How times change, and not just because more Sears, Kmart stores are closing

Earlier this year, the City Council placed a series of referenda on the ballot for the upcoming elections Nov. 6 – including one measure concerning the continued use of plastic straws within the city.

Soon to be obsolete

How ridiculous, many of us quipped. How absurd. Many of us figured it was purely a political move so as to knock more legitimate issues that politicos would prefer not to address off the ballot altogether.

BUT THERE ARE those people who look at all those straws one uses every time they attend a restaurant. Those plastic tubes allowing you to sip your drink, then throw them away.

Where they will wind up in a landfill somewhere, forevermore adding to the planet’s pollution (or at least several hundred years until they finally decompose into nothingness).

That issue popped into my head Thursday when I stumbled across a story concerning the Kroger Co., a supermarket chain that hasn’t been in Chicago proper for decades, but does have some subsidiaries that operate in the Chicago area.

One of which is the Mariano’s chain of up-scale supermarkets that they purchased not long ago. It seems they’re taking on the same environmentally concerned approach to doing business.

BEGINNING NEXT YEAR in Seattle, they’re going to do away with those plastic bags we all have received far too often when grocery shopping. Unless we’re the type who actively go out of our way to choose “paper” whenever asked the eternal question “paper or plastic.”

By 2025, the Kroger people say they want to do away with plastic bags altogether – as though they expect the world of grocery shoppers to start carrying around reusable tote bags every time they go to pick up foodstuffs. Which may make sense on a certain level, but I suspect a certain segment of society will always remain too lazy to think that far ahead when going out to shop for groceries.

Fun? Or hazardous?

In Chicago, we already have what was supposed to be the initiative to discourage plastic bag use – having retailers charge 7 cents per bag on top of the price of the merchandise.

I know some people are too cheap to pay it, but many others just wind up coughing up the cash for the convenience. Which results in lots of the plastic bags accumulating in our humble abodes.

AT LEAST IN my case, the bags do get re-used. My father and step-mother have a pair of dogs and there are times when I wind up with the task of walking them. Which means I carry pockets-full of the plastic bags so I can pick up the poop and not create a health hazard for the neighbors.

Of course, that means the bags wind up going into a trash bin filled with canine caca and will eventually wind up in a landfill that way – where the bags will outlast the poop inside them.

More in the way of change in our society. The day may well come when people won’t be capable of comprehending why we snickered at the thought of laws against straws – or bag bans!

Just like another story I stumbled onto – one involving the closing of yet another Sears store AND a Kmart by year’s end.

THE SEARS IN question is in downstate Bloomington; the city in which I attended college and where I remember often buying typewriter ribbons and occasionally having to take my Sears-model typewriter in for repairs.

While the Kmart is in suburban Steger – a municipality that typically would not have been considered significant-enough to have such a retailer. But the long-time mayor always considered it his major accomplishment of some 40 years in office that he made the trip to Troy, Mich., to persuade corporate types to locate in his village.

Yet another retail vacancy that will need to be filled by year's end

But nothing lasts forever, and soon they will just be memories – and something to be included on those lists to be published in a couple of decades of things that college-age kids of the future never actually experienced in life.

Perhaps also like the straws that some of us of now see merely as a political tactic, rather than a legitimate issue.

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Times are changing ethnically, and one alderman seems unwilling to resist

Mike Zalewski, an alderman in the Southwest Side 23^rd Ward, let it be known this week he will step down from his government post next month – just under one full year before his term comes to an end.

ZALEWSKI: Wants to go out on top!

Zalewski is in his fifth term as a member of the City Council. But like many of the so-called “white ethnic” officials, he’s finding the “ethnic” part of his home district changing.

ZALEWSKI IS NOW an official of Polish ethnic origins representing an area that is 67 percent Latino (mostly Mexican-American) composition. It seems he saw the result of the last month’s primary elections in a neighboring ward where the state representative who is brother to almighty Alderman Ed Burke managed to lose – to a Latino official who will now begin his political career representing an area of which he fits in with the majority.

It would seem Zalewski didn’t want to have a similar fate to Burke. So, he announced his intention to resign come May 31 – even though his term runs through early May of 2019.

