Fioretti showing persnickety mindset in wanting to dump Daley Plaza name

During the time he served as an alderman, Robert Fioretti was one of the people willing to speak out and say whatever he thought – regardless of how contrary his thoughts were to the establishment that set policy for municipal government.

Fioretti takes political pot shots at Daley son … 

Not that he was someone who got things done. If anything, he was somebody that reporter-type people could turn to whenever they needed a quote saying how absurd the mayor or other officials were being in their actions. Not somebody who could talk about serious policy questions or details.

SO IT WASN’T a shock that city officials used their last redistricting process of ward boundaries to put Fioretti into a ward without many people who’d be inclined to support him.

And that when he tried running for mayor in 2015, he was viewed by the city’s political establishment as the guy they most wanted to see go down to defeat.

He was a loud-mouth who wouldn’t get anything accomplished, but would also make other people feel awkward and miserable while they tried to go about their actions.

And now that Fioretti is trying once again to run for mayor, it seems his temperament hasn’t changed one iota.

FOR FIORETTI DARED to make the most sacrilegious of suggestions – taking away the name of the ultimate Hizzoner, Richard J. Daley, from the Civic Center that serves as the Cook County courthouse.

… for suggesting Dan Ryan name change … 

What would the Daley Plaza be, other than a place with a half-century-old Picasso sculpture that most Chicagoans still can’t say exactly what it is.

Fioretti on Friday suggested that the Daley Center building be the Chicago structure that gets renamed to honor Barack Obama – the former president who made his adult life in the Hyde Park neighborhood.

Now in all honesty, Fioretti doesn’t expect anybody to take his suggestion seriously. He doesn’t really want to have the identity of the Big O himself become tied to our civil courthouse and future generations of lawsuits that get filed within the city of Chicago.

… to a tribute to Barack Obama

WHAT HE’S REALLY doing is taking pot shots at Daley’s son, William. Who’s also among the masses of candidates wishing to run for mayor, and who is the one who suggested that the Dan Ryan Expressway be renamed for Obama.

In short, he’s trying to p’ off the powers that be who still hold the name “Daley” as something sacrosanct and sacred.

Maybe he even thinks he’ll gain a few votes for his mayoral bid from the kind of people who were always eager to trash the Daley legacy and who view the idea of a third “Mayor Daley” as an absolutely abhorrent concept for Chicago to have.

It’s political trash talk; rancid rhetoric of the finest kind. It’s all about stirring up the partisan pot. Which may well be why Fioretti is a long-shot to actually become mayor, and probably wouldn’t be capable of competently serving as mayor even if he could win an election.

FOR EVEN WHEN he offers up a somewhat legitimate point, his rhetoric comes off as so antagonistic that it prevents anybody from taking him seriously in the least.

Richard J. isn't about to lose his namesake tribute

Yes, I actually think renaming the Dan Ryan is ridiculous. Then again, I tend to think we should try to avoid naming streets and buildings for people who will be forgotten a couple of generations from now. It only ensures that the few who bother to remember will take great offense.

Just think if we did name something now for Barack Obama, how much of a stink would develop some time around the year 2070 when someone suggests ditching the name to honor somebody who likely doesn’t even exist yet.

So it may be so that Bill Daley is being short-sighted in even suggesting the renaming of the Dan Ryan Expressway. But Fioretti’s willingness to go for the punchline as part of his own mayoral dreams may well show us why he’s no better qualified to work out of Richard J.’s one-time City Hall office.

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Will Chicagoans have to choose between memory of Dan Ryan, Obama?

Will Dan Ryan subside someday … 

Bill Daley’s campaign for Chicago mayor is trying to gain some attention these days with a suggestion that a city-based expressway be named (renamed, actually) for Barack Obama.

Daley offers up a line of logic that other Chicago expressways are named for John F. Kennedy and Dwight Eisenhower – so why not give a president actually from Chicago the same honor?

… to Barack Obama?

ALTHOUGH SOME PEOPLE are speculating that this gesture by Daley is merely something meant to try to sway a share of the black vote to actually think about casting a ballot for him. Something with symbolic value, but little to no actual value in terms of public service.

But what is really causing a stink amongst some people is that Daley is suggesting a portion of Interstates 90 and 94 be used as the Obama Expressway. As in the same portion of highway that for years has been known as the Dan Ryan Expressway!

