Progress Illinois

During his marathon session before a City Council committee yesterday, Chicago Police Supt. Jody Weis suggested that many of his officers were not doing their jobs properly in part because of intimidation:

"I have heard from many officers that there is a degree of timidness -- that people are not maybe as engaged as they should be because of fears of lawsuits, fears of [complaints registered] being put against them by criminals and by other folks who are just trying to impugn their integrity," the superintendent said.

Mayor Richard Daley came to Weis' defense today, unleashing a nasty rant directed at local media for sensationalizing poor police conduct. Here's an excerpt:

“Remember how long you kept beating the police? That affects them. They’re human beings. They can’t take it." [...]

“This is a very difficult, challenging job and they’re always afraid of beefs because, once they get a beef, you [reporters] write about it. [You say], ‘He has 25 C.R. numbers [complaints registered], all unfounded.’ You say, ‘Why? This fella must be a problem’. And you find out most of them are gangbangers and dope dealers [who] filed charges. And they didn't show up in court or adminstrative hearings. [Yet] you write about it….You beat em up pretty good. Now, you want to be their friend.”

But while Daley's remarks suggest that reporters have ready access to the "C.R. numbers," this isn't the case at all. In fact, the only way the press or citizens can gain access to a specific officer's record of complaints is if a case works its way through the criminal courts and this information is offered as evidence. That is the entire point of the effort by 29 aldermen to gain access to a list of 662 officers with over 10 citizen complaints, which the city is fighting to keep private.

So Daley appears to be railing against a level of transparency that doesn't actually exist.

But that's not to say it shouldn't exist. Indeed, this ongoing lack of oversight sends an awful signal to Chicago citizens that the CPD and other leading city officials don't have their backs, particularly after years of neglecting to address the humans rights abuses taking place right under their noses.

UPDATE: WBEZ has the audio of Daley's press conference. 

After reading the well-reported, June 27 Boston Globe article on the deteriorating affordable housing units in Barack Obama's former state senate district, Josh asked how public/private affordable housing partnerships could be improved and what alternative federal housing models are being proposed. These are valuable questions worth discussing, but we should resist the impulse to dismiss these types of programs outright.

Indeed, Hilzoy offered some criticism of the Globe piece over at Obsidian Wings:

Chicago's efforts to do something about its public housing nightmare are a very, very big deal, involving 25,000 units of housing, huge numbers of public housing residents, enormous sums of money, and vast tracts of land, some of it quite desirable. Any project of this magnitude is going to have a whole lot of moving parts, and it will operate under a lot of constraints: political, financial, and so on. Especially in a city with a reputation for, um, interesting approaches to public management, I would be astonished to find that absolutely everything had gone swimmingly. What I would really like to know, therefore, is: how many of the projects went bad? Whose projects were they? Is the number better or worse than one would expect? And why, exactly, didn't they work out?

That's exactly right. Context matters. The CHA's Plan for Transformation is a vast undertaking affecting families in 25,000 high-rise units and one that has been improperly managed by various actors from the beginning. We noted a while back that it's already well behind schedule (only 64 percent of the proposed replacements were finished by the end of last year). And according to a front page Tribune article yesterday, the problems could be worse than anyone was ready to acknowledge.

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In an article last week on the failure of many public-private affordable housing projects in Chicago, the Boston Globe's Binyamin Appelbaum focused heavily on the Grove Parc Plaza Apartments in the neighborhood of Woodlawn. The development is located in Barack Obama's old state senate district and was managed at points by some of his developer friends. The article asserted that "Grove Parc has become a symbol for some in Chicago of the broader failures of giving public subsidies to private companies to build and manage affordable housing."

As I wrote on Friday, the Globe piece will hopefully prompt a reexamination of privately-oriented housing policies. As progressives, we should resist the temptation to simply write off these sorts of public-private partnerships as fatally flawed. While the examples highlighted in the article are certainly egregious, there's also plenty of evidence that these policies have proved successful elsewhere (as we'll discuss in future posts).

Furthermore, in assessing how to improve such policies, we need to learn from the unsuccessful projects themselves and the strategies these communities have developed in response. To that point, the Grove Parc Tenants Association sent out a press release yesterday in which they explained what was missing from the Globe piece:

The Globe Article, while rightly raising concerns about the failure of the private sector to adequately provide for the housing needs of the poor, unfortunately leaves out half of the story. Grove Parc is not just an example of the failures of past policies, but a beacon of hope for the way forward. Tenants have not only stopped foreclosure and displacement and brought in new management, but in so doing have highlighted the principles that should guide this nation’s housing policy – tenant empowerment and full funding to guarantee the Human Right to housing. [...]

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Today, the Boston Globe printed an important front-page article on the complicated world of privately-run affordable housing developments in Chicago. The piece uses Barack Obama's associations with local developers who benefited from affordable housing subsidies as a hook. But at its root, the article is about flawed policies that put public capital in the hands of private developers, but give them little incentive to adequately maintain the properties they build and fill with low-income families.

Here's an accompanying video, which focuses on the Grove Parc development in Chicago's Woodlawn neighborhood:

Conservative bloggers are sure to raise a ruckus over the article, particularly because indicted Democratic fundraiser Tony Rezko's name comes up repeatedly. Rezko made a good deal of money within the affordable housing industry here. Numerous other Obama supporters -- including Valerie Jarrett, Alison Davis, and Bishop Arthur Brazier -- have also been linked to federally-subsidized properties in Chicago that ultimately fell into disrepair.

But the issues raised by the article aren't necessarily ethical or legal ones. Instead, I'm left with this question: from a progressive standpoint, what kind of federal housing policies would we like to see advanced by an Obama administration?