He wants to depart on his own terms, and NOT as someone who got taken down by a growing ethnic population that no longer views him as “one of our own.”

Such circumstances mean that Mayor Rahm Emanuel will get to pick a replacement for Zalewski to serve through the next 11 or so months. Whoever that person winds up being will have the option of seeking a full four-year term in the 2019 municipal election cycle – and will be able to do so as an incumbent alderman.

BERRIOS: Ethnic loss can go opposite

NOT SOME OUTSIDER challenger seeking an open seat.

So in that regard, Zalewski is playing the political game according to the rules – in that he’s making it possible for the establishment to decide for themselves who will be admitted to the ranks of that political species considered by some to be among the most insipid creatures of all.

A real, live Chicago alderman!

But on the other hand, Zalewski is making a bold move that political people would not have even contemplated in the past.

BURKE: Sees own possible fate in Dan

CHICAGO’S ETHNIC AND racial composition is constantly evolving. There are many neighborhoods that once were something completely different than they are now.

Yet that doesn’t mean their political representation is always willing to follow along. In fact, replacing the old with the new often means the “old” goes kicking and screaming – with some insisting that some sort of foul conspiracy has occurred to remove them from office.

Seeing someone willingly acknowledge the change that has occurred in his neighborhood – one that he often clings to because it gave him a chance to run for a political office – seems to me to be a step in the positive direction.

Of course, these ethnic changes move in all directions.

CONSIDER THE FATE of one-time state Rep. Toni Berrios, whose Northwest Side legislative district by 2014 had developed from a Puerto Rican enclave to one that had some segments of upper-scale whites – many of whom that election cycle decided they’d like to no longer be thought of as an ethnic district.

State Rep. Will Guzzardi, D-Chicago, wound up winning the support of people in the Logan Square neighborhood, and the woman who had been the first Puerto Rican female to serve in the Illinois House of Representatives went down to defeat.

A fate that Zalewski definitely wants to avoid.

He’d probably like to have an end similar to the one-time Alderman Vito Marzullo, who served more than three decades representing what once was an Italian ethnic community in Chicago that, by 1986, had become Latino.

COURT-ORDERED REAPPORTIONMENT brought about boundary changes that made it highly unlikely Marzullo could continue to be elected – so he retired amidst great fanfare in the City Council. Which also brought about a rookie politico in the form of Luis Gutierrez.

Who is only now stepping down from the seat in Congress he eventually rose up to. Which gave us the primary victory showing Gutierrez likely will be replaced by Jesus Garcia – who was amongst the backers of Dan Burke’s Illinois Legislative victor and himself becoming a Latino power broker who likely would have found someone to play political hardball against Zalewski; if he hadn’t had the sense to step down now.

These kinds of changes are going to continue in the near future. Because our city is not the same composition as it was some 50 or 60 years ago.

Even though the kind of people who’d be inclined to complain about Zalewski’s departure are likely of the sort who wish things had never changed, and that we still had the original “Mayor Daley” in charge – rather than trying to figure out which third-generation Daley will someday try to run for mayor.

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How different will things be under Rahm?

“Chicago ain’t ready for reform” – Matthias “Paddy” Bauler, April 1955.

“Today, more than any other time in our history, more than any other place in our history, the city of Chicago is ready for change” – Rahm Emanuel, May 16, 2011.

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EMANUEL: Agent of change? I think not

Why do I have a funny feeling in the pit of my gut that former Alderman Paddy Bauler’s 56-year-old assessment remains more accurate than Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s official pronouncement Monday in the moments after he officially became the 46^th person to serve in that position.

And yes, I count people like David Orr when I come up with that mayoral total.

BUT BACK TO the concept of “change.” Is the election of a one-time White House chief of staff and member of Congress to run our city government the factor that will bring about change (dare I think, "reform") in the way things are done in Chicago?

I suppose it depends solely on how one defines “change.” Because I’m not sure I see anything terribly significant being altered. If anything, I’d say the people who gave Emanuel that 54 percent majority WITHOUT having to endure a runoff did so because they want things to stay more or less the same as they were under Richard M. Daley.

