Meeks’ departure: Yawn. What’s next?

I have to confess that finally learning of the intent of state Sen. James Meeks, D-Chicago, to give up on being an elected government official and go back to his other title, the Rev. James Meeks, didn’t do much to intrigue me.

MEEKS: Back to Rev.


A large part of it is the fact that speculation about Meeks being fed up with the inability of government to act in ways he wanted it to have gone on for so long. I have heard for months that Meeks might seriously decide to leave the Statehouse Scene.

SO HIS ANNOUNCEMENT this week to WLS-TV, along with an aide issuing a statement to everybody else, seemed almost anti-climactic. Like it was about time he decided, now let’s get on with things. Potential replacements already are crawling out of the municipal woodwork.

But more importantly, perhaps it is going to be the Meeks legacy of a guy who kept promising greater and greater things, yet never followed through on any of them.

Perhaps it was all those times he tried to pass himself off as a legitimate candidate for Illinois governor or Chicago mayor, only to find a reason to back out.

In the end, Meeks’ career as a legislator will come to a 10-year period in which he represented a district around the Roseland neighborhood that stretched into the surrounding south suburbs of places like Calumet City, Dolton and South Holland.

HE COULD HAVE become a prominent African-American suburban politician, particularly since the Cook County portion of the south suburbs have become so overwhelmingly African-American in population (that’s where many of those city residents moved to during the past decade).

Instead, he wanted to remain the city-based combination of a pastor and politician – and in the end probably reduced his effectiveness in both roles.

I am aware of the influence that Meeks has as the head of that incredibly huge congregation (in the tens of thousands) at Salem Baptist Church. But he never did a thing to try to extend that influence to anyone who wasn’t already a member of his congregation.

That’s why his campaign for mayor of Chicago never caught on among the masses. He was the candidate who had to drop out early among the African-American possibilities.

AND WHEN HE switched his allegiance to Carol Moseley-Braun, it wound up making him look ridiculous after she finished dead-last among the major candidates (with vote totals that were barely better than the fringe candidates).

Meeks couldn’t do a thing to bolster her. Nor could he bolster himself.

If anything, I think Meeks’ past talk of running for governor was a bigger show of his weakness.

For Meeks made threats to run for governor if people didn’t take him seriously about issues related to education. As though Rod Blagojevich would quake in his pants at the mere thought of the Meeks Machine running amok against him.

IF ANYTHING, BLAGOJEVICH called Meeks’ bluff and didn’t give him a thing in the way of education reforms. It’s almost reminiscent of the 1960s promises that the first Mayor Daley made to the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., only to renege on them once King left the North Lawndale neighborhood.

That may well be why Meeks was unable to get things done to try to improve the quality of education in inner-city neighborhoods.

Meeks always came across as pastor more than politician. Like he expected to go to the Statehouse and have the other 176 state legislators to cater to his whims and desires. He could minister to them, and have them do what he told them to.

Instead, they treated him as just another legislative hack – and one who came from an impoverished district that didn’t have much to offer outside of captive voters.

NOW THAT MEEKS is talking of being just a pastor again once his current state Senate term ends in January of 2013, he may gain more political respect. Although I’m sure a significant part of his legacy will be that of political failure.

How else to explain those token gestures he made back in 2008 to try to illustrate how broken-down the quality of public schools were in Chicago neighborhoods?

When I think of Meeks, the first thought that comes to my mind were his repeated trips that year to New Trier High School in the north shore suburbs. He tried to enroll inner-city kids who didn’t live in the district in those public schools, then turn their refusal into some sort of statement about how those children were being cheated out of a chance at a decent life.

All it did was make he and his followers look buffoonish. And when I choose the word “buffoon,” keep in mind that nearly all of the 177 members of the Illinois General Assembly have their moments that they should be highly ashamed of.

A PART OF me was always surprised that the local school officials didn’t just call the local police and have the whole lot arrested on some sort of trespass charge. Which probably would have been approved of by at least some of the Northfield and Winnetka locals.

So when Meeks returns to his pulpit full-time, he will be going back to a place where he is admired and respected. Perhaps part of it is that the day of the preacher/politician is over.

All those licensed attorneys who prevail at the Statehouse these days were just too much of a mismatch for Meeks.

Who’s to say? Perhaps having spent a decade surrounded by lawyers was a test that assures Meeks his eventual place in the hereafter.

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How embarrassing WAS Chicago Election Day for African-American voter bloc?

HENDON: Has time passed him by?

Depending on whom one wants to listen to, Rickey Hendon is retiring from the state Senate (and electoral politics altogether, if his “out is out” statement is truthful) because he’s ill, he thinks it will help him avoid an indictment or because he’s embarrassed by “pathetic” vote totals by African-American voters in last week’s municipal elections.

Now I’m not sure which of the three is most accurate, although I can’t help but think that some people who talk about indictments are merely eager to reinforce their own racial hang-ups. But the one that catches my attention is the latter.

