Tag Archives: La Spata

Not Too Mulch to Ask

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It was a simple ask. Our Chicago First Ward Alderman, Daniel La Spata, included a notice in his e-newsletter about a Saturday morning outing, organizing at his ward office on Milwaukee Avenue, for volunteers to join Openlands Chicago tree keepers to help place mulch around street trees nearby on Armitage and Milwaukee Avenues, and just, well, clean up a bit.

I admit to being an easy sell on urban trees. There is a beautiful century-old American elm in our backyard. Nearly fifteen years ago, I led an American Planning Association project, funded by the U.S. Forest Service, that resulted in a report called Planning the Urban Forest. It’s not that I believe the right trees in the right places improve the livability of our neighborhoods; I know it because of extensive research over many years that I have digested from numerous sources that prove it. I have written about it in published articles.

Volunteers in front of Ald. La Spata’s office, Saturday, July 29, 2023. All photos provided by Huan Song of Openlands.

So, once in a while, I try to put my muscle and time where my mouth is and just get out and do the real thing. All I had to do was register online so that Openlands knew how many people would participate. Besides, working to improve the survivability of real trees in a street-side environment is always an opportunity to learn something. Add my proclivity as a compulsive extrovert, loving the chance to meet and talk to new people, and I was sold. La Spata seemed pleasantly surprised when I showed up just before 9 a.m., but he shouldn’t have been. This is fun stuff for me.

But first, a word about Openlands, the organization with which he allied to provide this volunteer service opportunity. Openlands is now entering its seventh decade as a regional conservation organization, having been launched in 1963. They have consistently offered a regional vision for a landscape of land and water trails, urban forests, and public gardens, all with an eye to enhancing access for city residents. Together with the Morton Arboretum, based in Lisle, Illinois, they have provided a strong voice for the value of open space and trees in the metropolitan area that have kept people aware of the opportunities for a healthier and more biodiverse environment. While I have not been directly involved in Openlands, I have served for several years on an advisory board for Morton Arboretum’s Chicago Regional Trees Initiative, which has produced model ordinances and programs for communities throughout the region. I highly recommend visiting either or both websites and learning more about their programs in this time when climate change is threatening our urban quality of life.

But back to the scene of the volunteer work. More than a dozen volunteers, many of them certified Tree Keepers for Openlands, showed up. We initially were briefed on the day’s activities, including the areas where we would be working. We would not be planting trees—that is up to the city when it comes to street trees. Nor would we be pruning, which must be done by professional arborists. But we would be working with someone from the Chicago Streets and Sanitation Department, which provided a city truck to pick up any debris we picked up, or garbage, such as empty mulch bags, that the operation generated. Mostly, we used mulch to fill in boxes around street trees, not overloading the site but enough to protect the trees.

We also dug up and removed some burlap bags that contractors had left around some street trees, in order to allow them to grow and breathe better. That was not always easy because they become buried in the compacted soil, making them hard to extract and remove. Aside from personal fitness, I sometimes wondered what other benefits came from my twice-weekly strength and cardio workouts at a local gym. Now, I realized I was well trained to provide the powerful yank that some of these bags needed to pull them out of muddy soil for disposal. Fitness can serve practical purposes.

We were also fortunate that the weather was perfect for the occasion. The high temperature was in the low to mid 70s that day, so the only time I sweated a bit was when, on one occasion, I had to labor extra hard to remove one of those burlap bags. It was sunny but bearable. I had forgotten my sunglasses, but really did not need them.

Toward the end, as our crew had worked its way northwest on one side of Milwaukee Avenue and then back down the other toward the ward office, we were adding mulch in front of a relatively new nonprofit used bookstore, Open Books. If there is one diversion that can get my attention in addition to trees, it is browsing a bookstore, where some trees find a new but lasting use. I also needed to use the bathroom, so I asked the clerk at the checkout desk. On the way back, I mentioned that, on her birthday a few days earlier, my wife and I saw Oppenheimer at a movie theater before getting dinner nearby. Did the store have copies of American Prometheus, the Kai Bird book that inspired the movie? She looked, and they did, and I walked out with a used copy for a little over $13. Combining that with improving the neighborhood environment made for a successful morning, I felt.

But soon, as noon approached, we had a debriefing on what we had accomplished and any useful suggestions from volunteers. I suggested making wire cutters available because we had encountered chicken wire in some of the tree boxes, something much more problematic than burlap boxes, which eventually biodegrade. I don’t recall what else was mentioned, but our crew leader took notes.

