How long until proposed Red Line extension turns local tempers all “red?”

It is one of those projects that has been discussed for years – extending the Chicago Transit Authority elevated commuter train lines deeper into the city’s South Side than they already go.
 

Proposed route for Red Line extension

On a certain level, the project makes too much sense. The commuter trains that help city residents get from place to place and are a common fact of everyday life in most of the city only go as far south as 95^th Street.

WHILE CHICAGO ITSELF usually considers 119^th Street to be its southern boundary and there are parts of the city at the southeastern corner where 138^th Street is the end of life as we know it and where suburbia begins.

Now as somebody who actually originates from that part of the city (born in South Chicago and with relatives scattered across the neighborhoods that comprise the 10^th Ward), this is a project that I have long followed.

Because for people in the southeast part of the city, there are a few bus lines that pass through that eventually can take you to a place along the Dan Ryan Expressway where you can catch a Red Line train.

But it can be a slow, plodding trip (what with all those bus stops) and it can result in an hour-and-a-half journey to get downtown. There are parts of Will County or Gary, Ind., that have quicker connections to downtown Chicago via suburban commuter trains.

IT’S NO WONDER that those people who live near a Metra Electric line station in the South Chicago or South Shore neighborhoods, or in the Hegewisch neighborhood where the Indiana-based South Shore commuter line keeps its lone Illinois-based station, prefer to use those suburban-influenced services even though they're very much urban residents.

Which is why the idea of extending that Red Line train that now runs down the middle of the Dan Ryan to 95^th Street would be a life-altering experience for the Far South Side.

 

Metra lines more a daily life reality in Far South Chi

A direct CTA el train extension going to 130^th Street? Actual stations in the Roseland and Pullman neighborhoods – instead of having to take a bus to the west to catch a Metra Rock Island line commuter train in the Beverly or Morgan Park neighborhoods.

It sounds like nirvana (and I don’t mean the 90’s era rock band).

EXCEPT TO THOSE people who, while complaining about how isolated their part of Chicago often feels, will also be the first to complain about anything that brings about change.

They’ll be the ones who think of el trains as being something associated with “the ghetto” or artsy-fartsy North Side neighborhoods – and something they’ve managed to do without all these years.

I have heard from some of these people already. Although they have been muted largely because of skepticism that the city will ever get its act together and actually build the extension!

But will they get louder, now that talk is progressing to the point of figuring out where exactly new track would have to be built. City officials this week said they would allocate some $75 million for engineering studies. Which means figuring out what structures would need to be torn down.

CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS reported Thursday about the project – pointing out that 82 single-family homes and 19 multi-family properties are on a list of things that would need to be torn down to make room for 5.3 miles more of train track for the el extension.

The weekly business newspaper already has some comment from people who admit train service would be nice, but not necessary if it means they have to move.

Personally, I became an el proponent back during the stints I lived in North and Northwest Side neighborhoods, and I often wonder how it is that my home base neighborhood, so to speak, has never been willing to demand such equal service.

May someday no longer be distant southern CTA outpost?

Except that too many people living out in the land where Indiana isn’t an esoteric concept but is the place at the other end of the Chicago Skyway have become too used to their sense of isolation from the rest of Chicago – a concept whose time truly ought to come to an end.

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Baseball ‘kids’ don’t live in Chicago? Why did complaints take so long?

For those people who are spewing accusations that the Jackie Robinson West baseball team that nearly won the Little League World Series this year is tainted because its players don’t all live strictly within the league’s boundaries, I’d have to respond by saying that no one ever tried to keep it a secret.

There were so many people who back in August were eager to let it be known that some of the kids had ties to suburbs such as Dolton, Homewood, Lansing, Lynwood and South Holland (instead of neighborhoods such as Roseland and Morgan Park where the league is based).

SO TO NOW hear complaints from officials with the Evergreen Park Athletic Association that the Jackie Robinson West team that represented the Great Lakes Region at the Little League World Series comes across as little more than whining.