MANY GROUPS DIVERSE in ethnicity and religion experienced victories in the election results – the numbers provide evidence of their growing influence in the Chicago of the 21^st Century.

Yet influence is like a pie, in that no matter how many different ways one tries to slice it, there’s only so much to go around. So if ethnic politicos experienced gains, it only makes sense that someone had to lose out.

And it sure wasn’t the old order Irish-American politicos who lost anything – even if Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel were to dump 14^th Ward Alderman Edward Burke as chairman of the Finance Committee.

Was it the black voter bloc that lost out?

IN HENDON’S CASE, he tried to use his influence as a black politico to tout the campaign of Patricia Horton for city Clerk. It would have been a rise from her post as a board member of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District.

Instead, she got whomped, barely taking 40 percent of the vote in a head-to-head campaign against state Rep. Susana Mendoza, D-Chicago.

The new clerk becoming the first Latina to hold that particular Chicago citywide office is a gain for Latino political empowerment, and it came about because the Latino voter bloc that was split by about a 2-1 ratio between mayoral hopefuls Gery Chico and Miguel del Valle found common ground for Mendoza.

Thereby giving her a solid base of voter support that Hendon and other black politicos couldn’t overcome on Horton’s behalf.

OF COURSE, THE mayoral campaign itself factors into this.

The official figure that will be recognized is 59 percent – as in the number of black voters who are believed to have voted for Rahm Emanuel to be mayor, rather than Carol Moseley-Braun, the so-called consensus candidate of the African-American activists.

There’s also the fact that Moseley-Braun couldn’t win a single ward, and in fact only one a majority of votes in 1 precinct (out of just over 2,900 precincts in the entire city).

By comparison, Chico’s mayoral campaign actually won the majority of 10 wards, and even got significant votes in places preferred by Emanuel.

IF THERE WAS a racial/ethnic factor at work in this election cycle, it was one of white and Latino, not white and black such as what existed back in those un-glorious days of 1983.

Now I think it would be overly-simplistic to write this off as a growing political feud between Latino and black voters in Chicago, in large part because I think the people most eager to promote THAT view are the ones who want to stir dissent in hopes that it will enable them to maintain control.

But it also is a factor that will have to be accounted for as Chicago takes steps to being a city with equal numbers of Latinos, black and white people. (As it is, we’re pretty close now – the 2010 Census results for Illinois released two weeks ago show Chicago with 33 percent black people, 32 percent white and 29 percent Latino – with Asians of various ethnicities comprising the remaining 6 percent).

If anything, the Census results may provide the biggest clue as to what happened on Election Day – there probably aren’t as many black voters.

THE RESULTS THAT show Chicago as a city with just under 2.7 million people indicate that the bulk of the 200,000-person population “loss” was of black people who moved to the inner south suburbs of Cook County – with many of those municipalities becoming majority African-American.

Which also pares up with the fact that the outer southern suburbs of Will County is the place that had the largest percentage increase (just under 35 percent) in Illinois, and gained about 183,000 people. Now we know where many of the remaining white people went, and that “white flight” remains alive – albeit not quite an urban concept anymore.

Think I’m exaggerating? I covered a criminal trial recently at the courthouse in Joliet and heard the lead defense attorney at one point during a recess talk about his family ties in the Bridgeport neighborhood that he still feels, even though, “We’ve all moved out here now and taken over.”

For the city’s white population in the past decade remained relatively stable in terms of numbers, although it shifted around to different neighborhoods.

WHICH MAY WELL mean that Hendon probably shouldn’t feel embarrassment. Maybe he did the best with the remaining number of African-Americans in the city who are registered to vote.

It means we’re going to have to think in these multi-ethnic terms when it comes to defining our city. Black and white (or white and “other,” the way some people prefer to think of it) just aren’t accurate anymore.

And if Hendon can’t accept that fact, then perhaps we should praise him for resigning his legislative post. At least it means he’s accepting that he’s a part of our city’s past, unlike some other activists who will try to carry their ways of doing things into the future on a quest that bears all too much resemblance to the Chicago Cubs saying each year that they’re really, really, really going to win a National League championship.

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Street gang leaders think they’re being singled out for abuse by law enforcement

Reading the Chicago Sun-Times, I couldn’t help but detect similarities between the rhetoric coming from men who admit they have ties to Chicago street gangs and other people who get in trouble with federal law enforcement officials – most recently our state’s former governor, Rod Blagojevich.

Now before anyone gets all bent out of shape, I am not suggesting that Blagojevich is a thug. I single him out because he's the most recent person in the public's mind to complain that "the Feds" are picking on him.

IT IS JUST that the gang leaders got a writeup in the newspaper for their thoughts about a recent attempt by Chicago Police and federal prosecutors to talk with gang members and let them know of the harsh consequences for violent actions that can be traced back to gang activity.

