To the editors:
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What was important about the Washington commissions is harder to measure and describe and therefore to compare: the representativeness and credibility of commission members; the freedom they felt to advocate for their constituencies; the openness with which the Mayor and his administration heard what they had to say; and what they accomplished as a result. I wish Levinsohn had compared the old commissions with new councils along these lines. Focusing on the commissions’ inherent political significance reinforces a view that many, including higher-ups in the Daley administration, held of the Washington commissions as essentially political. While much of their work had political implications (as does the work of many government agencies), in my experience they did a great deal of substantive and essentially nonpolitical work, both within the bureaucracy and within their communities.
The article does compare the new improved CHR to the old, preexpansion one, and in some ways that are inaccurate and need correction. Levinsohn states that CHR was “a moribund little agency” until last May. What isn’t directly mentioned is that most of the CHR programs she praises were created during the Washington administration by Washington’s extraordinary CHR Director, the late Al Raby. Those programs under Raby, long before 1989, built a solid record of accomplishment despite the small staff implementing them and the lack of publicity they received.
It’s easier to speak out against neighborhood racists and cross burners (or critique prior administrations) than to challenge systemic discrimination in high places, including your own city government. From what I saw of Clarence Wood before I left town, I expect he’ll be availing himself of some opportunities to make important people uncomfortable. I hope he’ll devote some of CHR’s wonderful new resources to looking for those opportunities and that the new advisory councils will accept his invitation to help.
What is Judy Stevens so angry about? That I didn’t give the deceased Al Raby enough credit? I was concentrating on the present and wrote only a few paragraphs about the history of CHR. But I did say that the staff had been dedicated and hardworking. That I called CHR a “moribund little agency?” I guess that depends on your angle of vision. Most people outside the agency I talked to weren’t even aware of its existence. I also got that impression from some staffers, some of whom I quoted. That I attributed Jane Byrne’s dismantling of CHR to “whim and efficiency?” I never mentioned efficiency. I too heard the story about the ChicagoFest connection, but I couldn’t find enough hard evidence for it. As to the staff numbers, I made a typographical error; there were 38, not 8. Stevens’s description of Washington’s modus operandi is very interesting and expresses her own and others’ idealism, but it doesn’t add up. CHR was designed to combat discrimination not in city government but out in the community. I stand by my attempts to explain Washington’s failure to beef up the agency. I take it from her last paragraph that Stevens was not overly impressed with Clarence Wood. She’s entitled. I have a rather better impression, but then I don’t carry any baggage from a previous administration.