It was a relief to learn that Little League International this week issued a statement saying the league’s team that advanced in the Little League World Series to be U.S. champions (before losing to a team from South Korea) was legitimate when it comes to residency issues.

I don’t doubt that the ball playing kids received so much hype that the reality can’t live up.

But this amounts to petty jealousy from a suburban Little League program that happens to border to Jackie Robinson West program on the city’s Far South Side that was created back in the early 1970s to spur interest in youth baseball in a community whose racial composition had changed radically.

UNTIL RECENTLY, I had a “day job” of sorts in writing stories for one of the daily newspapers in the suburbs that covered the communities where some of these kids lived and went to school.

Which local school and government officials were more than eager to reveal. I personally remember one suburban mayor saying he wanted some credit for the player who lived in his community, saying, “We’re not going to let Rahm Emanuel steal everything.”

Although I personally think Gov. Pat Quinn and the Cook County Board did more to latch their names onto the Jackie Robinson kids for his own self-promotion than Emanuel ever did.

But back to the residency issue. It was known that the kids didn’t strictly live within the city neighborhoods. But the fact that there were split residency facts merely reflect our modern-day reality in society.

I remember specifically one ballplayer had a father who lived in Dolton, but a mother who lived in the Morgan Park neighborhood. Does anybody think that means the kid is supposed to never stay with his father just because he plays baseball?

THAT WOULD BE stupid.

In other cases, there were players whose families used to live in Chicago proper, but in recent years had moved to the nearby south suburbs. It appears that Little League rules permit such players to continue to play in their old home communities if they wish, rather than being forced to shift to Little League programs in their new homes.

The reality is that many of those suburban Little League programs are run by people who are interested in protecting their own little fiefdoms and aren’t exactly accepting of newcomers.

So the idea that these kids would prefer to keep playing ball in the Jackie Robinson West league – which is unique in the fact that it is composed entirely of African-American people – seems to be an obvious choice.

PERHAPS THE SOUTH suburban Little League programs ought to be giving more thought to how to make themselves more welcoming, rather than being among the forces trying (but failing) to keep the population in their home communities the same as it was four decades ago.

Reading the Chicago Sun-Times, I see that the head of the Evergreen Park program is complaining about people who are calling him an “idiot” and are saying he is a bigot.

I’m willing to give his racial attitudes a break and say what really bothers him is the fact that when a team from his Little League program played a Jackie Robinson West team this year, the end result was a 42-3 loss.

That still has to smart, something fierce!

  -30-

EXTRA: Jackie Robinson baseball now far bigger than Defender sports pages

It was earlier this past week that I happened to be in the Pullman neighborhood when 9^th Ward Alderman Anthony Beale got a crowd of 400-plus people all excited by merely uttering three initials.

“J-R-W.”

AS IN THE Jackie Robinson West baseball league that consists of a couple dozen teams from predominantly-black neighborhoods such as Roseland, Pullman and Morgan Park on the far Sout’ Side (and a few surrounding suburbs that have developed sizable African-American communities).

It’s a league that usually only gets public attention from the Chicago Defender, which often uses pictures of young African-Americans in action on their sports pages.

But now, that league is something far much bigger. They’ve been partaking in the Little League World Series tournament this past week, and became the best youth team in the United States when they defeated a Las Vegas, Nev.-area team Saturday by 7-5.

Which was particularly pleasurable because the one negative for the Jackie Robinson West all-star ball club during the past week was a 13-2 loss to that same Las Vegas team.

IT WAS PAYBACK of the finest kind for those of us with a Chicago interest and enjoy seeing one of our youth teams show it can compete with the best of the rest of the nation.

And considering how in recent years baseball has become so overwhelmingly pale in complexion while lacking in much interest amongst more urban communities, the sight of an all-black ball club takes on a certain other significance.

Particularly since they’re now going to represent this country when they take on the winner of the Japan/South Korea game played Saturday night.

I can’t think of a better ball club to represent what this country is about than the kids from the South Side. Particularly since way too many people tend to think the only things of significance in Chicago come from select neighborhoods on the north lakefront.