That meeting on Aug. 17 at the conservatory in Garfield Park (a beautiful place that scares many Chicagoans because of its proximity to neighborhoods with strong gang activity) has caused some politicians (although not Mayor Richard M. Daley) to denounce the police for allegedly “negotiating” with gang leaders.

In my mind, the kind of talk that came out of that meeting doesn’t sound like negotiations more than ultimatums. Indeed, the Sun-Times writeup on Thursday that previewed a press conference held by the gangs to try to gain television attention indicates the gang leaders who were present last month remain upset.

They say they were tricked into attending.

WHAT THEY ALSO had to say was that the Chicago Police don’t understand the present-day structure of streetgangs – preferring to think of things the way they were 30 or 40 years ago.

Those gang leaders (some of whom say they really don’t lead their gangs anymore because no one would listen to them if they did) also claim that the federal government, by making threats of using the RICO statutes designed to take down the Outfit and organized crime is singling out poor, black people who have little say over the levels of violence that are taking place on the streets of Chicago.

The bottom line? The federal government is a bully who doesn’t really comprehend the way things work on a day-to-day basis.

That just sounds so much, to me at least, like the rhetoric we have been getting from Blagojevich – who tells us the federal government is trying to break him when he didn’t do anything that should be considered wrong.

WHICH TO ME makes the gang leader rhetoric a lot of weak-kneed whining.

Not that I can blame them for being concerned. Because the federal government has shown on many occasions that when a U.S. attorney gets it into his head that he wants to use his authority on you, he’s probably going to find something improper.

The threats of incarcerating gang leaders for actions their so-called subordinates have committed, then using those same actions to seize any assets the gang leader family members may have is harsh. It is very mean-spirited.

Then again, it probably will take some borderline draconian action to get through to the gang types in our city that their behavior needs to change.

BECAUSE THE CURRENT problem with gangs is that we have severe enough problems in certain segments of our society that some people wind up fearing the misery they will suffer from not being part of a neighborhood gang more than they do any legal repercussions they would face by being a gang member.

Which is why I really don’t understand the political people, such as many white members of the City Council and Gov. Pat Quinn, who are determined to think of this latest approach as somehow dignifying the existence of the gangs.

As though if we pretend hard enough, the gangs will cease to exist in reality. It sounds to me like the older Cuban exiles who want to pretend that Fidel Castro never really took over the country, and that it is just a matter of time before he leaves and things return to the way they were 60 years ago.

Somehow, I suspect if Blagojevich himself thought anybody would care what he thought on the issue, he too probably would be denouncing the Chicago Police Department and Superintendent Jody Weis for this latest act.

ACTUALLY, I CAN’T help but wonder about one aspect of the gang leader comments that came out on Thursday. They claimed that the old days of strictly-structured gangs is history – the feds in Chicago broke them in recent decades.

Putting people like Larry Hoover and Jeff Fort (founder of the El Rukn gang that would have us think they were merely being good Muslims) away in prison for lengthy terms (the 63-year-old Fort likely will never be free again in his life) broke up the structure to the point where they say there really is no high-ranking leader who can pay for his subordinate’s crimes.

I don’t know how accurate that statement is. But I do find it believable that some young punk kid isn’t all that concerned what an old man like Fort thinks, or what anyone outside of his immediate block thinks.

In fact, I find it the kind of clueless attitude that would result in billing their “press conference” (I had no intention of going) by saying it is about “unconstitutional, guilty before innocent, premeditated arrest and indictment” by the Chicago police.

THEY EVEN GO so far as to accuse Weis (the guy whom some politicians would say is being too weak on this issue) of using “Jon Burge-style tactics” in dealing with them.

It sounds too much like the cheap rhetoric we get from many other people who have their own issues with the law. Which means that the meeting with gang leaders may well have served its intended purpose – it delivered a message that the gangs are being closely watched.

Which is what everybody in our society ought to want.

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A duel between the 1st and 2nd cities

It seems we now have something resembling a good ol’ fashioned Chicago/New York brawl on our hands, and not because the Yankees are in town (that won't happen until the end of August).

I got my kick out of seeing the provincialism of the Chicago newspapers versus their New York counterparts, both of which seemed determined to claim that new Supreme Court of the United States nominee Elena Kagan is really a hometown girl – one of our very own.

THE FACT IS that she is a New Yorker who lived and worked for a few years in Chicago. But that didn’t stop the stories in both cities that tried to claim Kagan was truly a native of their own boundaries.

Which amuses me, makes me laugh, because for all the blowharded talk that we get from people in both municipalities about how chic and sophisticated they are and how the rest of the world (or at least the rest of the Midwest in the case of Chicago) looks to them as a role model, we can be so rube-ish at times.

You’d think we were French Lick, Ind. – going on and on even now about how one-time pro basketball star Larry Bird once lived there.

