Another piece of Chicago’s industry moves to far sout’east corner of city

Reports of a company that shreds scrap metal choosing to locate along the Calumet River in Chicago’s 10^th Ward really isn’t that surprising.

Remnant of Republic Steel plant whose site will someday have a scrap yard. Photographs by Gregory Tejeda

What caught my attention in the reports about General Iron Industries is that the scrap yard is leaving its current location, which is along a portion of the Chicago River in the Lincoln Park neighborhood.

WHILE I REALIZE that Lincoln Park hasn’t always been the upscale place for Chicago’s excessively wealthy to live (and at one point in the 1960s was close to evolving into an ethnic enclave for people of Puerto Rican descent), it makes me snicker that such an industrial company was ever located there to begin with.

It is a reminder that lakefront (and riverfront) property once was viewed as prime sites for industry. You could bring in your raw materials on barges and dump your waste into the water.

That is, until all those pesky environmentalists started spewing their rhetoric about the need for clean water and public health. How times change!

Which is why I’m sure General Iron is moving on from their long-time site. They’re no longer going to have to listen to the complaints from area residents who can’t stand the sight of piles of scrap lying around near their million dollar-plus homes and the stench of certain metallic odors that can waft through the air.

Salt piles amongst area's cleaner substances

NOW, THEY’RE LOCATING to a place that long has been a prime location for all the kind of industry that no one – if they can at all avoid it – wants to live in proximity to.

Specifically, they’re moving to a site along the Calumet River in the East Side neighborhood; that part of Chicago where you’re south of Lake Michigan altogether and the eastern boundary is State Line Road (a.k.a., the Illinois/Indiana border). They’re actually going to be on part of the site that once was Republic Steel – the site of that Memorial Day 1937 labor protest that ended with police beating dozens of picketing union members and killing 10 of them.

Along the Calumet River

It is a place where the locals are used to certain foul stenches wafting through the air. But since they don’t have “million-dollar homes” in places like the East Side or South Deering, the political people don’t seem to care. Where else would one find a sub-neighborhood literally known as “Slag Valley” because of the piles of iron slag and petroleum coke that lie out in the open near homes – no matter how much the locals complain.

I’m familiar with the area because it is the part of Chicago that is my birthplace. Specifically, the South Chicago neighborhood, but I have cousins who live in all the other neighborhoods that comprise the 10^th Ward.

I KNOW FULL well how paying a visit to certain members of the family can be an unpleasant experience – and not because those cousins are annoying. It’s because the stink can be overpowering, and the sight of waste can be unpleasant.

Of course, this attitude is because much of the industry that sparked development of such neighborhoods has long withered away.

There no longer are steel mills working round-the-clock, and local residents justified the unpleasantness of the environment as evidence that they had working-class jobs that actually paid a living wage.

I am the grandson of two such men who worked in steel mills for a living, which is how my family developed an attachment to the area – it was near their jobs. Some of the old-timers who remain claim that old days of pollution were bearable because it was evidence they were employed.

BUT NOW THAT the jobs aren’t so plentiful, some people want to act as though we ought to be thankful for the few that remain. And may well try to act as though complaints about pollution are somehow elitist rants by people who have to right to think of themselves as elite.

When 10^th Ward Alderman Susan Sadlowski Garza says, “we’re tired of being the city’s dumping ground” (as she told the Chicago Tribune recently), I’m sure certain others in Lincoln Park are coping the attitude of “better you than me” in terms of having to cope with pollution.

Envision one-time police car soaring through air

How polluted is the part of Chicago my family hails from? One can’t help but note the continued failure of plans to turn the one-time U.S. Steel Southworks site into something economically viable – with some hints being that the pollution remaining from the plant that closed over a quarter-of-a-century ago is too toxic for serious development.

A place that too many Chicagoans regard as something utterly ignorable – except for when they stumble onto the old “The Blues Brothers” film and once again see that car-jumping scene over the 95^th Street bridge – which is only about 2 miles from the site where General Iron plans to set up its new home by 2020.

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Cat food in the beef tacos? Or just nitwit nonsense from the nativists?

Perhaps I’m just taking trivial trash on Facebook far too seriously. But I have been getting outraged by a page meant to celebrate a pair of neighborhoods on the city’s Far South Side that has turned into a rant about the content of Mexican food.

The building still stands. The food does not. But some still feel compelled to take the cheap shots. Photograph provided by the Smokin', Chokin' and Chowin' with the King weblog.

The page in question is meant to give people a chance to share their memories of the South Chicago and East Side neighborhoods – which are the ones in I was born and which I still have some relatives living.

THERE IS ONE stream of thought now existing on the page that talks of the Mexican Inn – that triangular shaped restaurant at 95^th Street, Ewing Avenue and Avenue L – not far from that open bridge the Blues Brothers leaped over in that 1980 film.