IT’S THE ENTIRETY of Chicago that makes it amongst the most interesting places in this country (and quite possibly on Planet Earth) to be. A small piece of that South Side existence is now getting national attention.

It’s a good thing that Mayor Rahm Emanuel has already committed city officials to having some sort of city-wide celebration when the team returns to Chicago in coming days.

Memories of that 2005 post-World Series parade the White Sox made through Bridgeport and Chinatown on their way to downtown come to mind. Although is a Grant Park-type rally also possible.

Let’s only hope that these kids go on to be inspired to achieve greater success in life (and not necessarily just in the world of athletics). Because the sad thing would be if this moment at age 12 became the highlight of their lives.

IT OUGHT TO be a moment that inspires all people to want to strive for greater things and higher levels than we already have achieved. That could be the real-life lesson we all learn.

So as we relish this moment of a Chicago-area ball club (even one of 12- and 13-year-olds) actually winning something (as opposed to seeing the White Sox blow a couple of ballgames to the New York Yankees in recent days or watching the Cubs’ ground crew show its ineptitude at laying down a tarp to avoid a rainy day), keep this thought in mind.

The next time Beale rattles off “J-R-W,” it won’t be just a room full of Pullman people cheering.

It ought to be the nearly 9-million of the metropolitan area  expressing its joy.

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Davis vs. Jones could be the sporting matchup of the year for Chicago fans

It has become the matchup I’m hoping becomes reality in coming days – pitcher Mo’Ne Davis going up against slugger Pierce Jones.

He of the three home runs and a triple who led the Jackie Robinson West team from the Roseland neighborhood to a victory to kick off the Little League World Series. She of the Philadelphia-area team that also is playing in Williamsport, Pa., who pitched a complete-game shutout and only gave up a couple of hits.

BIG SLUGGER AGAINST top pitcher – a key matchup that will occur if the Little League tourney plays out in such a fashion that the Chicago and Philadelphia ball clubs wind up facing off against each other.

Much has been made of the fact that Davis is a 12-year-old girl. Although all it really proves is that girls can be athletic, and most likely many of the boys she is facing have yet to go through that teenage growth spurt that turns them into adults and will erase whatever physical advantage she now possesses.

Although as one who enjoys watching baseball and often hears of the decline in the number of African-American ballplayers in the professional ranks (largely because of the upshot in recent years of ballplayers from Latin American and Asian nations coming to the United States to play ball), I would find this story to be a bit encouraging.

For Davis is black. As is Jones, and his entire Chicago-area ball club. That’s what happens when a Little League program representing an African-American portion of Chicago winds up getting good and winning the qualifying tournaments to represent the Great Lakes states in the Little League World Series – which has eight U.S. ball clubs and eight international teams.

YES, I’M FOLLOWING the activity of the team from Nuevo Leon, a northernmost Mexican state along the U.S./Mexico border – which kicked off its play by beating Canada 4-3, then losing Sunday 9-5 against a team from Japan.

But the big games that caught attention early on were that 12-2 victory by the Sout’ Side club against a team from Lynnwood, Wash. (I'm going out of my way to erase Sunday's 13-2 defeat from my memory); along with Davis’ shutout against a team from South Nashville, Tenn.

It was unique to see black ballplayers being such a dominant presence on the ball field. Not that I mean that in any bad way.

The degree to which some people with racial hang-ups were probably getting annoyed at the sight (or thought) of such activity was pleasing to me.

IT WAS ENCOURAGING to see some of the nonsense-talk that some people spew get rejected while watching these particular kids excel at something that some people would want to think they’re not supposed to have any interest in.

Plus, there’s the fact that they were kids – not quite at the stage in life yet where such an experience would lead them jaded.

I don’t know if any of these kids is destined for professional athletics in any form. It may well be that these few days in Pennsylvania will be a highlight moment that they will carry with them for the rest of their lives.

I’m also not convinced this is some seminal moment that will help shift black people back to an interest in baseball away from certain other sports. It would take several consecutive years of this – along with a certain shift in the baseball mentality itself – for that to happen.

