What constitutes a diverse population?

Newly-elected state Rep. Anne Stava-Murray doesn’t seem overly concerned about appeasing potential voters to ensure she gets re-elected. Why else would she go about publicly labelling her home city of Naperville as white supremacist?

STAVA-MURRAY: Serious study, or self-attention?

True enough, Stava-Murray earlier this year used that label to refer to her DuPage County municipality (the fourth-largest city in Illinois) while responding to a Facebook post where somebody had described Naperville government as “the biggest bullies.”

TO ME, THE white supremacist label carries such a strong overtone that I wonder if it is too strong a label to use; one that distorts the reality of the situation.

Then again, there’s no disputing that Naperville is NOT a community where there are great numbers of African-American individuals living. For what it’s worth, an American Community Survey completed in 2016 showed more than three-quarters of the Naperville population being white – with people of Asian or Latino ethnic origins also existing in greater numbers than the 4.7 percent of those who are black.

Stava-Murray points out that many of the local public schools have next to no black students, and absolutely no black teachers.

Which might seem to be dooming any effort to get re-elected to her post come the 2020 election cycle. Then again, Stava-Murray (who has just begun her first term in office this month after being elected back in November) has already hinted she’s going to challenge Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., come the next elections.

COULD IT BE that Stava-Murray has already realized her ’18 election as a Democrat to represent a DuPage County district that historically has been Republican was a pure fluke? And that making such comments is meant to try to give her more appeal to those parts of Chicago where non-white voters are predominant?

I could see where many of those voters might think some white lady from Naperville wouldn’t know anything about them. Is this an attempt by her to show that she’s not totally clueless?

It had better work out that way. Because if it doesn’t, I could see where making such comments becomes a political “kiss of death” to any future she thinks she might have.

What should we think of Naperville community character?

Because she’s not going to make friends amongst the people she’s supposed to be representing in Springfield by implying they’re a batch of bigots. Although to be honest, it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that many of those living in Naperville are out there precisely because there aren’t a whole lot of black people amongst their neighbors.

THEN AGAIN, PERSPECTIVE on what constitutes “diversity” varies based on whom one is talking to.

I remember once covering a legislative hearing about redistricting and district boundaries where local officials from suburban Tinley Park described their hometown as a diverse community – largely because the white majorities also had significant numbers of people of Arab ethnic origins moving in, along with a growing number of Latinos.

The African-American legislators on that committee took offense to the “diverse” label being applied to the municipality, which had a black population of less than 2 percent.

They couldn’t comprehend use of the “diversity” label to a community where their numbers were so few. Still are actually, as the 2010 Census Bureau count showed Tinley with a 1.92 percent black population – and with the majority including American Indian, Asian, Pacific Islander and Latino, along with its white populace including significant tallies of people of Irish, German, Polish, Italian and Dutch ethnic origins.

THE POINT BEING that the “diverse” label being applied, or denied, to a community probably says more about the hang-ups of the person using the label – rather than the reality of the communities in question.

DURBIN: Stava-Murray likely opponent in 2020

For what it’s worth, I have a step-brother who lives out in that area, and a niece who attends high school within the Naperville district (which actually includes her home in neighboring Aurora).

While I’m not going to claim the area is most accepting to the presence of black people, it is far in character from the communities I have been in that truly do reflect a “white supremacist” attitude.

That goes even further in thinking that Stava-Murray’s use of the “white supremacist” label is most likely a campaign tactic; trying to build an image for the currently little-known legislator as she prepares for future runs for political office. Which also means we’re likely to hear similar trash talk during the next two years.

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Some criminal acts won’t wither away

Crime is all about us, and sometimes we get a quick resolution.
 

Tinley Park P.D. still searching

Either the so-called stick-up man falls asleep in the getaway car, or does something else absurd (think of those people now sitting in Cook County Jail on criminal charges they beat a mentally-retarded man, and videotaped it to post on Facebook) to give themselves away.

BUT MANY TIMES, we don’t get the quick resolution. Sometimes, we never get an official end to a case – even though the masses of us have to figure out a way to get on with our lives; or else we’d be a neurotic mess if a lifetime’s worth of horrors accumulated.

What brought this to mind was a pair of stories that turned up this week about criminal acts from a decade or so ago that technically remain unsolved to this day.

Although in one case, the man many suspect of committing the crime is now “doing the time” (remember “Baretta?”) has been in prison for several years and likely will rot away what remains of his life at the Menard Correctional Center in Southern Illinois.

We’re talking about Drew Peterson, the one-time Bolingbrook cop who a decade ago was all over the news because of the disappearance of wife number four, whom he married not long after wife number three died drowned.

THAT DEATH INITIALLY was thought to be accidental, but was later ruled a homicide, and Peterson is now serving a 38-year prison term for it, along with more prison time he picked up for supposedly trying to hire someone to kill the state’s attorney who prosecuted him.

But the disappearance of wife number four, Stacy, remains an unsolved incident, even though Peterson’s son, Stephen (himself a former police officer in Oak Brook) said recently during the “Monster in My Family” program on the Lifetime cable TV network he now thinks his dad killed his step-mother Stacy.

Not that he knows anything specific that would result in a resolution of the case – the public’s suspicions that “Drew did it” may well linger on for decades to come.

 

Peterson still rotting in prison

Although I’m sure the Lifetime network will be the big beneficiary. They are, after all, the same one that gave us that 2012 film “Untouchable” that purported to be the Peterson story starring actor Rob Lowe in the lead role, Maybe they’ll find new reasons to keep putting the Peterson saga on television?

THERE ALSO REMAINS the incident that in some minds will forevermore cling to the name of the Lane Bryant chain of clothing stores – the slaying of five women at a store in suburban Tinley Park that occurred nine years ago Thursday.

Officials in Will County (the crime occurred just right across the county line from Cook) say they’ve chased down some 7,000 leads, and Tinley Park police have one detective who remains on the investigation.

