“So many activists who want social justice can’t tolerate a little sin and scandal in their ‘churches,’” Chicago labor lawyer Thomas Geoghegan tells Bill Droel in Salt (January). “So they walk away in a huff. As a practicing Catholic you can’t do that. You don’t give up on your church even if–as in the Middle Ages–a Jackie Presser or Jimmy Hoffa becomes the pope.”
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Translation: somebody’s primary campaign needed a quick shot of steroids. From a November 22 press release: “WASHINGTON, D.C.–Senator Alan J. Dixon today diagnosed health care in America as ‘critically ill’ and in need of ‘major comprehensive surgery.’” But instead of endorsing any of several long-discussed prescriptions, “Dr.” Dixon announced a public hearing in Chicago in late January or early February–in the middle of primary season.
Why was the number of local school council nominations down 53 percent, and voters down 45 percent, in 1991 compared to 1989? According to Patrick J. Keleher Jr. of TEACH America, “Chicago public school reform lost its momentum because it offered only half the loaf of empowerment, the political half available through local school council participation. But the financial half of the loaf stayed with the [public school] monopoly, which has no intention of handing it over to parents. The financial half would entail parental power to walk away, to take their business elsewhere if the public schools weren’t educating their children.”
“I don’t think it’s changed much in Chicago,” model, business owner, and volunteer Dori Wilson tells Today’s Chicago Woman (December). “I don’t think there are any black models here making big bucks, and you still see only one or two black faces. But I see the same thing in my social environment. Very few events I attend are integrated. I frequently go places where I’m the only black. It’s horrible. The charitable scene is incredibly segregated. It’s either all black or all white.”