BUT WATCHING THESE kids does create some intriguing moments on the ball field.

Particularly the thought of a Jones/Davis matchup.

Will Jones and his Jackie Robinson West teammates be the ones who can handle Davis and smack her pitches around the ballpark as easily as they did the kids from Lynnwood, Wash., last week?

Or will Mo’Ne be the one who schools Jones and company – giving them a lesson in humility that our city’s professional ball clubs give Chicago fans every time they lose another game on the field?

  -30-

Sout’ Side (but not the White Sox) make it to a ‘World Series’ of sorts

Baseball fans oriented to the South Side have something to cheer about this season – and not just the fact that Cuban sensation Jose Abreu is in the running to lead the American League in both home runs and runs batted in.

It’s not enough to pull the Chicago White Sox into contention for a division title.

BUT THERE WILL be talk of “World Series” bandied about on Thursday, and hopefully in coming days.

For we’re at that tournament in which youth league teams from around the world converge in Williamsport, Pa. – the annual home of the Little League World Series.

There are some “international” ball clubs present, but most are from the United States. And this year, the team representing the Great Lakes Region is from right here in Chicago – the predominantly-African-American Roseland neighborhood to be exact.

For the Jackie Robinson West Little League champion team this year advanced through the rounds of qualifying games to beat an Indiana team to make the trip to Williamsport.

ON THURSDAY, THEY will play their first game in the World Series against a team from Lynnwood, Wash. ESPN will carry the game live at 2 p.m.\

Mayor Rahm Emanuel has talked of having a viewing party so Chicagoans can watch the game, while Gov. Pat Quinn declared a “day” across Illinois for this year’s Jackie Robinson championship team.

That’s pretty heady stuff, particularly since the Jackie Robinson League baseball program is usually something only the Chicago Defender newspaper bothers to pay any attention to – and even then only to get a picture of a kid looking cute while trying to do something athletic.

So chances are most of us Chicago baseball fans had no clue what was happening in Roseland that a baseball team good enough to make it to the international tournament was in our midst.

REMEMBER THE CONTROVERSY from a year ago when the baseball program at Walter Payton College Prep tried cancelling out a game against Gwendolyn Brooks College Prep out of fear of the neighborhood?

That was Roseland as well, and in fact the Brooks high school uses Jackie Robinson League facilities for its program.

It will be intriguing to see a group of inner-city kids taking on the more heavily-experienced (when it comes to travel) teams that usually wind up playing in these youth tournaments.

And if some baseball fans get a jolt to see that black kids don’t just dunk basketballs, that may be a plus as well.

NOW I’M NOT about to predict a Chicago victory in the Little League World Series. The Jackie Robinson West champions (Jackie Robinson East baseball is played out in Newark and Jersey City, N.J.) may well be among the first teams knocked out this year.

Although let’s be honest.

If they were to accomplish something, it would be the sporting highlight of the year for Chicago – particularly since neither professional baseball club is going to win anything of significance this season.

So go Jackie Robinson West. Beat Lynnwood. And do the city proud as you work your way through the ranks of the top youth league baseball players the world has to offer. Show them you belong!

  -30-

EXTRA: Not sure Rauner gains much from his collection of ‘Dem’ supporters

I’m sure that Republican gubernatorial nominee Bruce Rauner thinks he struck a blow against Gov. Pat Quinn by offering up a collection of people who call themselves Democrats, yet said Thursday they will back his GOP campaign.

MEEKS: Will he really help Rauner?

Yet I’m not swayed.

LOOKING AT THE list of these Democrats, I see mostly a collection of business executives. Not a lot of names that the general public would recognize.

For all I know, this may wind up reinforcing the notion that Rauner is not like most folks – that he’s part of his self-admitted .01 percent of our society. Quinn could play this into something that reinforces his self-described populist, man of the people, image.

Some have given attention to the idea that Newton Minow – the FCC chairman under President John F. Kennedy – is on the list. The man who told us that television had become a “vast wasteland.” That’s a one-day story. Quinn will get more positive attention come May 3 when he gets to present former First Lady and Secretary of State Hillary R. Clinton with the "Order of Lincoln" award.