The thread has been out there for months. But in the past couple of weeks, there are those individuals who have felt compelled to inform us that the restaurant used cat food in the preparation of its tacos and other Mexican (actually, more Tex-Mex than real Mexicano) food.

While some people say it wasn’t cat food as much as real-live kitties being cooked up in preparation of the Mexican dishes.

When some (actually many) people felt compelled to post items saying that such stories were nonsense, there were responses from the few insisting that EVERYBODY in the neighborhood knew all about this. It just had to be true!

PERSONALLY, I HAVE always known there are some people who are nit-witted enough to want to believe stupid stuff and tall tales, particularly if it is something hateful about another group. Perhaps their own lives are lacking that they feel the need to trash someone else to make themselves feel better?

And yes, the idea that some people are pathetic enough to want to rant about anything Mexican in nature is not a surprise. Particularly since the names of the individuals who were spewing these feline tales seemed to be (by my judgement, at least) Polish or Italian.

Probably people who voted for Donald Trump (17.05 percent of the 10^th Ward’s presidential vote last year went for The Donald, with some precincts exceeding 40 percent) and are upset about his recent political defeats on various issues.

But seriously, who feels compelled to spread old rumors and rubbish about a restaurant that – while an iconic part of life in the 10^th Ward – has been out-of-business for several years?

THERE ARE THOSE who say the Mexican Inn (which dated back to the early 1960s) was one of the first Mexican-inspired restaurants in Chicago, and it lasted several years into the 21^st Century.

I know some people of a certain generation (in their 60s or early 70s, and NOT of any Spanish-speaking ethnic orientation) who say the first time they ever ate a taco in their lives was at the Mexican Inn!

But while the building remains and there are some faint traces of the paint on the outside walls that used to advertise the restaurant, the food service has been long gone.

Even the more contemporary restaurant that the family tried opening in Dyer, Ind., has since gone out of business. From what I hear, many people felt the new restaurant was “too expensive,” although many of those people struck me as being cheap and complaining in the way that some can’t get over the fact that a Chicago Tribune no longer costs a quarter the way it did when I was in high school – and is actually now $1.99 per copy!

PERSONALLY, I REMEMBER eating there as a kid. Both when my family was still city-residing proper, and later when we had gone suburban (Lansing and Calumet City, to be exact) and made trips back to the city to “visit grandma” or other cousins.

In my mind, the Mexican Inn is a place where I could get some basic Mexican food. I have since found restaurants offering much more elaborate Mexican cuisine, but that doesn’t degrade the “Inn’s” memory to me. Which is why I hadn’t been there in years, and must admit to being shocked when I learned a couple of years ago that it was gone.

But other people, it seems, are pathetic enough to want to spread the trash talk. They’re not happy enough that the restaurant no longer exists – they have to piddle on its memory.

Although from my perspective, all they have really done is forgotten to unzip their pants first – leaving the equivalent of a wet spot all over the front of their trousers.

  -30-

Is South Works the equivalent of galaxy far, far away from rest of Chicago?

Perhaps it is all too appropriate that the one-time site of the U.S. Steel South Works plant is being offered up as a location for that museum filmmaker George Lucas wants to create.

What will ever become of the one-time U.S. Steel South Works site?

For there are times that the southeastern corner of Chicago itself gets treated as being a place, “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.”

FOR THAT SITE on the lakefront (from about 79^th Street to about 95^th Street) is one that has sat vacant for decades, with the residue of the days when steel was made there still manages to pollute the surrounding neighborhoods.

Who knows what will ever become of the more than 600 acres of land (larger than the Loop)? Will anything ever become of the site? Will it remain a vacant hole in Chicago that most people aren’t aware of because they rarely ever set foot anywhere near the city’s 10^th Ward (of which the site is the northernmost edge)?

In my case, I have always taken an interest in the area because it is my birthplace. I have some relatives who still live there. South Chicago and the surrounding communities are the “old neighborhood” to me – the one where I used to travel to when visiting my grandmother.

Who was never comfortable living anywhere else.

FOR YEARS, THERE has been talk of turning the site into a housing development – one that would take advantage of being on the shore of Lake Michigan. Creating the possibility of some homes with boat slips. You could literally go sailing into the Great Lakes – an option many people in much wealthier communities on the north lakefront would love to have.

One fantasy South Works proposal.

But there was always hostile reception from people who lived in The Bush – the nearby neighborhood that was about as un-elite as the Lakeside development would have been upscale.

And with the economy being what it is and new development everywhere being on hold, the South Works site remained a place where real estate developers would look and dream while nothing was accomplished.

All this delay eventually caused U.S. Steel (which still owns the land) to give up. The developers with dreams were forced to admit that the Lakeside community (which looks nice in architectural drawings) will never become reality.

Will this become another fantasy project?

THAT IS WHAT led to this week’s political speculation that the lakefront site could now somehow be turned over to the Lucas project – the one in which he wants to develop a museum paying tribute to assorted artistic mediums, but which I suspect many people mistakenly think will be some sort of Star Wars-themed amusement park.

