Alderman Arena. We better have his back.

Veterans for affordable housing in Jefferson Park at Mondays City Hall hearing.

John Arena, the Chicago alderman from the city’s far north 45th ward, supports an 80 unit affordable housing project on Milwaukee Avenue near a CTA/Metra train stop.

Arena, a member of the City Council’s Progressive Caucus, supports it because it is a good idea.

Milwaukee Avenue is seeing construction of high density residential buildings near public transportation as it runs through all different wards from Wicker Park and Uke Village up to Arena’s Jefferson Park.

Many of the developments have witnessed anti-gentrification protests. The $4,000 a month rental units in the newly constructed high rise buildings in Logan Square are viewed rightly as a threat to the affordability of what was once a working class, multi-racial but mainly Latino community.

Arena’s Jefferson Park project is different.

It brings needed density, affordability and diversity to a neighborhood that needs all three.

Needed density?

Sure. Walk around Jefferson Park near the transit stations and you will see  empty store fronts. Neighborhoods need a certain level of density to support a neighborhood economy.

Unless you like driving to a Mariano’s every time you need a quart of milk and a loaf of bread.

The project includes 20 units subsidized by the Chicago Housing Authority, 20 for disabled people, 20 for veterans and 20 that will rent at market rates.

There is a clear racist tone to the opposition.

It is a tell when speakers opposing the Jefferson Park project show up (out-numbered two to one by those who support it) at a City Council hearing feel compelled to start their testimony by denying their racism.

It’s like that racist uncle who at Thanksgiving starts his annual racist tirade by saying, “I don’t want to sound like a racist, but…”

The fight for  open housing, affordable housing and for desegregated communities has always been a tough fight in our City.

When Martin Luther King came north, he came to Chicago to fight this fight and was met with racist resistance he said was worse than anything he saw down South.

The Jefferson Park project was approved unanimously by the aldermen in committee yesterday. The project will go forward.

We need more of this.

We need more aldermen like John Arena.

And we better have his back when election time comes around again.

Chicago’s Black flight.

Chicago’s history as the Black Metropolis is a long and proud one.

Black Metropolis by St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton was the first book I read when I moved here in 1973.

The second was Studs Terkel’s Division Street: America.

The third was Mike Royko’s Boss.

I am excited that we are having Timuel Black on our Hitting Left with the Klonsky Brothers, Friday at 11AM on http://www.lumpenradio.com (105.5FM in Chicago and streaming. Catch it later on our podcast, Hittingleft.libsyn.com)

Tim has lived and made a good part of our Chicago history.

Today there are roughly 850,000 blacks in Chicago, down from 1.2 million in 1980. While our city has lost population from many communities, nothing compares to the exodus of Black folks from the entire Chicago area.

Chicago Magazine:

The reasons for this are varied: The foreclosure crisis saw blacks evicted disproportionately from their rental apartments and houses; the Chicago Housing Authority leveled high-rises like the Robert Taylor Homes, scattering public housing residents; the lack of stable employment in South and West Side neighborhoods continues to force residents to look elsewhere for jobs; and school closures further disenfranchise communities. “There are not a lot of messages that Chicago cares about its black residents,” says Mary Pattillo, a sociology and African American studies professor at Northwestern University and author of the book Black Picket Fences. “When you lose the institutions that cultivate attachment, it makes it a lot easier to pick up and leave.”

The departure of 350,000 African Americans from Chicago didn’t just happen. The Great Migration brought hundreds of thousands of African Americans to this city because of our industrial base. Those jobs became union jobs with good pay and benefits.

Those jobs are gone, never coming back. And so are the people who worked those jobs.

Chicago’s Black community provided the progressive political base that elected our great progressive Mayor, Harold Washington, who empowered all working people regardless of race.

No wonder some want to see that community smaller.

And then there’s the social toll. Chicago may be a largely segregated city, but it has long prided itself on its diversity. As blacks take flight, Pattillo says, that shifts Chicago’s role nationally as a center of African American culture, one that gave rise to everything from the blues to the first black president. “It doesn’t mean there won’t be black creativity or black economic development,” she says. “It’s just going to happen somewhere else.”