Personally, I was caught up more with the notion that the Rev. James Meeks was on Rauner’s list.

MEEKS IS THE head of the Salem Baptist Church in the Roseland neighborhood. He has one of those self-described mega-churches. A huge congregation in the thousands filled with people who would do whatever he says.

He’s also the guy who served a decade in the Illinois House of Representatives, and often tried to pass himself off as a political player.

MINOW: Rauner's Kennedy connection?

He often threatened to run for mayor or for governor unless those officials did what he wanted, made it clear that gay rights activists weren’t of much concern to him, and once led a public effort to protest education funding by trying symbolically to enroll inner-city kids into wealthy suburban school districts (then claiming their rejection was somehow racist).

That latter move brought him ridicule. And I don’t sense that the political people who were challenged by Meeks ever felt threatened by his presence. In fact, they usually continued to win re-election despite Meeks’ hostile talk. Will Rauner gain much, if anything, at all by having the reverend on his team?

HE’LL GET A few more votes than Republicans usually get in Roseland. Then again, the Democratic Party operatives in that part of the city probably know how to counter such a move.

Besides, there’s the simple fact that Democrats, by their very nature, are an ornery political group. So many different factions that have a hard time playing nice with each other. The fact that Rauner has a list of 23 Dems who aren’t repulsed by him is more cute than particularly effective.

If anything, I’m more impressed by Rauner’s announcement that his first campaign ad spot of this part of the election cycle is a Spanish-language ad. Reaching out to Latino voters in a serious manner could be a bigger blow to Quinn than anything these 23 Dems could do!

Although if it turns out as lame as when lieutenant governor hope Evelyn Sanguinetti mixed in a few Spanish words into her Election Night introduction of Rauner, even that could turn out to be a lost opportunity.

  -30-

EXTRA: Payton wound up in Roseland

I find it encouraging that the baseball program from the Near North-based Walter Payton College Prep managed to make it Saturday down to the Roseland neighborhood – where they finally played that game against Gwendolyn Brooks College Prep that was supposed to have taken place two weeks ago.

What Would Sweetness Think?

To listen to the parents of those Payton Prep ballplayers now, they were only upset that the school bus meant to take Payton ballplayers to the Far South Side fell through and that they were being asked to transport their own kids to the game.

ALTHOUGH THAT STILL sounds like the talk of people who don’t want to be called on their nonsense rhetoric from before, and who likely are still peeved that the Payton coach called them out on their cowardice about wanting to travel to a part of Chicago they prefer to ignore.

While I’ll be the first to admit that Roseland (the area around 111^th and State streets) is not the most pleasant place to visit, the usual rules of venturing into unfamiliar neighborhoods apply.

Don’t get stupid. Don’t linger. And don’t try getting all haughty, as though the “locals” ought to feel blessed that you bothered to travel to their neighborhood.

Those are the people who usually bring attention onto themselves that provokes somebody to get stupid and act in inappropriate ways!

SO TO READ the reports and realize that the ballgame was played Saturday without anything resembling an incident, and that the Payton Prep ballplayers made it into and out of the neighborhood without any problems is encouraging.

An adopted Chicagoan

Perhaps there are lessons to be learned among the many groups that comprise modern-day Chicago. At the very least, that Roseland actually has one of the best Little League baseball programs on the South Side.

And in the end, it was Payton 11-Brooks 2. Which ought to be the only part of the ballgame that should matter.

  -30-

Some don’t see beyond Roosevelt Road; they miss Chicago character

I wish I could say I was shocked and appalled to learn that the Gwendolyn Brooks College Prep high school baseball program got a victory by forfeit Saturday night because their competition – Walter Payton College Prep – refused to make the trip to the Roseland neighborhood to play the game.

A world of difference beyond geography

Payton Prep is a relatively new school in the Near North area near downtown Chicago. It is an upscale part of the city; albeit not that far from what once was the Cabrini-Green public housing complex.