Not that there has ever been anything close to an arrest. Or the finding of anyone who bears a resemblance to those police sketches of the man who supposedly forced six women into a backroom of the store, then shot them with a pistol.

Five died. One survived.

THIS INCIDENT STICKS in my mind because my mother at the time lived in Tinley Park just a few short minutes drive from the store, and I remember trying to visit her that day only to encounter local police who were searching everyone in the area.

I had to justify to a cop that my mother actually lived nearby. Then again, I later learned the shootings had occurred within the past half hour.

The frustrating part is that I really don’t know any more about this criminal incident now than I did that day. The rumor mills out in the suburbs have spewed their share of stories and theories about what happened that day.

But for those with a direct interest in the case, they don’t even get the Drew Peterson outcome – that sense of someone being locked up for a differing crime!

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A suburban Christmas w/ the Klan?

White supremacist stuff is almost laughable. On the face of it, the materials they peddle come across as pathetic.

If not for canes, this Klan would be forgetable

One really has to have a depraved sensibility to find anything appealing about it.

WHICH IS WHY I have a hard time taking seriously the incident that occurred earlier this week in suburban Tinley Park, where the local police are investigating the distribution of a few fliers touting a group calling itself the Traditionalist American Knights.

As in a group that uses the imagery of the white robes and hoods of the Ku Klux Klan and tries to appeal to people who have their own irrational hang-ups about our society based on race.

It seems that five people living on a block in the southwestern Cook municipality reported having found fliers placed on their driveways in plastic bags – along with a candy cane.

How sweet. These racist nitwits who want to stir up fear kept in mind that it was the Week of Christmas. They gave a gift.

ON THE SURFACE, these people weren’t making a threat to the individuals who found the flier and candy. It seemed more to reassure people who live in the predominantly white (but also very ethnic) community that someone would sympathize if they’re the types who believe that all these Muslims who are moving into the southwest suburbs are somehow a threat.

The police may well be handling this incident properly. The candy canes have been collected as evidence, in the event that some sort of serious racial supremacist activity does develop in the suburb.

For now, it’s someone with a depraved sensibility leaving a candy cane. In and of itself, it’s not a crime.

Would these people have used candy canes?

But it’s the kind of thing that ought to have authorities concerned that criminal activity can develop. Although it seems that in Tinley Park, officials are less concerned with the Klan than the “16 and Pregnant” program of M-TV setting foot in town.

BECAUSE I’LL BE the first to admit the Klan, or the groups that use its imagery, aren’t anywhere near as organized as they’d like us to believe. The Klan of old that was fully-worthy of the label of “terrorist organization” is dead.

Instead, we have half-wits who try to reinforce their hang-ups by using the old imagery – as though they think everyone will cower in fear at their hooded presence. Instead of merely causing us to snicker at how pathetic they truly are.

I doubt this group, whatever its membership actually consists of, even bothers to wear the hoods and robes of old. They’re probably like a group of people I once encountered at a hot dog stand on the Northwest Side who were talking amongst each other about how to properly erect a cross so as to try to intimidate someone.

As far as I know, that cross was never erected in the neighborhood. It likely was a few meatheads blowing off some verbal steam.

NOW THAT WE have a candy cane chapter of the Klan (how else can we think of this latest group), it seems even more lame and laughable.

There always will be a few people who turn to the image of the hood or the swastika to try to reinforce their thoughts that it’s everybody else’s fault that they’re at the bottom of our society.

And that if things were just, someone else would rank below them. Which never will occur.

If anything, I have always sided with those civil rights activists who say that in the modern era, the bigots we ought to be concerned about are those who don’t wear sheets.

AS IN THOSE people who actually work their way into legitimate positions of power and authority – then use them to reinforce their racist thoughts.

I fear a government official or police officer with a racial attitude more than I ever will fear some clown in a hood who wants to idealize the nitwits who resorted to terrorist tactics to try to keep black people “in their place.”

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Muslim convention – holiday weekend fun or target for troublemaking rabble?

It will be intriguing to watch suburban Tinley Park this weekend, as the community with a convention center will be the site of a convention meant to give the public greater awareness of Islam as a religion.

It’s the 24^th annual event, and it’s being held this year at the Tinley Park Convention Center. Starting Friday, it is scheduled to run through Sunday.

LOOKING AT THE program for the event put forth on the Internet, it would seem that the weekend will include sessions such as a fashion show, children’s activities and other programs meant to bolster the interests of small business owners within the Muslim community.

It seems like many other sessions I have seen take place throughout the years, and seems to be about as un-notable as those programs.

Except, …

Things always get different these days whenever we talk about the Middle East and Islam. Certain people always are going to want to let their paranoia run amok and their ignorance take over.

ANYBODY WHO WANTS to convince me that this gathering coming right at the Labor Day holiday weekend is somehow a gathering of subversives wishing to take over the nation can just stow it right now!

I’m not in the mood for hearing paranoid pap. Then again, these are probably the same people who think the Labor Day holiday weekend is somehow subversive because it celebrates the concept of the worker. As though Karl Marx is the primary thought that runs through our minds when we roast a few weenies (or whatever other edible we choose to consume) for a holiday barbecue.

Personally, I see the event being put together by The Mosque Cares of suburban East Hazel Crest and Imam W. Deen Mohammad as just more evidence that our Chicago area continues to evolve in its ethnic composition.

But I also can’t help note the location of the convention and its proximity to Orland Park (the two suburbs are adjacent in southwestern Cook County – a region that has developed a significant Arab population in its many municipalities). That was the site of an incident just a couple of weeks ago.

THE LOCAL PUBLIC library put together a program for the community in which academics with knowledge of Arabs, the Middle East and Islam were to speak – in hopes of educating the public.

