Assessing Chicago's future

By MELVIN G. HOLLI

Dick W. Simpson, editor.
Chicago's Future In a Time of Change.
Champaign: Stipes Publishing Company, 1988.
Pp. 957. Paperback $19.80

In 1976 Dick W. Simpson, associate professor of political science at the University of Illinois at Chicago, compiled an anthology of reports, speeches and scholarly papers entitled Chicago's Future. In 1980 and 1983 he updated the collection under the title Chicago: An Agenda for Change. The newest edition, published in 1988 contains 60 articles.

It opens with an essay by Simpson which projects the prospect of global doom. Starvation, pollution and nuclear destruction are the three horsemen of this apocalyptic vision of our society, now and in the future.

In a somewhat lighter vein, Simpson — who served as alderman of Chicago's 44th Ward from 1971 to 1979—then turns to the Chicago political scene and advocates one of his pet ideas: people taking control of their own town neighborhoods. Although he co-chaired Mayor Harold Washington's Agency Review Transition Team, Simpson finds Washington wanting in this regard. "During the seven months before his death when he had the votes, Mayor Washington did not move on neighborhood empowerment," Simpson concludes.

Several pieces on social and economic conditions in Chicago deserve special attention including one by Chicago businessman Lawrence Tell, who relates that the riots following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 drove a thousand business out of the city in 1969, with the greatest job losses suffered on the black west and south sides. Offering a gloomy prognosis for the 1990s, Tell predicts that black and Latino workers will find themselves in fierce job competition with newer officially designated minorities such as women, veterans, the elderly and the handicapped — a modern version of Darwin's view of nature, "red in tooth and claw," with each special interest group fighting for its entitlements under the banner of affirmative action.

Integration of minority youth appears equally problematic, according to Alfredo Lanier, Chicago free-lance writer. He asserts that Chicago's Hispanics do not want school integration and busing but instead seek separatism with bicultural and bilingual education in their own neighborhoods.

Roosevelt University urbanologist Pierre de Vise reveals that blacks hold a disproportionately large share of public jobs in Chicago. They make up more than one-half of all public employees, accounting for 60 percent of the federal workforce, 53 percent of the state's workers and 44 percent of the city's employees, whereas the black share of the population stands at 42 percent. A grimmer statistic in de Vise's study shows that three-fourths of all black births in Chicago are illegitimate and that being reared by single parents severely cripples young black workers. "Poor education and training, racial pride and independence, and a reputation for immoral and criminal behavior disqualify many underclass blacks for jobs, marriage and parenthood," he claims. Furthermore, he adds that increased public welfare has aggravated rather than alleviated these problems.

Even less comforting is business writer Merrill Goozner's "What Ails Post-Industrial Chicago?" — one of the most provocative essays in the book. Goozner takes as his text leftist labor writer Barry Bluestone's argument that upper- and lower-income groups are growing while the middle-income group is shrinking. Although this thesis is much disputed and does not hold up so well on the national level, Goozner appears to have sufficient evidence to make his case that it applies to Chicago. In addition, he calculates an 11 percent decline in the average Chicago household's "real" income over the last decade.

More sprightly and optimistic is the view of Thomas Roeser of the Quaker Oats Foundation. He argues that the "naysay-ers are wrong" and that Chicago can have a bright and promising future if it only follows Daniel Burnham's turn-of-the-century prescription to "make no little plans."

This large book deals with many other topics such as patronage, the police department's "Red Squad," the origins of the Independent Voters of Illinois, the Daley machine and Harold Washington's 1983 election. Highlights include "Is Chicago Ready for Reform?" by William Grimshaw, political scientist at the Illinois Institute of Technology, and research on political corruption by Kathryn Malec and John Gardiner, political scientists at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Ben Jarovsky, Chicago free-lance writer specializing in public affairs, has done a fine "Midterm Report" on the Washington administration, and Chicago lawyer-editors Bob Warden and Mary Tatro contribute an eye-opening account of the Democratic party's strong control of the Chicago judiciary.

Also noteworthy is a piece by Simpson and Duane Bean, a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Their roll-call study of voting patterns in Chicago's city council illustrates the French saying "plus ça change, plus e'est la même chose" (the more things change the more they stay the same). This analysis shows that after April 1987 Mayor Washington directed the council members like robots into "lockstep voting," reducing the body to his "rubber stamp." The authors conclude that this is the "historic pattern" and that "despite Mayor Washington's promises of reform, little . . . changed in terms of city council voting patterns from the Daley years."

The final section of the book appears adventitious and poorly grafted onto what is otherwise a solid text. Found therein are a reprint of Jesse Jackson's 1984 National Democratic Convention address, a speech by acting Mayor Eugene Sawyer and other miscellany. Even so, Chicago's Future offers rewarding reading for the serious student of the urban malaise. Overall, it is an interesting, far-ranging and ambitious effort to assay the city's future.□

Melvin G. Holli is professor of history at the University of Illinois at Chicago and co-author with Paul M. Green of The Mayors: The Chicago Political Tradition (1987) and of the forthcoming Harold Washington's Last Campaign (due out in spring 1989).

February 1989 | Illinois Issues | 31