say we couldn’t so I’m sure everything will be cool. We’re adults, you know?”

Music: I’ve found Townes Van Zandt’s Live at the Old Quarter, especially “Two Girls,” to be revelatory. You ever hear something for the first time but find yourself able to sing along with it? I’d also recommend a listen to Taj Mahal’s “She Caught The Katy” if only to hear how much the Blues Brothers version nicked from it.

Politics: With so many problems facing Illinois, the possibility that the governor’s race will become Daleys vs. Madigans is profoundly depressing.

* If you don’t mind spoilers, this AV Club summary gives you the gist.

Things I don’t understand

Politics, , , ,

There are a number of arguments you can make against marriage equality or “gay marriage.” None of them are persuasive to me for reasons beyond the nature of this post. Regardless of intent, all are countered by the simple understanding that we cannot deny basic rights to one group of people if we extend them to others.

Yet the arguments make a kind of sense to me. Their basis is usually in fear and that’s a universal emotion, even if I don’t agree with the roots of that fear – usually an effort to hold on to some imagined way of life (the “traditional marriage” argument) that didn’t exist before and doesn’t exist now. I may disagree with the intent but I can at least get my head around it.

The argument Cardinal George made in a letter this week? I don’t get it. It’s not based in fear. It’s based in a kind of logic. A deeply flawed logic with truck-sized holes in it.

“Civil laws that establish ‘same sex marriage’ create a legal fiction,” George wrote in a letter sent to priests today. “The State has no power to create something that nature itself tells us is impossible.”

What does nature tell us is impossible? Reporter Manya A. Brachear explains:

According to the tradition of natural law, every human being must seek a fundamental “good” that corresponds to the natural order to flourish. Natural-law proponents say heterosexual intercourse between a married man and a woman serves two intertwined good purposes: to procreate and to express a deep, abiding love.

In fairness to Cardinal George, those aren’t his words even if the crux of the argument is. Here’s what I don’t understand:

Where does this leave couples who cannot have children due to a biological reason? If they cannot procreate, does their marriage run counter to natural law? Or if couples feel called to adoption – and as someone with just a passing familiarity of the domestic and international processes, make no mistake, it is a calling – is their marriage in opposition to the natural law Cardinal George feels is so important? What about couples who have a deep, abiding love but feel children are not possible in their marriage due to financial or other lifestyle concerns? Why isn’t Cardinal George trying to oppose these marriages? Is it because in Cardinal George’s mind he imagines they’re capable of both procreation and love and perhaps God will guide them to procreation by changing the nature of their minds or healing their biological concerns? Odd that the Cardinal views man’s mental or biological free will – a gift from God – with such contempt.

On a completely separate topic is this piece from New York magazine on what happened when the California State Teachers Retirement System, a public pension find, let a private equity firm called Cerberus Capital Management know it was less than happy with the firm’s ownership of a certain gun manufacturer:

Cerberus, it emerged, owns the company that makes the Bushmaster semiautomatic rifle used in the Sandy Hook spree (along with other gun companies). CalSTRS, which has $750 million invested in Cerberus funds, made it known that it wasn’t happy about this news.

Hours later, Cerberus — whose CEO’s father lives in Newtown — announced that it was putting its firearms holdings up for sale.

What I don’t understand is this: Could this method be used to reduce the widespread sale of guns in this country? A democratic political operative I’m friendly with on Twitter thinks it’s the ballot, not the buck, that stops the bullet.* And there may be reasons why the above wouldn’t operate at scale.

Worth trying to understand why or why not though, right?

* Apologies if that conversation is a bit tough to follow via the link. I’m not feeling up to Storifying it to capture the context and order of how it unfolded.