But that was the level of boosterism we got from the Chicago Sun-Times, which managed to come up with a picture of Kagan from back when she was on the University of Chicago law school faculty. Not that she was doing anything academic – she is seen with a bat in her hands playing softball.

THE 16-INCH KIND, the newspaper tells us. Although the look in her eyes is just a little too clear for her to be all liquored up like many an aging Chicagoan who plays the slow pitch game because they can’t handle anything more athletically challenging.

Of course, that wasn’t the only tidbit we got from The Bright One.

We also learn the address of Kagan’s apartment in the Lincoln Park neighborhood (which makes me wonder if the landlord will now use this factoid to justify a significant rent increase to the current occupant – hey, a “celebrity” once lived there), that she was a regular in the lunches held by the law school faculty and that she occasionally treated her students to lunch at Café Ba Ba Reeba.

I feel like the tapas place on North Halsted Street owes somebody some money for the free publicity they just received.

AS IT TURNS out, Kagan was like many an out-of-towner whose work brings them to Chicago. She left the Second City when a better job opportunity came along. In her case, it was a chance to work at the White House under then-President Bill Clinton.

Clinton even tried to make her a judge, but partisan politics (against William J., not Elena personally) caused the appointment to stall.

The University of Chicago wasn’t all that enthused, according to the Sun-Times, about having her come back just so she could wait out her time for another political appointment. So that is what ultimately caused her to leave the shores of Lake Michigan, ultimately settling in at the law school at Harvard University.

While some might think it was her presence there that gave her resume the substance that caused President Barack Obama to choose her for the spot of replacing retiring justice John Paul Stevens on the Supreme Court, one can’t underplay the significance of her time along the Midway Plaissance.

IT WAS THERE that Kagan and Obama met (he was the one-time instructor at the U of C law school). Any personal tie that would have developed between the two that would give her the edge over other potential nominees (including Diane Wood, the one-time Chicago law school professor who is a federal appeals judge for the Northern Illinois district, who some thought would be the local “favorite” to get a high court nomination) occurred in the Second City.

In short, New Yorker Kagan had to come to Chicago to find herself. And a little piece of our city is likely to be with her no matter what ultimately becomes of her life or how long she winds up serving on the Supreme Court (at 50, she has the potential for decades of public service as a high court justice).

One point I did find amusing was the angle played up by the New York Daily News – the one that stated Kagan was a long-time New York Mets fans, compared to Obama’s other appointment to the Supreme Court.

Sonia Sotomayor has never done a thing to hide the fact that her baseball loyalties lie with the New York Yankees. Are we going to have judicial “brawls” everytime the two teams take each other on every season?

POSSIBLY. BUT I think the better comparison lies between Kagan and Secretary of State Hillary R. Clinton.

For the Sun-Times reported that Kagan used to go to Chicago White Sox games when she lived here in the early 1990s (back in the days when Frank Thomas was an undisputed star hitter who still played first base). So Kagan is a Mets fan who took to watching the White Sox.

By comparison, the one-time Hillary Rodham grew up in the Chicago suburbs, rooted for the Chicago Cubs, then took to cheering for the Yankees (occasionally wearing their cap) when she moved to New York to become a U.S. senator in the 2000s.

It sounds to me like Elena is the anti-Hillary, at least on the baseball diamond. And that may be more interesting than any of the other trivial tidbids we got from our newspapers on Tuesday.

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Who gets mass transit perks?

It’s not much of a secret that mass transit on the city’s South Side is set up a little more awkwardly than it is up north.

There are those North Side neighborhood residents who can get by just fine without an automobile who think it is a sign of their urban “sophistication” that they can figure out how to get around “the city” on the elevated train systemThese are the Indiana commuter trains that could, but can't, pick up South Side residents. Photograph provided by State of Illinois.

I’D ARGUE THAT if they were true urban sophisticates, they’d live a stint on the South Side, and try to figure out how to navigate around the city in the section where commuter train service isn’t as expansive.

There are those to whom mass transit is “the bus’ and all those transfers that make truly lengthy trips across the city seriously inconvenient. It also creates people who reside in certain neighborhoods into those who rarely leave the neighborhood because going anywhere is such a pain in the butt.

It probably isn’t an accident that many of those most isolated neighborhoods are African-American in population. Not that I need to come out and say there is some sort of racial motive at work. I don’t have to because there are plenty of other people who will do so.

Just this week alone, the Chicago Tribune reported about a lawsuit being filed in U.S. District Court that contends the Regional Transportation Authority’s methods for splitting up state funding for mass transit programs is biased in favor of the suburban-dominant Metra commuter trains and against the Chicago Transit Authority that handles the buses and “el” trains in the city.

THE NEWSPAPER ALSO reported about a new activist group that wants increased transit service on the South Side, and is hoping to use the South Shore Railroad commuter trains to their benefit.