Instead, a collection of radical types showed up with the intent of disrupting the program – while trying to claim it was the fault of the people on the panel that there was any controversy.

All too similar to the actions of some 50 years ago when civil rights activists who were abused by angry white mobs were then further dumped on by police – with the establishment trying to justify such conduct by claiming the activists caused the problem by not staying in their (subservient, of course) place.

Perhaps it is evidence of how we have advanced in a half-century. When the police were called for in Orland Park, no one got arrested. But it was quickly seen that the problem was from the people whose purpose was disruption.

THE LOCAL POLICE did not follow the literal words of one-time Mayor Richard J. Daley and “preserve disorder.” They kept the two sides from erupting into a full-fledged riot of any sort. They did their jobs.

Let’s only hope that nothing similar (as I write this commentary on Friday, I am unaware of any outbursts) occurs during this holiday weekend.

Because I really can’t see how an event that includes a session on what exactly preparation of food in accordance with Halal could create any legitimate controversy.

Unless the Muslims themselves take offense to the fact that their convention was being held in a facility (although not necessarily the same room) that, just a week earlier, was the site of the Midwest Pole Dancing Competition!

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EXTRA: Will the Chicago Cubs be the suburban dream of towns that consider themselves too upscale for a casino?

How long will it be before the Chicago Cubs have a list of municipalities desiring their presence within their boundaries that is so long that it might as well be all 250-plus communities in the Chicago area?

A suburban replica anytime soon?

For the Chicago Tribune is reporting about yet another suburb that thinks it has a plot of land perfect for erecting a 40,000-seat stadium and handling the kind of traffic that comes from crowds that large.

SUBURBAN TINLEY PARK now needs to be added to the list that now includes Rosemont and DuPage County – all of which have expressed some interest in being considered if the political egos become so bloated that an overhaul of Wrigley Field becomes impractical.

Perhaps municipalities that think they’re too elite to have a casino would think they could have the Cubs. Although I’d wonder which would be the bigger gamble?

Specifically, village President Ed Zabrocki (one of those long-time mayors – 32 years, and counting – who makes the stints of the Daleys, J. and M., seem miniscule by comparison) said he could see the former Tinley Park Mental Health Center becoming the site of a new stadium.

That facility was closed by Illinois state officials amidst great controversy. Something has to be done with the site – which, by the way, sits right on the Cook/Will County border.

THE CUBS LITERALLY would be right across the street from Will County. Maybe somebody could erect one of those tacky tobacco-retail businesses (that operate under names like “Smokes” or “Cheap Cigs”) right across the street from the ballpark?

If the Cubs were to wind up in Tinley Park, I would see a little bit of irony not so much in that it’s a suburb to the south of Chicago (which makes me wonder if the Chicago White Sox would pull a San Francisco Giants-style move and refuse to let them “invade” their territory just like the Oakland Athletics can’t consider a move to San Jose, Calif.), but in its former purpose.

The site on 183^rd Street west of Harlem Avenue once housed people who were considered to be too mentally unstable to be amongst us. Now, we may have people going there and becoming mentally unstable after having watched yet more bad Chicago Cubs-style baseball.

A future Cubs ballpark site?

Or maybe it’s somewhat appropriate that the one-time West Side Grounds ballpark (at Taylor, Wood, Polk and Lincoln streets where the Cubs used to play at the beginning of the 20th Century) is now the site of the University of Illinois Medical Center.

PERHAPS IF CLARK and Addison streets were once a medical facility, the Cubs would have been more successful (never won a World Series in the 99-plus seasons they’ve played there) than they have been.

Not that any of this should be taken too seriously. I don’t expect to see the Cubs play in Tinley Park, or any suburban park, any time soon.

If they tried, I suspect they’d find out how quickly they’d alienate the portion of the Chicago metro area for whom any particular suburb isn’t all that convenient!

  -30-

EXTRA: A GOP “civil war” brewing at Chicago suburb political conventions?

Rick Santorum lives on in Chicago suburbs. Photographs provided by American Conservative Union

The Illinois Republican Party is holding its convention Friday and Saturday in southwest suburban Tinley Park, hoping to get the party faithful together to get them all worked up about the prospects of voting on Election Day.

No, they’re not going to put Illinois into the Republican column of electors for the presidential campaign. But they’re hoping to inflict their share of damage on Democrats, and probably would consider it a major deal if they could keep Rep. Joe Walsh, R-Ill., from losing to Democratic challenger Tammy Duckworth.

NOT THAT WALSH himself is going to be anywhere near the Tinley Park Convention Center, the facility located just off Interstate 80 that party leaders brag they chose because of its easy access to downstate Illinois.

Why make rural Illinois Republicans have to drive for another hour or two through the Chicago area to get to a northwest suburban convention site?

Yet somehow, I suspect another reason they’re in Tinley Park (which admittedly has a nice convention facility) is because the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont (near O’Hare International Airport) is already taken.

For that is the site of the American Conservative Union convention being held Friday at the very same time that party functionaries are trying to get people all worked up to vote GOP!

WALSH IS AMONG the people who will be speaking at the union’s convention, along with Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Ill. (the Republican who beat Duckworth the last time she tried running for a seat in Congress).

Among others who were expected to have a presence at the gathering include the failed presidential hopefuls such as Herman Cain, Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann – names which have some attraction to segments of the electorate.

They’re also supposed to include names such as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal.

For those people who want a Grand Old Party experience, it sounds like the real bash is taking place in Rosemont – while the Illinois party leaders are gathered in Tinley Park, less than a mile from the site of the Lane Bryant store where five people were killed some four years ago in a still-unsolved case.

UNLESS THE PROSPECT of a “surprise” birthday party for St. Louis-area congressional candidate (and failed Illinois 2010 lieutenant governor nominee) Jason Plummer held Thursday got you all excited, it seems like the people the party leaders want to appeal to have all chosen to show up at the other end of Cook County.