Personally, I’d be amazed if the Lucas people would be interested in the site – in fact, I fully expect they’ll find some other city in which to develop their project.

Chicago probably lost its chance to have the Lucas museum when a judge thwarted plans to build the structure in the parking lots just south of Soldier Field.

Tenth Ward Alderman Susan Sadlowski Garza may have told the Chicago Sun-Times how the site is closer to downtown Chicago than Versailles is to Paris, but I suspect Lucas wants something with an up-close view of the downtown skyline (and not the one you need binoculars to look at like the one at the South Works site).

THIS MAY BECOME a site too isolated for Chicago to develop – largely because a lot of our political people have such a small vision of what is truly the city.

This is long-gone from 10th Ward site

Which is a shame, because the site is so open and spacious the potential to do something there is great – for people who can think on a large-enough scale.

That is the problem. Take the fact that developers wanted to use part of the land for the proposed Barack Obama presidential library and museum – an idea that was rejected because the presidential aides were skeptical anything else would be built there.

A judgment that seems to be more correct with each passing day – one that hurts us all by depriving us of what could be prime lakeshore for public use and winds up being the equivalent of a gaping hole (a cavity, of sorts) in the Chicago smile!

  -30-

What a plunge!!! Was it worth it?

It’s not something we hear that much of – a suicidal jump off the Chicago Skyway into the Calumet River.

That's quite a plunge from bridge to river. Photographs by Gregory Tejeda

We’re more likely to hear of someone taking a plunge into the Chicago River – where the pollution likely would infect them with something more deadly than exposure to icy-cold water.

PART OF IT is that the Skyway is 10^th Ward – that far southeastern corner of Chicago that often feels ever so isolated. Plus there’s the fact that getting onto the Skyway isn’t that easy without a car. And even with one, there really isn’t a place to park it before jumping – you’re likely to get hit by a motorist somewhere along the 7.8 mile stretch before you can take the leap.

Unless you want to stop off at the McDonald’s franchise on the Skyway near the Illinois/Indiana border. How depressing would it be for one’s final image of life to be Ronald McDonald and the Hamburglar? Or to learn that the particular McDonald’s franchise has gone out of business. No final glimpse of “Mayor McCheese” for you, bud.

So it is with that premise in mind that I read the news report from the Chicago Sun-Times about the person who got onto the Skyway, then took a plunge into the Calumet River.

Which for all I know is even more contaminated with industrial waste than the Chicago River ever was.

The Calumet River, a place where salt and sludge are stored openly

OF COURSE, CONSIDERING that the Chicago Skyway toll road is nearly 200 feet in the air, that would be one heck of a plunge – one that theoretically could kill someone before being exposed to the Calumet River water.

I was surprised to learn that the person who jumped Monday afternoon was actually still alive when pulled from the water by Chicago Fire Department rescue crews.

Taken to Advocate Trinity Hospital, the person was listed in critical condition initially, but then later died. Officials were not immediately willing to identify the woman, but said it is an apparent suicide.

Now I don’t know anything more specific about this incident other than what the Sun-Times was able to publish on their web site. I don’t know anything about who this individual was – or why she felt that life wasn’t worth living any longer.

The area bridge most people know - the Blues Brothers

ALTHOUGH IT WOULDN’T shock me to learn in the future that some of my cousins, aunts or uncles who still live on the Southeast Side may well have come into contact with this individual at some point in their lives.

Neighborhoods like South Chicago, the East Side, South Deering and Hegewisch do have the feel at times of isolated rural towns – feeling cut off from the rest of the city and sometimes even from themselves.

I do sympathize with this person, wishing they could somehow have found something in life to make them realize just how much it is worth living.

I know in my own case, the recent death of my brother has had me pondering more often in recent weeks about what the afterlife, if there is any, is truly like.

Truly an isolated part of Chicago

BUT IT ALSO has me convinced of the need to make what is left of the rest of my life as worthwhile as possible.

Because I suspect if there is an afterlife and I am destined to meet up with my brother again, he’ll be waiting for me and would pound the living daylights out of me if I were to let my loss of him totally devastate me into accomplishing nothing else with my time alive on Planet Earth.

I’d like to believe that the most significant thing I accomplish in my life has yet to be done. That’s the best way I can think of to pay tribute.

  -30-

No political bets -- this means St. Louis won’t get Cubbie-blue cheesecake

A part of me is pleased to learn there won’t be an official mayoral bet connected to the latest round of playoffs that began Friday between the Cubs and the St. Louis Cardinals.

EMANUEL: How will he back Cubbies?

For a part of me has always found it silly to see two political people try to mooch some public attention off of a ballgame, and also for the two public officials to get contributions from local corporate entities to provide the actual payoff.

