Monroe Anderson

Mayor 1% takes on a community organizer

 

 The first of three Chicago runoff mayoral election debates took place Monday night. Rahm Emanuel outperformed his challenger, Jesus "Chuy" Garcia. But there are two debates in a little over two weeks before we'll know who's the last man standing. Here's my Chicago Defender column.

 

Chuy win over Rahm still debatable

Monroe Anderson

Defender Columnist

 

Jesus “Chuy” Garcia had to do just one thing during Monday night’s first mayoral debate: Channel his inner Harold Washington to show Rahm Emanuel and the rest of Chicago who was the boss.

       Mission unaccomplished.

       Garcia came off as the man who would be mayor. Emanuel came off as the mayor.

      In a testy verbal battle between Commissioner Congeniality and Mayor Meany, both men made valiant efforts to go against type. It was obvious that Emanuel was working hard at being more likeable. It was just as apparent that Garcia was attempting to be No Mas Mr. Nice Guy.  At the same time, each man was out to typecast the other.

Without name calling, Garcia, the community organizer, reminded voters why there is a book out there entitled, Mayor 1%.

“Chicagoans need to know that this mayor has provided corporate welfare to his cronies, millionaires and billionaires, in Illinois in terms of tax increment financing and that he promised four years ago to put Chicago’s fiscal house in order,” Garcia said.  “We’re in a financial free fall. The city has been downgraded, three of its agencies over the past two weeks, to near junk bond status.”

Cook County Commissioner Garcia charged that while “trying to talk in a sophisticated way,” the mayor wasn’t saying anything that would help any Chicagoan who wasn’t physically or professionally in the Loop.

Mayor Emanuel, chum to the corporations, was far smoother than Garcia but just as combative while sticking to the story in his TV attack ads charging that his runoff challenger is all Windy City planner with no specifics on how he intended to get things done.          

The mayor even threw in a short lecture. “The difference between being a legislator,” said Rahm, once a Congressman, to Chuy, once a state senator, is “you pass a bill. When you’re the mayor, you have to pay the bills.”

Throughout the hour-long debate the mayor stuck it to Garcia for not being specific while glued to talking points that sounded more specific than they actually were.  Neither candidate has presented a scenario that would hoist Chicago out of the deep financial hole that 20 plus years of Mayor Richard M. Daley dug for the city. Garcia wouldn’t say whether he will or will not raise property taxes. Emanuel who once said that property taxes were the last resort, now says they’re off the table.

The mayor has let his $15 million war chest do the talking. A constant barrage of TV ads telling Chicagoans that Garcia hasn’t a clue and others, with the mayor in a Mr. Rogers sweater explaining that while he may be a jerk, he’s our jerk appear to be working. An Ogden and Fry poll Saturday showed Emanuel at 47.1 percent, compared to Garcia’s 37.6 percent. A Chicago Tribune poll released the day before reported Emanuel at 51 percent and Garcia at 37 percent with 11 percent undecided.

In order for the mayor to win another term all that may be required for the next 20 days is for him to keep up the attack ads while playing nice. Saturday’s endorsement by the powerful Service Employees International Union should deliver Garcia more money and an army of campaign workers but he’ll still have to throw more elbows.

The mayoral challenger needs to rally the old Harold Washington coalition of Blacks, Hispanics and progressive whites. But more than anything else, Garcia will need to get out the Black vote.

To do that, he needs to hold news conferences in front of one or two of the 50 closed neighborhood schools. While at one of them he needs to point out that Emanuel’s closing of the six mental health clinics was just one more blow to the same low-income neighborhoods impacted by the school closings. He needs to talk about how, as with the parking meters under Daley, Emanuel has privatize the CTA fare system, thus killing another of the city’s geese that should lay the taxpayers golden eggs.

Garcia needs to emphasize and re-emphasize that unlike Mayor Washington, Mayor Emanuel has not been not fairer than fair while waving the Chicago Sun-Times report that whites continue to dominate the city’s highest paying jobs at City Hall and throughout city government. Among Chicago’s 32,500 city employees, 46 percent are white, 31.8 percent are Black, 18 percent Hispanic and fewer than three percent Asian.

      These are the specifics Garcia should be addressing, not suggesting improbable fixes to what is nearly an impossible problem--pulling a $9 billion rabbit out of the hat.     He’ll get a second chance next Thursday at the second mayoral runoff debate.

  

 

A Black mayor for Chicago is not in the air

 

 

 

 

 

 This column on the Chicago mayor's race is my second of the weekly columns I'm writing for the Chicago Defender.

 

 

White, Brown or Black?

                By Monroe Anderson

                     Defender Columnist

 

 

When the last vote is counted after next month’s mayoral election, no one is going to be surprised that, once again, Chicago’s next occupant on City Hall’s fifth floor will not be black.

    President Barack Obama’s radio endorsement of incumbent Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Monday was one serious predictor. But the city’s history during the past quarter century is even better.

         For a few in-vain months, it looked like things might be different this year. Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle was an odds -on favorite to get in the mayoral game and return the throne to Chicago’s largest ethnic bloc. An Illinois Observer poll in March had Preckwinkle leading Mayor Emanuel, by eight percentage points, 40-32.  But just before hopes got too high, President Preckwinkle announced in July that she would stay put right where she was. Days after she dropped out, a Sun-Times poll had Karen Lewis, who was President of the Chicago Teacher’s Union and a queen-size thorn in Emanuel’s side, with a nine- percentage point lead over the mayor, 45 to 36. In October it was announced that Lewis had a cancerous brain tumor and she, too, would not be a candidate.

