The View From the Other Chicago

It has been said that under Rahm Emanuel there are two Chicagos, one for the haves and one for the have-nots. That distinction could also be characterized as the wanted and the unwanted.

Emanuel has also stripped many community members, both law-abiding and non-law-abiding, of crucial services in his neoliberal push to privatize the city. Having closed over 50 public schools and half of the city’s publicly funded mental health clinics, Emanuel has consistently imposed policies that take from the needy and give to the rich — and like most leaders whose rule is punishing to the poor, he is very concerned with security. Under Emanuel, the city spends $4 million a day on a famously racist and incompetent police department. 
 
When a community is suffering, public outrage can often be dulled by depicting every member of the community as being somehow implicated in the harms that are occurring. The notion that there are no innocents is spun by officials and is often accompanied by pleas for the marginalized to practice better values so they can be safer. The implication of guilt by association has reliably cultivated a public tolerance for the collective mistreatment of entire populations, fueling the violence of anti-Blackness, the genocide of Native people and the endless wars waged by the US that are now treated as background noise by the mainstream media.

It’s an election year in Chicago, and only time will tell if the city has had enough of Emanuel’s neoliberal policies and victim-blaming, or if the country itself has had enough of such politics. But while grieving Chicagoans continue to hold vigil and shut down major roadways, crying out for investment, resources and peace, Emanuel continues to blame the very people he has failed. Rahm Emanuel’s message is that he’s not a bad mayor — it’s the city that’s letting him down. Could that be true? The 356 people who have fallen to violence in Chicago in 2018 could not be reached for comment.


kelly hayes,
truthout.