Focus on Chicago's problems and not the clown car of candidates

     Maybe we're going about this wrong.
     Last week, as you know, Rahm Emanuel realized his mayoralty is upside down in a ditch, wheels spinning, so he decided to take his ball and go home.
     And this enormous crew of marginal figures, cranks, has-beens, and perennial candidates leaps up and announces, in turn, that each is just the person to run what is still the nation's third largest city. It's like that scene where the Oklahoma territory is opened for settlement; somebody fires a gun and all these buckboards and horseback riders go racing across the border in a cloud of dust.
     I won't list them all.
     Some blame belongs to the media, including my own beloved Sun-Times. We pass the time recounting tales of Willie Wilson handing out cash here, William "Dock" Walls making his fourth bid there (I actually agree with Walls about something, when he says of his fellow arrivistes, "They have no clue what's needed." His only omission — omnia vanitas — is not including himself in the magic circle).
     All good fun. I get it. Ringling Brothers went out of business, and the employment opportunities for clowns is severely limited. That's sad. But what's needed now is not to indulge egomaniacs, but to find someone who can address the enormous, city-killing problems facing Chicago.
     Since this column tops out at 719 words, I'll limit myself to the top two problems.
     First, violence in general and the cops in particular. Violence not only rips apart lives, but drives away the investment that the city needs to thrive. And cops, besides killing innocent people all too often, cost the city $500 million we don't have over the past 15 years in settlements and judgments.
     Here, I hate to say it, but Garry McCarthy has a definite edge. Not for any experience in his four and a half years as superintendent, which amounted to saying "Yes Mr. Mayor" twice a day into the telephone. But the CPD rank and file already really, really hate him, which gives him a certain freedom to act. What ruined Rahm is that when the Laquan McDonald video became known, he had already passed through his reform-the-police phase of his attempt to lead and had drifted into the try-to-be-pals-with-cops phase, and if handing the mom who popped up a paycheck kept the video out of sight, all the better.
    We need a mayor who is going to act on the scathing Justice Department indictment of the Chicago police, and who'll implement change while she stops her ears to the we-can't-do-our-jobs-unless-we-can-glibly-trample-human-rights-without-any-supervision-or-consequence shriek the force will put up.
     Whoops.
     Did I say "she"? Giving the game away. 

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If, like some readers, you finish the column and want a little background on my unusual fondness for Carol Moseley Braun, you can find the details here.

White males up the ying yang

     People occasionally ask me to do stuff. Speeches, panels, appearances. Monday I was invited to judge a Halloween dog costume contest. For the second year. Of course I said yes.
     It doesn't happen a lot. I don't want to pretend I'm Malcolm Gladwell. From time to time, people ask. 
     And I try to comply, because it keeps me busy, gets me out of the house, and I suppose huffs a little air on my little flickering ember of local quasi-celebrity. Heck, sometimes they even pay me.
     Monday, besides the spooky pooch parade, someone who had asked me to appear at ... well, it seems some kind of story-telling evening related to a certain community. I don't think I'll say specifically which.  Draw the veil a little. The event takes place once a month at a North Side bar.
      Anyway, last December, this reader asks me to show up the next day to appear at the event. And I say, "Yeah, that's kinda short notice. Ask me another time."  
     Monday up he pops again, messaging on Facebook. The event is set for Nov. 6. Am I in? At first I think yes, sure, I'll show at up at your event. Then I look at the calendar. Nov. 6 is Election Day. Apt to be a busy time at the paper, not the evening I want to be sitting on a stool in a small club blinking into a spotlight. 
     I tell him we'll have to kick the can down the road again.
   "Pick a month to hold a slot," he urges. "There are a lot of white males wanting to tell stories to our audience. At one point I had white males booked for a year plus a wait list."
      I look at this remark and weigh my reaction. You're allowed to think about what you say before responding; too many people forget that. 
     What would YOU say?
     Should I point out the guy writing this to me is white? 
     He'd kinda have to be, wouldn't he?
     I decide to go the low-key route.
     "Hmmm, put that way ... " I write. "If there's a glut, I can graciously yield the field."

     Okay, he replies.

     That might have been the end. But his remark simmered. Low-key is not my style.

     "I mean, I'm not corking up for it," I add. An obscure reference. Burnt cork. Like Al Jolson. Meaning: I'm not going to pretend to be black to do your event. I'm goading him, seeing how he reacts. Too many white guys indeed. We have to ration them.

     He doesn't reply to that. Maybe he doesn't get it. Instead, he again tries to nail me down for a future date. He wants a commitment. 