That leaves those who would like to see a third African American mayor in Chicago with two choices, perennial candidate William Dock Walls or self-made multimillionaire Willie Wilson. Neither of the two black men is The One.

William “Dock” Walls, whose false claim to fame is that he was Mayor Harold Washington’s closest confidant, has run and lost races for city clerk, mayor, Congress and governor for pretty much the same reasons--he has no money, no managerial experience and has never held a political office. Willie Wilson, who is a real pro in the business world, has run campaign ads and taken policy positions--such as pledging to reopen Meigs Field and to save city funds by forcing uniformed police to abandon their squad cars for public transportation when coming to work--that expose him as a pure political rookie.

    Right after Washington won the primary in 1982, the Rev. Jesse Jackson commandeered Harold’s microphone at the victory celebration to inform friend and foe that “now it’s our turn, it’s our turn, it’s our turn.”  

That was then. Now it’s clear that for black Chicago, our turn has come and gone.

History has been repeating itself since Aldermen Tim Evans, Dorothy Tillman and Bobby Rush constructed the mythology following Washington’s sudden death that Evans was the late mayor’s heir apparent. Since then, the list of black wanna-be mayors intent on succeeding Washington and Eugene Sawyer goes from the ridiculous to the sublime--Sheila Jones, a disciple of the political quack, Lyndon LaRouche; the late Joe E. Gardner, who was a commissioner of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District; Congressman Danny Davis; Roland Burris, who was then the former Illinois attorney general who ran as an independent candidate; Jesse Jackson Jr., who was the second congressional district representative, former U.S. Sen. Carol Moseley Braun; and the late Appellate Court Judge R. Eugene Pincham.

Then, as now, any talk of having a black mayor is merely magical thinking. Unlike in the short-lived era of the Evans urban legend, there is no pretense of an heir apparent, not even a great black hope in the air.

It all went poof in the spring of 1988 when political allies of Evans, the Coalition to Let the People Decide in 1989, filed a lawsuit to force a special election. Wanting time to heal the schism in our base, Mayor Sawyer approached Evans calling for his support, promising that after two terms, he’d stepped down allowing the 4th Ward alderman to become a real heir apparent.

Evans’ refusal to play nice, and therefore assure that it would be our turn, turned out okay for him. He was awarded a judgeship and has gone on to become the first black judge of the Cook County Circuit Court. It didn’t quite work out as well for Chicago’s African Americans as an ethnic group.

We could have been like Atlanta.

Since Maynard Jackson was first elected in 1974, every one of the city’s succeeding mayors has been African American--Andrew Young, Jackson for a third term, Bill Campbell, Shirley Franklin and now Kasim Reed.

Rather than whining about not being respected and treated fairly while protesting about and begging for an equitable share of city contracts and jobs, we could have had men and women in the mayor’s seat that treated us like we should be treating us. Rather than being upset about our schools being closed and our teachers taking the biggest hit in layoffs, we could have been the masters of our own fate.

Instead, come February 24, we can only hope for a mayoral run-off. If Jesus “Chuy” Garcia wins in the run-off, we can hope that he’ll treat us like he’ll treat the city’s Hispanics. If Ald. Bob Fioretti wins, we can hope that he’ll treat us like he treats Chicago’s Italians. We can hope that either man, like Washington, will be fairer than fair.

And we can continue to recall the good ol’ days when Harold was mayor and it was our turn.

.

 

Ten years after 9/11, America needs 911

 

 

    On the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy, the Chicago Sun-Times assigned all its Sunday op-ed columnists to write on the subject. Below is what I wrote. I've cut and pasted it from a wingnut website, Free Republic. If you'll notice, I got honored with a very grown-up "Barf Alert."

    Well, five years have passed. We're Bush-free but still stuck in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    We're also still afraid.

    We can't catch a flight without going shoeless first and we're more than likely to have to show our private parts to a TSA agent before we're allowed to board. Osama bin Laden is dead but his terror lives on. So does his toll on American freedom and finances. We've spent ourselves into a hole by occupying two countries in our pursuit of invisible men. While we've been blowing things up for the past decade, China has been building and building and building.

We're still stuck in the quagmire with President Obama afraid to pull the plug, rightly fearing that the Republicans will successfully label him our soft on terror, anti-American, pro-Arab, freedom-hating commander-in-chief.

Ten years after 9/11, we're still nation-building in the Middle East while the Midwest in our nation is falling apart. So, for this next presidential election, I think Obama should be making a 911 call for America--we need the emergency services.

   

Just in time for elections, Bush campaigns on fear (BARF ALERT)
Chicago Sun-Times ^ | September 10, 2006 | MONROE ANDERSON

Posted on Sun Sep 10 09:47:18 2006 by Chi-townChief

 

Just in time for elections, Bush campaigns on fear

by Monroe Anderson

Five years after the 9/11 tragedy, the kingpin of Abraham Lincoln's party is still dead set on fooling most of the people most of the time.

President Bush and his chorus of Republican pols, Cabinet members and neo-con sycophants would have us believe we're safer or, depending on political expediencies, not that safe. According to the president's pre-9/11 anniversary speeches on the progress of the war on terror, we're safer than we were before the attacks but not yet safe enough to steer clear of his failed stay-the-course strategy. As Bush explains it, al-Qaida's leadership is decimated but remains dangerous enough to destroy the entire civilized world.

There he goes again.

With midterm congressional elections less than two months away, the Bush subterfuge machine is in full spiel and spin. Too incompetent to manage problems that are all too real to mainstream America, such as high gas prices, 45 million citizens without health insurance and a sliding income for middle-class workers -- or capturing Osama bin Laden for that matter -- the president and his forces are back to wheeling and dealing terror. They're playing the same fear-mongering three-card monte game that worked so well in the 2002 and 2004 elections: See if you can find the terrorist threat under here or here or there. Find Saddam Hussein's ethereal weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Watch the politically timed color alert rise and fall on cue.