It certainly wouldn’t be the first time that events were scheduled in conflict with each other. In the public’s eye that often cares less about political concerns, I’m sure it was a bigger deal a few years ago when the Chicago White Sox scheduled their winter fan convention on the same day of the Super Bowl.

Still, it makes me wonder which party operative is responsible for deciding that this weekend was the one for Republicans to gather in the Chicago area.

We’re going to be seeing the split between the party regulars and the ideologues who these days get most worked up over the prospect of voting for Republican Party nominees – even if in many cases they’re really voting AGAINST Democratic challengers.

BECAUSE I’M SURE that group would eagerly have rebuffed the party officials if there had been any suggestion put forth that these two sides somehow work together.

So what’s my point in stating all of this?

JINDAL: What GOP thinks Obama should try to be like

It’s just that the American Conservative Union says in the statement that they’re gathering in Chicago on Friday to, “take the fight for the future of America directly to President Barack Obama’s backyard.”

Yet if we look to the president’s “backyard,” we get to see the split that harms the party’s chances of Election Day victory – which may well be the reason that Obama overcomes the concerns about a sluggish economy and wins Term Number Two come November.

  -30-

Not all activity confined to Chicago

Why do I suspect that long after the typical Chicagoan has forgotten about the “chaos” caused by NATO Summit protesters, they’re still going to be pondering what happened Saturday in suburban Tinley Park?

That “happening” was an off-the-wall attack that took place at the Ashford House restaurant on 159^th Street in the southwest suburb, which on Monday looked from the outside like nothing was out-of-the ordinary.

A DIGITAL SIGNBOARD outside the restaurant touted prime rib dinners for $30 apiece.

Yet just about every report coming up these days indicates that business has stunk the past two days. Nobody seems too anxious to eat there, even though the area is far from a high-crime neighborhood.

This was the restaurant where a group of up to 15 people (the number keeps changing, but seems to be about a dozen) were attacked by masked men who charged into the restaurant bearing bats and hammers.

Five people from that latter group have been arrested, and bond has been set for them on the criminal charges they now face.

BUT BEFORE ONE gets the sense that these were innocent bystanders who got beat up, it seems that among the portions of the Internet that attract the white supremacists of the world, this gathering at the restaurant was being billed as almost a convention, of sorts, for white supremacists.

Or white racialists. Or white nationalists, or whatever other goofy label those people try to come up with to legitimize their bigoted babble.

And from what police have said, the group that did the attacking is describing itself as an “anti-racism” group that seems to want to take things up a notch in expressing their opposition to a group of people who are a stain on our society.

At this point, nobody really knows for sure what any of these people really stand for, although Cook County prosecutors said during bond hearings for the five men now facing charges that the people who were attacked were all part of a group calling itself the Illinois European Heritage Association.

IS THIS REALLY just a group of white people who are taking pride in their ethnic origins? Or is that use of ethnicity just a cover for a group that dreams of the day when they can have a supremacy in our society that they don’t seem to merit by their own qualifications!

Personally, I have found that groups with legitimate interests in promoting their ethnicity are specific about what their ethnic origins are. “European” in this context is overly generic and reeks a bit too much not so much of “white” but of “not black.”

So it is believable that these people who got attacked aren’t exactly like you or me, even though I have noticed some conservative ideologues already are anxious to portray this event as a matter of violence against regular people trying to eat a meal.

Nonsense!!!!

WHAT CATCHES MY attention about all of this is the fact that none of these people have anything to do with the Chicago area. With the exception of the couple of restaurant employees who happened to be working Saturday when the outburst occurred and got caught – so to speak – in the crossfire.

The European “Heritage” group’s members don’t live around here. The people who organized this “event” said they chose suburban Tinley Park because of its centralized location – which is true because of the fact that Interstate 80 cuts through the southern edge of town and Interstate 57 is just to the east.

Which in all likelihood is why the now-shuttered Lane Bryant store in Tinley Park was the site of that 2008 shooting that left five people dead. It was all about location.

It would be easy for those living around the Midwestern U.S. to drive to this location without having to travel too deeply into Chicago proper.

EVENB AMONG THE five men who are the attackers and who believe they are standing up for decency and justice in our society aren’t from here. They all gave Indiana addresses – and I don’t mean the part of the Chicago metro area that crosses over State Line Road into the Hoosier State.

Every single one of these individuals made a special (and lengthy) trip to be here.

Why couldn’t they have found some other way of keeping themselves busy this weekend? Why not just stay home and cause trouble there?

A part of me is pleased to know that these are out-of-towners. Because it makes me glad to believe that the people of metro Chicago, by and large, are too sane to do something like this.

IT’S THOSE WACKY out-of-towners, who perhaps have turned out like this because they don’t experience the joys of living in Chicago – which I will always view as one of the nation’s great cities.

Then, there’s the bottom line. For an event that some believe was meant to be a gathering of racists to engage in trite trash-talk, there’s something about the image that they could only get a dozen people to show up that is reassuring.

The overwhelming majority of us are too sane to take such talk seriously.

  -30-

Red light cameras? Only ours, please

When the Texas Republican Party last month put together their latest version of a platform, it was filled with all kinds of laughable, Lone Star State hooey. But even the Texans managed to pick up on one idea that has political people to many people.

It is the official stance of the Texas GOP that red-light cameras should be banned!

I CAN’T HELP but think many people would agree with that thought, since our political people seem to be becoming way too willing to latch onto such cameras as a way of enriching their coffers.

Now I will be the first to agree that many people do drive like idiots. I see it all too often as I try to avoid getting hit by some nitwit who doesn’t seem to pay attention to what is going on around him (or her).

There also is a sense that I like the idea that local police officers can be freed up for work on more important law enforcement activity, if they’re not having to spend so much time sitting in cars parked in an isolated spot – just waiting for some nitwit motorist to drive past them and get caught in their “speed trap.”