IT IS THE mirror image of Roseland – an old neighborhood on the city’s Far South Side (around 111^th Street and Indiana Avenue) – in so many ways.

So to read the accounts published in the Chicago Sun-Times that some parents of children on the baseball team refused to let their kids make the trip sounds way too predictable – non-black parents automatically thinking that the overwhelmingly-black neighborhood is dangerous because it isn’t just like their community.

It is a bad stereotype in so many ways -- even though Payton Principal Tim Devine told the Chicago Tribune that "leadership issues" within the baseball program (and not racial attitudes) were to blame for the forfeiture.

In fact, the racial issue is an attitude that is the real problem behind the crime problems – people who are more than willing to ignore certain parts of Chicago and try to pretend as though they don’t exist. As though some city residents aren’t worth as much as others.

THERE ARE THOSE people who make a point of moving to the city upon completing their education and thinking of themselves as particularly urbane – even though they usually live in a version of Chicago that stretches about as far west as Western Avenue and as far south as Roosevelt Road.

And in their ideal take on Chicago, Lake Michigan would be within constant eyesight. Because life gets too uncomfortable for them away from the north lakefront.

Yes, I’ll concede the lakefront has its perks. It offers some of the benefits that make city life worthwhile. There is something special about those neighborhoods.

And I’ll also concede that the Roseland neighborhood isn’t exactly a place where I would want to hang out on a regular basis. Mostly because the neighborhood is old and has been allowed to decay to the point where it is not one of the city’s nicer communities.

BUT EVEN THAT decay is due to the fact that former residents (a lot of those white ethnic types who fled decades ago and never think of visiting the old turf) want to believe that it is no longer worth preserving because the people who remain aren’t exactly like them in every respect.

So for those who want to blame the current residents for letting the neighborhood rot away, keep in mind that there are others who would interfere with any effort to bolster the neighborhood.

They’d rather see the resources put into the places they’re currently residing in.

It’s not a simple matter of placing the “bigot” label on certain individuals for wanting to pretend that places like Roseland do not exist.

THEN AGAIN, IT’S very easy to say that the people who want to argue that bigotry has nothing to do with this situation are really just individuals who don’t want to be called on their trash-talk.

This willingness to separate ourselves even within the Chicago city limits is the problem that threatens all of us. We need to start thinking of ourselves as one city; even if we are so many varied communities of differing people within the overall municipal boundaries.

Saturday’s high school baseball forfeit is a bit of evidence that some people are determined to keep us apart.

To the point where I suspect that if Cabrini-Green were still in existence just a few blocks from Payton Prep, those parents probably would refuse to let their children attend school there!

  -30-

Digging into the political past

Admittedly, not many people pay attention to the assessor’s office of Cook County government.

That is one office whose highlight in the public eye may very well have come 29 years ago when it got mentioned in the film “The Blues Brothers” (remember when Jake and Elwood were in their mad dash to pay the taxes on the orphanage where they grew up? Their destination, with law enforcement and military personnel of every type in pursuit, was the assessor’s office).

BUT THAT POSITION could wind up getting more attention than usual if Bob Shaw proceeds with his declared intentions to seek the office as his way of gaining a return to electoral politics.

Shaw released a statement saying he’d like to run for the post, on account of the fact that incumbent Assessor Jim Houlihan has said he plans to retire, following 12 years running the office that sets the property values for every single plot across the county – which has a hand in determining how high the property taxes will be.

Whether Shaw could win the post is something I’m unsure of.

For the simple fact is that Shaw and his twin brother, Bill, were always one of those breed of political people whose base was a small portion of the Chicago area, rather than the entire area.

THEY HAD THEIR followers on the far South Side of Chicago and in the inner southern suburbs. But whether anyone else will find Bob Shaw appealing enough to cast a ballot for him is questionable.

It is like the commonly accepted political logic surrounding Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, whose legislative district encompasses a couple of wards on the Southwest Side.

He may be all-powerful, but he likely could never win a statewide (or even citywide) office. His power is too concentrated in those select neighborhoods.

The same goes for Shaw, who is an acquired taste who appeals to certain people who feel like they are otherwise ignored by political people.