There's a book just out with a title that sums it all up: Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal and the Selling of the Iraq War. Authors Michael Isikoff and David Corn report that Bush hated Saddam so much that he privately let loose expletive-laden tirades against the dictator. In March 2002, months before Bush asked Congress for authority to attack Saddam, he bluntly exposed his true intentions in an unguarded moment with two aides. When told that White House correspondent Helen Thomas was questioning the need to oust Saddam, Bush snapped: ''Did you tell her I intend to kick his sorry m - - - - - - - - - - - - ass all over the Mideast?''

The president's anger was understandable. ''After all,'' Bush said six months later while speaking at a fund-raiser in Houston, ''this is the guy who tried to kill my dad.''

I think that's admirable that Bush 43 loves his dad, Bush 41, enough to try to revenge Saddam's botched assassination attempt in 1993. I loved my late dad as much as Bush loves his, and while I too would have been livid if the Iraqi dictator tried to whack my father, I wouldn't have set into motion a wave of international shock and awe that would result in the deaths of more than 2,600 U.S. military men and women and more than 41,000 innocent Iraqi civilians.

I also love my two sons as much as I'm sure he loves his twin daughters. If we're really in danger of Apocalypse Soon, as Bush keeps insisting, then we ought to act like it. The president should re-institute a mandatory military draft. I'll tearfully send my sons off to war, right after Bush tearfully sends his daughters to sign up in our co-educational military. If the war against Islamic terrorists compares to the fight against Nazis, as Bush insists, and if a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq would lead to its conquest by our nation's worst enemies, then we ought to have a military reflecting that clear and present danger. There were 16 million Americans fighting to keep the world safe for democracy in World War II. There are 130,000 in Iraq.

I'm afraid Bush's plan to save the world from Islamic fascism is way too modest. He wants Congress to pass his terrorist surveillance act and authorization to try the al-Qaida detainees held in his secret CIA torture prisons. For reasons too simple for many Americans to understand, he's not interested in following the 9/11 Commission's recommendations to shore up security at U.S. harbors or keep a close watch on checked airplane luggage. Those measures, which would obviously make America safer from the inevitable al-Qaida strikes in the future, would cost big business big money.

But what fool would want to take those measures when it's so much more politically practical to scare most of the people one more time?

Carol Moseley Braun: A mayoral foot race?

 

    The Root asked me to write a piece on Carol Moseley Braun's run in the Chicago mayoral race. I talked to half a dozen Chicagoans who are hip-deep in the city's politics. None had anything glowing to say about the campaign of the woman who was the first black woman elected to the U.S. Senate. I called her press secretary, Renee Ferguson, a good friend whom I've known since college. I'm still awaiting a return call. I called Braun's campaign office. I'm still awaiting a return call. So here's the commentary I wrote for The Root.

Since I didn't have any positive feedback from anyone, I ended up writing a not-so-positive piece.

 

 

Carol Moseley Braun's Quixotic Bid for

Mayor of Chicago

The former Illinois senator wasn't the first choice of the black power elite to take on Rahm Emanuel in the crowded mayoral race. Or the second. 

 

 

 Getting the nod as the black consensus candidate for next month's Chicago mayoral election worked like a charm for Carol Moseley Braun -- the third time around.

The first time the coalition of the Windy City's self-appointed black power elites met to bless one of the half dozen or so African Americans vying to replace the unexpectedly retiring Richard M. Daley, Braun was not the first choice, or the second. Those honors went to the Rev. James Meeks, an Illinois state legislator who boasts ministering a mega-church with 20,000 faithful, and Larry R. Rogers Jr., a prominent personal-injury attorney and commissioner of the Cook County Board of Review (property taxes).

Nor was Braun the first choice the second time around, after Rogers opted out, and when the reality set in that many of Chicago's white and Hispanic voters might just not be that into the anti-gay, pro-school vouchers Meeks. During Round 2, Rep. Danny Davis was crowned the one-who-would-mostly-get-most-of-the-black-votes.

The second decree of the coalition of aldermen, business leaders and community activists worked just fine for Davis -- but Braun, not so much. Mission unaccomplished.

Finally, after a year's-end intervention, with the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson summoning both candidates to a late-night meeting at Rainbow PUSH, Davis stood down on New Year's Eve. That left Braun, who had the support of two of Chicago's most prominent business titans -- John W. Rogers Jr., chairman, CEO and chief investment officer of Ariel Investments, and real estate mogul Elzie Higginbottom -- as the last viable black candidate standing.

The notion that Braun, the first and only black woman to serve as a U.S. senator and a former U.S. ambassador to New Zealand, was a viable contender, and the belief that a black consensus candidate was a viable strategy, both lasted for about 3½ days -- and since then, it's been one "oops" moment after the next.

As a harbinger of missteps to come, on Dec. 29, just two days before Week 1 of her "The One" campaign began, Braun got into the first of her two pissing matches with folks who buy their ink by the barrel.

In response to a critical column by Neil Steinberg of the Chicago Sun-Times, Braun lashed out at the columnist during a news conference to outline her public-safety platform, stating that, "He is a drunk and a wife beater, and that's a matter of record. I didn't make that up. It's the truth."

Steinberg, in his column headlined, "Carol, I Miss You Already," had facetiously claimed, "part of me wishes she had a snowball's chance in hell of becoming Chicago's next mayor," because he'd have so many things to ridicule in a hypothetical Braun administration. 