     I think some more.

     "I'll be honest, I find being put in the slurry of generic white people a little off-putting," I write. "If I said I had a lot of..." and here I plug in his particular group "angling for my attention, you'd feel ill-used. I understand white privilege, but at some point it becomes just another way to undercut somebody different from yourself. I was born white, I'm stuck with it."

     We went back and forth a bit. He did apologize if he offended me, and I said, no, not offended so much as surprised. We parted civilly, on good terms, which doesn't always happen.  A nice guy, trying to ensure a diverse group of presenters, albeit awkwardly. His goal was laudable: a diverse evening. Just not too heavy on the pale end of the spectrum. He wants me, but not too many guys like me, not all at once, since we can be overwhelming. Got it. 

     And yet. Maybe it's residual bitterness on my part from being designated the paper's poster boy for White Privilege. Maybe I have a little trouble seeing quotas as a positive sign of confidence from formerly-oppressed groups. Maybe this is fall-out from having an unapologetic bigot as president. "I can't do anything about Donald Trump, but I sure can do a whipsong on you." But I'm seeing more what I consider White People Suck messages. Which certainly has basis in the realm of historical fact regarding societies as a whole, while still being unfair applied to specific individuals, such as me. There's the issue of the group versus the individual. History notwithstanding, I'm just not ready to allow myself to be draped with the mantle of pale suckiness. An innocent black shopper feels rightly outraged if a store clerk follows him around the store, based on his own racial fears and pre-conceptions: why should I accept the blame for what other white people who are not me did or are doing?

     If I want to hire a guy to paint my house, and you show up with your white face, and I say, "You know, I really wanted to give the job to an erstwhile disadvantaged minority: got any friends of color?" that could be seen as a noble attempt to right historic inequalities. But from your point of view, from the perspective of a disappointed house painter trying to get work, you lost a gig through no fault of your own. And I would be acting in a prejudiced fashion, by punishing an individual for the supposed flaws of his identity group. 

     I don't want to make too much of this. Fox News sorts are already writhing on the ground, crying about white genocide and whatever. That's not what I'm saying here. Maybe this is just one guy extending an invitation in a ham-handed fashion, forgetting that lumping together anyone's race, even a notorious race with a catalogue of horrors as long as the white race's, is not a winning strategy to get a busy guy to give up an evening to entertain his bar full of friends. I may be a white person, but that's not all I am.

     

       

      

National Geographic's amazing journey with youngest face transplant recipient

A surgical resident carefully cradles Katie Stubblefield's head to keep it still in the intensive care unit of the Cleveland Clinic after the 31-hour face transplant featured in "The Story of a Face" on the cover of the September issue of National Geographic. | Photograph by Lynn Johnson/National Geographic

     Regular readers know that I've occasionally written about the challenges confronting those with faces far from the norm, particularly in "Face Fear," written for Mosaic in 2015. I wanted to share this story because it seemed an important step in the mass media—assuming such a thing still exists—portraying the disfigured. Given that most magazines meticulously photoshop already beautiful models to give their newsstand sales and extra twist, I thought it particularly bold of the National Geographic that they put Katie on its cover, and wanted to draw further attention to he issue.

     On March 25, 2014, Katie Stubblefield found texts from another girl on her boyfriend's phone. She confronted him and he broke up with her. Distraught, the Mississippi teenager took her brother's hunting rifle, jammed the barrel under her chin and pulled the trigger.
     "Gone were part of her forehead; her nose and sinuses; her mouth, except for the corners of her lips; and much of her mandible and maxilla, the bones that make up the jaws and front of the face," Joanna Connors writes in an extraordinary article, "Katie's New Face," in the September National Geographic magazine.
     Last year Stubblefield became the 40th recipient of a face transplant and, at 21, the youngest ever. 
     First surgeons had to save her life, had to find a way to cover the hole blown in the middle of her face. They built a crude nose and upper lip from thigh tissue, a chin and lower lip from her Achilles tendon. Scanning her sister's jaw as a model, they built Katie a jaw out of titanium.  

