Juan does a superb job describing the problem. Sadly, while Burke's election is a welcome ray of hope, I doublt it's sufficient to push back the influence of the City's ultimate boss Toni Preckwinkle.
I'm reminded that Atlanta just re-elected Fani Willis as DA. Until Chicago's Black community demands better elected officials and stops voting inept self serving footsoldiers of Toni's Chicago will continue to degerate and lose businesses and population.
Chicago Centrist’s: Time to Get Back in the Game!
By Juan Rangel
May 24, 2024
Chicago finds itself in a power shift that is testing old political paradigms while imperiling her future. The political center, which once dominated the local scene and was marveled at for its working-class values and voting base, has given way to an extreme left once regarded simply as a fringe nuisance in our city’s historical one-party system of government. Centrist elected officials are on defense, if not on life support, as they try to navigate an increasingly hostile political terrain leaving moderate Chicago voters wondering if there’s still room for them in their Democratic Party.
Gone are the days of the Daley Democrats or as some would put it “the Machine” which built power through patronage jobs in city government in exchange for a vote. The old machine stalwarts and their ways have been put on ice. In their place are teacher union bosses who turned labor contracts and union dues into a new well-oiled machine that doles out government goodies to their allies for their so-called“common good” agenda. The lingo may have changed, but patronage is alive and well. Can you say, “sustainable schools model” or “safe passage workers”?
Let’s be clear, this new machine is led by the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) and has helped the extreme-left gain a larger foothold into the city and state’s power centers.
They are” the establishment” complete with its own dominant Democratic Socialist Caucus in the City Council, its own political party apparatus in United Working Families (chaired by none other than CTU President Stacy Davis Gates), and its own teacher union organizer-turned mayor in Brandon Johnson. Their most ardent followers are a well-organized alliance of actors whose political pedigree range from social justice warriors to outright anarchists. It’s the new left where even traditional leftists have been, well, left out. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia is Exhibit A. This is not hyperbole, it’s our new political reality that requires a response.
Yet, there is a void of centrist leadership in a city long-known for its blue-collar families, lunch bucket values, and church-lined neighborhoods. Perhaps Chicago grew comfortable with a steady strong-mayor governance model, albeit corruptibly imperfect, that kept extremists at bay. The absence of such a power center has unleashed forces that run counter to what centrists believe in and are antithetical to what our city and state need.
The chief far-left protagonist is of course CTU, whose own radicalization a decade ago led to two teacher strikes in as many years and shut the city’s most vulnerable kids out of their schools for more than 15 months during COVID. Never mind the science which said schools were safe for kids; this was a power move that mattered most to the teachers’ union. Now bolstered by their hand-picked mayor and school board, CTU is on the march to eliminate any competition that gives parents better school options for their children, unless you can afford it. (See Stacy Davis Gates.)
The CTU’s opposition to charter schools, selective enrollment schools and tax credit scholarships for poor kids to attend private schools is only the beginning. Yet, the schools are only part of CTU’s target as they push a broader public policy agenda giving them a hand in every part of life for Chicagoans. Their efforts to “defund the police” have left the city more vulnerable to neighborhood street crime and violence that has also hollowed out Chicago’s downtown economic vitality. Their “tax the rich” mantra or as socialist Alderperson Rosanna Rodriguez’ likes to non-eloquently declare, “eat the rich,” has only added to Chicago’s middle-class tax burden. Just ask employers, property owners, and renters in Pilsen how that’s worked out for them.
While Mayor Harold Washington may have declared the machine “dead, dead, dead,” CTU has breathed new life into it with devastating consequences, especially for Black and Brown communities. But maybe, just maybe, the recent victory of Eileen O’Neill Burke for State’s Attorney and the defeat of Johnson’s “Bring Chicago Home” transfer tax show signs that Chicago’s centrist working class is recognizing the threat to their values and the quality of life they’ve worked so hard to have. Well, it’s past time for the political center to take action and stand up for our values and interests. This requires the attention of civic-minded leaders from the business, religious, education and non-profit sectors, and means engaging in the raucous political process.
Proponents of school choice and stronger accountability in our public schools, increased and better policing for safe communities, and responsible governing that values taxpayers and promotes neighborhood job development must organize, coalesce and push back on the extremists. It also needs new leaders to emerge and drive the change needed to get back to some sense of normalcy.
-30-
Juan Rangel has a 35 year history in Chicago’s community-based and political arenas and now serves as the founder and Executive Director of the newly launched The Urban Center, a non-profit program created to give voice to Chicago’s centrist communities by taking action on a common sense agenda over the extremist leftwing takeover of our city and state. www.theurbancenter.org Prior to founding The Urban Center, Juan served as Senior Director of Empower Illinois, a tax credit scholarship organization providing opportunities for low-income children to attend private and faith-based schools in Illinois. He also served as CEO of the United Neighborhood Organization and founded the UNO Charter School Network (now Acero Schools) in 1998, serving over 7500 students at its peak in 2013. Juan began his public service career in 1989 as an elected local school council member of his former grammar school in the Little Village community.
Opmerkingen