On Jan. 5, when asked to discuss her problematic personal finances as she appeared at the scene of a South Side shooting to decry city violence, Braun took on the mainstream media again, flippantly responding, "Some of you may work for the Tribune or the Sun-Times, and last time I looked, the Tribune was in bankruptcy."

This miscue followed a bad answer two days earlier, when she was asked why she was refusing to release her tax returns, as the other candidates had done. Her response: "Because I don't want to."

Not 24 hours later, Braun flip-flopped, releasing some of her tax returns. It's understandable why she didn't want to.

Her tax returns and personal financial statements did not speak well for a candidate seeking to manage the $6 billion annual budget of the nation's third-largest city. In 2009, Braun claimed a net income of $15,954, all of which seems to come from her public pensions as a former U.S. senator, Cook County recorder of deeds and Illinois state legislator.

Her 2008 federal income-tax return showed that she lost more than $225,000 that year -- $200,000 of it in what she called a "net operating loss" that she did not bother to identify on the form. She would, though, indicate to reporters that her financial troubles stemmed from Ambassador Organics, her spice-and-tea company.

The next day, Braun released new pages from her tax return, showing that she had a loss of $120,000 from her public-speaking business, CBM One Corp. Just days after Braun's pointing out that the Tribune is in bankruptcy, the newspaper reported that she was late in paying property taxes on her Hyde Park home -- which she has on the market for $1.9 million -- five of the last six times her bill was due, and that she had paid more than $3,400 in late penalties.

Unfortunately for the 63-year-old Braun, this is not the first time she has found herself mired in misdeeds and money problems. Her one term as a U.S. senator was tainted with controversies concerning campaign finances and a visit to Nigeria to meet with military dictator Gen. Sani Abacha.

And while none of Chicago's other black mayoral wannabes come close to matching Braun's résumé, it's understandable why she wasn't the coalition's first choice. In a Tribune-WGN poll conducted last month, former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel was backed by 32 percent of voters, followed by 30 percent undecided. Gery Chico, a Hispanic who is former schools chief, and Rep. Davis each had 9 percent, while Meeks had 7 percent. Braun polled at 6 percent.

Even Braun's support among the city's black power elites mirrors her recent polling. Mellody Hobson, the president of John Rogers' Ariel Investments, has signed on as the co-chair of Emanuel's mayoral campaign. And former White House Social Secretary Desiree Rogers, John Rogers' ex-wife and the mother of his daughter, hosted a sellout fundraiser Tuesday night for Emanuel, featuring Jennifer Hudson, at Chicago's House of Blues.

With six weeks left until the nonpartisan election, it's still possible that the coalition's default candidate could become a contender. If Emanuel falls short of the 50 percent-plus-one vote threshold -- as it now looks like he will -- and Braun garners the second-largest number of votes, she could conceivably rack up all the "anybody but Rahm" votes during the April runoff.

But in order to do that, Emanuel, who is running a Rose Garden campaign, would have to falter big time. And Braun would have to move her campaign from stumblebum to fleet of foot -- while making sure it stays out of her mouth.

 

Cyber columnist Monroe Anderson is a veteran Chicago journalist who has written signed op-ed page columns for both the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times, executive-produced and hosted his own local CBS TV show, and was the editor of Savoy Magazine. Follow him at http://twitter.com/#!/MonroeAnderson. 

This commentary was also reposted on the websites of NPR and WBUR.

The Chickens Come Home to Roost on Right's Hate Spews

    The blame game started Saturday within hours after reports of the Gabrielle Giffords assassination attempt in Tucson. The left correctly blamed the right for all the hate speech and political vitriol that may have fed the madness of accused murdered Jared Loughner. The right defensively played the moral equivalency card much like a bunch grade schoolers on the play ground, whining that while they got caught name calling, the other kids were doing it too.

What the right and left have done may be the same thing but was done at different times. In the late 1960's the left was almost as bad then as the right is now. I say almost because the left’s political leadership wasn’t behaving as badly back then as the right’s political leadership is right now. The Left’s extremist talk and actions some four decades back helped swing the nation to center right. My sense is that the right's extremism will surely move the pendulum back.

But while talking about bad talk is satisfying, we need to talk more about the pink elephant in the room: gun control.

A mentally ill, hate-filled 22-year-old armed with a butcher knife may have killed and maimed, but his toll would have been a lot less than six dead and 20 wounded. Here's a column I wrote four and a half years ago for the Chicago Sun-Times. It's painfully personal.

 

We're killing ourselves more effectively than terrorists

Chicago Sun-Times

July 30, 2006

by Monroe Anderson

 

My kid brother, Dariek, gave me the only handgun I've ever owned: a target gray, stainless steel .357 Magnum. This gun was the not-so- little cousin to the .44 that co-starred in "Sudden Impact," when Clint Eastwood, as "Dirty Harry," told a bad guy: "Go ahead, make my day."

The weapon came into my possession right after Dariek had a bad night. Voices from his stereo speakers had kept him awake, talking to him, telling him to blow his girlfriend's brains out. He had fought valiantly to ignore the voices but feared the next time he heard them he might not be as strong.

"Are you taking your medicine?" I asked.

"No," he grunted. "I stopped taking it. That stuff is poison."

"You've got to take your medicine," I said, worried but grateful he had managed not to become another statistic in one more tragic news story.

Back in 1977, Dariek dropped out of Indiana University to be all that he could be in the Army. About a year and a half into his tour of duty, he was yanked out of the American nuclear missile silo he was guarding in Germany after he suddenly suffered a mental breakdown. He was flown to an Army hospital in New York where he was diagnosed as schizophrenic, then given a medical discharge.