Used with permission of National Geographic

     
     The result was a noseless, lipless mask, criss-crossed with deep scars that Katie playfully nicknamed "Shrek."
     She went on the transplant list. After a year, in May, 2017, a donor face became available. The operation, at the Cleveland Clinic, the nation's center for face transplant surgery, took 31-hours, the first 16 carefully detaching the donor face. There is an extraordinary, fold-out photo in the National Geographic showing surgeons gathered around the disembodied face, hands folded reverently, gazing down at it.
     Attaching the face took another 15 hours, the cheeks of Katie's new face flushing as surgeons connected major arteries.
     The editors of National Geographic chose to put Katie, pre-surgery, on its cover, in profile, holding flowers, which is where I noticed her at a newsstand on my way through O'Hare last week. I flipped through the magazine, asking myself, "Do I really want this in the house?" I put it back. At Denver, I saw it a second time, and passed again.
     Back at Chicago, I bought a copy, wondering about the reaction to a story that some readers, editor-in-chief Susan Goldberg admitted, "may find very difficult to look at."

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'Nobody's friend'—Rahm Emanuel's place in history

Past mayors of Chicago on display in the outer office of the mayor, 5th floor, City Hall

     Roswell B. Mason. Monroe Heath. Thomas Hoyne...
     Most of the 53 men and one woman who were mayor Chicago before Rahm Emanuel are not cherished in the hearts and minds of the grateful city they once served.
     Hempstead Washburne. William E. Dever. Frank J. Corr....
     They're barely remembered at all—and no, the Washburne Trade Academy wasn't named for the former mayor. Different Washburne.
     So with Emanuel's surprise announcement Tuesday that he will not seek a third term, the immediate question is: where in the pantheon Chicago mayors will history place Emanuel? How will he be remembered? With respect? Contempt? Or do the waters of oblivion close over him?
     The short answer is: that depends.
     Most Chicago mayors served briefly and were forgotten swiftly. The city initially elected its mayors to a one-year, then a two-year term, and the first 22 mayors each served just one. Then Francis Sherman, mayor from 1841 to 1842, broke tradition and won a second term 20 years after he left office, then a third, making him both the city's 5th and 23rd mayor.
     In terms of longevity, Emanuel's eight years in office puts him easily into the top 10, behind Carter Harrison Sr. (8 1/2 years), his son, Carter Harrison Jr. and William Hale Thompson (12 years apiece), the under-appreciated Edwin J. Kelly (14 years) and the Daleys, Richard J. and Richard M., at 21 and 22 years respectively.
     We're biased toward our own times, lending them more significance than they ultimately merit in the sweep of history. Eugene Sawyer is remembered today because many living Chicagoans remember him. It is a safe bet that his two years in office in the late '80s will not reverberate down the ages, the way that most Chicagoans do not generally know that one mayor, Carter Harrison Sr., was assassinated in his own home, two days before the end of the 1893 World's Columbian Fair.
Where does Emanuel fit?

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The Saturday Snapshot #5

Photo by Tom Peters

        Today's snapshot comes from Tom Peters—that's No. 2 for him, if you're keeping track. It's of the Kankakee River at Momence, and for those who, like me, had no flippin' idea where Momence is, my special journalistic skills uncovered that it is a small town about 50 miles due south of the Loop.
      The downtown is well-preserved—it was used for some exterior scenes in the 2002 Tom Hanks movie, "Road to Perdition." Not his best film, true, but it had its premiere at the Chicago Theater, and Hanks delighted the audience by showing up and giving us all a wave. Well, I thought it was cool he showed up; I really can't speak for everybody else.
     I can't find another town in American called "Momence"—named for a local Potawatomi leader, Isidore Momence, or Moness. Though to be honest, my search was startlingly brief. It's been a long week, and you're invited to prove me wrong.
     Momence's 19th century history seems romantically rough-edged.

Poster from 1968 festival

     "Here supplies of powder and shot were to be had," Burt E. Burroughs wrote in his 1923 Tales of An Old Border Town and Along the Kankakee, "and here, also, a fellow with a 'thirst' could deluge the inner man to his heart's content with no one to say him nay, so long as he had a raccoon or mink pelt left to pay for it."
    Nor is Momence's charm confined entirely to the dimly-lit halls and corridors of the times long gone. For the past 81 years, Momence has held an annual Gladiolus Festival. This year's was Aug. 8-12—just missed it!—and included a "Kid's Parade" (that must be some kid) a Reptile Show, a Flea Market and a "Princess and Queen Coronation."
    Checking over the rules for that last event, I couldn't help but pause over this note on Glad Fest Royalty competition essays: "The candidates will be answering a simple question in a written format and provide an interview with a panel of outside judges. The candidate's answers will not be judged on grammar, punctuation or length. They will be solely judged on content as it pertains to the topic."
     I might argue that grammar, punctuation and length all speak to quality, and have a direct bearing on whether any individual, no matter the size of the town they dwell in, can legitimately entertain aspirations to royalty. There seems to be a story buried there—my guess is there were complaints about a past winning entry, because the rules go on to observe that a past winner was very long, leaving off "So stop griping." But it does not behoove any self-respecting city slicker to put small town charm under too fine a microscope. Besides, my plans for next summer are completely open: a visit to the Gladiolus Festival might be in order, and I don't want to turn them against me before I even show up.

