CITY OF BIG SHOULDERS’ DAY OF RECKONING

Focus is on HQ2 while cop’s murder trial looms. Does Chicago have a soul?

Much has been written and said about the year 1968, which was one of the most transformative years in U.S. history. The country, and many of it’s most prominent cities, experienced myriad defining moments.

The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and the aftermath riots that permanently scarred some urban landscapes.

The assassination of Robert Kennedy and the subsequent sense of hopelessness that swept across America.

Mayor Richard J. Daley’s ordered beatdown of protesters by Chicago policemen in Grant Park, not far from the Democratic National Convention.

Chicago, as much as any city, has not fully recovered from 1968. Forty years after the fact, large swaths of the city’s West Side and South Side are blighted from the effects of the ’68 riots. The damage done by hoodlum arsonists and vandals is still visible, as if it occurred only a few years ago.

And Chicago has essentially turned its back on the West Side. Sure, the United Center is on the near West Side and Chicago’s hottest neighborhood, the West Loop/Fulton Market is on the even nearer West Side.

But if you venture a mile or so beyond the United Center the landscape changes and changes fast. Rundown homes. Remnants of burned out buildings. Boarded up businesses. Beat-up looking package liquor and convenience stores. Trash strewn all about. Pockmarked yards. Stray pit bulls. Few, if any, large chain grocery stores. Few, if any, job opportunities like those found in other areas of Chicago.

Large sections of Chicago’s South Side are in similar condition.

Yet, most of the people living on the West and South Side are good Americans who just need a break and some tender loving care. Unfortunately, for decades, the City of Chicago has proven unwilling to give them a little TLC.

Even projects ostensibly good for Chicago’s forgotten neighborhoods seem to bog down.

The much-ballyhooed Obama Presidential Center has been fraught with controversy. For starters, the design of the “tower” is lame. The blocky looking tower is the opposite of Obama himself, who is a svelte, cool customer if ever there was one. Neighborhood groups don’t believe the center will produce the promised jobs. Locals fear the center will create gentrification, bringing in more affluent types and forcing the incumbents out of their own neighborhood.

Another attention-grabbing South Side project is the proposed Tiger Woods-designed golf course, also off to a shaky start. The neighborhood hears promises but doesn’t believe their input is taken seriously. Will golf green’s fees be beyond the reach of locals? Will the course (along with the Obama Center) negatively impact the existing charm and character of Jackson Park?

The Obama Presidential Center and Tiger Woods-designed golf course pale compared to Chicago’s interest in landing Amazon’s HQ2, with it’s promise of 50,000 jobs paying a salary of around $95,000.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel, city government and business leaders are pulling out all the stops (and presumably all the tax breaks) to land Amazon. There has been, however, a lack of transparency. Chicago taxpayers have no idea if they would be forced to fund the tax breaks and if so, how much it would cost.

While Amazon HQ2, the Obama Center, and the Tiger Woods-designed golf course are highly-visible and garner their share of the headlines, Chicago’s reckoning is a less sexy, but far more important, story about what kind of town Chicago really is.

Chicago’s 2018 (or 2019) reckoning, 40 years after the MLK riots and police beatdown of Democratic convention protesters, revolves around the oft-delayed murder trial of ex-cop Jason Van Dyke.

Van Dyke, you’ll recall, pumped 16 bullets into a teenager carrying a 3-inch knife who, at the time of the shooting, was walking away from Van Dyke.

There were several other cops on the scene that night, none of whom felt threatened by Laquan McDonald or, to use the police threshold for justifying shooting civilians, the other cops did not fear for their lives.

The other cops were already on the scene, managing the situation, when Van Dyke rolled up, hopped out of his squad car, and inexplicably murdered McDonald.

Now, three cops who were on the scene face trial this summer for covering-up the shooting. A special prosecutor said the three cops engaged in more than obeying a “code of silence.”

Charged with murder and official misconduct, Van Dyke’s case plods along. (Remember, Van Dyke shot McDonald on October 20, 2014.) His attorneys, as part of delay tactics designed to help the public forget and move on, demand the trial be relocated out of Chicago.

The further from Chicago, the whiter the jury and the better chance Van Dyke elicits the same empathy afforded other cops acquitted of murdering young black men. (The list of cops freed after murdering civilians – in just the past few years - is long enough to fill a big-city morning shift roll-call).

Fortunately, a documentary about what is known in Chicago as “the Laquan McDonald shooting” - as if McDonald shot himself – recently previewed at Toronto’s Hot Docs film festival.

“The Blue Wall” reveals the coordinated cover-up, including witness tampering and incredulous statements by ex-top Chicago cop and current mayoral candidate Garry McCarthy (who said when interviewed for the documentary that Van Dyke faced “a dangerous situation”).

For his part, former Fraternal Order of Police official Pat Camden stands by the three officers initial statements that McDonald was coming towards them, rather than walking away as the now infamous video clearly shows.

Mayor Emanuel is also on the hot seat. His re-election depends on winning the black vote. Emanuel benefits from many of Chicago’s black ‘leaders’ existing in a perpetual pork-and-patronage induced snooze. (Most notably, Secretary of State Jesse White, current top-cop Eddie Johnson, the formerly formidable Jesse Jackson, Alderman Walter Burnett and many more).

An acquittal for already-proven murderer Jason Van Dyke (video don’t lie) might finally wake the black populace in Chicago from their slumber. Surely, black Chicagoans will go to the polls and make significant political changes, from the mayor’s office on down.

In preparation for the real possibility Van Dyke gets away with murder, and the real possibility blacks in Chicago say enough is enough, Mayor Emanuel, and his overmatched Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson, should watch video of Chicago riots in 1968. Or the 1992 L.A. riots after cops were acquitted of pummeling Rodney King. Or simply hop in Superintendent Johnson’s squad car and take a ride around wasteland sections of the West Side.

No one knows what the Van Dyke verdict will be or how Chicagoans will react. But one thing is certain. Chicago’s day of reckoning inches closer.

Douglas FreelandMay 10, 2018