May 18--Yes, he was changing the subject from Chicago's wretched finances. Yes, his words were provocative but not controversial -- who opposes better futures for boys and girls born into poverty and disorder? But with his 19-minute inaugural address Monday morning, Mayor Rahm Emanuel spoke truth to all of us preoccupied with other challenges confronting Chicago and Illinois:
Building that stronger future for Chicago requires us to focus on a difficult subject that is too often ignored in our civic conversation. It is ignored precisely because it is so hard to talk about. So today, as we inaugurate the stewards of our city for the next four years, I want to use this moment to shine a spotlight on preventing another lost generation of our city's youth. We all know who they are, although it is easier and sometimes more convenient to ignore them. Many are born into poverty. Many come from broken homes. And many have been on their own from early on. As a result, many of them drop out of school and are jobless. ... Many of them lack the spark of hope in their eyes that we would never accept in our own children.
From City Hall to the Illinois Capitol and beyond, the civic conversation Emanuel cited has focused on politicians' ruinous decisions. The twin obsessions of exerting power and getting re-elected have devastated state and local governments statewide. Many among us now talk often of budget deficits and junk credit ratings and unfunded pensions because those consequences flow straight from political calculations.
Hours before Emanuel spoke, though, Chicago police responding to gunfire in the South Shore neighborhood found a young man bleeding from his abdomen and leg. He was the 49th person to be shot here since Friday afternoon; unlike two of the others, he at least survived the weekend. Given only the facts in this paragraph, will you be surprised if he, too, soon makes his way into a body bag?
The faces of these lost and unconnected young men are often invisible -- until we see them in a mug shot as the victim or perpetrator of a senseless crime. Their existence is avoided rather than confronted. They live in the shadows of our cities -- and in the recesses of our minds. ... They lack connection to the values and experiences that most of us treasure: a parent's affection, a teacher's praise, a coach's encouragement and an employer's appreciation. They have to make their own way in life, and their options are limited. But what we know is that their circumstances do not have to define them. In each of them is the spark of the Divine. Because of their circumstances, we often fail to recognize their humanity and their potential. And worse, they often fail to recognize it in themselves.
Emanuel is a politician, but this wasn't a political speech. To the contrary, it was an indictment of the my-group-first politics of Chicago and Illinois -- the politics Emanuel himself has practiced. It was an expose of how our political class, from the City Council to the General Assembly, becomes irrelevant to these young people as they descend into dead-end lives:
Some argue that the answer is more money for more government programs. Others argue that the answer is better values through more parental involvement and spiritual guidance. It is time we stop talking past each other and join together for solutions. The young people that we are losing cannot wait for an endless political debate to be resolved. ... The adolescents I am addressing are often untouched by government programs. Their school is the street and their teachers are the gangs.
Monday's inauguration was spare and inspiring -- the choir, the invocation, but also aldermen and other public figures at times visibly puzzled by this unorthodox and single-minded speech. Each time we thought the mayor might pivot to a new topic, he doubled down. Four years ago, at his first inauguration, he promised better days; this time he demanded that his listeners help build better lives:
Be a role model for the young people in your life. Share the values that made you who you are with someone who wants to grow up to be like you. Give an adolescent who was born without a prayer his first prayer at getting ahead. Find a way to let young men, invisible for too long, see hope, belief and expectation in your eyes. ... Years of silence and inaction have walled off a portion of our city. It is time to stop turning our heads and turning the channel. It is time for each of us to start breaking down those walls.
We did catch Emanuel's allusion at the end to all the other quests Chicago must mount -- for stronger schools and more jobs and economic growth. There is nothing wrong with Chicago, he said, that cannot be fixed by what is right with Chicago. Then he spoke yet again about a generation of young people who, with a show of love, attention and support, can make better choices in life.
This wasn't the speech about city finances we had expected. But for those who can focus too much on public policy fights and not enough on the lives at stake, it was the speech we needed to hear.
You'll find the full text of the speech here.
