“Looks like everybody’s in there,” the man was telling his buddy as they peered through the glass doors into the Truman College lobby in the troubled heart of the 46th Ward.
They were cautiously pulling open the door when a company of young men in expensive sport coats approached them. The Indian instantly stepped away from the door, pushing back against his precariously balanced friend while trying to stay out of the way.
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“Yeah, something like that,” said the young man with a barely concealed chuckle. He seemed genuinely tickled. “It’s Helen Shiller’s inauguration; come on in.”
Munching on crackers, raw vegetables, and dip were well-dressed black families and tough-looking white boys in heavy metal T-shirts. Seniors and extended Latino families of between six and ten members apiece sat waiting for Shiller’s arrival. A few steps away, groups of smiling Asian businessmen chatted in tight little circles. White and Hispanic women in business suits and running shoes laughed and puffed on cigarettes behind the food table. A few cropped-hair lesbians wore “Pro-Ordinance/Washington” buttons in reference to the mayor’s (and Shiller’s) support for a gay rights bill.
“Congratulations alderman!” said a black man in a crisp gray suit. He grinned from ear to ear as Shiller, being swallowed by hugs and greetings, extended her hand to him. He kissed it. It took her almost ten minutes to make the 20-yard trek from the door to the makeshift stage at the front of the lobby.
“If we deal with the problems of the most oppressed,” she said at her most radical moment, “then we affect the quality of life of everyone.
Now that she’d won, he attended the victory parties, taking hugs and congratulations, but generally staying away from Shiller. At Truman it wasn’t until his departure, when he came up and tapped her on the shoulder to say good-bye, that they spoke. “I’ve got to go,” the lanky Coleman told her, eyes twinkling. “But congratulations . . . again.”