By the time the voices in the stereo speakers were telling Dariek to shoot to kill, he had been in and out of the hospital and on and off medications designed to treat his delusions of grandeur, paranoia and schizophrenia several times. His nervous condition, as my mother always referred to it, had proved not to be a barrier to legally buying the .357 from an Indiana gun shop.

"I need to borrow the gun," I said, with all the authority a brother 11 years older can wield.

"Why?" he asked, distracted from repeating his descriptions of what the speaker voices had to say.

Knowing that Dariek kept up with the news daily and that there was yet another Lincoln Park rapist running loose, I told him we needed it so that my wife, Joyce, could carry it for protection. He understood. The next day, I drove to my parents' home in Gary, where he handed over the gun and the Indiana gun permit.

I recalled that unsettling episode last week as reports of sniper fire in Indiana hit newspaper headlines and broadcast news. Zachariah Blanton, 17, confessed to the series of Downstate Indiana highway shootings that killed one man, wounded another and left four vehicles shot up. He allegedly went on a shooting rampage after arguing with family members over gutting a deer during a hunting trip. Two days later, after the alleged Blanton sniping, a copycat sniper was reportedly taking potshots at vehicles in Northwest Indiana.

Gunplay in our nation is almost as much a national pastime as baseball. And, with the never-ending, inadequately controlled abundant supply of firearms, we're killing ourselves more effectively than any terrorist organization could. In 2003, the most recent year that data is available, there were 30,136 gun deaths in the United States. Forty percent were homicides; 56 percent were suicides.

When the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, stating that "a well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed," was ratified in 1791, the good citizens were worried about the Indians successfully stopping the theft of their land and the African slaves rebelling, violently reclaiming their freedom. Those are all dead issues now. And yet, even as tens of thousands of Americans die year in and year out from firearms, conservatives carp and babble about Second Amendment rights whenever any lifesaving gun control proposal rears its logical head. As the National Rifle Association likes to sloganeer, "Guns don't kill people, people kill people."

But had the angry Indiana teenager bore stones instead of a firearm, he'd be charged with vandalism, not murder.

 

White House blackout peeves some black columnists

    I was a columnist at a major American newspaper nine years before three black East Coast columnists brought "the idea that a group of black columnists would come together to share our common experience and probe the soft underbelly of our craft" to fruition in 1992.

By the time these three men had formed The Trotter Group, I was no longer writing a signed, op-ed column for the Chicago Tribune but had moved on to a post as a department head at WBBM-TV and the executive director and host of Common Ground, a public affairs TV talk show. 

Five years ago, I was back in print, writing a signed, op-ed page column for the Chicago Sun-Times. It was during that time that I became a member of The Trotter Group.

I've gone into my ancient history because of current events that are still unfolding. 

Ten members of The Trotter Group met in the White House with President Barack Obama and other key staff a few days ago. I only learned of the meeting after fellow Trotter, Robin Washington, the editor and a columnist at the Duluth (Minn.) News Tribune--with whom Obama spent a better part of a day for an interview 20 years ago, even cutting class at Harvard Law--sent me an angry Facebook message questioning how certain Trotters were selected to attend the meeting and others were not. While I didn't receive an invitation at all, other Trotters were invited then dis-invited. As a result, travel plans had to be changed and there was considerable explaining to do to the editors who had signed off on the trips to the White House.

So far, the aftermath has fallen just short of that old axiom: Hell has no fury like a columnist scorned. But just barely.

There has been a flurry of emails between Trotters criticizing the selection process. Trotter member Faye Anderson (no relation), didn't write about it on her blog, Anderson@Large but did discuss it on her Facebook page. Under the headline, Did White House Decide Who Represents Trotter Group?, Trotter member Richard Prince brought the controversy to light in his Journal-isms column.

And, of course, I've just written about it, here, on my political blog. This may be the end of the story. Then again, it may not be.

We'll see.

Everlasting memories of a great father

 

I've spent the last 25 Fathers Days without. By now, I thought I'd be over my father's death. I'm not. It's no longer the ever present pain as it was back then but every now and then, his lost haunts me. And always on Fathers Day I remember and wonder what it would be like if he was still here. I've written about him more than once, I posted a Chicago Tribune column last year that I wrote shortly after his death.

  This Fathers Day, I'm posting a Chicago Sun-Times column I wrote three years ago. 

What happens to children without father's example?

Chicago Sun-Times

June 18, 2006

BY MONROE ANDERSON

My earliest memory of my father, Monroe Anderson, dates back to when I was three. On a pre-dawn winter morning, I stood in my flannel pajamas, watching him stoke the coals in our apartment’s pot belly stove until there was a golden glow bathing the room. My last memory of my father, alive, was in1984 at a New Year’s Day family dinner in the Gary house where I grew up. Dishes were being cleared from the table when my father vanished, returning with a vintage shotgun cradled in his arms

      “I want you to have this,” he said, handing it over, barrels up.

      The shotgun meant a lot to him. When he was a boy living down South, his maternal granddaddy used it while teaching him to hunt for supper. Thinking it was a strange gesture, I thanked him, as I took the 12 gauge.

      Eight days later, my father was dead at 61, the victim of a massive heart attack. To this day, those first and last images remain burned into my mind’s eye, capturing the core of what my father meant to me. He was light and warmth and protector and provider.

      He made it all so easy for me, while it hadn’t been easy at all for him.