IT’S NOT LIKE Mayor Rahm Emanuel was offering anything out of his own pocket to the mayor of St. Louis if the Cardinals manage to whomp all over the Cubs – and if the owners of the McNally’s tavern in the Morgan Park neighborhood wind up losing their shirts from all the free beer they give away IF lots of Cardinal home runs wind up leading to a Cubs defeat.

But while Emanuel offered a bet with the mayor of St. Louis tied to the results of the playoffs that will run into next week, it seems Francis Slay won’t play along.

Slay let it be known on Friday that he’s not interested in offering up a St. Louis-themed payoff – in the event the Cubs prevail.

Perhaps the idea of a Lou Malnati’s pizza and Portillo’s Italian beef combo, chicken vesuvio from Harry Caray’s restaurant, a Cubbie-blue Eli’s cheesecake, tickets to the top of the Willis Tower and a river cruise along with a financial contribution to a youth-related charity just didn’t appeal to a city that thinks of fried ravioli and Anheuser-Busch beer products as haute cuisine.

THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE reported how Slay didn’t offer up a reason for his rejection of a bet. Although the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported back in 2013 that Slay also refused to make a bet with Boston Mayor Tom Menino on the World Series that year.

As he put it back then, not engaging in gambling, “frees up time of staffers,” while also jokingly saying that making bets on behalf of the Cardinals (with their history of National League championships) “isn’t fair to other mayors.”

SLAY: Too confident?!?

It’s just that the overly-commercial nature of these bets makes them seem all kind of phony – as though Emanuel who has never hid his lack of intense interest in sports is trying to buy an “every man” image. Even though anybody who backed him for office probably did so because he isn’t every man.

It makes me wonder that should it turn out the Cubs manage to beat both St. Louis and the winner of the Los Angeles/New York playoff matchup to win their first National League championship since 1945, would Emanuel actually show up for any World Series games played at Wrigley Field?

I COULD EASILY envision the boos roaring down from the stands if Rahm were to show his face at the ballpark, trying to pretend that wearing a Cubs warmup jacket somehow makes him seem like a real baseball fan!

A Sout' Side blow against Cubbie cockiness?

Maybe on some level, Emanuel would be spared that spectacle if the St. Louis Cardinals were to prevail. Or would Rahm prefer it if the Cubs won a round – then lost to either Los Angeles or New York?

Anything to spare him a World Series spectacle!

Of course, if he didn’t show up at the ballpark for a Chicago-based World Series, that would be even worse for him. There are those baseball-oriented people who STILL rant nearly four decades later about the fact that then-President Jimmy Carter only attended one ball game during his entire presidency.

AND THAT DIDN’T come until the next-to-last year in office, when Carter attended the final game in which Willie Stargell’s Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Baltimore Orioles (which used to be considered D.C.’s “hometown” team).

So what does it really mean that we won’t have a mayoral bet on this round of playoffs that feeds off the natural rivalry between Chicago and St. Louis as for who’s the dominant Midwestern city?

TUNNEY: Will he take up Cub cause for his ward?

Maybe something more honest than pseudo-bets that are nothing more than free advertising for local businesses. Although when Slay refused to make a bet two years ago, a St. Louis alderman rose up to bet with a Boston councilman.

Perhaps Tom Tunney, the 44^th Ward alderman whose ward includes Wrigley Field, ought to be making a bet with a St. Louis counterpart – offering up some of the famed cinnamon rolls from his Ann Sathers restaurant as the Chicago payoff!

  -30-

EXTRA: A 20-vote lead, will it hold?

Tuesday was the final day by which Chicago Elections Board officials had to validate and count provisional ballots from the April 7 elections, while also processing absentee ballots that were put in the mail (and post-marked accordingly) by Election Day.

The final day of the canvass and the announcement of results for those municipal elections is April 28.

FOR MOST POLITICAL people, it doesn’t matter. There was no way Jesus Garcia would close a 75,000 vote gap to overtake Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

But in the 10^th Ward (the land where Indiana is the nearby reality that gives us a Whiting-based oil refinery that really stinks up the air), there was always the chance of a last-minute shift in votes that could alter the aldermanic election results.

Challenger Susan Sadlowski Garza went from a seven-vote lead over Alderman John Pope on Election Night, to an 89-vote lead once all the precincts were counted to a 33-vote lead once the first rounds of absentee ballots were counted.

As of Tuesday, she was down to a 20-vote lead. That’s 5,825 votes for Garza to 5,805 for Pope. As in Garza, a Chicago Teachers Union official who got in the race originally thinking she’d be a running-mate of sorts to Karen Lewis’ mayoral aspirations, has 50.09 percent voter support.

THAT’S CLOSE! THAT’S got to hurt for Pope – a 16-year member of the City Council – if he comes that close to winning re-election, but doesn’t. It would take something of historic proportions for him to prevail now!