Those trains are the ones that connect South Bend, Ind., to Hammond, then have their trains pass through the South Side en route to their final destination – the Randolph Street station at Michigan Avenue.

Those trains, by agreement of the transit authorities in both states, don’t make stops at stations in the city neighborhoods, even though they share tracks and pass by stations used by the Metra Electric commuter train system that connnects southern Cook County to downtown Chicago.

In short, there are those who want more commuter train service through the South Side, because there are limitations as to how effective bus service can be – particularly since they’re making stops every couple of blocks or so and have too much of a knack of getting backed up during peak traffic times.

SO I CAN understand the reason that these activists are upset and why some people feel compelled to file lawsuits claiming that Metra is getting too much money.

The problem, however, is going to be to convince political people that there is any truth to that concept.

I can recall being a reporter-type person covering political debates that devolved into arguments about mass transit – usually because there were those who believed that it was the Chicago Transit Authority that got “too much” money and that it was the suburban services that ought to be receiving more.

Admittedly, the political partisan atmosphere has changed since those days to favor the city’s interests. But there are still going to be a significant number of government officials who will blatantly resist any attempt to make changes in favor of the South Side activists.

THE BIG FACTOR is just the cultural difference in the way mass transit is viewed between urban and suburban residents.

The latter account for about two-thirds of the people of the Chicago metropolitan area. But it is the CTA that gets nearly 90 percent of all the funding provided by the state for mass transit programs, with the bulk of the remainder going to the Metra commuter trains that connect various suburbs to downtown Chicago.

The actual amount that goes to Pace, the suburban bus entity, is so miniscule that that is the sole reason while suburban bus lines run so infrequently and are non-existent in certain parts of the Chicago area.

Those percentages are justified by officials on the grounds that it is city residents who make up the bulk of mass transit users. Yet it also is those same city residents who are using a system that in portions is more than a century old.

STATE SEN. KWAME Raoul, D-Chicago, (whose home neighborhood of Hyde Park has no CTA “el” trains running through it, but has some Metra Electric line trains that pass by) is sponsoring a bill in Springfield that, while it has little chance of passing, may persuade transportation officials to discuss the issue seriously to avoid having some sort of government intervention on the issue.

I have no doubt that the activists are absolutely correct when they argue that the mass transit service in their respective neighborhoods is in need of a serious upgrade. Yet this might very well turn into one of those issues where everybody agrees there is a problem, but no one is willing to do much about it because of the cost. For as much as the CTA needs a cash influx to improve (cost-cutting only means a reduction in service, which exacerbates the problems rather than resolving them), I have no doubt that Metra trains also need more finances in order to be maintained.

Reading about the federal court lawsuit, I got my chuckle when I read that Metra trains were “mass transit luxury.” I don’t remember anything particularly luxurious about a Metra train the last time I rode one (I occasionally use the Rock Island line Metra trains that run from Joliet to the Southwest Side, then to downtown).

In fact, I can think of CTA “el” trains that were cleaner. Then again, I probably was using a Red Line train to get to some North Side destination at the time.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: The federal courts in Chicago and the Statehouse in Springfield are being asked (http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2010/01/minorities-cheated-on-public-transit-funding-suit-says.html) to ponder (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-metra-southshorejan04,0,2377858.story) whether the problem of lesser quality mass transit service on the South Side is a coincidence, or some sort of legal catastrophe.

Does “boycott” equal “busing?”

When I hear about the Rev. James Meeks’ attempt to use a boycott of the first days of school in Chicago to protest the inferior conditions of urban schools, I can’t help but be reminded of “busing.”

For those of you whose memories don’t go back a couple of decades, I’m referring to the attempts by racially homogenized school districts to impose some sort of racial diversity among their student bodies. Some of their students would be shipped off to inner-city schools, while some of “those” students would be sent to the Anglo-oriented schools.

THE IDEA WAS to expose students to people outside their own group, and to overcome the concept of “white flight” by which some families deliberately moved to avoid such exposure.

What actually happened was that it aroused the anger of all those white parents, who took up in protest (using their Constitutional rights) against the idea that anyone had the authority to force their kids into a differing environment.

Boston was particularly hard hit by such sentiments (how many of you remember the news photograph of a white anti-busing protester trying to impale a black man with a U.S. flag?). I was actually in Boston the “Summer of ‘75” and will never forget the sight of such protests. But such feelings out anger could be found elsewhere, including in Chicago.

Mention the word “busing” to one of those parents (now a senior citizen whose grandchildren may be finishing up their education these days) now, and you will get a visceral reaction.

ANGER. DISGUST. CONTEMPT. In trying to articulate their feelings, many of those people will try to justify their claim by saying they were merely sticking up for the concept of neighborhood-based schools.

The reason I am reminded about this is that it is the same reaction I am sensing in some quarters these days to the Rev. Meeks.

