But Emanuel’s attitude toward Morley and the other members of the Mental Health Movement was perhaps emblematic of a deeper issue that would haunt him in the not-too-distant future. Although he seemed adroit at manipulating the levers of power, Emanuel did not seem to understand the power of regular Chicagoans, especially Chicagoans organized into the city’s rich mosaic of community groups, labor unions, progressive organizations, and interfaith coalitions.
This failing would become fodder for national pundits in the fall, as the Chicago Teachers Union made headlines around the world by going on strike and filling the city streets with waves of shouting, chanting Chicagoans clad in red T-shirts. Emanuel appeared shocked and disgusted with the union’s audacity, attacking them in a public relations campaign more reminiscent of a brutal electoral race than contract negotiations between two teams of public servants.
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Few would dispute that Emanuel is a highly intelligent, energetic, efficient, organized, and hard-working individual; these are clearly qualities anyone would hope for in their elected leaders. Emanuel let hardly a week go by without announcing a major new initiative or project, many of which were applauded and praised across the board. It would be hard to question his commitment to conservation and clean energy, safe bike lanes, beautiful parks, and other aspects of a livable city. He pledged to make Chicago one of the nation’s most immigrant-friendly cities, and he pushed state legislators to grant driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants and to legalize gay marriage. He courted employers, bringing thousands of new jobs to Chicago and positioning the city as a high-tech industry hub. He made common-sense improvements in efficiency, including reforming the city’s bizarre garbage collection system. After Mayor Daley left a yawning budget gap and leased the city’s parking meters in a notorious deal that would leave taxpayers paying the price for decades to come, many understandably welcomed Emanuel’s business acumen, fundraising ability, and determination to whip the city into fiscal shape.
But Chicagoans should have been able to expect that a leader with such skills, experience, and connections would listen to their ideas, address their concerns, and solve some of their problems—rather than ignoring them or treating them as the enemy when they questioned his actions, priorities, or motivations.
Many pundits describe Emanuel as the epitome of the modern centrist neoliberal Democrat. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is often viewed as a symbol of neoliberalism, a global socioeconomic doctrine with intellectual roots in Chicago. Emanuel was a key architect of the trade agreement, which ultimately cost tens of thousands of US jobs and brought social and economic devastation to Mexico.
To the extent that Emanuel genuinely wants to make the world a better place for working people, he thinks market forces and business models are the way to do it, and he clearly (and perhaps rightly) thinks that he understands these institutions far better than any teacher or crossing guard or nurse. From that viewpoint, the messy attributes of democracy—sit-ins, protests, rallies, people demanding meetings and information and input—simply slow down and encumber the streamlined, bottom-line-driven process Emanuel knows is best. But many regular Chicagoans see injustice, callousness, and even cruelty in this trickle-down, authoritarian approach to city governance. They see the mayor bringing thousands of new corporate jobs subsidized with taxpayer dollars while laying off middle-class public sector workers like librarians, call center staffers, crossing guards, and mental health clinic therapists. They see him closing neighborhood schools, throwing parents’ and students’ lives into turmoil. They see him (like Daley) passing ordinances at will through a rubber-stamp City Council, leaving citizens with few meaningful avenues to express their opposition to policies changing the face of their city.
This book explores Chicago’s embrace of privatization and public-private partnerships: an increasingly popular urban development strategy that community and labor leaders say can be beneficial and productive if carried out right. But like residents in other parts of the country, many Chicagoans fear that the encroachment of the private sector on the public realm is increasing economic and racial inequality and sidelining unions and democratic processes. Continuing a trend championed by Mayor Daley, Emanuel has pushed for privatization of various city properties and services—including education and health care—and garnered national attention with his public-private Infrastructure Trust.
This book also details how privatization and cost-cutting, along with larger ideological debates, were central to Emanuel’s battles with organized labor—long a storied and powerful constituency in Chicago. And it depicts the popular movement that arose around the NATO and G8 summits, describing how that movement became a defining struggle over civil liberties, economic priorities, and transparency at the city level.
The description of Emanuel’s early life and his time in Congress, the private sector, and the Obama and Clinton White Houses was compiled through interviews and largely through reliance on books and media documenting these eras. Starting with Emanuel’s campaign for mayor of Chicago and extending through his first two years in office, the content is based primarily on firsthand reporting supplemented with other media and analysis; it is also informed by my fifteen years of reporting on organized labor, immigration, community struggles, and grassroots movements in Chicago.
Although this is a book about Rahm Emanuel, it is also a story about organizations—like the Mental Health Movement and the Chicago Teachers Union—made up of regular people who are finding it harder and harder to secure basic rights including housing, health care, and a voice in their governing institutions.
I aim to explore what these actors stand for and how they pursue their goals at a time when many Americans have embraced a view of the country that pits the “99 percent” against the “1 percent,” “Main Street versus Wall Street,” and feel neither political party is really representing their interests.
By his second year in office, Emanuel—a famous Democrat running a city famous for Democratic hegemony—was frequently being compared to prominent right-wing Republicans including Wisconsin governor Scott Walker and even presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Such allusions were great oversimplifications, but they showed that many Chicagoans did not feel that their Democratic mayor was actually interested in democracy, transparency, or a system that genuinely seeks equity for the have-nots.
Emanuel cut his teeth in opposition research, a then-emerging field in which political operatives secure victories in part by acting as private eyes, digging up dirt or spinnable information on opponents and leveraging it for political gain. Given this expertise, and his mother’s activist background, it is perhaps surprising that Emanuel did not seem to understand the history or culture of popular resistance in Chicago—or anticipate that activists and organizers would become a thorn in his side.
If there’s one thing Chicagoans have demonstrated ever since the city rose out of a swamp of stinking onions, it is that they will not quietly acquiesce when they sense injustice. This rich tradition stretches from the Haymarket Affair of 1886 to the garment workers strikes of the early 1900s; from the 1968 Democratic National Convention protests to the first massive immigration march of 2006. Like the proud Chicagoans who came before them, the Chicago Teachers Union, the Mental Health Movement, and other contemporary groups are committed to questioning and shaping the meanings of democracy, leadership, power, and justice.
Rahm Emanuel’s tenure as mayor of Chicago has provided a stage for these populist and progressive institutions to grapple with other powerful forces in a drama about the continual evolution of a great American city.
Photo by Toby Fruge.
The Emanuel boys grew up playing chess; their father taught them to “Remember what Napoleon said: ‘Offense is the best defense’”—as recounted by Ezekiel Emanuel in his 2013 memoir.
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A Golden Boy
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