How Mayor Rahm Emanuel Awoke a Progressive Resistance in Chicago
By Kari Lydersen, excerpted from her book Mayor 1%: Rahm Emanuel and the Rise of Chicago's 99% in In These Times (November 18, 2013)
March 4, 2012, was Chicago’s 175th birthday, and the city celebrated with a public party at the Chicago History Museum. The event promised actors portraying famous Chicagoans, including Jane Addams, founder of Hull House and advocate for immigrants, children and factory workers. Little did the organizers know that the show would be stolen by a woman some viewed as a modern-day Jane Addams—more eccentric and irascible, less renowned and accomplished, but just as willing to raise her voice and speak up for the weak and vulnerable.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel grinned broadly as the Chicago Children’s Choir, dressed in red, sang a lively version of “Happy Birthday.”
Ten months earlier he’d been inaugurated as leader of the nation’s third most populous city, taking the reins from legendary Mayor Richard M. Daley. And while his term hadn’t been a cakewalk, so far things seemed to be going well. He had inherited a nearly $700 million budget deficit and attacked it with an aggressive round of cost-cutting and layoffs. The labor unions had resisted, but ultimately Emanuel was able to strike some deals and come out on top. Meanwhile, he was moving forward with his plans to institute a longer school day, a promise that had gained him positive attention nationwide. He was already assuming Daley’s mantle as the “Green Mayor”: In February he had announced that the city’s two coal-fired power plants would close and miles of new bike lanes were in the works.
Emanuel had even snagged two important international gatherings for Chicago: the NATO and G8 summits, to be held concurrently in May 2012—the first time both would be hosted in the same U.S. city.
There had been sit-ins and protests by community groups and unions related to the summits, school closings, and other issues. But Emanuel had shown a knack for avoiding and ignoring them, and so far he didn’t seem to have suffered too much political fallout.
As Emanuel watched the swaying, clapping singers at the birthday party, he didn’t seem to notice a crinkled orange paper banner bobbing in the crowd of revelers. It said, “History Will Judge Mayor 1 Percent Emanuel for Closing Mental Health Clinics.”
He’d gotten the moniker early on in his tenure. As Occupy Wall Street–inspired protests swept the nation, it was a natural fit for a mayor known for his high-finance connections and brief but highly lucrative career as an investment banker.
A staffer did notice the banner, and told the man holding it to put it away. Matt Ginsberg-Jaeckle, a lanky longtime activist, complied, partially folding the banner and lowering it into the crowd. The song ended, and Emanuel began shaking hands with the singers and other well-wishers near a colorful, multi-tiered birthday cake.
Then a shrill, rough voice cut through the chatter, causing heads to turn as the orange banner was unfurled and raised again. “Mayor Emanuel, please don’t close our clinics! We’re going to die. … There’s nowhere else to go. … Mayor Emanuel, please!” cried a woman with a soft, pale face, red hair peeking out from a floral head scarf and dark circles around her wide eyes that gave her an almost girlish, vulnerable expression.
It was Helen Morley, a Chicago woman who had struggled all her life with mental illness but still managed to become a vocal advocate for herself and others in the public housing project where she lived, and for Chicagoans suffering from disabilities and mental illness. For the past 15 years she’d been a regular at the city’s mental health clinic in Beverly/Morgan Park, a heavily Irish and African-American, working- and middle-class area on the city’s Southwest Side. It was one of six mental health clinics that Emanuel planned to close as part of sweeping cuts in his inaugural budget. He said it made perfect economic sense—it would save $3 million, and the patients could move to the remaining six public clinics. But Morley and others pleaded that he didn’t understand the role these specific clinics played in their lives and the difficulty they would have traveling to other locations.
Morley’s eyes were fixed unblinkingly on the mayor as she walked quickly toward him, calling out in that ragged, pleading voice, her gaze and gait intense and focused. Almost all eyes were on her—except for those of the mayor, who shook a few more hands and then pivoted quickly and disappeared through a door, studiously ignoring Morley the entire time.
“Mayor Emanuel!” she cried again as he dashed out. “Please stay here, Mayor Emanuel!”
The abruptness of the exit, the cake sitting there untouched, the lack of closing niceties, and the crowd milling around awkwardly gave the impression that the event had been cut much shorter than planned.
With the mayor gone, Ginsberg-Jaeckle and fellow activist J.R. Fleming stepped up on the stage and lifted the banner behind the cake. Morley centered herself in front of them and turned to face the remaining crowd, earnestly entreating them, “People are dying. They aren’t going to have nowhere to go!”