The reverend (who also is a member of the Illinois Senate representing a couple of South Side neighborhoods) led a protest by which he took some busloads of kids (he claims 1,000, but some reports indicate only a couple hundred actually made the trip) from Chicago and their parents up to a pair of the wealthier school districts in Illinois. Those students made a token attempt at enrolling their children in the suburban schools.

Of course, they were turned away. What was encouraging was that at New Trier High School, students who were supportive of the concept that there should not be such financial inequities between school districts engaged in a rally of their own to try to make the inner-city kids feel a little welcome – during their few hours on the North Shore.

THERE WEREN’T ANY of the angry protests that used to take place with regard to “busing.” No parents shouting at the “out of district” kids to go home. Nothing that visually could be compared to the scene outside Little Rock, Ark.’s Central High School when it integrated in September 1957.

Instead, the anger simmered under the surface. Anyone checking out the Internet could turn to “comments” sections of various websites to find out how anonymously vocal people thought about the issue.

My personal “favorite” crackpot comment was posted at the Chicago Tribune’s website, where one reader literally wanted the police of suburban Northfield and Winnetka (the towns chosen by Meeks for his protest) to set up roadblocks to prevent the reverend’s buses from entering town.

“They can tell Meeks to STICK IT!!!,” this person (who only identified him/herself by the vague name of “More”) wrote.

OTHER COMMENTS BY people reading the Tribune and WMAQ-TV websites referred to Meeks as a “liar” and a “four flusher” who plays the “victim card.”

This is the aspect that bothers me about the boycott as a tactic more than anything else. It is going to be used by people hostile to the interests of urban American to somehow justify the current conditions and their pathetic attitudes.

It is as if they are desperately trying to find a way to claim Meeks is causing the problem, and should therefore be ignored. Now, in their minds, they have their reason.

When serious attempts are made in the future to try to resolve the inequities of public education funding, there will be a group of people who have entrenched themselves for the fight against it. Meeks’ boycott may wind up stirring up more anger than it does build up sentiment for trying to solve the problem.

FOR THE REALITY is that there is a problem with regard to equality of education. Not everybody gets equal quality of schooling. All too much depends on where one lives. While some Chicago residents will argue about the option of private schools (particularly those run by the Catholic Archdiocese), that is not an option for everyone.

And for those who would rather have government take steps to help make private schools (or even charter schools, whose supporters are usually more interested in messing with teachers’ unions than anything else) more readily accessible to all, I’d argue we ought to be trying to boost the quality of the public schools. That is more in line with “the American way” of life.

Now I was lucky. I had adequate public education (in part because my combination of living my early life in both Chicago and certain suburbs put me in certain school districts with easy opportunities to learn). In fact, I went to a brand new high school with quality facilities that gave me a chance to do everything I wanted to with my life back then.

Not everybody gets that. People in inner city Chicago whose children can’t get into the “magnet schools” are stuck in older facilities that are decaying (and cannot be properly maintained). Their educational experiences are limited because local officials are stuck trying to maintain the status quo, rather than being able to think about improvement.

THIS ISSUE ISN’T just an urban problem.

People who live in the most rural parts of Illinois (places where they think Carbondale is a BIG city) often attend schools with only a few dozen students (maybe a couple hundred in total) where there just isn’t enough of a tax base to raise the kind of money needed to provide for the newest technology and other tools to help provide a 21st Century education.

Because there was no serious chance those suburban school districts were going to enroll any of the Chicago students, I will agree with those people who say that Meeks’ school boycott was a wasted gesture.

But I don’t want to come off too favorably in favor of those Meeks critics, because there is a larger issue at stake than whether one day of school means all that much (some have argued that the students should not have used up one of the nine absent/tardy days they are permitted each school year).

THERE IS A serious problem at stake here. We don’t want the people who would just as soon ignore it to prevail just because of some disagreement you might have with the boycott, as a tactic.

Because quite frankly, the thought that 30 years from now, people will remember the word “boycott” the way an older generation regards “busing” is depressing, because it means we will have achieved nothing in terms of solving the greater problem.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: How many students really participated in the boycott organized by (http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/content/education/chi-meeks-school-boycott-websep03,0,2704581.story) Rev. James Meeks?

Were more people angered (http://www.nbc5.com/news/17366246/detail.html) by the concept of a school boycott (http://www.topix.net/forum/source/chicago-tribune/T2F88PIJB7PUQ30NV) than actually participated in it? It almost seems so, to read the rants of the Internet public.

Suburban residents (http://www.pioneerlocal.com/glencoe/news/1139697,pp-meeks-090208-s1.article) have their own perception of the coming students, while some activists try to use Meeks’ action (http://socialistworker.org/2008/09/02/teacher-community-solidarity) to score points for their own political causes.

Suburban hostility toward Chicago is silly

My perception of Chicago and its surrounding population is a bit different from many others – I didn’t grow up in a single house my entire childhood. I can say that I lived in the city (far south, near north and northwest sides), assorted suburbs and a couple of downstate towns.