What most irritates people about these cameras is the arbitrary nature in which they seem to enforce violations. Those cameras take pictures of moving violations, with the resulting photos being regarded as incontrovertible evidence of the wrong-doing.

NO APPEALS. NO nothing. Just fork over the cash.

Which is all the local governments really care about – fines that can be assessed without having to maintain the cost of the appeals process by which flawed tickets can be challenged.

That idea got reinforced in my mind when I was reading a news report out of suburban Tinley Park, where village officials decided to “opt out” of an attempt by Cook County government to set up red-light cameras at intersections of roads that are maintained at county expense.

That “opt out” means that the county can’t put up the camera that they wanted at 171st Street and 80th Avenue (about 12 blocks from the Cook/Will county line) because it falls within the village limits.

IT DOES NOT mean that Tinley Park officials have an ideological objection to the intrusiveness of more cameras watching our society. It’s just that the village maintains three red-light cameras of its own at other intersections of the village (all along Harlem Avenue, for those of you who ever pass through the area).

It seems to me that Tinley Park officials realize that “the people” don’t really like these cameras, and they know that having too many of them around the village will get people seriously upset – perhaps enough to even start voting against local officials.

So if there can only be so many cameras in the suburb before the people get outraged, they want to be sure that the cameras (and the resulting fines) are all controlled by the local officials. “Let Todd Stroger fund the final months of his county board presidency somewhere else,” seems to be the attitude expressed here.

This comes just a month after the county board voted overwhelmingly to install their own red-light cameras at 30 intersections. Those cameras are all supposed to be in place by the end of August.

NOW I MUST admit to not feeling complete sympathy for those people who get caught by such cameras, mainly because every intersection that has such a camera also has a warning sign, of sorts, telling the driver that they are approaching a camera-patrolled intersection.

I remember once hearing a suburban police chief (now retired) say on the subject, “we put up a great big sign warning you, it’s your own fault if you don’t pay attention.”

Personally, I always give my speedometer a quick glance when I see such a sign, and I also do pay a little extra attention to the way I make stops and turns at such an intersection. If it reads like I’m writing that I get a little extra careful, that would be true.

I don’t need a ticket and fine for something stupid, even though I realize that the villages and the county itself would prefer it if I just drove carelessly – because they want my money.

WHICH MAY BE one point upon which I agree with Republican Roger Keats, who is challenging Toni Preckwinkle for the Cook County Board presidency come the Nov. 2 elections. The former state senator from the North Shore suburbs calls it a “cheap ploy to pick the pockets” of taxpayers.

Of course, maybe he (and the Texans who took their “bold” stance on red-light cameras) would change his mind if he actually won election, and saw a use for the revenue. But for now, it’s encouraging to learn that at least a few politicos aren’t so eager to have those bloody boxes hanging up on posts all over our metro area.

-30-

Have you seen this face?

You’re not alone in saying “no.”

Police in the southwestern suburb of Tinley Park have received tidbits of information from more than 5,600 people, yet none of it is solid enough that police could go so far as to make an arrest in the slayings of five women at a Lane Bryant store that took place one year ago Monday.

THE “LANE BRYANT slayings” seem destined to go down in Chicago crime lore along with the Brown’s Chicken killings at a franchise in northwest suburban Palatine. People died in 1993, yet it took nearly a decade before people who knew definitively what happened were willing to come forth and cooperate with police.

One can only hope for the sake of the memory of Carrie Chiuso, Rhoda McFarland, Connie Woolfolk, Sarah Szafranski and Jennifer Bishop, someone can speak up a bit sooner than that.

In the meantime, officials in the suburb plan to mark Monday with a special service – to be held at Noon at the Tinley Park Convention Center, located on Harlem Avenue at Interstate 80. The Brookside Marketplace shopping center where the slayings took place is located on just the other side of the interstate highway.

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTE: Officials insist they need to move ahead, despite the inability of law enforcement (http://nwi.com/articles/2009/02/01/ap-state-il/d96318mo0.txt) to complete their work on a case that can be prosecuted in Will County court.

Chicago’s “Elite Eight” for ‘08

I enjoy this old postcard image of downtown Chicago, from before the days when the Sears Tower and Hancock Center dominated the skyline. Image provided by Chicago Postcard Museum (http://www.chicagopostcardmuseum.org/).

In the history of Chicago, 2008 won’t go down quite as adventurous a news year as, say 1968, 1929 or 1871.

But the year that will be complete in just a dozen more days did have its share of stories worth remembering. Considering this weblog began its existence one year ago today with a promise to “help people better understand what is happening on the shores of Lake Michigan between Evanston and East Chicago, Ind.,” today is as good a day as any to review the year’s top stories.

8 – MILOROD GETS BUSTED: Some people are going to disagree with me and claim I’m downplaying the legal predicament now faced by Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

I will be the first to admit that moving forward with impeachment of an Illinois governor is unprecedented. So is the degree to which a Chicago public official is accused of such crass (how else do you describe trying to “sell” the former post held by the biggest-name goo goo in politics today?) public behavior.

But I rank it at the bottom of this list for one reason – the real saga is going to come when the legal process progresses to the point where a trial takes place in U.S. District Court (or when Blagojevich enters a “guilty” plea to some sort of lesser charge).

In all likelihood, that will take place some time in 2010 (or 2011, or some year thereafter, if attorney Ed Genson gums up the legal works with enough procedural motions like he did with the criminal case of rapper R. Kelly, whose case took five years to go to trial).

When that happens, I will gladly proclaim the Blagojevich trial the Number One story of the year. Until then, I’ll have to agree that Genson’s characterization earlier this week of the Illinois House committee’s impeachment hearings as “stupid” has an element of truth to it.