THE FACT IS that at their peak, Shaw was the all-powerful Alderman from the 9th Ward (the Roseland and Pullman neighborhoods, primarily), while brother bill was a state Senator from the same area.

Bob at City Hall with Bill at the Statehouse. They made an impressive pair who were willing to give a voice to a neighborhood that when many people think of it at all, it is to comment on how much it has declined in recent decades.

Of course, time progressed and the two made the move to the suburbs, with Bob becoming a member of the Cook County Board of Review. His brother for a time doubled his state Senate service with a stint as mayor of suburban Dolton – although he eventually focused his attention on that post full-time until his death last year.

Now it will just be Bob Shaw, who some always considered the stronger voiced of the two (as in Bill did Bob’s bidding), although it likely was more accurate to say they were a pair with similar goals – focused on trying to get more public attention and awareness of the impoverished communities they represented.

LISTENING TO BOB Shaw these days, he still speaks like he’s representing merely the underdogs of our society – rather than going for a post that would give him a say in the lives of the more than 5 million people who live in Cook County.

He says he’d like to use the post to try to help people who are in danger of losing their homes to foreclosure because they can’t afford to pay the property taxes that his desired office would have a hand in setting.

(I say a hand because the reality is that it is the city councils and village boards across the county that actually set the tax levels in their communities based on how they use the property values and levies set by the assessor’s office).

That could be a powerful issue – vote for Bob and you might get to keep your house.

BUT I ALSO have to wonder how Shaw’s political past will scare off many prospective voters. Like I wrote earlier, he may have been around the local political scene for more than two full decades, but hardly anyone outside of Roseland or Dolton has ever had a chance to vote for him before.

And somehow, I doubt the feelings of the Jackson family have changed toward Bob Shaw.

I’m talking about Jackson as in Rep. Jesse Jr., D-Ill., who is the son of the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr.

There was always the sense that the Shaws wanted to be the political powerbrokers of the far South Side and surrounding suburbs, and were envious of the fact that it is the Jacksons who actually have that kind of influence.

THERE HAVE BEEN many local campaigns in recent years between allies of Shaw running against allies of Jackson, and it was usually the latter who won. Even in the few cases where Shaw allies were victorious, they usually had trouble governing effectively because there were so many Jackson-types willing to oppose them at every step.

Would a Bob Shaw for county Assessor bring out a hard-hitting opposition from the Jacksons? Or will it be a lot of under-the-table kicks to the shins?

Either way, a Shaw attempt at returning to politics could wind up being an intriguing sideshow come the 2010 election cycle.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Will Cook County get its first African-American (http://nwitimes.com/news/local/illinois/article_c64c6755-4ed3-5687-a3f0-250e397d7cd1.html) assessor?

The lobby of the Cook County Building got immortalized in cinema, but the actual (http://www.bluesbrotherscentral.com/locations/cook-county-building/) assessor’s office was on a soundstage in Hollywood.

Shaws used local government to build allies, amass their political influence

One-time House Speaker Thomas “Tip” O’Neill is remembered among political geeks for the saying, “All politics is local.” And if ever there was anyone who took that saying to heart, it was the brothers Shaw of the far South Side and, later, its surrounding suburbs.

There was once a time when Bob and Bill Shaw threatened to be some of the most politically powerful twins anywhere in this country. Bob was an alderman from the Roseland neighborhood, while Bill represented the neighborhood in Springfield – both in the Illinois House and later the state Senate (until 2002).

THAT ERA IS definitely over, now that Bill has succumbed to colon cancer earlier this week. He was 71, and is survived by, among others, brother Bob.

But in my mind, what made the Shaws unique was that they sensed the changing demographics of the Chicago area, particularly in the early 1990s when many south suburban towns that once were lower-middle class white changed to majority African-American populations.

Rather than feeling hemmed in by their existing neighborhoods and the need to continue to live within their respective wards or legislative districts, they moved. They left city life in a decaying Roseland neighborhood for the suburbs.