If anything, I am a suburban-type person who is a bit more comfortable with the city than many of my neighbors are, and who expects someday to again live in Chicago proper.

SO MY REACTION is to see the humor in a pair of recent incidents where suburban Chicago types are so desperate to maintain their separation from “that urban rathole” that many of them perceive when they think (at all) of the city.

How else to explain the reaction of people from Indiana who on Wednesday learned that some of those “evil Chicagoans” may have tried to cast ballots in their presidential primary on May 6.

Illinoisans (including those who identify primarily with Chicago rather than their home state) had their chance to vote on Feb. 5. Yet elections officials in Lake County, Ind., told local reporters that there were “several” instances of people at polling places in Whiting and East Chicago who asked to cast ballots – and produced Illinois driver’s licenses or other identification indicating they live west of State Line Road.

The Times of Northwest Indiana newspaper reported that none of those people were permitted to vote, and officials are trying to figure out if it was just confusion on the part of people or if there really was some sort of criminal plot to get ballots cast by non-registered voters.

SOME PEOPLE MIGHT think it ridiculously naïve to think that someone would not realize they should not be venturing across the state line in order to try to vote in a presidential campaign. Yet I also have been made aware on many occasions in my life as a reporter-type that not everybody pays strict attention to the specifics of government and electoral politics.

There are many otherwise intelligent people who do not understand the concept of jurisdiction, and can resent it when they are told by a local government official that some facility that sits within a village’s boundaries is actually a Cook County-controlled facility or is a road or other building that falls under state government’s control.

I once had a person (loosely affiliated with the ’92 presidential aspirations of Texas billionaire H. Ross Perot) that all government is really the same, and that one of the “reforms” that ought to be imposed is elimination of various levels of government control.

So could there be some people from Chicago who heard all the intense news coverage of the Indiana primary campaign activity and figured it was their civic duty to make a trip to the Land of Hoosiers so as to cast a ballot?

IT’S POSSIBLE, EVEN though a part of me finds it scary to realize that some otherwise hardworking, decent people in our society are clueless enough to not immediately realize the difference between an Illinois primary election and one in Indiana.

Of course, I couldn’t help but notice that the sources of these stories about “Those People” from Illinois coming east to Indiana were members of the Republican Party organization in Lake County.

How weak is the GOP in the northwest part of Indiana? Almost as weak as the GOP in Chicago proper, I would think. At least the Hoosier GOPers in and around Hammond, Ind., know they have the bulk of the rest of their state on their side, whereas the GOP in Illinois has become so weak that it can offer the Chicago Republican Party no moral support whatsoever.

So making scurrilous charges about Chicagoans coming to Indiana to try to stuff ballot boxes with their “outsider” way of thinking is probably the most attention the Lake County Republicans will get in a long time. And there are too many local people who are willing to believe it because they want to think the isolated ways of their town are the ways of the world.

MY POINT IS that while I don’t doubt there are some people clueless enough to try to vote in an Indiana election, I’m not sure the problem is anywhere near as extensive as Indiana Republicans want us to believe it is.

But the notion of wanting to maintain separation between Chicago and its suburbs is not just an issue for the people who live in the part of the metropolitan area that spills over into Indiana. Sadly, even some of those people fortunate enough to live in Cook County, Ill., don’t truly appreciate the benefits their towns derive from being so close to the Second City (it’s really third), which remains the transportation hub of the nation.

Why else would some residents of the northwest suburb of Palatine be seriously looking into the concept of secession?

Some people up there do not like the idea that they are a part of Cook County, which they feel is totally dominated by Chicago. They would rather be able to say they are in a separate county – one of which Palatine would likely become the county seat.

A BILL IS pending in the Illinois General Assembly (sponsored by Palatine’s member of the Illinois House of Representatives) to make it easier for communities to secede from their counties, although it is far from certain that anything will ever happen to advance that bill.

Earlier this week, county board President Todd Stroger held a hearing at Harper College, where he confronted the masses of Palatine (about 200 people, according to the Chicago Tribune) and listened as they blamed his urban ways for causing the problems that confront Cook County government.

“I think Cook County represents the residents of Chicago,” and “I don’t trust you guys,” were among the lines of rhetoric tossed out at Stroger by people who likely wish they lived in some rural burg without any significant city in or near its boundaries.

I only wish these people could take a look at rural life sometime, particularly the sense of isolation that occurs when one’s home is far from anything and when such daily necessities as grocery shopping requires lengthy automobile drives.

THEY’D SEE PLACES like some tiny communities in Southern Illinois and rural Indiana where overall population is on the decline, and where local officials have to seriously address issues related to the drain of young people with talent and skills from their populations.

A place like Palatine can claim some stability in large part because it is so close to a place like Chicago, which serves as a drawing card to the region, and to which some of its working population spills off into the surrounding suburbs.

