Rebranding Rahm.

“It is a new beginning. We are putting the past behind us, it is time to turn the page,” said CPS CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett.

Hmmmm.

Not so fast.

With at least three federal court challenges to the largest school closing in American history, the past is still the present and the future. The communities, the parents, the students and the teachers are not quite ready to turn the page yet.

That’s what is happening in the courts.

There is also what is happening in the streets.

Chicago Summer: Everything from acts of civil disobedience to massive voter registration.

Nobody should be surprised to find that the schools that the mayor-controlled CPS school board voted to shutter are open when the next school year begins.

Schools opened under federal court order? Doesn’t that bring to mind images of Little Rock in the 1950s?

And that my friends is Rahm’s electoral problem.

“We must change the conversation. We must change the political landscape of the city,” says CTU President Karen Lewis.

Some have wondered why Rahm went ahead and shuttered all fifty schools now. Why not do it over time like some editorial page writers and pundits suggested?

The answer I think is that Rahm wants the next year to be a time of rebranding. By closing them all now, his advisors are hoping it will all be forgotten in 18 months.

Away with the belligerent, F-you Rahm. In with the sensitive, concerned with the poor and downtrodden Rahm.

Take for example the very interesting article in yesterday’s NY Times about how the Chicago housing crisis has ignited a community-based movement that has reclaimed foreclosed homes for the homeless. At first the article focused on the activists, Willie Fleming, who goes by J. R. (“It stands for Just Righteousness”) and Toussaint Losier, a doctoral candidate in history at the University of Chicago.

But right in the middle of the article it turns into a story about Emanuel.

In the afternoon, Emanuel headed back to the South Side, to Bronzeville, where he sang “Lift Every Voice and Sing” in the DuSable High School auditorium. Alderman Pat Dowell, who represented the historic African-American neighborhood and led the singing, told me that the economy there had already shown signs of revival and that she was pleased with the mayor’s increased investment in her community. Emanuel said he was using Bronzeville’s rich cultural past as an economic-development tool. They had moved Gospel Fest from downtown to the neighborhood. They had granted DuSable historical landmark status.

Rahm’s handlers are trying to turn the page on Rahm as the new Orval Faubus – the closer of schools that Black children attend – into Rahm Emanuel singing “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” the Black national anthem.

Or take the cover story in next week’s Time Magazine.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel left his job as White House Chief of Staff to run a broke, violence-plagued city. He has been dubbed “Mayor 1%” by his enemies for cozying up to corporations, and the “murder mayor” for closing 50 public schools, some of which were in gang-troubled neighborhoods. In this week’s TIME cover story, editor-at-large David Von Drehle writes that Chicago “has budget problems and crime problems, problems of inequality and racial division, problems of mutual suspicion and failing schools, of high unemployment and aging infrastructure. And behind it all, special interests so deeply entrenched you need spelunking gear to go after them.” Yet in spite of all those daunting challenges, Emanuel tells Von Drehle, ”This is the happiest I’ve ever been in public life. I’ve always wanted to be mayor.”

Well, at least he’s happy.

There are plenty of pundits who want us to believe Rahm is unbeatable.

But the Chicago political landscape is full of politicians who were thought to be unbeatable.

Just ask Michael Bilandic (I guess you can’t ask him anymore), Jane Byrne and even Richie Daley.

Long-time observer of Chicago’s politics and culture, Achy Obejas considers two possibilities: My Congressman, Luis Gutierrez. And County Board President Toni Preckwinkle.

Preckwinckle won her current post with two thirds of the vote and majorities across the city’s ethnic and racial majorities. It’s hard to imagine she wouldn’t beat Emanuel in the black wards, that her progressive positions on housing, wages, and guns—and her disagreement with with Emanuel on school closings (no surprise from a former teacher)—wouldn’t find support among Latinos. Perhaps more importantly, Preckwinckle is popular on the lakefront—maybe not enough to beat Emanuel along the coast, but certainly enough to considerably diminish his support.

Will he be seen as the Chicago Bull and all the baggage that comes with that? Or the sensitive Rahm who joins in on “Lift Every Voice and Sing”?

The fight over the next year will be a lot about which Rahm narrative takes hold among Chicago voters and particularly African American voters. Rahm was elected by the Black wards and if he loses them he will lose the city. Rahm’s La Salle Street and Civic Committee corporate backers are hoping to change the narrative and change the look of the brand called Rahm.

However, another journalist and veteran of Chicago’s political wars told me, “If the CTU and those folks can register the number of voters they’re talking about, Rahm is done. Preckwinkle would mop the floor with him.”

Rahm was elected the first time with less than a quarter of the city’s registered voters.

More will be paying attention the next time.