7 – SKY-HIGH PRICES GIVE ME GAS: The times I have pumped gasoline in my car this week, I have paid somewhere in the area of $1.60 per gallon It wasn’t all that long ago that the only Chicago-area motorists who paid that much for gas were those stupid enough to use those overly-taxed pumps at filling stations in and near the Loop.

But it comes off as sounding like a bargain basement rate when compared to the more than $4 per gallon we were paying back in the summer months. At one point, Chicago-area motorists were paying an average of $4.24 per gallon (with those downtown pumps charging rates dangerously close to $5 per gallon). We had the highest average in the United States – even higher than isolated places like Alaska and Hawaii.

The end result of this gas price fiasco is that we are now used to paying ridiculous rates for petrol, and are inclined to think of the current price as some sort of bargain for which we should feel grateful. It also has many of us wondering how high gas will go come the summer of 2009.

If it weren’t for the steadily increasing rates (combined with service cuts) for mass transit, I’d be inclined to junk my automobile once and for all.

6 – BASEBALL IS MORE THAN A GAME: It’s a nerve-wracking ordeal.

In one sense, Chicago baseball in 2008 was historic. For the first time in 102 years, both of the major league teams representing the city made it through their six-month regular season ordeal to finish the season in First Place.

Both ball clubs will hold rituals in April to raise banners over their respective ballparks declaring themselves to be “Central Division Champs” of their respective leagues. And the way the White Sox managed to win that division title by winning a string of end-of-season games (with a loss in any one of them bringing their season to a Second Place conclusion) is something that ought to be remembered for decades to come.

Yet what is going to be remembered is the way both the White Sox and Cubs managed to lose the first round of their playoffs (I still see merchandise for sale touting the idea that the Cubs were destined to win the World Series this year). While the Sox managed to be competitive and win a game, the Cubs got swept in such humiliating fashion (for the second year in a row) that many of us wonder what was it about this team that made anyone take it seriously to begin with?

5 – AUCTIONING OFF THE ASSETS: Much has been made of the idea that Rod Blagojevich was selling off a U.S. Senate seat to the highest political bidder. But in a sense, Richard M. Daley did the exact same thing with some of the city’s assets that (if managed properly) can bring in revenue.

I’m talking about the deals made to turn control of Midway Airport from the Chicago Aviation Department to a private company, and another deal to let a private company oversee the parking meters on city streets.

Much has been made of the fact that parking along downtown streets could someday (by 2013) reach a rate of $6.50 per hour.

But what gets to me is why city officials think such income-producing resources are better off in the hands of private companies. While I appreciate the short-term benefit of millions of dollars being pumped into the city coffers, the long-term harm is that there will be nothing left for city government to oversee.

If that’s the case, why don’t we just auction off control of the City Council and Mayor’s office to a private management firm that could do all the actual work of government management? Then, Daley & Co. could sit back and do nothing, which some smart-aleck observers might think is an improvement.

4 – LANE BRYANT BANDIT REMAINS AT-LARGE: It was back in early February that a would-be robber at a Lane Bryant store in southwest suburban Tinley Park got carried away and killed five women (including some who were nothing more than customers).

The senselessness of the slayings caught the national mindset, and people across the country were paying attention to us for a time. It also inspired some of the craziest conspiracy theories (such as the idea that the robber/killer was some sort of homophobe who picked a Lane Bryant store because of the perception that transvestites shop there).

I even remember a few religious fanatics trying to turn the funerals of at least one of the women killed at the store into an excuse to protest against gay people.

But when one puts the mindless nonsense aside, the fact is we still don’t have a clue as to whodunit, or what the motivation for the slayings was (even though we’re pretty sure it will turn out to be something trivial).

3 – SCOTUS BANS FIREARMS BANS, CHICAGO SAYS “NO”: It was earlier this year that the Supreme Court of the United States gave gun nuts their jollies by issuing a ruling that struck down the stringent bans on firearm ownership in the District of Columbia.

The activists who can’t envision life without their high-powered rifles (and view ownership of an AK-47 or an M-16 as the equivalent of the car collector who likes to drive fine sports cars) immediately started filing lawsuits against other cities that try to restrict firearms ownership – including Chicago.

Many of those towns (such as Morton Grove, Ill., the suburb that enacted the original firearms ban) decided to avoid litigation by eliminating their bans, or amending them so as to make them pointless.

But Chicago stood firm, refused to make any changes, and recently got a federal judge to rule that the city’s ban is constitutional. That ruling is now susceptible to challenge in appeals courts, and it is possible that a higher court will try to overturn the local judge’s ruling.

But in my mind, that merely confirms that the high court’s action was a politically partisan move on behalf of a conservative constituency – rather than any serious reservation about the legitimacy of gun bans.

2 – I CAN HEAR THE OLYMPIC MARCH ALREADY: The next summer Olympiad is to be held in 2012 in London, with the next one after that in 2016 still in search of a site.

And there’s a chance that Chicago will become that site, bringing the eyes of the world to our city similar to how the presidential campaign of Barack Obama kept showing off aspects of Chicago life to the nation.

The U.S. Olympic Committee made it official when they officially chose Chicago to be the focus of their efforts to get the Olympics in the United States, rejecting a proposal by Los Angeles.

Now I suppose it’s possible that the International Olympic Committee could be delusional enough to think Madrid, Tokyo or Rio de Janiero is a nicer city than Chicago. Of course, that would mean they’re the same kind of people who think Britney Spears has legitimate musical talent.

The Olympics in our city would have the opportunity to give our city a grand new image, while also pressuring city officials to finally get off their duffs and fix some of those problems (ie., mass transit) that confront our daily lives.

As for those people who claim the headaches of staging the Olympics are not worth it, all I have to say is, “pipe down.” You probably think the Illinois State Fair is a grand old time, instead of the most overrated excuse for a corn-dog fest ever derived.