      My father’s father, yet another Monroe Anderson, was a sharecropper in the Mississippi Delta.  About eight decades ago, a tornado uprooted my father’s family’s tenant shanty. The bodies of his father, his mother and his six-year-old sister were found in the storm-ravaged fields my grandparents had worked. As the rescue and recovery team plowed through the fields, heaping one corpse after the other on its horse-drawn cart, my father, then a one-year-old baby, was found lying face down in a furrow. Just as they were about to stack his tiny body with the others, he shuddered. He was raised by his grandmother and two young aunts, always wanting and always missing the family he never knew.

      By the time he was 16, armed with just an eight-grade education, he was on his own. He migrated North, first to Chicago, then to Gary, to improve his lot. Shortly after he was drafted into the army during World War II, he and my mother, Norma, would elope; their marriage would last for 42 years, ‘til death they did part. The war ended and  I was born a year after my father was honorably discharged.  My sister followed five years later and my brother came six years after her.

      While my father worked in the steel mills for most of his life, his real job was family man. He was the house handyman and the family chauffeur.  He was a man with traditional values who cherished his position as head of household, but also a man ahead of his time. He routinely relieved my homemaker mother from the daily drudgery of cooking and house cleaning. 

      From time to time, I think about my father, wondering how different I’d have been had he not always been there, showing me how to be a man, demonstrating how to be a father. I wonder what his reaction would be to this “my baby’s daddy” era when too many fathers are casual acquaintances to their children when not absent or non-existent.  In our modern times, one third of our children are raised without the biological father present. In African American households, it’s twice as bad because the percentage is twice as high. How much better would life be for these children if they had  fathers present and committed?

      When my father died, I thought of myself as having lost a best friend, mentor and role model but as time has passed and I’ve raised two sons of my own, I’ve come to realize that my loss was theirs as well. My father as their grandfather would have made my sons’ lives that much richer. 

      A great father is hard to forget. So I know how lucky I am that he was there for me to remember this father’s day and every other day. 

With Rep. Jefferson, third time's a curse

   

     The Democratic U.S. congressman from New Orleans, William J. Jefferson,  turned a silk purse into a sow’s ear.  The first black congressman from Louisiana since Reconstruction, a Harvard Law graduate, had the world on a string. And in many instances, it could be argued, he served his congressional district well.
    But, then again, he did not.

    When Hurricane Katrina struck, the congressman found it more pressing to commandeer the National Guard so they could help him remove some precious items from his home while some of his constituents were sitting on their roofs tops begging to be rescued.
    There was also that little incident where the Feds found $90,000 in marked bills in Jefferson’s freezer in his D.C. home.
    The New Orleans politician faces a run-off for his congressional seat on Nov. 4. On that day, Louisiana voters ought to make sure that they send Barack Obama to the White House and Rep. Jefferson to the retirement home.

     The congressman had his chance and blew it. Wayne Hicks at the Electronic Village agrees. Here’s some of what he had to say about the Louisiana congressman:

Rep. William Jefferson .... Please, Just Go Away!

Do you believe that things come in threes? If so, perhaps there is still hope that New Orleans congressman William Jefferson will fade from sight soon. First, Kwame Kilpatrick was forced from his position as mayor of Detroit. Second, OJ Simpson was forced from his position as a sports icon.

Perhaps U.S. Rep. William Jefferson will be #3 on this list. Jefferson, seeking his 10th term in Congress, faces a December trial on charges that he took bribes, laundered money and misused his congressional office for business dealings in Africa.

Of course, the people of New Orleans can end his career on November 4 when his congressional district holds a runoff. Jefferson was the first Black elected to Congress from Louisiana since Reconstruction. But, it is time for him to go away. Since he won't retire, it is up to the people to put him away.

OJ Simpson had false hope before he was found guilty by Las Vegas jury. Perhaps Jefferson is a wee bit too confident. He addressed a few dozen family members and supporters at a restaurant in a section of eastern New Orleans still struggling to recover from Hurricane Katrina. “We look forward to a rigorous campaign but a successful outcome,” Jefferson said.

A victory in the Nov. 4 runoff would send Jefferson to a Dec. 6 general election in the heavily Democratic district against a little-known Republican.

     Read the rest of the Electronic Village post here.

      And, this is what I had to say about Jefferson in my Chicago Sun-Times op-page column more than a year a ago.

Rep. Jefferson a Bad Actor

Chicago Sun-Times

January 21, 2007
BY MONROE ANDERSON

 

 

I'd bet my bottom dollar that William Jennings Jefferson's folks taught him what all perceptive parents taught their black baby boomer children about the secret of succeeding in the racially challenged U.S. of A.: ''You've got to be twice as good as the white man.''

Somewhere along the line, the 60-year-old Harvard Law graduate forgot his upbringing.

U.S. Rep. Jefferson was arraigned Friday in federal court on charges of racketeering, money-laundering, soliciting bribes, wire fraud, obstruction of justice, conspiracy and violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. In total, the Louisiana Democrat racked up 16 violations of federal law and if convicted, he could face 235 years in federal prison.

A politically potent, well-connected African-American man taking a criminal legal hit that big, unquestionably failed to do something right. Jefferson, who has been fairly mum publicly about the case but has maintained his innocence, is either bad at appearing to be a good public servant or has acted badly as charged.

The congressman's got some powerful proof to overcome. The feds have successfully flipped two co-conspirators and established a solid paper trail for good measure. Last year, Brett Pfeffer, a former congressional aide, admitted soliciting bribes on Jefferson's behalf and was sentenced to eight years in prison. Another Jefferson associate, Vernon Jackson, the former chief executive of the telecom firm iGate Inc., was sentenced to 87 months in prison for paying $400,000 to a company controlled by Jefferson's wife in hopes of landing contracts from the U.S. Army and a number of African nations. Both Pfeffer and Jackson agreed to cooperate in the case against Jefferson.