Flashback 1997: Outlook for immigrant takes a turn for the better

      Readers of yesterday's flashback wondered what happened to Riva Feldsher after the column ran. I had a vague memory of checks coming into the paper, no more. But I looked, and found this, which will have to do for today—I didn't write a Friday column, because I wrote something longer for Sunday about Rahm Emanuel's place in history, or lack of which. 

  

     Riva Feldsher has given her cat food to a neighbor who actually owns a cat.
     The 83-year-old immigrant from the former Soviet Union bought the food because at 24 cents a can it represented cheap food for herself, she said.
     But now, after living under the threat of losing her federal welfare benefits, Feldsher's life is looking up.
     Since a March 27 Chicago Sun-Times article on the situation Feldsher shares with thousands of legal immigrants in Illinois who face losing of their federal income because of welfare reform, she has applied for citizenship.
     She is taking advantage of a change in the Immigration and Naturalization Service's rules, which now allow disabled immigrants to apply for citizenship without passing a written test. Feldsher is nearly blind and is mentally frail.
     However, immigrants still must take a "meaningful oath," a requirement that troubles advocates.
     "While we understand the political pressure the INS is under, we're concerned that many people will not meet that strict requirement," said Barbara Otto, head of the SSI Coalition for a Responsible Safety Net.
     Immigrants with Alzheimer's disease, or those with significant mental impairment, could be denied benefits, she said.
     The Sun-Times article about Feldsher got a strong response from readers. Some expressed sympathy and sent checks.
     Others were outraged that foreign nationals can come to this country and receive "handouts." They suggested that whoever sponsored Feldsher should take care of her.
     "In Riva Feldsher's case, the person who sponsored her is her sister, who is also on (public aid) and doesn't have any income to support her," said Donna Pezzuto, assistant director of the Council for Jewish Elderly, which helps Feldsher, who came here six years ago, and people like her function in society.
     Pezzuto points out that while there was still a Soviet Union, the United States was interested in getting people out from behind the Iron Curtain.
     "In the past, the sponsor was not legally responsible for supporting them," she said. "Most of these people were refugees, fleeing religious persecution, and we opened our arms to them."
     Otto said that in many cases people were in good health when they came to this country, but deteriorated with age.
     "What are we going to say to them, 'Tough luck'?" Otto said. "These are people the United States said could come to this country. We said, 'We will grant you refugee status.' Now we're changing the rules."
     Otto said the SSI Coalition is filing a class-action lawsuit against the Social Security Administration, alleging that the status of immigrants had been changed unlawfully.
     In a related matter, a bill that would restore partial benefits to elderly and disabled immigrants denied federal benefits passed the Illinois Legislature April 17. A similar bill is being assembled in the U.S. House by Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D.-Ill.) to return benefits to legal immigrants and pay the cost by reducing "corporate welfare" to profitable businesses.
     Gutierrez will lead a protest at the White House Wednesday to draw attention to the issue. A protest also will be held in Chicago.
     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, May 5, 1997

Flashback 1997—Tired, poor and out of luck ; Welfare cuts hit immigrants hard

     I was talking about a future story with an editor and this column came to mind—you know a subject has affected you when you remember the name of somebody from a story after 20 years. I certainly remember Riva Feldsher.

     When Riva Feldsher got a letter from the government telling her that the $484 monthly check she lives on would stop coming in 90 days, she wasn't upset.
     The letter was written in English. Feldsher, a Russian immigrant, can't read English.
     Had the letter been written in Russian it wouldn't have made a difference because Feldsher, 83, is nearly blind after a stroke several years ago.
     Once the news was explained to her, Feldsher reacted with resignation.
     "What am I going to do?" she said through an interpreter. "I am an old person. The only choice I have is to go on the street and die there."
     Feldsher is one of about 22,000 elderly or disabled Illinois immigrants — 10,500 over age 75 — facing a similar prospect over the next several months, as government subsidies are taken away from them in the name of welfare reform.
     "It is going to be devastating," said Barbara Otto, executive director of the SSI Coalition for a Responsible Safety Net. "People count on this monthly cash assistance to pay for housing, clothing, food."
     Karen Popowski, executive director of the Polish American Association, called the cuts "a national tragedy in the making."
     "It seems unreasonable and inhumane to achieve cost savings by denying subsistence benefits to elderly and disabled legal immigrants," she said.
     Two federal programs are affected by the cuts — Supplemental Security Income, or SSI, and food stamps. Last August, President Clinton signed the welfare bill, and it will go into effect between April 1 and the end of August.   
     Chicago's Latino Institute estimated that the state will lose $130 million a year in federal aid.      