I-90/94, northwest to O'Hare

State Rep. LaShawn Ford, D-Chicago, who led the effort to rename a central Illinois part of Interstate 55 for Obama, claims that the law prohibits Ryan’s name from being removed. Although Illinois Department of Transportation officials say there are procedures that could allow for the name change.

I-290, west to Tri-State

Although they also told the Chicago Sun-Times they discourage too many changes, saying it can cause confusion amongst the driving public.

SO WHAT’S GOING to become of the Dan Ryan Expressway? Has Dan really outlived his usefulness as a namesake for THE major street cutting through the South Side leading people into and away from the downtown area.

I-55 southwest to Obama Expy

Has it truly been so long that Ryan’s name no longer has political significance? Is “the Ryan” in reference to a daily commute going to be an example of someone thinking in a 20^th Century reference.

Will people living in Chicago in the late 21^st Century think of “the Obama” as the main way of travelling from 95^th Street all the way into the heart of the city – with that view of the one-time Sears Tower looming in the distance; growing taller and taller as we drive closer and closer to it?

Or is the name “Dan Ryan” too sacred to Chicago’s character that it would seem sacrilegious to think of changing it. What next; taking the name “Harold Washington” off of the main building of the Chicago Public Library?

Is Rkchard J.'s name sacrosanct?

OR REMOVING “RICHARD J. Daley from the downtown Civic Center (as in the building with the ‘Picasso” statue out front)?

Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that many people don’t know who Dan Ryan, Jr. (there also was a Sr. who was politically significant) was.

Both served on the Cook County Board, with Jr. serving as a commissioner from the 1920s to 1954, when he became county board President – a post he held until his death in 1961.

During his time as an elected official, he took a special interest in the development of highways through Chicago, which is what caused the county board to think him worthy of presidents and a former governor (Adlai E. Stevenson II) when it comes to being namesakes for the city’s expressway system.

Will William gain support from Obama move?

NOW IF DALEY (as in William) winds up losing the upcoming mayoral election, this could wind up becoming a moot point. Who knows if anyone else will feel compelled to take up this issue.

It may strike some as an issue far too trivial to expend much time and energy on.

Although I must admit to having one reason to kind of hoping that an Obama Expressway in Chicago becomes a reality someday. We’re in an age where some amongst us are determined to do whatever they can think of to erase memories of Obama or his legacy from our society.

The idea of a highway in Chicago that is federally funded and named for Obama? It would almost be the equivalent of a middle finger in the faces of all those who find things to admire about this Age of Trump we’re now in.

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EXTRA: What warrants Obama brand for posterity (or maybe that long)?

Out in south suburban Markham is an elementary school named for Barack Obama, while a quickie search of the Internet uncovered schools in Dallas, Los Angeles and Milwaukee named for the nation’s 44^th president.
 

OBAMA: Does he need a highway too?

Which intrigues me because our federal government’s current leadership seems determined to erase anything and everything that ever occurred during the Obama years. If they succeed, will students of the future attend schools named for someone who left nothing lasting behind?

WE’RE GOING TO spend the next few years, perhaps even decades, pondering the Obama legacy – between those who want to erect tributes to it in marble and whose who want to be the equivalent of the pidgeon that dumps its waste all over it.

So it will be interesting to see how things wind up this year with a pair of bills now pending in the Illinois General Assembly, being sponsored by legislators who want Obama to be something equivalent of John Kennedy, Dwight Eisenhower, Adlai Stevenson II or Dan Ryan.

As anybody who drives around Chicago on a regular basis knows, those men all have major highways named after them. In fact, I’d bet most people only know the Ryan as a South Side highway and don’t have a clue who the former Cook County Board president really was!

We do seem to have a split.

 

STEVENSON: Can he share I-55 w/ Obama?

ONE BILL SAYS we ought to rename Interstate 294, also known as the Tri-State Tollway, for Obama. It would be a major road used heavily every day by traffic in the Chicago area, and some think it cute that it connects Illinois to Indiana and Wisconsin – all of which are states Obama took in the Electoral College in his 2008 presidential victory.

Of course, the smart alecks point out that the Tri-State is the road used by traffic to avoid having to enter the Chicago city limits.

 

RYAN: A highway, more than a man?

But there is another bill calling for the bulk of Interstate 55 in Illinois to be named for Obama. As things stand, the Chicago portion of that highway already is named for Adlai.