By this point, it would seem that Garza is going into the history books along with Lyndon Johnson’s 1948 victory for the U.S. Senate – an 87-vote victory margin, albeit with over 1 million votes cast to the 11,600-plus for the 10th Ward election.

Someone may wind up tagging her with a nickname as memorable as “Landslide Lyndon.” Right now, my mind is a blank. Although I’m sure Garza will settle for the label that ultimately is the only one that matters.

“Winner.”

  -30-

A mere 33-vote lead and declining; could Rahm ally retain aldermanic seat?

The aldermanic run-off election for the 10^th Ward (far Southeast Chicago) is getting closer and closer as people try to figure out whether Alderman John Pope actually lost his bid for re-election to a fifth term in office.


Pope, who has been an alderman since 1999 and either is credited, or trashed, for being a solid supporter (100 percent, Pope critics claim) of Mayor Rahm Emanuel, got the largest number of votes back in February, but not enough for a majority.


WHICH IS WHY he had to endure a run-off election against Susan Garza, a counselor at Jane Addams Elementary School in the East Side neighborhood and an official with the Chicago Teachers Union.

It would seem that most of the people who backed one of the other five aldermanic candidates in February united last week in their opposition to giving Pope a chance (if he makes it through another full four-year term) to be a 20-year alderman.

Because when all the votes in the 36 precincts of the 10^th Ward were counted following Election Day, Garza had an 89-vote lead. She went so far as to declare herself the winner.

Although Pope was more low-key, realizing that this election in a part of Chicago often ignored by the rest of the city (although which I pay attention to because it’s my birthplace, the South Chicago neighborhood to be exact) could still swing in his favor.

IT WAS, AFTER all, just an 89-vote lead – so close that both candidates could accurately say they got 50 percent of the vote (Garza rounds down, while Pope rounds up).

There also were the dreaded absentee ballots, dreaded at least by those who want simple election outcomes that are known by about 9 p.m. on Election Night. Most definitely not those where we have to wait until the April 28 deadline for the Chicago Elections Board to complete its canvass.

For what it’s worth, by the end of the first day of counting absentee ballots, Garza was down to a 44-vote lead.

The elections board’s website indicates that by the resumption of counting on Monday, Garza has a 33-vote lead over Pope – 5,797 votes for Garza to 5,764 votes for Pope.

COULD WE WIND up with coming days chipping into that lead more and more to the point where Pope winds up the victor because of those people who wanted to cast ballots, but for whatever reason couldn’t make it to either an early voting center or a polling place last week?

After all, it takes only a one-vote margin to win an election. Who’s to say how funky the counting could get?

It is what motivated Garza’s supporters on Saturday to hold what they called an “End Corruption!” rally outside of Pope’s aldermanic office on 106^th Street. Accusations were tossed out by Garza backers about how Pope backers harassed and threatened people, while also mailing in absentee ballots that had been time-stamped prior to the April 7 election date.

Even though the rules say that the key to a valid absentee ballot is that the postmark on the mailing be prior to Election Day. So ballots could still, theoretically, be showing up and wind up being counted. A stamp on the ballot wouldn’t mean anything!

UNLESS YOU BELIEVE the incumbent alderman is engaged in a conspiracy with the U.S. Postal Department, this one may be a bit of a stretch. Although the whole concept of votes still coming in and being counted relies so much on the public trust that it is no wonder some people are willing to believe the worst.

It is why Chicago Sun-Times reports are intriguing about how the identity of those who cast absentee ballots from the 10^th Ward were inadvertently revealed. Making it possible theoretically that someone is trying to keep track as to which people voted the “wrong” way and need to be punished.

So for that ward most of us only notice on those occasions we’re looking down on it while driving through the Chicago Skyway, we don’t know the final count yet.

We’re going to have to wait and see whether it is Pope or Garza who winds up filing the request for a formal recount of Election Day results.

  -30-

EXTRA: On the shores of the Calumet (lake/river), 89 votes is victory margin

That final precinct is in. Aldermanic hopeful Susan Garza has an 89-vote lead over 10^th Ward Alderman John Pope. Some 5,747 ballots cast for Garza, compared to 5,658 for the incumbent, according to the Chicago Board of Elections.


The Chicago Teachers Union official and educator who campaigned on a platform that Pope was nothing more than a lackey for Mayor Rahm Emanuel may well have won!


OF COURSE, THERE’S also absentee ballots that may, or may not, change the vote margin. And the loser may well demand a recount, what with how close it is.

Although Garza gathered Wednesday night with supporters at Viveros, 9500 S. Avenue L, for what seems to be as close to a victory party as one can have without tempting fate.

“Our campaign will remain vigilant in observing the process by which (absentee ballots) are handled and counted, so the voice of the people is not stolen,” Garza said.

As for the 16^th Ward, Toni Foulkes has a 112-vote lead over Stephanie Coleman, Chris Taliaferro has a 500-vote lead over 29^th Ward Alderman Deborah Graham and 43^rd Ward Alderman Caroline Vickrey has a six-vote lead over Michele Smith. All with all precincts counted, the city Elections Board says.

