Notes on the Important Revitalizing Neighborhoods Side of the DALEY for MAYOR CAMPAIGN

1.  Approaching the eve of the 2019 Martin Luther King Jr. Federal Holiday weekend, I received the following email invitation, ostensibly addressed to an important cross section of Chicago’s African American clergy community:

“Dear Rev. Joel Washington; As we look ahead to celebrate the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on Monday by honoring his legacy…we want to take this opportunity to invite you to join Bill Daley and me for dinner on Sunday (1-20-19, 6:30 pm). Bill is interested in hearing your thoughts, ideas and vision for the city and how we, as a community can come together while celebrating Dr. King’s legacy  – not just once a year or a few times a year – but every day to build a better, safer Chicago.  Please join us on Sunday, January 20, at 6:30 pm at Gibson’s (1028 N. Rush Street), … Sam Scott, Chairperson, Daley for Mayor.”

2.  According to most of Chicago’s political pundits, the Bill Daley Campaign for the City’s Office of Mayor is the mayoral campaign of Big White Business -apparently based on a superficial reading of its funding sources and political endorsements.

3.  However, clearly standing between the lines of the media’s DALEY CAMPAIGN punditry is the less reported, indeed obscured, position of the Campaign’s championing the clear and present need for community revitalization itself integrally linked to downtown Loop development.

4.  This short piece is designed to go against the grain of the City’s majority pundit opinion.  More, it is designed to briefly explore the peanut butter and jelly sandwiching together of the Daley Campaign’s downtown businesses approach on the one hand & on the other with its ongoing thrust for developing the City’s outer communities via not just its vision but also via its proposed governance practice.

5.  The above resourced MLK Weekend Evening invitation to a dinner/discussion meeting with Bill Daley at Gibson’s Steak House (touted as the highest grossing restaurant in the Mid-West) served as the Daley Campaign’s illustration of its equal concern with fostering neighborhood dialog generally, the Black community in particular, with an important cross-section of distinguished African American faith-based leaders. 

6.  Initiated and organized by the Campaign’s Black and other People of Color leadership, the above dinner/discussion meeting (significantly held, from the POV of City’s Black clergy, in Gibson’s Upper Room) provided an opportunity not only for a Daley Campaign Campaign/Black community ministries fellowship but also for an intensive one-on-one Q&A with Candidate Daley covering such burning issues as community safety, education, job creation, infrastructure development, affordable housing, fair governance, and the precipitous African American out-migration from the City currently fraying adversely Black Chicago neighborhoods.

7.  Sam Scott, Daley Campaign Chairman and the MLK Dinner/Discussion Co-Host, is an eloquent advocate of the Campaign’s community revitalization approach.  To be sure, Scott’s advocacy includes his special concern for the City’s Black community’s fortunes.  But Scott’s concern however, has also prompted him to seek common ground with the predominantly Latino/Latina Pilsen Neighborhood’s The Resurrection Project -TRP-  a faith-based initiative aimed at “Building Relationships!  Creating Healthy Communities!” on the South West Side.

8.  Incidentally, the Daley Campaign is managed by Jorge Neri.   According to Ballotpedia, the online reference, Mr. Neri “has a background in Latino voter engagement and immigration policy, (he) was the Nevada state director for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.  Mr. Neri also formerly served as “the associate director of public engagement for the White House under Barack Obama.” 

9.  In 2016, after retiring as Chairman and CEO of Ingredion Inc., Sam Scott convened Black Chicago Tomorrow -BCT- (A Plan for Neighborhood Revitalization). Scott convened BCT in response to the crises of African American out-migration from the City, to the tune of 400,000 Black people, seeking greener pastures elsewhere.

10.  Scott called for the intervention of the City’s Corporate sector to foster Black economic development and to stem the tide of Black population loss leading to the destabilization of Chicago’s Black Metropolis traditionally one of the leading Black urban communities of Black America.

11.  This said, BCT understood its role as not just revitalizing the City’s traditionally vibrant Black Metropolis but as a Citywide key to reviving the outer Loop communities of Metro Chicago as a whole -itself absorbing the blow of its own out-migration of 600,000 residents in addition to the already significant Black exodus referenced above.

12.  Accordingly, BCT asserts that a significant dimension of the neighborhood sector of the City stands in need of revitalization for the beneficial sake of the political/economy of Metro Chicago as a whole.

13.  According to Scott, then, the Daley campaign has adopted BCT’s thesis. More, and in so doing Bill Daley has recruited Mr. Scott to serve as Chairman of the Daley Campaign.

14.  In many ways, then, Bill Daley’s campaign can be defined not simply as the continuation of a family politicaa l dynasty, nor even as a White male Big Business Campaign only but rather as a significant contribution to the City’s history of spawning truly multicultural mayoralty campaigns.

Respectfully submitted:  Rev. Joel Washington (Khunanpu Sangoma), Convener of SAVING YOUNG BARACK OBAMA’S ORGANIZING SANCTUARY (Reformation Church Chicago & Elim Swedish Lutheran Conservator, 11310 S. Forest Avenue), MIF/ELCA/ADLA, 2-26-19, Updated: 2-27-19

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