     "Even if private agencies and religious-based providers fill the gap, there is no way they can replace $105 million in lost benefit in Illinois," Otto said. "Absolutely no way."
     The Latino Institute and the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago hired the Urban Institute of Washington, D.C., to study the taxes paid in Illinois by immigrants vs. the benefits they received. 
     "We found that Illinois immigrants pay $3 million more in taxes than they collect in benefits," said Pamela Seubert, director of government programs for the Jewish Federation. "So ironically, while people talk about immigrants being a burden to society, their tax contributions leave money on the table for the rest of us."
     To escape the cuts, immigrants have several options. They can prove they have been employed for a total of 10 years while in the United States; that they are veterans or on active duty in the military, or that they have become U.S. citizens.
     None of these options is available to Feldsher, who came to this country in 1991 from Kiev. Her husband and her only son had died, and her younger sister in Chicago was all the family she had left.
     Feldsher expected, she said, to enjoy a small stipend similar to the one the Soviet government paid in consideration for the years she worked as a bookkeeper.
     Asked if she could learn English and pass the citizenship test, Feldsher hurried to bring out her Stalin-era medals to show she was a hard worker who helped win the war against the Germans.
      "She is worried the government thinks she is a thief or a bad person," said Jane Tannenbaum, a social worker assigned to Feldsher. "She does not understand how the government can take away her 'pension' — she thinks of it as a pension. She takes it very personally."
     Asked whether Feldsher could pass the test, Tannenbaum said: "She thinks the television is talking to her. Sometimes she talks back. Since she had a stroke, she is nearly blind and faints."
     "I can't pass it," Feldsher said. "I can remember everything going on in my childhood. But not much else."
     Even sharp-minded immigrants who want to become citizens might find themselves in a Catch-22, losing benefits at least for a few months, because of delays in the system.
     "A legal immigrant to the United States cannot even file their application for naturalization until they have been a resident in the U.S. for four years and nine months," Seubert said. "The minimum amount of time it takes to process an application is six months."
    But the wait to become a citizen is expected to be even longer.

      "The INS has now elongated the FBI fingerprint checks— which are required by statute — and the INS expects 1.8 million applications this year, as opposed to 1.2 million last year, without additional resources. So we expect to elongate the minimum to nine months and probably in excess of a year," Seubert said.
     Rob Koon, a spokesman for the Immigration and Naturalization Service in Washington, confirmed Seubert's figures, but added that the increase in applications for naturalization cannot be attributed to welfare reform.
     "We've been seeing an upswing in naturalization applications since fiscal 1992," he said.
     Advocates for immigrants and the elderly find it a cruel irony that welfare reform should be balanced on the backs of powerless immigrants.
     "The purpose of welfare reform was to move people to the workplace (who) should be working, but 40 percent of the cuts (under welfare reform) are in SSI, a program that supports elderly and disabled," Otto said. "The public does not understand where these cuts took place, I believe. The general public did not intend for us to rip away the safety net from people who will not transfer to work or cannot naturalize because of the disabling process of aging."
     Federal officials hope that changes can be made before the new law transforms into widespread human hardship.
     "The president, when he signed the welfare bill, mentioned this as the part he was trying to fix," said Hannah Rosenthal, regional director of the federal Health and Human Services Department. "He has proposed that elderly legal immigrants should be allowed to get their SSI. He is pushing that, but Congress is being difficult."
     Rosenthal said the president's proposal has "a chance of working," which does not translate into much hope for the elderly immigrants of Illinois.
     "Now that they understand this means they will be losing their money, their anxiety rate is even higher," said Donna Pazutto of the Council for Jewish Elderly.
     For Riva Feldsher, the anxiety is expressed in hoarding what little income she has.
     "She has started spending just $1 a day because she thinks she will be out on the street and need money for food," said Tannenbaum.
     What she is worried about losing is a $250-a-month studio apartment, decorated with a huge photo of her deceased husband, a photo of her sister, and three identical pictures of a grinning little boy, cut from cereal boxes, carefully propped up at each place at her tiny kitchen table.
     They keep her company, her social worker explained.
                                —Originally published in the Sun-Times March 27, 1997

To find out what happened next to Riva Feldsher, click here. for the follow-up.