SO IS ELECTION Day over? It depends on who you ask.

The ultimate “expert” on this issue may well be actor John Belushi’s “Blutto Blutarsky” character from “Animal House” when he screamed, “Did you say ‘over?’ Nothing is over until we decide it is!”

, in hearing the voices of people who have been ignored for so long, we together were able to upset the status quo and chart a new path for the forgotten 10th Ward," Garza said early Wednesday."Absentee ballots have yet to be counted completely, and our campaign will remain vigilant in observing the process by which they are handled and counted, so the voice of the people is not stolen."A Press Conference has been scheduled.....
WHEN: Tonight April 8th, 7:30PM
WHERE: VIVEROS - 9500 S. Ave.  -30-

EXTRA: Why can’t it be over?!?

I’m sure it’s frustrating for political operatives – you go through the rigamarole of a campaign season, exchange the political blows, the people express their will by voting.

Yet after all that, we still don’t know who won!

THAT SEEMS TO be the case in four of the city’s 50 wards. There are aldermen who don’t know if they have to begin planning for the next four years, or the next couple of weeks as they should clear out their offices and transition into the next part of their lives.

No ward, it seems, is any tighter than the 10^th – that part of Chicago at the far southeast corner filled with lots of contaminated industrial sites and where Indiana is merely the other side of State Line Road and NOT some esoteric concept.

Alderman John Pope, who has been in office since 1999, had 5,465 votes cast for him, compared to 5,472 for Susan Garza – a counselor at Jane Addams Elementary School and an official within the Chicago Teachers Union whose father was a long-time head of the United Steelworkers Union local. So close that both candidates can legitimately claim to have 50 percent of the vote – 50.03 percent and 49.97 percent.

There is one precinct (out of 36 in the ward) where votes still have to be counted, and Garza supporters are optimistic because it seems it is the East Side neighborhood precinct that contains the school itself, at 10810 S. Avenue H.

IT IS A precinct that, back in the Feb. 24 municipal elections, gave Garza 60 percent voter support, with Pope and the other five candidates running then taking the remaining 40 percent.

Garza backers said Wednesday they’re fairly sure they will take that precinct and wind up with more than a seven-vote lead.

Although they say Garza herself plans to wait about a week before any kind of election announcement is made. So we don't know yet if the ward that was the one-time political base of the Vrdolyak clan yet also has had a significant Latino population for decades will finally get its first Latina (by marriage) alderman.

For one thing, there is the potential that absentee ballots were cast in the 10^th Ward, which will still trickle in during the next coming days. Who’s to say a slim Pope lead won’t crop up? They also expect that since the election results will be close no matter what, that a recount of the votes will have to be done.

SO WHILE CLAIMS can be made that the City Council that Mayor Rahm Emanuel will have to deal with during his next term will be less sympathetic (so far, no one who ran for alderman as an Emanuel critic has lost), we don’t know the exact composition of the 50 aldermen.

As Chicago Teachers Union Vice President Jesse Sharkey said Wednesday of the Election results, “the mayor didn’t win the run-off election as much as he survived it.”

On the South Side, the 16^th Ward had a potential Emanuel opponent, Toni Foulkes, leading Stephanie Coleman by 50.96 percent to 49.04 percent. To the west, 29^th Ward challenger Chris Taliaferro is leading Alderman Deborah Graham 52 to 48 percent.

While on the North Side’s 43^rd Ward (including the Lincoln Park neighborhood), incumbent Alderman Michele Smith has just a bare 50.38 percent to 49.62 percent lead over Caroline Vickrey.

SO LIKE IT or not, this election cycle isn’t over yet. April 28 is the date that the Chicago Board of Elections has to complete its canvass and tell us the final official results – so that the transition to the newly-elected officials can take office at noon on May 18.

By then, we will be able to transition directly into the 2016 election cycle, for which some candidates already have started to campaign.

Ah, you have to love the never-ending campaigning for political office!

  -30-

Do political firings solve problems? Or merely sweep them under the carpet?

I wonder at times if political people view the hiring/firing process as being the equivalent of the confessional booth.


You know, go in there, tell the priest how much of a sinner you were, and you're forgiven -- no matter how bad your "sin" is.


IT SEEMS THAT political people think that whenever someone on their staff (or someone connected to them) screws up, all it takes is a dismissal; and then we're supposed to forget that the grievance ever occurred.


Instant forgiveness, it would seem.


Except for the political opponents of that person, who usually will go out of their way to keep that "sin" alive for as long as they wish -- whenever it serves their purposes.


This all popped into my head last week when 10th Ward Alderman John Pope let one of his aides go -- specifically, Thomas "T.J." Sadzak, who had worked for him since 2008 in terms of dealing with constituent complaints of 10th Ward residents.