In fact, I suspect most Chicago motorists would get a confused look on their faces if you speak of I-55; but Stevenson Expressway will create a slew of stories of traffic congestion they have had to endure.

 

FORD: Name has new freeway fame

ALTHOUGH I SUSPECT this bill is politically loaded – there will be the rural Illinois residents who will object to having one of “their roads” being used for an Obama tribute. Yet you try to dump the name of Adlai E. from the Chicago portion of I-55, and that will create a bigger stink because people will have to learn a new name for telling people what road they were caught in traffic on during the morning rush hour.

These measures are going to create quite the political brawl; particularly since I already sense how offended the “loser” (as in the one whose idea gets rejected) will take it personally.

Will we get some people out there determined to hang on to numeric designations because they don’t want to acknowledge the Obama name – similar to how I’m aware of some people who insist on using the “Calumet Expressway” name for Ill. 394 because they don’t want to acknowledge the “Bishop Ford Freeway” and the Rev. L.H. Ford whose cultural significance as international head of the Church of God in Christ apparently didn’t extend into the non-black parts of the South Side.

It is a large part of why I personally hate seeing roads renamed for anybody. The amount of stupid-talk that gets created is never worth the tribute, and it also has the effect of reducing the memory of anyone to nothing more than a future traffic jam or deadly accident.

 

BYRNE: She saw humor in her interchange

IN FACT, ABOUT the only renaming I ever wound up liking was the one that turned the Circle Interchange (just southwest of downtown where all the expressways converge) into the Jane Byrne Interchange, in honor of the first femme to become Chicago mayor.

It’s not that I think the Byrne Interchange moniker has all that special a ring to it.

But Byrne herself was still alive when the change was made, and I’ve heard stories about how much amusement she’d gain whenever she heard radio reports about traffic congestions that inevitably would include the line, “Jane Byrne is backed up.”

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Byrne joines Ryan, Ford as transport tributees -- will 'Looie" be next?

Put Jane Byrne on the list of people whom future generations of Chicagoans will regard as a mere road.


Forget the humanity that ever existed. People will forget the fact that Byrne was once mayor of Chicago, or that she was the first (and thus far, only) woman to hold that post.\


BECAUSE HOW MANY people do you really think remember that Dan Ryan, Jr., was once a Cook County Board president. Or that the Bishop L.H. Ford was once a significant leader of the Church of God in Christ?


Instead, we hear the daily traffic reports about how backed up traffic was on the "Ryan" for those people working their way into the heart of the city.


We even hear exotic reports about this "Ford Freeway" that always seems absurdly backed up headed north in the morning, and south in the evening -- but that many people living in the metropolitan area never go anywhere near.


Admittedly, Byrne's name will get more prominence because she's getting the Circle Interchange named after her. That's the point where all the expressways that head downtown converge.


IT'S THAT POINT where many motorists from all over Chicago and surrounding suburbs converge. It is a place with much potential for auto accidents of all sorts.


Which makes me wonder if we're destined to hear of so many people being killed or maimed at the Byrne Interchange that her name will take on an even more negative connotation now than it had for some people back when she was mayor and interfering with their efforts to push yet another concocted scheme through City Hall?


One significant difference; Byrne was still alive last week when ceremonies were held to mark the official renaming of the interchange.


Unlike Ryan and Ford, who had already passed on by the time the expressways that took their identities became a part of the daily commutes that occur in Chicago.


ALTHOUGH CONSIDERING HOW long it took for Byrne to get anything of significance named in her honor, I can't help but wonder if some political people were preferring that she be deceased before they had to get around to doing anything.


Even Harold Washington got his namesake tribute (a public library building) so many years ago that I wonder how many people are losing track of the man.


We now have Ryan, Ford and Byrne, to go along with former Governor and U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson and former presidents Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy as the namesakes of Chicago's major expressways.


Ronald Reagan has his own expressway up in the far northwestern suburbs; which I suspect makes his ideologue backers happy. His road doesn't stretch into the city, because his political programs and ideas often ignored the concerns of urban America.


ALTHOUGH LOOKING AT the non presidential types who get a Chicago expressway, I can't help but notice some odd sense of balance -- although I believe it is unintentional.


A white Irish type in Ryan, an African-American preacher in Ford and a woman in Byrne. Does this mean we're going to someday need a Latino of sorts to provide another sense of balance?