Much of the energy at the federal level has recently been focused on passing the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, which Obama and most Democrats support, along with many housing advocates. But as the article makes clear, federal subsidies doled out to private developers don't always serve the needs of low-income residents.

So what improvements can be made on this system? And what alternative models are out there? These are questions we'll be looking into in the coming weeks.

It's an important debate and I'm glad the Globe chose to spark it.

During a press conference in Chicago yesterday, Barack Obama was asked by Crain's Greg Hinz to explain what it means to be a politician from Chicago. Another reporter later questioned the Obama campaign's decision to bring much of the Democratic Party apparatus to Chicago, considering the inevitable increase in national attention on the city's politics.

As the general election drags on, Obama is sure to face more questions like this. It's quite likely that more uncomfortable headlines will emanate from city hall and the state capitol prior to November 4 and he'll be asked to account for them.

Judge for yourself how he did this time around:

Also of interest is an AP article published yesterday appraising Obama's tenure in the Illinois Senate. The reporter backs up Obama's statement during the presser that "my reputation here was somebody who would try to work with everybody":

Just how liberal was he?

In all, Obama's record from nearly eight years in the Illinois Senate suggests someone who believes strongly that government can make life better for people, whether by offering financial help, banning dangerous guns or providing health care.

But Obama, now the Democratic candidate for president, was no ideologue. He often cooperated with Republican lawmakers, co-sponsoring their legislation and working with them on compromises.

"People on both sides of the aisle would find him to be someone who would reach across to find out why people think the way they do," said William Mahar, a former Republican state senator. "He wouldn't talk just to people who agreed with him."

In what will certainly become a controversial decision, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Washington D.C.'s ban on handguns this morning, declaring for the first time that the Constitution protects an individual’s right to possess a gun, not just the right of the states to maintain militias:

Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority in the landmark 5-to-4 decision, said the Constitution does not allow “the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home.” In so declaring, the majority found that a gun-control law in the nation’s capital went too far in making it nearly impossible to own a handgun.

But the court held that the individual right to possess a gun “for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home” is not unlimited. “It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose,” Justice Scalia wrote.

The decision is the first since 1939 to deal with the scope of the Second Amendment. In his dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that the majority “would have us believe that over 200 years ago, the framers made a choice to limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate civilian uses of weapons.”

So how will this affect Chicago's gun-control laws, which were similar to DC's and have been in place since 1982?

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Last week, Chicago's Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies shut down its exhibit "Imaginary Coordinates" after museum donors complained that the show portrayed an "anti-Israel" bias. The exhibit had featured maps that conflict with the current national boundaries of Israel. While the curators didn't reveal what specifically had sparked the complaints, they said the decision was based on a desire not to offend members of the Jewish community, its "core constituency." However, many of those criticizing the closure of the exhibit come from the very Jewish community that Spertus claims it did not want to offend.

Blogging at Jewschool, Rabbi Brant Rosen argues that "intelligent exploration and provocative debate is precisely what belongs at a Jewish institution." And at the Sun-Times, columnist Neil Steinberg had this to say:

If the Israeli-Palestinian deadlock teaches us anything, it is the limited benefit of bulldozing forward without regard to conflicting viewpoints. We condemn the Palestinians for feeding their children a narrow view of the world. And then we take a page from them and spike an exhibit because some aspect makes the check-writers uneasy. Shonda fur di goyim. From a Jewish museum, we expect better.

In last week's Time Out Chicago, Lauren Weinberg noted that "Imaginary Coordinates" had been lauded by critics.  She went on to draw a contrast with other museums' handling of similar controversies:

When controversy hit New York’s Jewish Museum in 2002 and the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 1999, those institutions acknowledged viewers’ sensitivities but kept their exhibitions—and a meaningful dialogue—open.

Interestingly enough, the Spertus website still proudly displays the glowing reviews received by "Imaginary Coordinates."

Here's some news of the weird for your Friday afternoon enjoyment:

An alligator was found in the Chicago River on the South Side Friday afternoon, police said.

The alligator, which is about 5 1/2 to 6 feet long, was found near 37th Street and the Chicago River about 2:15 p.m. by a citizen who called police, according to police News Affairs Officer John Mirabelli.

The city’s department of Animal Care & Control, 2741 S. Western Ave., took the alligator, which was alive, and no injuries were reported, Mirabelli said. [...]

“The suspicion is that it’s someone’s pet that was released at some point in time and obviously, was able to survive and did quite well,’’ Rosenthal said.

As part of an effort to expand into local news reporting, Arianna Huffington has announced that the famed Huffington Post will be opening up newsrooms in cities across the U.S. The first city on the list? Chicago, naturally:

Huffington said the Chicago site would aggregate news, sports, crime, arts and business news from different local sources as well as contributions from bloggers in what will be the first of a series of projects in "dozens of US cities". The Chicago site will initially be curated by just one editor.

"We are aspiring to be a newspaper in that we want to covering all news, not just the political blogging the way we began," said Huffington, speaking at Guardian News & Media's internal Future of Journalism conference.

The Second City is an obvious choice for this new, hyperlocal HuffPo newsroom (they already have offices in New York, L.A., and D.C.). But you can't help but wonder if the decision to move here was sped up by the recent ascension of a certain local politician.

Be sure to check out this brief Tribune article on Chicagoans Efrain and Leticia Cortina and how the Congress Hotel strike "controls the rhythms of their family life." Both parents walked out with other striking hotelworkers in 2003 and have been rushing to the picket line from other jobs ever since.

The standoff between the stiking workers and the Congress owners entered its sixth year last week. You can find Adam's feature on the strike here and pictures of the huge Thursday rally here.