BUT IT SEEMS that Sadzak had previously worked for the city's Streets and Sanitation department and had engaged in behavior so bad that he quit that job before he could be terminated -- and had actually been placed on a list of people whom are not eligible for city jobs. The city wound up having to pay nearly $99,000 to settle the resulting lawsuit filed by a fellow city worker.


But that list didn't apply to aldermanic staff hires, so Pope gave Sadzak a job -- one that he'd probably still have except for the Chicago Sun-Times reports of recent weeks that drew public attention to the whole situation.


That caused the alderman to let his staffer -- for whom to the best of my knowledge hadn't done anything as an aldermanic aide that would warrant his dismissal -- go.


As though all the criticism will now wither away. Actually, it probably will. Most people are short-memoried enough that they're not going to remember becoming public now by the time of the Feb. 24 municipal elections. I probably should point out here that in my reporter-type person duties, I have dealt with Sadzak and never had any problems with him.


ARE WE SUPPOSED to think that Pope's aldermanic challenger, Rich Martinez, is being petty every time he brings the issue up during coming months?


Which I suspect he will. As it turns out, Martinez came up with his first campaign attack on Friday calling for Pope to fire Sadzak, then resign himself -- all for showing "questionable" judgment in hiring the aide to begin with. That fact doesn't change, regardless of whether anyone lost a job now.


Martinez may still whine and cry in coming months that Pope didn't go far enough. Eventually, the voters will decide whether they think this issue -- along with many others -- is legitimate enough to warrant removal from the post he has held since 1999.


This issue won't die, no matter how much some people want it to, because some will  be determined to be petty enough to keep it alive.


WHAT THE CRITICS wanted was for the attack issue; not any real concern over whether the aide remained on the alderman's staff.


Not that such circumstances are unique. I still remember the 2008 election cycle when Barack Obama came under intense criticism because of his family pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and the rhetoric that to me sounds like what comes out of many a black-oriented church, but which "shocked and appalled" many white people who just weren't used to such over-the-top talk on Sunday.


Obama quickly cut ties to Wright -- the pastor who had presided over his wedding and established family ties. Not that the ideologues among us are willing to forget anything.


They want to complain, the way Pope's critics will still complain. The way many other political post terminations wind up being nothing more than sweeping a potential problem under the run -- rather than try to resolve the situations that led to the problem arising in the first place.


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How strict can we get with petcoke regulations when I suspect most people don’t have a clue what it is

When it comes to petcoke, I have a funny bias in favor of the local residents.

I’m not one of them any longer. But I am the grandson of a pair of Mexican immigrants who found their particular version of the “American Dream” through work in the steel mills that used to dominate the 10^th Ward.

HECK, I STILL have relatives who live in places like Hegewisch, the East Side and South Deering (and who know exactly what Slag Valley is).

So when I hear about petcoke, it’s not some abstract concept. Nor is it something that inspires silly gags about colas or cocker spaniels.

I have seen the piles of the petroleum byproduct and fully appreciate how decades of industrial pollutants have given the air in the city’s far southeast corner a particular stink.

And I totally appreciate how people who still live in the area, including an uncle and a couple of cousins of mine these days, would love to see the piles of pollutants removed.

THE FACT THAT it easily gets blown about and can wind up adding a layer of grime to one’s home (or totally coat their newly-washed laundry with filth) makes life all the more unpleasant.

So I can comprehend the disgust felt by local residents when they say they want an outright ban on petcoke being stored within the city – only to be told by attorneys for city government (who probably avoid traveling to the 10^th Ward at all costs) that they’re being unreasonable.

Seriously, they’ve been told that the industry that remains along the Calumet River has a right to be able to store the substance in some way.

Salt -- one of the least disgusting things piled up out in the open in the 10th Ward. Photograph by Gregory Tejeda

 

But what is the way that can be acceptable to local residents?

IN RECENT MONTHS, there has been speculation about some sort of petcoke storage ordinance. I’ve been at hearings where talk has been of requiring the substance to be stored indoors in specially-built structures that would be located quite a ways away from residential areas.

Although when one considers that industry in the 10^th Ward can literally be found right across the street from homes that families still live in, it is an odd environment.

There is much that gets tolerated by city officials about the 10^th Ward that would never be accepted elsewhere. A lot of otherwise unacceptable conditions get “grandfathered” in because it would (allegedly) be too expensive to get things up to code.

Just like how there are still troughs for men to pee in when they watch a ball game at Wrigley Field. At least with that disgusting concept, there is something resembling history and tradition.

YOU JUST DON’T get the same sentiment when having to breathe in petcoke.

Which is why I couldn’t help but feel a tinge of disgust when I learned about what happened Tuesday. Activists from the 10^th Ward were at City Hall, hoping for support for petcoke regulations that they felt were too weak, but were better than nothing.

