Chicago activists rise up

By Maya Dukmasova

Tribune News Service

Young people from Chicago’s South and West Side neighborhoods are rallying behind Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s challenger Jesus “Chuy” Garcia in the runoff election on April 7.

Far away from the city’s affluent neighborhoods, youth of color in Chicago see aspects of this city that conflict with the “world class” image the mayor is so preoccupied with projecting. Gang violence, school crowding and closures, and unemployment disproportionally affect the youth.

On March 28, dozens of young voters gathered in front of the Chicago Board of Elections to vote early for Garcia. Some were voting for the very first time.

Berto Aguayo, 20, who grew up in the Back of the Yards neighborhood and is now a junior at Dominican University, says that his community and others like it have been “politically abandoned.”

‘Struggles’

“We know there’s tough choices to be made,” he says. “But we’d rather have a mayor making those decisions who really deeply understands the struggles that the ordinary Chicagoan faces on a daily basis.”

“I found Chuy’s work at Enlace really inspiring,” says Aguayo, speaking of the candidate’s leadership of a prominent community development corporation. Aguayo thinks Chicago needs many more such organizations.

He also says Garcia has a much better understanding of public safety issues than Emanuel.

“How are you going to expect somebody that’s living in the community who witnessed a crime to tell a complete stranger what happened?” Aguayo asks. “I think that’s a very unrealistic expectation, and I think Chuy realizes that. The steps that he’s laid out with respect to community policing are trying to address that.”

Aguayo has been canvassing for Garcia since the fall and has seen enthusiasm for this candidate among black and Latino youth all over the city.

Carmen Yang, a 19-year-old freshman at University of Wisconsin-Madison, helped organize the rally on March 28 and has been ringing doorbells for Garcia in Chinatown. In all her time canvassing, she says she hasn’t met any young people who planned to vote for Emanuel.

Yang echoes many of Aguayo’s concerns. She saw the consequences of Emanuel’s drastic education cuts as a student at Thomas Kelly High School, a majority Latino and Asian school where most students are low income.

After mass lay-offs of teachers, there were as many as 40 students in some of the classes at her high school, she says.

Credentials

She is also drawn by Garcia’s neighborhood credentials. “He listens to people and he actually cares about everyone, not just the 1 percent,” she says.

For a lot of young people, Garcia, who is endorsed by the Chicago Teachers Union, the Service Employees International Union and other working-class organizations, is a hopeful alternative to a mayor they feel has no interest in them. That’s why so many of them are rooting for Garcia over the incumbent.

Maya Dukmasova is a writer and photographer based in Chicago who writes about issues affecting low-income communities and people of color. She wrote this for Progressive Media Project, a source of liberal commentary.