Lori Lightfoot loses mayoral election in Chicago
So many on the right are celebrating that Paul Vallas made it to the runoff. White men are on TV directly identifying how black males are the primary perpetrators of crime in Chicago (which they are). What is interesting is how the crime we are seeing was occurring under Rahm Emanuel and Richard Daley, yet they did not receive the level of criticism that Lori Lightfoot did. Those last two mayors defunded so much of the black community in Chicago and the pandemic and George Floyd protests uncovered the damage from those previous administrations. Lori Lightfoot had a difficult road to trave from Day 1, but unfortunately she navigated it badly.
Most major cities experienced a spike in crime during and after the pandemic and the George Floyd riots. Chicago was no different.
There were major spikes in shootings, carjackings, and robberies all over the city. At the same time, court judges were releasing males on house arrest who were charged with illegal gun possession which allowed them to commit murder while out on bail.
Downtown Chicago looked like a rundown, abandoned ghost town overrun by lawlessness. The pandemic led to several business closures in south downtown and criminal behavior took root in those areas. Shootings were occurring regularly in Chicago’s loop driving many patrons away. Remaining businesses boarded up their windows to protect themselves from the random lootings that occurred in Chicago’s downtown area.
This city is a great place for getting away with murder, particularly in black communities, because our police officers are not doing their job despite all of the sympathetic media coverage they receive. Chicago police officers have an abysmal record for catching criminals, particularly in black neighborhoods.
Lori Lightfoot did not direct the full extent of her power towards solving this problem. But, could she? She came into power at a time when black people wanted two conflicting things.
Get Obeng Umama Bera’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
First they wanted police to be accountable for the brutal ways they treated black people during police encounters AND they wanted more police presence to deter crimes.
She did neither well. Despite having a black police superintendent, black people were not fully invited into the police department and be part of the change they wanted to see. She did nothing to neutralize the influence of John Catanzara, the head of the Chicago’s Fraternal Order of Police, who represents a racist mentality that perpetuates incompetence, police brutality, and police corruption within the Chicago Police Department.
Lori Lightfoot’s biggest mistake was that she never fully embraced the Chicago African-American community. She got into public heated arguments with African-American members of the City Council. During the pandemic, white, north-siders could violate pandemic curfew laws, but black people were subjected to harsher treatment. She spoke harshly to black boys casually playing at the playground. During the George Floyd riots, she made sure the white north-side businesses were protected by raising bridges to block rioters from progressing to the north side and she marshalled the police to protect white businesses, but south side businesses serving the black community were left vulnerable and unprotected by rioters and were seriously damaged.
Just recently, she opened Chicago as a sanctuary city to illegal immigrants, primarily those from south of the border, and are housing them in a closed down school in the black community. So Lightfoot has enough financial resources to house illegal immigrants in black communities, but not enough financial resources to fully fund schools, re-open mental health centers, and provide job opportunities to support the needs of the black community members themselves?
These are slaps in the face to African-Americans whose neighborhoods remain delapidated from the lack of investment in its communities. Several businesses such as Walmart and Target left African-American communities and continues to leave large swathes of black communities in a food desert.
Just weeks after being elected, Lightfoot fought hard against the Chicago Teacher’s Union which resulted in a teacher’s strike for days, disrupting children’s education. Mind you, the CTU contract does not include tuition reimbursement or paid maternity leave. In fact, they were largely fighting for more school psychologists and social workers so that students with mental health problems could be better cared for. The City Colleges of Chicago negotiated for months and went so far as to authorize a strike before the city and the unions came to an agreement.
Yet, her administration maintained education policies inherited from Rahm Emanuel and Richard Daley that continued to fail black students. Rahm Emanuel closed down 50 schools in the black community but Lightfoot did nothing to undo this damage. Both Daley and Emanuel actively defunded and dumbed down schools in black communities. They removed skilled blue collar programs in black schools like CNC machinists, electrician training, and construction that could lead to well-paying jobs and replaced them low-skill, non-union career programs like certified nursing assistants, daycare work, barber training, and culinary.
Had Lori Lightfoot simply restored to black communities what previous administrations had taken away, she would have been seen as a shero in Chicago. But she did not and she paid for it. Lori Lightfoot was not a friend to black Chicagoans and she lost the mayoral election because of it.