1 – YES, WE DID: The rise of Barack Obama from the obscurity of Illinois politics to being able to work in the Oval Office without causing the Secret Service to arrest him could very well turn out to be the “Chicago Story of the Decade.”

I can remember after his loss to Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., for a seat in Congress that political people were wondering if the Obama intellect was destined to fizzle out before it ever rose to new levels.

Even at the beginning of ’08, people figured Hillary R. Clinton (the suburban Park Ridge native-turned-Arkansan-turned New Yorker) was the shoo-in for the Democratic Party’s nomination, and Obama was just a pretty face who could give good oratory.

But he gained an advantage with an early win in the Iowa caucuses (where participants don’t view Chicago and Illinois as some alien land), and he ran up a string of primary victories despite the aspects of Chicago culture (Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, Antoin Rezko, etc.) that may seem alien to those people not fortunate enough to live in the Second City.

Insofar as the general election, Obama won because a majority of the people decided they liked political newcomer Barack and didn’t care much for the other newcomer – Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

In the end, Honolulu-native Obama (who like many others adopted Chicago as his home when he started his adult life) caused people from across the country to converge Election Night on Grant Park to celebrate the fact that he will become the first U.S. president with significant Chicago ties (Abraham Lincoln was a Springpatcher, while Ronald Reagan ditched Illinois for California, and Ulysses Grant didn’t live in our state long enough to qualify, in my mind).

And come Jan. 20, when Obama takes the oath of office to become the 44th U.S. president, this country will have a chief executive with an innate knowledge of all things Chicago, including why it is totally absurd to think one can root for both Sox and Cubs come the Cross-town Classic.

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People trying to get on with their lives 6 months after quintuple slayings

TINLEY PARK, Ill. – It has been six months to the day since I visited my mother, only to find a police squad car parked at the end of her block, and a uniformed officer questioning everybody who wanted to get past him.

My mother lives in this southwestern suburb exactly 20 blocks north of the Brookside Marketplace shopping center, which was the site of a Lane Bryant store where five female shoppers were shot to death (and a sixth was wounded).

TO DATE, THERE are no suspects publicly identified, just some drawings indicating police think the gunman was African-American with braided hair. There definitely is no one in custody facing criminal charges for any of the deaths.

What there is, is a community that is trying to get past the incident in the way everybody has to get on with their lives following death. Police, when questioned, make a point of saying that criminal investigations take time to complete.

That’s true.

The days of Joe Friday collecting “just the facts, ma’am,” and solving a criminal case in 22 minutes were never reality, and the idea that modern science makes it possible to solve a case beyond appeal within an hour’s show (a la the various “CSI” programs) isn’t real either. POLICE IN THE suburb on the Cook/Will county line obviously are feeling the pressure of not having someone in custody six months after the crime (most people would only have been satisfied if the gunman had been shot dead by police six seconds after the crime was committed).

Why else would the two Chicago metro daily newspapers be offered up stories about progress in the criminal investigation?

The Chicago Tribune story from Friday intrigued me the most.

Implying that the store manager’s ties to her church in Crest Hill, Ill. (which since has relocated to Austin, Texas) might somehow be relevant to this case would elevate the slayings from the level of a third-rate robbery gone violent that so many people took as gospel since the incident occurred to that of a complex crime that justifiably takes time to resolve.

OF COURSE, POLICE are quick to say they haven’t confirmed that the church ties (specifically, the store manager’s withdrawal from the church two years ago) are relevant.

But it gives local residents something to speculate over, aside from the theories I have heard from locals when visiting my mother about how the gunman went east on Interstate 80, and somehow managed to get out of the country and is now relaxing on a beach in Jamaica.

So what are the locals thinking these days? People I spoke to Friday mostly pleaded ignorance about the case.

Nobody knows nothin’, and the few who had much of anything to say were more disgusted that the criminal investigation is not yet a closed case.

“I JUST WANT to know who did it, and know that he is in the process of being punished,” said Suzanne Holt, a Frankfort resident who was shopping Friday at the Sally Beauty Supply store located directly next door to the now-shuttered Lane Bryant.

Most of those who I spoke to were not enthused about being identified, but they said they were more focused on their lives now, rather than dwelling on what happened six months ago today.

In fact, that seemed to be the general mood around the Brookside Marketplace, which is a huge shopping center for which the label “strip mall” really does not apply.

With a “Super Target,” a “Kohl’s” and a “Best Buy” anchoring it, and many other smaller stores also present, it is easy to overlook the Lane Bryant store, whose windows remain covered with brown paper and a sign posted near the locked entrance says the store remains “closed until further notice.”

BUT AS EVIDENCE that there once was commerce taking place here, another sign remains from the “old” days – one that informs customers in pink and white lettering that they can purchase “Instant gift Cheques” for $25.

It’s not like the rest of the shopping center has become a retail ghost town like the one-time Dixie Square Shopping Center in Harvey, Ill., which sat in decay for years until it was finally demolished – and its vacant lot remaining as a sign of what could have been.

Construction equipment literally can be seen along the edge of the development, building yet another structure that (from its appearance and specific location) will slop fast food onto store customers, which will turn the duo of Taco Bell and Arby’s into a junk food trio.

The vacant Lane Bryant (which has its store sign above the entrance remaining in place) has immediate neighbors with their share of business on Friday. Stores such as “Dinner by Design” and “Back to Bed” had their typical mid-day level of customers.

BASICALLY, CUSTOMERS WERE hustling and bustling into the shopping center’s main stores, providing people of this developing area just off Interstate 80 and Harlem Avenue a place to spend their money.

In short, the shopping center’s owners appear to have no intention of giving in to the criminal notoriety that their retail development now has.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Is a cellular telephone call routed through a nearby tower a clue to finding the gunman (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-lane_bryant_webaug01,0,1642159.story) who shot and killed five women back in February at a Tinley Park shopping center?