Next to the aldermanic office was an outlet for Jersey Mike’s. I had joked that we should all walk in and tell them we had heard that they were planning to feed the volunteers. We laughed but obviously did no such thing. But the thought of a good sandwich burrowed into my brain, and with less than half a mile to walk home, I entered the store and ordered a turkey sandwich, Mike’s way, and took my prize home for lunch, accompanied by Cheetos and a chocolate chip cookie. The sandwich was the only likely source of nutrition, I suspect, but along with some lemonade from the refrigerator, it felt like an adequate reward for making a small difference in a big city.

Jim Schwab

When Every Vote Matters

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As a general rule, I am not about to tell people that the fate of the world depends on someone’s election to city council, even in a large city. On the other hand, some people climb the ladder to higher office after winning at local levels. But if candidates have commitment and staying power, one loss is unlikely to deter them in the long run. Barack Obama famously lost a Democratic primary election for Congress to U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush in Illinois’s First District in 2000, only to win a U.S. Senate seat by a landslide in 2004 and the presidency by a decisive margin against Sen. John McCain in 2008. People often learn vital campaign lessons from losing once or twice.

Meanwhile, aside from the question of who is positioned to run for higher office, most city council members, including aldermen in Chicago, have important jobs to do for their constituents. In Chicago, it is not a small job, as the city’s 50 wards average about 56,000 people, more than the population of all but a few suburbs. They are legislating for the third-largest city in the nation and handling constituent concerns about city services. Who holds these positions has some bearing on quality of life and civic satisfaction with city government. Collectively, the aldermen have considerable power and influence over property taxes, local environmental policy, land use, and development.

But this blog post is not a history or civics lesson. It is about the process of choosing these representatives who play a visible role in shaping the city’s future, and more importantly, about why participation matters. It is about the current Chicago election for mayor, other citywide offices, and 50 aldermen. In the bargain, Chicago is electing members of 22 new district councils that will work with the police department on law enforcement policy.

Chicago and all Illinois municipalities use a system created by the Illinois legislature in 1995 in which all candidates for local office run in a nonpartisan primary in late February. If any candidate for a particular office, such as alderman or mayor, wins an outright majority in the primary, that person is elected. If no one gets a majority, the top two vote-getters move on to a run-off five weeks later, and the winner takes office.

In Chicago, until 2011, either Richard M. Daley or Rahm Emmanuel won a majority overLori all other candidates and became mayor after the primary. Some wards had runoffs because no aldermanic candidate had a majority. That state of affairs ended in 2015, when Emmanuel, running for re-election, failed to win a majority and faced Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, now a member of Congress, in a runoff, winning against Garcia in a closer election than many people had thought likely. By 2019, the “old way” in Chicago was on its deathbed, with 14 candidates vying for mayor. Two African-American women, Cook County Board President Tony Preckwinkle and political newcomer Lori Lightfoot, a prominent lawyer and former federal prosecutor, led the vote, both with less than 20 percent. In a major voter rebellion against corruption, Lightfoot won the runoff with 73 percent of the vote, carrying every ward in the city. She became not only the first Black female mayor of Chicago, but the first lesbian mayor as well.

Daniel La Spata, Alderman, 1st Ward, City of Chicago. Photo from https://www.the1stward.com

The plethora of candidates was not limited, however, to the mayor’s race. Aldermanic races also saw far more entries than had been typical in the past. Progressive candidates became much more popular and prominent. In the 1st Ward, where I live, newcomer Daniel La Spata, a progressive with a city planning master’s degree from the University of Illinois at Chicago, uprooted incumbent Alderman Proco “Joe” Moreno by a 22 percent margin. Moreno was weighed down by a scandal after he was charged with filing a false police report and insurance claim after police stopped his girlfriend, who was driving his Audi A6. She told police he had lent the car to her. He had claimed the car was stolen. Later, out of office, he was again arrested after hitting numerous cars on a side street in Chicago’s Gold Coast late at night during what police said was a case of drunken driving.

I met La Spata during that campaign and liked him. I had a slight acquaintance with Moreno but was turned off by his legal problems. I felt La Spata offered an intelligent alternative at a time when the ward needed one. Over the past four years, I have had a number of opportunities to interact with La Spata. I found him responsive and thoughtful. In one email exchange, we discussed his advocacy in city council of increased availability of public restrooms, which are often scarce in Chicago. I pointed out that this was an issue not just for homeless persons who often lack access to such facilities, but for elderly people and those with disabilities or medical conditions that could make access an urgent need. I saw it as a public health issue. As a planner, I see public health as a serious local government responsibility that faces too many detractors—even without considering the controversy surrounding COVID-19 issues.

