Sept. 07--About half an hour after angry protesters had forced Mayor Rahm Emanuel out of his own town hall meeting, a couple dozen of them continued to dance and chant in celebration on a stage Chicago's mayor was supposed to have commanded.
"Shut it down!" they shouted over and over, as Emanuel slipped out a back door after Chicago police and senior aides convinced him he'd be unable to finish a forum planned for the public to give him input on his upcoming budget.
For the mayor, the embarrassing scene in front of TV cameras last week was a case of his post-election promise to be more publicly accessible colliding with scores of frustrated Chicagoans erupting after waiting years to give him a piece of their minds. Dominant topics ranged from school closings and special education cuts to red light camera tickets and flight noise near O'Hare International Airport.
Emanuel's predecessor, Richard M. Daley, established a tradition of Chicago's mayor holding annual open meetings as an opportunity for residents to offer input on the budget, and more often, their gripes about city services. Emanuel did it his first year, and that was it.
That philosophy extended to Emanuel's re-election campaign, where unlike most politicians eager to be seen pressing the flesh, he rarely allowed himself to be observed interacting with regular Chicagoans in uncontrolled settings.
Last week illustrates Emanuel's reluctance. Two of his three public budget meetings were taken over by protesters engaged in a hunger strike aimed at forcing the reopening of a South Side high school.
That anger served as the flash point for a range of activist groups that for years have referred to Emanuel as "Mayor 1 Percent" and accused him of looking out for millionaire campaign donors instead of poor and working-class Chicagoans struggling with violence and a lack of opportunity in some of the city's most downtrodden neighborhoods.
"When you watched a lot of people who went up and spoke on various issues, it really was a combination of frustration that the mayor has been inaccessible to people for so long, frustration that he doesn't seem to respond to the concerns of the everyday, ordinary working person," said Mark Wallace, an advocate for removing the city's red light cameras who spoke at Emanuel's Wednesday hearing at the South Shore Cultural Center.
"So, when all these people had the chance to tell him, it just boiled over and people really said what was on their mind and on their hearts," Wallace said. "The question is, will the mayor respond to that in any real positive or productive way? I tend to doubt it."
Emanuel's decision to hold three town hall-style meetings on the city budget stems from his hard-fought re-election victory in April.
In what amounted to political discomfiture for the nation's most recognizable mayor, Emanuel found himself in a runoff campaign and decided to change his tone. In his first TV ad of that race, Emanuel spoke directly into the camera, acknowledging he "can rub people the wrong way or talk when I should listen. I own that."
A few weeks later, in his election night victory speech, Emanuel thanked voters "for putting me through my paces. I will be a better mayor because of that. I will carry your voices into the ... mayor's office."
The public hearings were a step to show Chicagoans he would follow through. Even so, speakers at the meetings chastised the mayor, saying he was not being inclusive, not meeting with community organizations and not taking their concerns to heart.
A sampling of what Emanuel heard: "Rahm don't care," "You're a liar," and "The blood is on your hands!" During the first meeting at Malcolm X College on the West Side, speakers repeatedly asked the mayor when he would meet with the Dyett High School hunger strikers.
When chants of "Answer the question!" disrupted the hearing for several minutes, the meeting's moderator first said CPS CEO Forrest Claypool would meet with the demonstrators. When the chants continued, Emanuel finally stepped forward and said he'd talk with the group afterward.
"You wouldn't meet with us or have anyone meet with us and give us any sort of answer until we threatened to shut this meeting down," Dyett supporter Tamara Jasmine told Emanuel at the meeting. "That shows what power we have as people. F--- him!"
The perception that Emanuel is unwilling to hear out community organizations was a theme. At the final event Thursday at Wright College on the Northwest Side, several homeowners criticized the mayor for not meeting with them to hear their concerns on an increase in flyover noise near O'Hare.
At the start of his first hearing at Malcolm X, Emanuel appeared eager to interact with speakers offering constructive criticism.
To a man complaining about a lack of public housing options, Emanuel acknowledged "it was totally unacceptable" that the Chicago Housing Authority had been sitting on millions in reserves as the waiting list for vouchers grew. The mayor also answered a question on special taxing districts and a new high school program.
Lisa Young, who said she works at a West Side apartment complex, thanked Emanuel for organizing a faith initiative in which churches and police officers put on community events to keep kids out of trouble. She encouraged him to do more, and the mayor responded by trying to highlight the successes of the organized weekend of activities across the city.
"That weekend, we were out across the city. If you remember, Englewood had a series of actions that actually kept the gunfire, there was none for about 36 hours, 48 hours ..." Emanuel said before a woman in the audience interrupted.
"No shootings for a day and a half? Are you kidding me?" she yelled. "That's really something to be proud of!"
As the crowds grew increasingly hostile at the first and subsequent meetings, Emanuel spoke less. He spent almost all of the final two meetings sitting, sipping from a bottle of water and occasionally taking notes. That approach also meant the mayor often did not reply when speakers asked him direct questions.
At the South Shore meeting, Emanuel was asked why he'd allowed cuts to special education and why he wouldn't remove red light cameras after the company that installed them had an executive plead guilty to corruption. He didn't answer.
The same went for questions on other topics, including Dyett. While Emanuel met with activists earlier in the week, he offered them no commitments. And when Emanuel didn't respond at the second hearing, the frustration built until protesters took the stage, crowding around the mayor and ultimately forcing his security detail to whisk him away.
"He's the one who just sat there, not saying anything. He made the situation worse instead of better," said Jawanza Malone, the first protester onstage who chanted "Right now!" in an attempt to get the mayor to answer a question on the high school. "Not a single response. So, it was time for us to end the meeting."
Not only were Dyett demonstrators cheering and chanting, but so, too, were citizens gathered there for other causes. The next day, Emanuel contended the Dyett protesters' actions cheated others out of their chance to speak up.
"I understand my role as the mayor is to hear what you say, no matter how energetic. But you can disagree without being disagreeable," he said. "I was ready to go back out, and a lot of people who weren't part of Dyett were waiting."
Wallace, the red light camera advocate who was at the meeting, called the Dyett protesters' conduct "completely unacceptable." But he said Emanuel's unwillingness to respond to their issue on stage helped ratchet up the tension.
"The mayor always seems to have this existential look of, 'I'm just here,' and when people are making comments, he has this smirk on his face," said Wallace, who hosts a radio show on WVON-AM 1690. "I don't know if that's nervousness or what it is, but it seems like the attitude is, 'I'm going to sit here and hear what you say, but I'm going to go on and do what I already have planned to do.' It's like he's telling you that the whole thing is just a dog-and-pony show."
Emanuel's runoff opponent, Jesus "Chuy" Garcia, who during his campaign tapped into neighborhood frustration over school closings, crime, and a lack of jobs, said there's a reason the Dyett cause ignited such a fury of protest.
"People identify with the plight of the Dyett people," Garcia said. "What's being done to communities and how the less advantaged folks in our city are having such a hard time getting the attention of the mayor and policymakers is what fuels this. And a lot of people can relate to that -- ordinary people fighting for basic things like a decent school for their children."
Asked if he would have liked to see the activism reach that level of intensity during the campaign, Garcia didn't hesitate.
"Sure, I would have, but this is a different time from the election. You don't have the barrage of TV ads, you don't have the White House telling you who to vote for," Garcia said. "Now, it's the real deal. ... It's about how Chicago works. And these people are tired of Chicago not working for them."
bruthhart@tribpub.com
