It may sound pompous to call them members of the loyal opposition. Yet key leaders throughout the city are rising in strong voice, insisting that Mayor Richard M. Daley use the mandate that descended on him in his
February 25 landslide re-election victory to change policy on housing and other nettlesome issues facing his administration.
Two voices, one moderate, the other representing direct and severe opposition, offer insight into a broad spectrum of post-election thought about public policy that will affect Chicagoans' lives for generations.
The Rev. Christopher Bullock, pastor of the near South Side's Progressive Baptist Church, says the affordable housing and public housing issues remain questionable because vision in City Hall is "stuttering."
The reason, he said, is City Hall's ambiguity about its mission to rebuild housing in Chicago.
"Is it urban renewal, or is it housing development for middle and upper-income residents?" said Bullock, a Republican who got 32 percent of the vote in last November's election in his attempt to replace Cook County Board President John Stroger.
"What about those not at the upper-income level?" he said. "I'm concerned about those people coming out of Robert Taylor Homes and other high-rise projects."
Professor Robert Starks, a Northeastern Illinois University faculty member in its Center for Inner City Studies, believes City Hall's Plan for Transformation of public housing is inequitable.
He said the mayor must reverse his "entire attitude" toward affordable housing: "He doesn't support it," Starks said.
Worse, he said, of the Chicago Housing Authority plan to rebuild or replace 25,000 units, "The mayor has not come up with a comprehensive plan to provide replacement housing for persons displaced by tear-downs."
On crime and rehabilitation, Bullock's view appears to rely on a philosophical approach to creating fundamental change.
"If we are to lower the crime rate in our city, we need to treat minor crime as major crime," he said.
"Those that commit minor crimes are more likely to commit major crimes. That was the approach of New York City under Mayor (Rudy) Guliani, and it can work in Chicago," he said.
Community policing should be enhanced with "strategic partnerships," he said, involving community and faith-based organizations working to rehabilitate ex-offenders and deter crime.
Starks's view is less philosophical.
"The Chicago Police Department is a sacred cow," he said.
"The mayor has yet to make a strong statement condemning police brutality. It's the culture of police to abuse African Americans."
On public education, Bullock said he feels strongly that schools CEO Arne Duncan be held directly accountable for student progress on campuses and in programs that are world-class, not just world-class in more prosperous neighborhoods.
"I look forward to working with him where I can to create good schools, safe neighborhoods, good places to live where teachers and administrators have good-paying jobs," he said.
That near-utopian vision would go hand-in-hand with accelerated economic development.
"I think the mayor needs to develop a Marshall Plan for urban revitalization and transformation that includes all Chicagoans, regardless of economic status and do it in a bipartisan fashion.
"We need a program for small business development, particularly in African American communities," Bullock said.
Making the inevitable link between communities' economic conditions and the state of their public schools, Starks said he finds public education in most of the city abysmal, despite Mayor Daley's "claims it has improved since he's been in office.
"Reading scores have not improved, and the capital program is too little and filled with patronage and corruption," he said of the school system's $3 billion rebuilding plan, one he called City Hall's "conduit for taking care of its friends."
A week after Daley's triumph, the sound of opposing voices suggests His Honor will have no respite from those speaking from the political podium, those speaking from the ivory tower, and from experts and opinion makers between the extremes.
The housing issue seems to be the central criterion for taking measure of the future.
"I'll tell you exactly what's happening," Starks said.
"Gentrification and other incentives are there to move white, middle-class people to the city at the expense of the poor; and middle-class people don't want to live around the poor.
"Nobody knows what's going to happen. Nobody gives a damn. The question has been shifted from pillar to post, and the poor have been dispersed throughout the metropolitan area to ghetto suburbs and to the South and West Sides."
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