La Spata ran for re-election in the February 28 primary. He faced two political newcomers, Stephen “Andy” Schneider and Sam Royko, and Moreno, who was seeking a comeback. Royko, son of the late newspaper columnist Mike Royko, was a serious candidate driven by a concern about rising crime after his girlfriend was carjacked in the ward last year. Schneider is a community activist with a decent following. As for Moreno, I felt strongly that, while I believe in second chances, they do not need to involve public office after the sorts of problems he had created for himself. There are many other ways he can find to prove his commitment to the community without being entrusted with public office, and I suspect he will be able to find those opportunities. In any event, he garnered less than 7 percent of the vote, finishing fourth. It seems clear that the overwhelming majority of voters in the ward agreed with my assessment: Sorry, Joe, find another line of work.

The real question was whether La Spata or anyone else would win a majority on February 28. Knowing the outcome was less than certain, I volunteered, helping with his petition drive for ballot access. Aldermanic candidates need 750 signatures but often collect two or three times that number to ensure they have enough even after signature challenges by opponents, a common practice in Chicago. I spent one very chilly evening in November knocking on doors in the Logan Square neighborhood, not finding enough people home but adding slightly to the signature totals. During the campaign, I aided with phone calling on a Saturday but did less than I had planned closer to the election because of personal and family distractions. La Spata’s campaign staff was gracious about whatever time I could spare. He seemed to have enough volunteers to be highly competitive.

At one unfortunate point in the campaign, someone vandalized the La Spata campaign office. It remains unclear who did it, but a campaign organizer told me Schneider and Royko offered condolences and sympathies to La Spata over the situation. Democracy should function and thrive unimpaired by such behavior.

On election night, the importance of all that effort became clear. La Spata led the four-person field at one point with 49.44%, with Royko trailing with about half that number, and Schneider in third with less than 20 percent. La Spata appeared to be about 100 votes shy of a majority, although the numbers fluctuated through the evening. If that situation prevailed, Royko would face La Spata in a runoff.

But it is not as simple as it once was. More people vote early, more vote by mail, and all those ballots must be counted, systematically and precisely. By law, the Chicago Board of Elections must count all mail ballots that arrive within two weeks after the election, in this case, March 14, although they must be postmarked by Election Day, which was February 28. People who obtained mail ballots, which can be done by request to the board, can also turn them at early voting sites, which I did.

In the interest of full disclosure, I will note that my wife has served for several years as an election judge. I respect what these people do because I have watched her go to the nearby polling place the night before to set up, then retire early to wake at 4 a.m., arriving at the polling place by 5 a.m. to set up, not returning home until about 10 p.m. That is an exhausting day for a person of any age, let alone someone in her seventies, as we both are. Readers may fairly surmise that anyone wishing to question the honesty or integrity of election workers, as has become the fashion in many right-wing circles, will win no support or sympathy from me.

As the days followed, there was a noticeable drift in favor of La Spata as mail ballots were counted. La Spata jokingly referred to this situation as a “mail-biter.” This is not some mysterious or nefarious development, as former President Donald Trump might allege, but simply the process of allowing late-arriving ballots to be counted. The post office is not always efficient in delivering election-related mail. My wife had to visit the post office the previous Thursday in person to retrieve a bundle of undelivered mail that included the election board’s letter of authorization that she needed in order to pick up an equipment key from the board by that Saturday to fulfill her function as an election official. People’s ballots should be not be disenfranchised simply because the U.S. Postal Service does not always deliver mail in a timely manner.

By March 15, however, the die was cast. La Spata had exactly 15 more votes than needed to avoid an April 4 runoff, winning the primary outright with 50.11% of the total vote. In Chicago’s First Ward, every vote had mattered. Royko, who appears to have much to offer the community despite his loss, conceded quickly and congratulated La Spata. I hope they can cooperate and collaborate on issues important to the ward over the next four years. But it was also just as well to bring resolution to the contest.

As for the mayoral race, the world knows by now that Lightfoot did not survive her first challenge for re-election. Nine candidates competed, including Garcia, but the runoff this time belongs to two men, Paul Vallas, a frequent former candidate and former schools chief in not only Chicago but New Orleans and Philadelphia as well, and Brandon Johnson, an African-American Cook County Supervisor. Johnson began his career as a teacher and has strong ties to the Chicago Teachers Union, which often tangled with Mayor Lightfoot. Vallas has the support of the Fraternal Order of Police. Both candidates have other union endorsements. I will not comment further on that race, nor will I venture any predictions for April 4. Chicago, however, simply is no longer the machine-run city that Sam Royko’s father once wrote about in Boss, his famous biography of former Mayor Richard J. Daley, who died in office in December 1976.