Download the podcast. Hitting Left with the Klonsky Brothers #14.

An ode to Sam’s.

I read the news yesterday that Sam’s had closed on Saturday.

I won’t be back from our trip to Block Island and points east in time to have just one more red hot and fries at Sam’s.

This is the second time in the last few years that a place I loved in the neighborhood has been taken away from me.

Johnny’s Grill went all deconstructed food on me a year ago. I’m not paying nine bucks for a lonely hamburger on a plate with not even a little plastic cup of cole slaw on the side to keep it company.

And now Sam’s is gone.

I don’t think this can be blamed on gentrification or hipsters moving in.

It seems to be about family illness. Although the little triangle on Armitage must be worth a nice piece of change these days.

Back in 2008 I wrote about Sam’s in a blog post about Anthony Bourdain coming to Chicago and doing a story about Hot Doug’s.

Hot Doug’s was all duck fat fries and fancy cased meats.  As Casey Stengel once said, it got so popular nobody went there anymore.

I’m not waiting in a block-long line in Chicago for a hot dog. No way.

If Bourdain had asked I would have taken him to Sam’s, a little shack on Armitage near Western. Nothing fancy. No place to sit down. A steamed dog (the kind that snap when you bite into ’em) with mustard, onions and sport peppers wrapped in paper with a bunch of fries and a Pepsi for four bucks.

In Brooklyn on our way to Block Island I realized I had forgotten my bicycle helmet in Chicago. I walked over to 9th Street Bikes on 5th Avenue in Park Slope to buy one. The  25-year old guy who sold me the helmet asked me where I was from. When I said “Chicago,” he pointed to his t-shirt that advertised Hot Doug’s. “I lived in Chicago. Logan Square. You know it?”

“Uh huh,” I said.  I thanked him politely and walked back to where I was staying.

I have been going to Sam’s since 1975 when I first moved to the neighborhood. I have been stopping less frequently of late because of my desire for a healthier diet. I stopped drinking sugared drinks a couple of years ago.

But every couple of months I would drive down Armitage and pull over. I would get a dog and fries. No hot dog salad on top at Sam’s. Just the dog with mustard, onions, pickle relish and sport peppers. Rolled in a sheet of white paper with the fries so the steamed dog and steamed bun would get all squashed and some of the mustard, onions and pickle relish would mix in with the fries.

I would wash it down with Chicago’s finest tap water when I got home.

You just don’t know how much I will miss it.

You just don’t know.

Teachers in a position to reward friends and punish enemies on pension fight.

The Chicago Way.

Don’t be shocked when you read this. I have my criticism of the IEA leadership.

But at the IEA RA last week, when I was asked to vote on giving more money for the fight against anti-union legislation and defending our pensions, I said yes. Yes. Yes.

Now I want the IEA to use it well. Reward friends. Punish enemies.

Greg Hinz reports on who the big spenders were in the Illinois primaries.

Who had the deepest pockets? Mike Madigan, Chairman of the Illinois Democratic Party and long-time Speaker of the State House. He spent $213,914. Interestingly, it was spent on Democrats in order to beat other Democrats.

No. 2: Illinois Education Association PAC, the political arm of the big teachers’ union, at $201,500. It was followed closely by Health Care Council of Illinois PAC ($201K) and Associated Beer Distributors ($200K).

Among other biggies:

• Stand For Children, a business-backed group that tends to be on the opposite side of the teachers’ unions, spent $139K.

• Illinois Senate Democratic Fund, Senate President John Cullerton’s campaign arm, $134K.

• Personal PAC, the abortion-rights group, $120K.

• Chicago Teachers’ Union PAC, $110K.

• Service Employees International Union, the big government workers group, $97K.

 Looks to me like the unions out-clouted the business guys when it comes to campaign cash — at least in this go-round.

Good!

Now let’s see if it pays off.

I always want to be able to look at this list and see that the unions spent the most. And then I want to see what we paid for.

Reward our friends. Punish our enemies. That’s the Chicago Way.