Instead, the council’s Zoning Committee got to review an even-weaker proposal – one that permits petcoke storage on-site if companies can document that it was consumed on-site as part of a manufacturing process.

It also would allow for stockpiles of petcoke to be burned.

YOU JUST KNOW that will add to the stink in the air around the East Side. How weak will this regulation become by the time aldermen get around to approving something?

Now I realize that industry is not all-bad. It does provide employment (albeit, not as much as it did several decades ago). And part of the appeal of living in the 10^th Ward once upon a time was that the working class could get those decently-paying jobs within walking distance of their homes.

My father grew up in a house in South Chicago that was just a couple of blocks from the one-time U.S. Steel Southworks plant – the one that developers now want to turn into an upscale housing development right on Lake Michigan.

Which is a cute idea – although I wonder how many people would want to live there once they realize its proximity to communities that have those petcoke piles lying about.

Sitting in Chicago's 'corner'

BECAUSE CITY OFFICIALS right now seem more concerned about the business interests than they are of certain residents in the land of alphabet-oriented streets (Avenue O, anyone?). Perhaps they’ll get serious about cleaning up the mess if those upscale residents ever do settle in the city’s southeast corner?

Or if they ever get political clout that can get things done. Because I also couldn’t help but notice the same Zoning Committee gave its support Tuesday to construction of a new heliport on the Chicago River in the Bridgeport neighborhood.

It must be nice to be the neighborhood of Chicago mayors, rather than one of piles of petcoke!

  -30-

Petcoke cleanup underway, but it will be awhile before Sout’East Side is clean

The far Southeast corner of Chicago (the land where the eastern boundary is Indiana – NOT Lake Michigan) has always been a heavily industrialized portion of the city.

Chicago's southeast corner far from pristine. Photographs by Gregory Tejeda

 

It’s a place where the steel mill and other factory jobs that created the bulk of the local economy were located literally across the street. It was a place where the employees could walk to work.

HENCE, IT ALSO is a place that is far from pristine – particularly since it saw decades worth of buildup of various pollutants from back in an era when some people were inclined to think of “environmental cleanup” as some sort of alien concept.

I am a native of that part of Chicago (I am the grandson of immigrant steel mill workers whose one-time employers are now large, vacant plots of land), and my visits to the “old neighborhood” have always included being able to see things that just wouldn’t be tolerated elsewhere.

Although now, it seems they’re not even being tolerated in places like the East Side or South Chicago – as in a couple of the neighborhoods that comprise that distant part of Chicago. How distant? Try standing on the 106^th Street bridge over the Calumet River.

Look off to the north, and you can barely see the tip of the top of the Sears Tower (You call it Willis, I’m refusing to right now).

BUT THIS AREA got the attention of downtown this week when officials reached an agreement with companies that have had piles of petroleum coke along the edge of the Calumet River. That agreement by Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the Illinois attorney general’s office was to be filed with a court on Thursday, although Emanuel said later in the day he would not be willing to go so far as an outright ban in Chicago.

A whole 'nother world from the Loop

Known more commonly as petcoke, the substance is a byproduct of the petroleum-making process. It results in mounds of the substance that then gets blown about by the breezes.

Which means that people who live in the area have been stuck having to accept as fact that their homes will get covered in the petcoke dust. Some people tell stories of finding the dust all over their freshly-washed clothes (if they put them out on a clothesline to dry).

It is inevitable that they (and I, when I have reason to return to visit) have inhaled the petcoke dust. Who knows what long-term damage is being caused?

The Port of Chicago presence (off in the distance) hasn't completely devastated Lake Calumet

 

THAT IS WHAT has motivated the activist-minded residents of the area, who in turn have put their share of pressure on government officials. Which is why government officials felt inclined to do something that makes it appear as though they’re resolving the situation.

Although it should be noted that earlier this month, locals noticed that the petcoke piles were being put onto ships and being taken out of the area. The agreement reached this week says that companies in the area that have petcoke are going to have to store it indoors, and also will have to monitor the levels of air pollution around those facilities.

Which sounds sensible enough; something that should have been agreed upon a long time ago. Except that such actions create expense that reduce the financial bottom-line, and therefore are considered to be a hassle by the more corporate-minded.

Yes, I’m pleased to learn that something is being done with regards to petcoke. I have relatives who live within blocks of these piles. I’m sure they will (literally) breathe easier.

ALTHOUGH IT’S FAR from over. All those decades of industry have left more than their share of pollution. With the vacant remains of many of those factories still in place, I can’t even envision just how tainted those Southeastern neighborhoods remain.

And how much of a miracle it is that something like Lake Calumet still manages to maintain so many species of nature despite all the toxins in the area.

What would they think in Lake View?

It’s going to be a long time, if ever, that my part of Chicago will be as clean as a place like Beverly or Sauganash – where the concept of a giant pile of salt out in the open would be unheard of, yet doesn’t even capture a second glance from the locals.

  -30-