Sometimes, things really do change.

And every vote really does matter.

Jim Schwab

Our Collective COVID Cabin Fever

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I am not a doubter when it comes to the COVID-19 vaccines. All I want to do is sign up and let them put a sharp needle in my arm and inoculate me. Do it twice if the vaccine demands it. Even my experience in early February with the shingles vaccine cannot deter me. On a Tuesday afternoon, a pharmacist at the local Walgreen’s provided a shot that I requested at my doctor’s suggestion. It has been two decades since I experienced my second episode of shingles, but I vividly recollected the piercing pains in my shoulders and arms that made it nearly impossible to exercise my fingers on a keyboard, one of the most basic things I have long done to earn a living. I told the pharmacist that I “noticed it but did not feel it.” He put a bandage over the location on my upper left arm, and I left, thanking him.

It was that evening that I noticed my reaction as muscle aches spread from that left arm across my upper chest. Then the chills set in, and I pulled the covers over me in bed. I repeatedly felt my forehead, testing for a fever. Nothing happening. The next day, the muscle aches diminished, but the chills persisted, and I sat in a leather chair with a blanket pulled over me, doing little but reading a newspaper and then falling asleep. I had slept all night, but it mattered not; the fatigue overpowered me. Late that afternoon, I struggled through two online meetings, and my energy again failed me. I spent the next day feeling slightly more energetic until about 3 p.m., when I fell into a deep sleep, again with blankets covering me as I accomplished nothing. My wife says I turned white, but I wouldn’t know. I lacked the energy to look into the mirror.

By Friday, I at least posed a question to my primary physician on the patient portal: Is this normal? He wrote back to say that about 20 to 25 percent of people getting the shingles virus experience such a reaction, which mostly proved that the vaccine was beneficial. My immune system was relearning how to fight the shingles virus. That was vaguely reassuring, and I knew he knew whereof he spoke, but it took one last development to convince me.

Late that Friday afternoon, with the better part of a week lost to malaise, I suddenly felt the fog lift and the fever break, though it was not really a fever. All within an hour. It just stopped. My immune system had learned what it needed to know, and it ceased fighting what was not there. And I was fine. That’s part of how vaccines work, but I could not recall ever experiencing such a reaction to any previous vaccine.

 

Our backyard after the Presidents Day blizzard.

Amid this experience, however, the snow piled up in Chicago. First came a snowstorm that covered our yards and streets in blinding whiteness. Often, in Chicago winters, these snows come, sit around for a few days until the sun comes out, and they melt away as the temperatures rise.

But not this time. Until February in this season, we had seen little more than timid flurries of pixie dust that barely covered the ground, with green shoots of grass still poking out from below. Now it came to stay, as temperatures soon plunged to zero and slightly below, solidifying the growing accumulation of snow even as we struggled daily to clear a path down our gangway and along the sidewalk in front of our home. I shoveled in front of a neighbor’s home as well, knowing he had recently had hernia surgery. And the very next day, we had to do it again.

Jean wanted her turn at shoveling as a way to get some exercise. She got her wish.

The three weeks of persistent snow culminated in a 17-inch overnight debauchery on Presidents Day that left us staggering and feeling quarantined by virtue of a simple inability to move a car down the alley, or the challenge of climbing over hip-high snow piles at intersections. During those three weeks, our cumulative snowfall mounted to 40 inches.

Our somewhat metaphorical confinement by way of extensive pandemic restrictions now took on major physical dimensions, leaving us feeling imprisoned. Not only was there nowhere to go because the restaurants were closed, but there was no way to get out, either. In place of my brief fatigue in reaction to a shingles virus, I now felt a very real spiritual and emotional fatigue at the mere thought of needing boots and a heavy coat just to step outside. Staying at home felt more like incarceration than refuge. Even the mail, which provides some tangible connection to the outside world, was no longer arriving. The carrier on our route, and probably on many others, was not braving the snow piles and frigid weather, and the mail piled up at the post office until, one day, I simply walked the mile to get it, standing in line for more than half an hour for a pile of paper surrounded by a rubber band, partly containing bills to pay. The process took long enough that, by the time it was over, I needed to use a bathroom and home was too far away. I opted for the nearby Cozy Corner diner, and showed my gratitude by staying for lunch. It’s a very decent eatery, actually, and I enjoyed my California melt with fries. And then I walked home again, through the very snow piles that had impeded its delivery. Watch where you walk when you cross the street.

After weeks of erratic service, the mail came all at once, and not again so far.