Bob Shaw accommodated no longer being a city resident by giving up a City Council seat for a post on the Cook County Board.

HIS TWIN BROTHER merely shifted over from a city-based Illinois House seat to a state Senate seat covering both city and suburban territory. He paired that post with his election in 1997 as mayor of Dolton – a position he continued to hold to the present day.

When the Shaws went suburban, they had hopes of bringing their Chicago political skills to the suburbs to organize local officials into a series of allies who would make them the two big political powerbrokers of south suburban Cook County.

They definitely saw themselves as a political pair. I remember Bob once telling me during a visit to the Statehouse Springfield to help his brother gain support for education-related legislation, “I’m watching his back, the way he’d watch mine.”

They never became the county-wide powerbrokers that they dreamed of being, in large part because around the same time that the Shaws went suburban, the Rev. Jesse Jackson had his son, Jesse Jr., get elected to a seat in Congress that represented the far South Side and surrounding suburbs.

BASICALLY, POLITICAL POWER in southern Cook County during the 1990s became a squabble between the Shaws and the Jacksons. There were many local elections that had their significance in that they were between candidates who were allies with Shaw and allies of Jackson.

One of Jackson’s perennial opponents for his seat in Congress in recent elections has been the Rev. Anthony Williams – a Shaw brothers protégé from Robbins who usually campaigns on the theme that Jesse Jr. has “lost touch” with the reality of inner-city and suburban black life. If one had asked the Shaws, they would have given the same answer.

Insofar as a lasting legacy, many will argue the Jacksons won.

With Bill Shaw now gone and Bob’s political glory in the past, it falls short of Jesse Jr., who has a semi-legitimate chance of moving up to the U.S. Senate (even though Gov. Rod Blagojevich on Thursday verbally touted the chances of another member of Congress – Danny Davis – for the post).

WHEN IT CAME to the public perception among local voters, the Jacksons always came out ahead based on the national glamour/notoriety of the reverend’s lengthy record as a civil rights leader. Jesse Jr. was the guy who would get the glory in the national press, with the Shaws usually coming off as petty, small-minded people who couldn’t see beyond their own immediate neighborhood concerns.

But that would be an inaccurate way of looking at the Shaws, who if anything were guilty of taking Tip O’Neill’s advice literally.

They built up influence by using their skills to get local trustees elected to village boards throughout the area surrounding Dolton. And within Dolton, Bill Shaw was a political boss with the same control that some people like to remember Dick Daley as having in the old days in Chicago proper.

I still remember when Dolton politics got its moment in the Chicago-area mindset, when critics claimed that Dolton police department credentials (including those stinkin’ badges) were given out to Shaw allies with criminal records and to family members and other friends.

BUT DESPITE THE people who want to believe that Bill Shaw was running some sort of criminal operation in Dolton, nothing illegal was ever proven. In fact, much of the criticism tended to come from people who remembered the old days of Dolton as a white-majority town (rather than its current population of 82.4 percent African-American people).

And in the Legislature (where Bill Shaw did double duty for six years), he is remembered for measures to require increased attention to the contributions of African-American people in the teaching of history in public schools.

So in figuring the legacy of the Shaw brothers (and one has to consider them as a team, watching each others’ backs), it will live on because there are still officials on village boards and park districts and school boards who control local concerns of interest to many people who owe their initial election to Bill and Bob.

Jackson may have gotten the national glory, but the Shaws for a time had the actual Chicago-style political power.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Here’s hoping the Shaw family and friends have a happier Christmas holiday than (http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/1302875,shaw-dies112608.article) they did for Thanksgiving.

Both Bob and Bill Shaw were ultimately replaced on the Cook County Board and in the (http://www.thetimesonline.com/articles/2008/11/27/updates/breaking_news/doc492e42499d872233123279.txt) Illinois Senate respectively by challengers allied with the Jackson family.

Clues as to just what the Shaws and Jacksons thought of each other can be found in this newspaper account (http://www.jessejacksonjr.org/query/creadpr.cgi?id=6295) that Jesse Jackson Jr. made a point of distributing on the Internet.