From all appearances, Jefferson has been caught red-handed -- on video and by wire as well as live and in living color. Federal investigators say they videotaped the congressman on July 30, 2005, receiving a briefcase containing $100,000 from an FBI informant. A few days later, the FBI executed search warrants to examine Jefferson's homes and car, seizing a number of items, including $90,000 in marked bills stuffed in a home freezer.

Cold cash aside, I'm painfully aware that one of the great American pastimes is locking up black men. Our nation boasts the world record, with more than 1 million African-American men in prison and jail. That's more than all the black men in all the prisons and all the jails in all the other countries on the planet combined. Our imprisoned black men, as a rule, are uneducated, poor and powerless. Jefferson is none of that. Ideally, as a duly elected national lawmaker and leader, you'd think he'd be about setting a good example.

Jefferson, whose 2nd District includes New Orleans, won reelection in a runoff last year partly because of Louisiana's legendary quirky politics and partly because Mayor C. Ray Nagin and other prominent black politicians endorsed him. In 1990, he became the first black member of Congress from that state since Reconstruction.

Last week, Jefferson garnered a similar but more dubious distinction: He is the first U.S. official to face charges under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibits U.S. nationals and corporations from corrupting foreign officials.

One of the foreign officials allegedly was Nigerian Vice President Atiku Abubakar, who recently resigned. Just how good do you have to be to corrupt a Nigerian official? Only Russian palms are less difficult to grease.

This is not the first time Jefferson has received bad press. He was criticized in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Five days after the hurricane made landfall, Jefferson commandeered a National Guard detachment to recover personal property from his home. When the truck that was chauffeuring him to his home got stuck, Jefferson called on more Guardsmen, a helicopter and a second truck to help him out as untold numbers of his constituents sat on the rooftops begging to be rescued.

While it's easy to harbor bad suspicions, I imagine the good congressman was simply checking on his laundry.

June is now Black History Month

   

    History happened last night. Or as Sen. Barack Obama described it, it was an eventful evening as he became the first African American to win the Democratic nomination for president. A year and a half ago, Obama’s journey this far with nothing but a notion. Hillary Clinton had the name recognition, a leg up in the money chase and her hand on the party’s political machinery.
    Back then, I was soberly skeptical while secretly hoping the improbable would become the reality. Obama is now five months away from being the winner who takes all. 
    Still, yesterday was good. Let’s hope that tomorrow will be even better.   
    Here’s a column I wrote for the Chicago Sun-Times a year and a half ago, right before Obama officially announced his candidacy for the party nomination.

Can Obama prove me wrong again?

Chicago Sun-Times

January 21, 2007
BY MONROE ANDERSON

Not long after Barack Obama lost his bid to unseat U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush, I ran into him at a downtown restaurant. I stopped at his table for a quick hello before joining my lunch date. Before I could nod goodbye, Obama told me that he was going to run for the U.S. Senate. I was taken aback. ''From a state senator to a U.S. senator? That's too big a leap,'' I warned.

''It doesn't matter. It's all the same,'' Obama said, summarizing in the shorthand exchange of a chance restaurant encounter that either you're qualified and capable or you're not. Remembering that he'd expressed an interest in running for mayor during another lunch meeting years before, I think I shook my head in disbelief. Time, obviously, has proved Obama right and me wrong.

The short period it took him to go from a relatively unknown Illinois state senator to a relatively unknown political force with rock-star stature could have happened only in these modern times, where the currents of cable network news and the World Wide Web ebb and flow 24/7. In less than three weeks, we'll see if it's his time again as he launches his bid to become the next president of the United States. When Obama announces, he'll make history as the first black candidate whose presidential campaign goes well beyond symbolic protest or civil rights activism. As he announces, the time and place cannot be ignored: He'll do it in the midst of Black History Month, from Springfield, the center of the Land of Lincoln.

And this season we're in now may never be the same.

Almost as soon as the nation's holiday season ends, the black history season begins, starting with the Jan. 15 national holiday celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King's legacy of freedom and equality in modern American life. With the slain civil rights leader's ''I Have a Dream'' speech as its coda, the black history season lasts six weeks -- from King's birthday until the end of February. While that window of opportunity is open, African Americans of some note -- or those who have something to say -- become the perennial flavors of the month. It's a heyday. The chosen are sought out for speechmaking and interviews on network television. For those six weeks, the trials, tribulations and triumphs of great American blacks become our nation's wallpaper: always there but not always noticed. During the season, from morning to night, day in and day out, there are Black History Month exhibitions, concerts, programs, performances, galas and fund-raisers. The cable movie channels spotlight black film directors and black movies. Sponsored public service announcements are featured on network television. Public radio and television broadcast special features. Public school children are taught the heroism of Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass and George Washington Carver.

Then it's all over. We have to wait until next year.

Shoehorning centuries of conflict and contributions into six short weeks once a year always struck me as a peculiar practice. As slaves and as freedmen, from Reconstruction to Jim Crow to the civil rights movement and now, African Americans are tightly woven into all aspects of the American fabric. Our heritage is the back story in all American history and often a main plot.

To be sure, Obama won't be running on the African-American platform but, seek it or not, he'll be the African-American presidential candidate. That's fine with me. Every time this brilliant, compassionate man speaks to American citizens will be at once, a lesson in current events now and a history lesson for generations to come. And should he win, believe it or not, black history will become America's history 12 months, 52 weeks, 365 days of the year. So I, like millions of other Americans of all races, creeds and national origins, would like to see him become the Jackie Robinson of major league politics in this nation.

Only time will tell if, exactly two years from yesterday, Obama will be front and center at the swearing-in ceremony on Pennsylvania Avenue. I honestly doubt it, but I sincerely hope the Illinois senator will prove me wrong again.