If the unique set of circumstances required for secession were to ever occur, we would see a place like Palatine engage in celebration for a day at the thought of their independence.

Then, after realizing just what they lost by not being directly tied to the largest county in Illinois (at 5 million people, it is five times the size of the second-largest county – DuPage), we likely would see a mass movement to undo the damage they had just done. It would be interesting to see how quickly they would clamor to come back to Cook.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: And we wonder why some Indiana and Michigan residents make disparaging remarks about (http://nwi.com/articles/2008/06/18/news/top_news/doc08777d7ebc2032a18625746c0000e8c6.txt) “F-I-P’s.”

Palatine wants to think of itself as a world separate from the rest of the Chicago (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-stroger-17-both-jun17,0,1327158.story) metropolitan area.

California, Here We Come

Because the Chicago Bears followed up their Super Bowl appearance with a losing record in 2007, the only excitement left for Chicago-area football fans is watching the Fighting Illini on Tuesday make their first Rose Bowl appearance in 24 years.

It won’t just be the University of Illinois alumni rooting for the Illini when they take on the University of Southern California, as much of Chicago views the Champaign, Ill.-based school as our area’s home team for big time college football.

So the people who are complaining these days that Illinois does not deserve to play in Pasadena, Calif., and has no business being on the same playing field as the mighty Trojans of USC had better realize they are taking on the muscle of the Second City when they make their sports slurs.

Typical of these slurs is a recent column published in the Torrance, Calif.-based Daily Breeze newspaper, which calls Tuesday’s game, “the matchup of no one’s dreams, unless you hail from Peoria. Unless Champaign isn’t something you imbibe on New Year’s Eve, but live in year-round.”

The writer hates the idea that Rose Bowl officials maintained “tattered threads of tradition” by having a top team from the Big 10 play a top team from the Pac 10 for their game that is a part of their Tournament of Roses parade and festivities, and admits to preferring the thought of West Virginia, Kansas State or Hawaii as an opponent for USC.

For USC fans, Illinois football, “barely register(s) on the sexy program meter.”

Now I realize when it comes to Big 10 football, it is Michigan and Ohio State that are the dominant teams with perennial bowl game ambitions. Illinois fans haven’t seen their team play in Pasadena since 1984 and haven’t actually won a Rose Bowl game since 1964 – beating Washington 17-7.

I’ll also concede the two schools’ history of football match-ups works against Illinois – the Illini are 2-10.

But we’re talking about a football program that produced one of the greatest names ever in college football (Red Grange), has 16 members in the College Football Hall of Fame and 5 alums in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. It also includes among its ranks Dick Butkus, the Roseland neighborhood native who went on to play for the Chicago Bears and whose name is still associated by football fans with animal-like ferocity.

In fact, Butkus lives in Southern California these days. Perhaps we should send him walking around his home neighborhood to give a beating to any USC fans who get too condescending toward his alma mater.

There’s also the fact that Illinois is more than just a Champaign-based school.

Chicago colleges such as Loyola, DePaul and the University of Illinois at Chicago don’t have football programs. The University of Chicago dropped out of the Big 10 decades ago and now plays NCAA Division 3 football, while Northwestern University often plays as though it belongs in Division 3.

So those of us Chicagoans who want the pomp and ceremony of college football fulfill our fix by following the Illini, with the exception of the most die-hard fans of Notre Dame. But I suspect the Fighting Irish were so pathetic this season that even their fans will be willing to jump on the Illini bandwagon for a day.

An Illinois/USC matchup gives us media markets number three going against number two. This has the potential to be a classic Chicago-area/Los Angeles-area brawl.

Perhaps a Southern California-type is too effete to appreciate a game with brawl potential. But it is exactly the type of game that can be appreciated in Chicago. Does anyone really believe that fans of West Virginia or Kansas State could provide the same emotion?

As far as Hawaii football is concerned, their fans were hoping that an undefeated season would be rewarded by an appearance in the national championship game in New Orleans. A Rose Bowl appearance would have been seen as a letdown by their fans.

So while I’m not an Illinois alumnus, I must admit to now hoping for an Illinois victory just because I’m sure it would completely demoralize the Southern California types who are whining so much about having to cap their season by playing “lowly” Illinois in the same way some remain miffed that the Angels lost the 2005 American League pennant to the White Sox.

I will confess, however, to finding one aspect of USC football superior to Illinois, or just about any other sports program – college or professional. The Song Girls, USC’s famed cheering squad, is the most lovely of college cheer teams in existence – and far more elegant than the borderline sleazy behavior that passes for cheerleading these days at NBA and NFL games.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: The California columnist who managed to irritate me so much can be found here: http://www.dailybreeze.com/sports/ci_7816918

Something much more pleasing lurks here: http://www.usc.edu/student-affairs/IMREC/spirit/song/