By the following Sunday, temperatures rose and stayed above freezing. The snow began to melt, removing the impediments to delivery. Nonetheless, in the past week, delivery occurred only on Tuesday, when the mailbox was suddenly full, but it was an aberration rather than real change. No mail arrived for the rest of the week. This has been an ongoing problem across Chicago, for systemic rather than purely weather-driven reasons, and even more so in some South Side ZIP codes than ours, which is itself bad enough. The Chicago Tribune ran an article about the Trumpian mess in which U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush expressed his impatience on behalf of his constituents about the staffing excuses, saying there were plenty of unemployed people in the city, so “if you have a job, do it.”

The as yet uncollected recyclables in a bin filled to the brim.

That comment formed an interesting backdrop to the other event the same day all mail arrived. The city recycling pickup occurs on our block on alternate Tuesdays, and our bins were full, if somewhat piled around with snow. The trucks seemed to be very selective, leaving our stuff uncollected, so that we are now storing recyclables in paper bags in the garage. I complained to the city Streets and Sanitation Department in an online forum that left little room for comment, then forwarded the complaint and further explanation to our 1st Ward alderman, Daniel La Spata. I noted that the previous week, the regular garbage pickup occurred without a problem under worse circumstances. He informed me that a private company had been hired for the recycling, similar problems had emerged elsewhere, and added, “Honestly, that’s the difference between public employees and privatized ones, and why we’re pushing back on the latter.” Some might question that comparison in light of the post office problems, but I would suggest that the U.S. Postal Service, to a significant degree, has been the target of efforts to undermine it as a means of justifying privatization and subverting the integrity of mail ballots. In any case, I still want them to empty those blue recycling bins.

During all this, I nonetheless wanted to access the COVID vaccine so that I could move beyond the sense of limitation that nearly a year of closed stores and restaurants, and mask wearing and social distancing, has instilled in all of us. For compulsive extroverts like me, the compounded effect of long-term pandemic restrictions followed by a month of being buried in frozen precipitation is producing a profound restlessness. Put simply, I want out.

I have not yet mentioned that five grandchildren have been studying remotely in our home since September. We are guardians for one, and the others are here as their mother engineers a major change in her life, and besides, my wife is a retired public schools teacher who can mentor them. Throughout February, the Chicago Teachers Union engaged in a vociferous public debate with the Chicago Public Schools and Mayor Lori Lightfoot about reopening schools, arguing over the adequacy of the preparations for protecting teachers and staff from coronavirus exposure. This took place against the backdrop of the larger national debate over online versus in-person education, but I know what I see. The kids are noticeably glazing over and tuning out, and listening to a teacher on a screen is getting old. Students, particularly students of color (most of our grandchildren) and those with working parents, are falling behind, and the schools will have a major challenge in coming years of reversing the impacts of online education. Students in the early grades need human contact to remain fully engaged. None of this is to deny the necessity that drove the schools to close, but the national failure to manage the pandemic has greatly exacerbated the consequences.

We need to get our national act together, and moving millions of doses of vaccines to sites where people can get some sense of relief is the most important step right now. Instead, I’ve found myself checking online daily, sometimes multiple times daily, only to find no availability for vaccine appointments. But my wife finally got her call for March 2, so I remain hopeful. I have no other choice.

That expression of patience is at the heart of our dilemma. I could live with the snow, however impatiently and with some humor, because I knew that warmer days lay ahead, and snow cannot outlast St. Patrick’s Day in Chicago. Unlike Texas, our infrastructure is designed to handle winter. A slow, steady rise in temperature would allow snow to turn to water at a steady pace without triggering floods. We will be fine.

What has been less certain has been the ability of our national public health infrastructure, as disheveled as political neglect has allowed it to become, to respond to the pandemic. But I can also feel a steady warming trend since January 20, however halting it has seemed at times. The big snowstorm, which jostled its way through Kentucky and Tennessee and Arkansas all the way down to Texas and Louisiana, slowed distribution of vaccines, but maybe for a week. My wife learned that she got her appointment because PrimeCare, a local health care provider, had just received a big shipment.

Snow recedes to a manageable level as the weather has warmed.

My turn will come, and so will yours if you’re smart enough to get vaccinated. My outlook will change with the warm breezes of spring, and I will start to think about where I can go and what I can do. We will end this year-long cabin fever that has been induced by a tiny virus with protein spikes that latch onto receptor target cells in a microbiological process most of us do not understand.

But it may be a long time before we stop talking about it. Our collective COVID cabin fever does that. Let’s all talk about what we as a nation can do better next time. Do it over beer or coffee or tea, but make it a productive, meaningful conversation. I’m tired of gripes. I prefer solutions.

Jim Schwab