AIDS epidemic still chalking up young black men

    For young black men, the AIDS epidemic hasn't gone anywhere. In fact, it's coming on strong. The cover story of this week's Gay City News reports that for black gays 24 and under, there has been a 60 percent rise in the disease in a four-year period.

    Here's the beginning of the Gay City News article:

An Epidemic Unabated

By: DUNCAN OSBORNE

04/17/2008

 

For Black Gays 24 and Under, 60 Percent Rise in Four Years

Leaning back in a chair, his arms crossed above his head, Justin D. Walker spoke easily about his life. The 24-year-old paused to sip some water and occasionally stood to look at a computer screen displaying slides from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Using data from 33 states, one slide showed that new HIV or AIDS diagnoses among African-American gay and bisexual men aged 13 to 24 went from just under 1,000 cases in 2001 to more than 1,600 in 2005. Walker is one of those statistics. He learned he was positive at 20.

"I know that my future is altered," he said toward the end of a 90-minute interview. "One of the things that I've always wanted to do was have a family. I know that is not impossible, but it will be hard to do."

New HIV or AIDS diagnoses among white or Latino men who have sex with men in that age group also increased over that time, but the cases among whites hit roughly 600 in 2005 and there were about 500 cases among Latinos in that year.

During that same period, new diagnoses among gay and bisexual men aged 35 to 44 went from over 6,000 to roughly 6,500, cases among 25- to 34-year-olds went from 5,000 to 5,500, and cases among 45- to 54-year-olds went from roughly 2,500 to more than 3,000.

The 13- to 24-year-olds account for just four percent of all male AIDS cases, according to one CDC estimate, but that anyone in that age group is getting infected is shocking.

"It's a very serious problem when the very young are becoming infected and it's increasingly so," said Dr. M. Monica Sweeney, assistant commissioner for the Bureau of HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control in the New York City health department.

City data show that 3,596 13- to 24-year-olds first received an HIV diagnosis from 2001 to 2006. Sixty-six percent, or 2,388 cases, of those diagnoses were in men and, among the men, 68 percent, or 1,633 cases, were gay or bisexual men. Fifty-two percent of all the young men were African-American and 34 percent were Latino.

    To read the rest of the Gay City News article click here.

    One reason for AIDS not abating among young Africa Americans may be that while the face of AIDS is now black, the funding to fight disease still goes to white organizations. Here's the op-ed page Chicago Sun-Times column I wrote about it nearly two years ago.

Those most affected by AIDS don't control research dollars

Chicago Sun-Times
By Monroe Anderson
June 11, 2006

When AIDS was first diagnosed 25 years ago, it wore a gay, white male face. Today that face is black and poor. Africa, which has slightly more than one-tenth of the world's population, accounts for nearly two-thirds of those living with HIV/AIDS worldwide.

In the United States, the numbers for African Americans are devastating just the same. Blacks make up slightly more than 12 percent of the population, but account for more than 70 percent of all new HIV infections and more than half of all AIDS diagnoses.

In Illinois, African Americans are affected by HIV/AIDS more than any other group. Though African Americans make up 15 percent of the state's population, in 2004 they accounted for more than half of the reported HIV cases. Among all women who reported HIV infection last year, 70 percent were African American, and between both sexes, 46 percent were African American. Chicago's South and West Sides are home to most of the state's blacks who are living with the virus.

This being the case, logic might dictate that the money follow the numbers. But life isn't logical or fair, and that's not how the funding fared. Those who command the lion's share of the money, and dictate how the disease will be treated, prevented and fought, are reflecting the old face of AIDS -- not the new.

Over the years, AIDS has become big business. Treatment costs $1,200 to $3,600 a month per person. The old heads fight for funds so they can continue to do what they do and maybe more. Take Howard Brown Health Center. Boasting an annual budget of $12,420,000, the Midwest's largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender organization is so flush with funding that it has set up an HIV testing program in China. Across town, the Let's Talk, Let's Test Foundation, a black AIDS awareness organization on the South Side, scrapes by on an annual budget that is exactly $12 million less.

"Funding doesn't traditionally go to black organizations in the same amount it does to other communities," asserts Lloyd M. Kelly, executive director of the foundation. "We have got to be included in the decision-making process."

With the potent combination of a voice and a multimillion-dollar budget at stake, do-gooding is a habit that's hard to kick. But no matter how good-willed, white organizations don't do as well on Chicago's South or West sides as they do on the North because they aren't as familiar with the black community. A while back, the Howard Brown center considered coming to the South Side before meeting resistance from black organizations suspicious that it was setting up stakes not as missionaries but as mercenaries.

The health center's services might have been useful because many African Americans still won't face the facts about the AIDS epidemic. "The black community is socially conservative," explains Rae Lewis-Thornton, who says AIDS still has a negative connotation among African Americans that "leaves us paralyzed."

You get AIDS "because of your behavior," she said. And, that behavior -- intravenous drug use, gay sex, unprotected sex -- is not acceptable to middle-class, morally right African Americans. "The stigma that's attached to the disease is killing us."

For the past 13 years, Lewis-Thornton, who was diagnosed with AIDS in 1986, has been speaking out against that stigma. At the peak in 1993, she was speaking three to five times a week. Those engagements are now three to five a month. But after years of basically ignoring the problem, the mainstream black organizations are now beginning to make an about-face. Next month she keynotes at the NAACP's 97th Annual Convention.

This latter-day move by the venerable civil rights organization just might be the saving grace. An in-your-face approach will address the AIDS epidemic in the black community much more effectively than playing peek-a-boo.