CHICAGO – I’ve only been back in the town where I was born and went to college a few hours now but my first impressions are in in line with my lasting impression: Chicago is a city that works, a city its people take pride in.
Mostly, I think, that’s because guys named Daley have known how to use power to get things done. When Daleys are running the show, neighborhoods regenerate, mass transit serves the masses, the establishment somehow shares a vision of a greater good that keeps Chicago vital and alive and the people proudly see themselves as Chicagoans.
Don’t get me wrong. Chicago is not a model of the kind of engaged democratic community I believe in.
Many of the politicians and other bigshots are crooks and some of them even go to jail for the their crimes. All too often jobs and contracts are awarded on the basis of patronage and insider connections. Ward healers operate like neighborhood councils in L.A. except for one difference: They have the clout to make sure things get done for the neighborhood.
Corruption greases the skids to get things done. I often heard Chicagoans say this of the original Mayor Richard Daley: “Sure he steals but he gives some of it back to us unlike those other guys.”
Of course, corruption inevitably gets out of hand and reformers are needed to clean up the mess. But reformers don’t pave the streets, get traffic moving or solve any of the other great urban problems. And that may be some of what’s wrong with L.A.
Reformers most of a century ago created a city government in which nobody really had power. Their goal was clean government no matter what it cost. As the years went by, L.A. boasted it was a clean city not like Chicago where nearly everyone is on the take.
I remember when I was in college the time that a cop stopped me for a headlight being out and took a look around the car and then asked me if I knew how much a ticket would cost and whether I had the money to pay it. I said all I had was $10 or so and he said that would be enough.
Now that kind of corruption is a bad thing and I’m sure one way or another it still happens in Chicago. But there’s another kind of corruption that’s worse and that’s L.A. style.
As far as I know, the problem in L.A. isn’t that we’ve got crooked politicians or crooked cops. It’s the system that’s corrupt so they’re all crooks. The pols, the city workers, the contractors, developers, influence peddlers and influence abusers — they’re all on the take. But we (or I should say the politicians) have legalized this form of corruption by calling bribery by another name “access” so it’s all perfectly legal.
And to be honest, that doesn’t bother me as much as the fact that they don’t deliver on the one thing that matters to us all: Solving the city’s problems, making life better for the people.
Public corruption that doesn’t get the job done for the public is truly a crime.
For my money, the only answer to that is for the communities to organize and mobilize to look after themselves.
Unlike Chicago where Mayor Daley gives some of the money back to people, in L.A. ,the people are going to have to take the money back themselves.
Ron, I love your blog.
But are you sure you wrote the “phony oil crisis” for the Enquirer 25 years ago?
Or were you a stringer contibuting to it?
Ron, Chicago is my home town as well. And I agree, human beings are sinners and things will happen, but the JOB of running a city must be taken seriously – and things get done in Chicago, unlike L.A..
I do not think that insisting that the services that need to be done by an organized city is out of line. And that is the point of your blog and your excellent reporting.
Now, what do you want from us? How can we help?
We have all been organizing, complaining, writing letters, trying to vote in some new blood but failing because of crooked unions that overstep their power and the in-group getting their own way constantly.
The incessant clamor of the disorganization in the departments and mayor/city council offices drown out the people of the city and nothing
happens.
Chicago: Sad while being ironically funny.
Chicago, my favorite city of nostalgic of childhood visits.
It would be an ironic six degrees of separation if you went to Senn High School, and were pals of Warrens, Schwartzes, Sweetkays, Robins or Singers.
Ya gotta love the never ending jokes about dead people voting.
Could it be that Chicago works because in square miles it isn’t nearly as big as L.A.?
It seems like bigger, as in land area and school districts, doesn’t work as well as smaller. It’s not like we don’t realize that size in itself isn’t a problem. The Valley, a large city and economic power unto itself, has tried to break away, and we came close to chopping LAUSD down to size.
Yup, it does look like we’re all gonna have to dust off our Robin Hood costumes, and the poor mice are going to have to steal back our money from the city’s fat cats.
Having never lived anywhere else but SoCal for most of my life it’s hard to conclude that any other large city does so much better with its millions.
However, I do not think corruption solves any problems. “Good corruption” is like saying there is “good domestic violence” in this world.
I think the difference between L.A., NYC, and Chicago lies in leadership. Sure, grassroots organizations make a HUGE difference and have been severely lacking in L.A. City up until a few years ago, but from those grassroots groups new leaders with vision must arise.
These leaders are the ones that can transform a city. NYC was able to transform because it had a lot of the right people in positions of power at the right time. I don’t know that much about Chicago’s leadership in the past 20 years, but I’ll bet leaders with vision had something to do with any positive changes you have seen there.
I was hoping Viaraigosa was going to be one of those leaders who came from the grassroots and helped to transform L.A., especially because he’s got Bratton working with him, but I don’t know…it seems city hall is guided by the same old unwritten “rules” and unofficial protocol that it’s always been guided by.
The only entity that’s noticeably changed in this city in the past several years is the police force. Bratton has a long track record of improving policing. Thank God he’s been able to do something here.
I dunno. Maybe Giuliani wants to move to L.A.?
I wonder how the gangs would feel about that?
(I’m snickering to myself over imagining Giuliani on the TV here calling them “punks”. LOLOLOLOLOL—oh yeah. That would go over well.)
But please no more stupid subways prone to collapse in large earthquakes! We’ve had all these earthquakes in the last few weeks in China, Iceland, and Taiwan; all the fault systems in the world are interconnected, and yet, the city and county voted for SUBWAYS! SUBWAYS!!!! That decision STILL bugs me.
Electric, solar power assisted monorails are what we should have had instead, and could have afforded with what we’ve spent on those stupid subways.
But where are the leaders who will rise up out of the muck and mire of the politics of this city, emerge relatively clean and with all their great ideas and vision intact? Have they been “killed” and sabotaged along the way? Or is the task at hand just too large for any small group of individuals to manage?
It is excruciatingly difficult to change the status quo, anywhere.
My apologies for spelling Villaraigosa’s name wrong earlier. I was tired.
I live in New York, which has been on a mission to clean up its streets since before I was born. So the idea of corruption being a good thing is totally foreign to me.
Good post, thanks