The Chicago Sun-Times reports that police are wondering if the Tinley Park quintuple slayings are related in any way (http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/1085902,CST-NWS-lane01.article) to a quintuple slaying on the South Side, for which three men already are in police custody.

Starbuck's closes its way into racial squabble w/ Chicago-area closing

I’ll give the people with Starbuck’s a little bit of credit – I don’t think the Seattle-based gourmet coffee retailer intended to provoke a race war when they picked which of their Chicago-area stores would be among the 600 nationwide to be closed.

But that is what they have managed to provoke with their choice.

WHEN STARBUCK’S RELEASED their list of coffee shops across the country that will be shuttered due to rising costs and declining profit margins, only one was a franchise located in Cook County.

Hence, only the people of Country Club Hills, a southern suburb, will lose their ability to purchase coffee in the various exotic blends and funky-sounding sizes that the retailer has used to create their corporate personality.

Now as it turns out, I have parents living in the towns both to the west (Tinley Park) and east (Homewood) of Country Club Hills. Both of those towns each have two Starbuck’s franchises in their boundaries.

So one can make a legitimate argument that the Starbuck’s store that was part of the strip mall at 167th Street and Crawford Avenue (in the city, we call it Pulaski Road) will not be missed. There are other Starbuck’s stores within a 10 to 15 minute drive of the soon-to-be-defunct location.

AND FOR THOSE who would argue that people without cars will not easily be able to get to the other locations, I’d argue that the strip mall in Country Club Hills was at a location distant from residential areas. No one from a nearby neighborhood with any sense was walking to the store in question.

So on paper, the corporate decision makes sense. But facts and figures on paper do not always take into account the raw emotions that exist. In this case, those emotions are racial, and they are behind the differing perceptions of the motivations behind the corporate action.

Country Club Hills (in 2000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau) is a town of 16,169 people, of whom 81.9 percent are African American.

The two surrounding towns that each will continue to have two Starbuck’s franchises are majority white. Homewood is 78.1 percent Anglo, although a black population was at 17.5 percent in 2000, and evidence exists to show it has grown in the past eight years.

BUT IT IS the other town that has the black activist in everybody upset. Tinley Park is a Chicago suburb of 93.2 percent white people (only 1.9 percent African American). And officials note that at a time when the chain is closing stores (and putting on hold plans to build stores in places such as the nearby suburb of Lansing), they went ahead and opened a second Tinley Park franchise – located directly across the street from the existing store.

These particular dueling Starbuck’s stores are about a five-minute drive from where my mother lives, and I can personally attest that Starbuck’s is not lying when they say that the existing location is in a strip mall with a set layout.

There was no way to amend the structure, particularly not if the goal was to have a drive-up window for people who need their gourmet coffee fix but are too lazy to get off their duffs and out of the car to make their purchase.

The new location on the east side of Harlem Avenue is a new structure, so the drive-up window was included in the design. Corporate officials won’t say so, but it would appear obvious that the old location will eventually be closed once its lease expires (which local newspapers report is in about two years).

SO FOR THE time being, Tinley Park, Ill., will go from being the home of the Bettenhausen family of auto racing fame to being the place where Starbuck’s fights a “civil war” of sorts for the loyalties of the area’s coffee drinkers.

Seriously, the SouthtownStar newspaper published a story Wednesday quoting locals who insist they will remain loyal to the old store, and don’t like the idea of having to walk across the street.

But to the people in neighboring Country Club Hills (the two towns are separated by Interstate 57, which is generally considered the demarcation point between the south and southwest suburbs), they see it as an issue of their predominantly black town losing a franchise so that their white neighbor can have two stores.

Even those black people willing to look at the issue somewhat rationally find it sad that their town’s economic demographics were considered unacceptable by corporate officials in Seattle to maintain the Starbuck’s store.

DOES THIS SOUND ridiculous?

To some, they will want to complain that Country Club Hills officials are guilty of “playing the race card” in being critical of Starbuck’s.

But I see the whole incident (which got significant amounts of airtime in a story broadcast Wednesday by ABC-owned WLS-TV) as more evidence of the way black and white people can perceive the same circumstances so differently.

In a way, it is no different than the poll commissioned by the New York Times, which on Wednesday reported on the differing perceptions of the presidential campaign of Democrat Barack Obama – based on the race of the person being questioned.

WHEN ASKED, “WHO has a better chance of getting ahead in today’s society?,” 53 percent of white people questioned said they think the two races are equal, with 35 percent saying white people have a better chance of succeeding in our society.

When it came to black people, 64 percent think white people have better chances of success, with only 30 percent thinking the two races have equal chances.

There also was the question of whether race relations in this country were “generally good or bad?” Fifty-nine percent of black people picked “bad” while 55 percent of white people picked “good.”

As much as I’d like to say these statistics sadden me, I have to admit they do not surprise me. I still remember how naïve I thought it was when the Wall Street Journal ran a lengthy story last November entitled "Whites' Great Hope?" about the Obama presidential campaign having the potential to be one that forevermore puts aside race as an issue.

HOW CAN WE be expected to put aside race when it comes to something significant like a presidential election?

We’re in a situation in this country where the closing of a coffee shop (particularly one as generic as a Starbuck’s franchise) can be cause for a racial debate. They might not be as blatantly offensive as they were a half century ago, but we’re nowhere near resolving the racial tensions of this country.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: It lasted for barely over one year, but the Starbuck’s franchise in the predominantly African-American suburb of Country Club Hills (http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/local&id=6269041) is history.

Tinley Park’s “War of the Starbuck’s” is a case (http://www.southtownstar.com/news/1058004,071608starbucks.article) of misplaced consumer loyalty.

We the people of this country can’t even agree on whether racial overtones exist with the closing of a coffee franchise. Why should we be expected to agree on the racial (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/16/us/politics/16poll.html?_r=1&oref=slogin) perceptions involved in the presidential campaign?