There will be some things done differently, although I’d argue those will be superficial changes.

The Chicago White Sox won’t be able to count Hizzoner among their season-ticket holders. That Opening Day appearance Emanuel made at U.S. Cellular Field wearing a White Sox warmup jacket will probably be his last at the ballpark this season – unless the Sox seriously get their act together and make it all the way to the World Series. Even then, he might only grudgingly attend; with President Barack Obama nudging him along.

EVEN THEN, EMANUEL (who has been quoted as saying, “I hate baseball”) isn’t going to be that guy who plays at cheering for sports. A fairly decent write-up by the Associated Press that was published in many newspapers this weekend shows just how “into” the arts – particularly music and dance – our new mayor is.

It also does not shock me to hear from the activists who are screaming that this mayor is “too North Side” in his focus, and that much of his mayor-elect activities ignored the majority of the city south of Roosevelt Road.

This is a North Side guy in actuality. For the next four years (barring some sort of tragedy), there won’t be someone with the Sout’ Side in his veins working on the fifth floor. Anybody who didn’t realize that when they voted earlier this year deserves whatever aggravation they now feel.

If you wanted a hard-core South Side guy, you should have listened to Alderman Ed Burke and voted for Gery Chico.

BUT LIKE I said, these are trivial aspects.

The reason I don’t see serious change is because Emanuel was the candidate preferred by the business community. He also is the guy who ran Obama’s White House for nearly two years – the same two that has many progressive types thinking that Obama might not have been what they had hoped for when they voted for him in 2008.

Because Emanuel’s strategy, both in overseeing the effort in 2006 that saw Democrats take back control of the House of Representatives and in running the White House staff for Obama, was to search for those more conservative people who would be willing to wear the “Democrat” label – even though many of their ideological beliefs might make them a better fit for the opposition.

This was the guy who was instrumental in giving us candidate Tammy Duckworth for Congress over primary opponent Christine Cegelis because she was the type who wouldn’t attract Republican voters, and also kept Obama from even thinking of touching immigration reform because he didn’t want to upset those same voters.

HECK, THAT WILLINGNESS to put aside the ideological issues that bring many to the Democratic Party to begin with is the reason he gets the business community backing. If anything, it might very well be that relationship between government and business interests that most needs to be studied and considered for change.

If you view “change” as accepting defeat on certain issues and feeling the need to concede, then Emanuel is change. To me, it seems more like accepting the status quo on certain issues that need to be changed.

Not that I’m complaining (too much) about how the municipal elections turned out this year. I accept that Emanuel has certain administrative qualities from his past political posts that will come in handy.

I also like the fact that the people most offended by the concept of “Mayor Rahm Emanuel” are conservative ideologues who desire Rahm to wither away into nothingness so they can brand his Democratic Party political career a failure. There may well be times when Emanuel will turn that hot-head temperament of his against someone who has the city’s worst fears at heart. That will be something to see.

THEN AGAIN, WASN’T an ability to be stubborn and think that he was always correct when it came to urban issues one of Richard M. Daley’s traits (along with that of his father, Richard Joseph)? Where’s the change?

As for those who would argue the fact that a Jewish person is now mayor of Chicago, I'd argue that the reason many in this city voted for him so eagerly was because he was the closest resemblance to a traditional white guy candidate they could find in this particular election.

In short, I don’t see some radical shift in the way our city government does business. A part of me seriously wonders if Emanuel is merely the Fifth Floor seat warmer until the day that the next generation of the Daley family is ready to run a campaign for Chicago mayor.

BAULER: A "true" Chicagoan still?



It makes me wonder if Paddy Bauler hit on the very nature of Chicago on that date many decades ago when he reacted to the coming of the original “Mayor Daley.” His words still resonate, even though he has been gone from this Earth nearly as long as Daley, the elder.

INSOFAR AS WHICH North Side official you’d rather deal with (Emanuel or Bauler), consider this. Rahm may have once aspired to be a dancer. Yet Paddy used to brew his own brand of beer at his tavern at North Avenue and Sedgwick Street.

Take your pick.

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