Which makes me wonder if the day is going to come when we're going to get a significant road named for Rep. Luis Gutierrez? I'm not sure which road it will be. For all I know of the "Chicago Way," it's likely that someone will want to build a new road (and get rich off the awarding of the construction contracts) just so that the congressman's name will have a place to go.


And someday, the outspoken congressman will become nothing more than a place where winter icy conditions caused a series of fender-bender accidents.


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Some people compelled to complain

Soon to be undergoing long-overdue repairs. Photograph provided by LHOON

I write this during the weekend anticipating all the rants and rages we’re going to hear Monday from South Side residents who have to rely on the Chicago Transit Authority’s “Red Line” trains.

That, of course, is the line that was shut down completely beginning Sunday so that crews can work around the clock (instead of in shifts around “el” trains) for the next five months to upgrade the track.

IF IT HAD been done in shifts, it would take years to complete the work. Which would mean years of inconvenience.

By doing an outright shutdown, the work can be completed sooner and the benefits to be derived from upgrading the train that runs down the middle of the Dan Ryan Expressway to 95^th Street will be felt sooner.

For what it’s worth, CTA officials claim that improved tracks will allow for the “el” trains to speed through the area faster – possibly reducing as much as 10 minutes off the total commute for anyone who goes from 95^th Street all the way to downtown.

Now as one who has, from time to time in my life, had to rely on commuter trains for transit (and still uses them on occasion), I comprehend that it’s going to be a pain in the behind for those people who are used to relying on the Red Line (which, in a sign that reveals my age, I still think of as the Dan Ryan Line).

THEY’RE GOING TO have to find an alternative. And I’m sure there are some for whom shifting to a Green Line (a.k.a., Englewood/Jackson Park Line) train or using the Metra Electric trains that make stops on the Sout’ Side between Michigan Avenue and Blue Island is not going to be practical.

Some people may have their livelihoods seriously interfered with by this repair work.

But the simple fact is that all things eventually wear down. Eventually, everything needs serious upgrades in order to keep them in use. Unless we want them to deteriorate to the point where they become unusable – if not downright hazardous!

Now some people want to see a racial angle in this move because of the fact that this repair work is going to impact overwhelmingly African-American neighborhoods – since the reality is that many of the white people who use the southern extension of the Red Line (they think of it as the train that goes north to Howard Street and cuts through the Lincoln Park and Lake View neighborhoods) are off the train by 35^th Street.

WHICH MEANS THE Chicago White Sox may be impacted – although many fans I talk with say they already try to avoid the Red Line crowds and prefer other ways (I’m inclined to try the Metra Rock Island line train with its nearby stop named for one-time state Rep. Lovana Jones) of getting to U.S. Cellular Field.

JONES: No, she didn't play for the Sox

I’m not sure I buy that angle. Although if there is a racial angle to this issue, it may well be that CTA officials were willing to let the southern part of the Red Line deteriorate to its current condition without having done these repairs much earlier.

The Red Line dates back to the 1960s, and there are parts of the track that are now going to be replaced that literally date back to the opening.

Although I suppose compared to how old the Green Line extensions to neighborhoods on the West Side were (just over a century) when CTA officials finally got around to doing upgrades on that track in recent years, the Red Line might be considered in prime condition.

THE POINT BEING that this work is long overdue. We never hear of the elevated train lines running through North or Northwest Side neighborhoods going that long a time period without repairs.

And if it had been done in a more-timely manner, the commuter inconvenience would be long past – a thing of history.

  -30-

Wave of the transit future?

There might be one plus to the overhaul the Chicago Transit Authority plans to do to that train line that runs down the middle of the Dan Ryan Expressway – it could be the act that forces transit officials from city and suburb to figure out how their systems should work together.

Because the way the system is set up now is so oriented to, perhaps, the first third of the 20^th Century – rather than the way the world really works these days.

AT A TIME when some officials think we should be encouraging people to use mass transit more often, we have to accept the fact that the current layout makes such use way too impractical.

There have been times I have lived in city neighborhoods that were laid out in ways where it was utterly practical to rely on the el trains and buses to get around – along with the occasional taxicab.

I can see how some people are able to get through life without an automobile. A part of me wishes I could do that now.

Instead, I keep an aging automobile running because I don’t want the payment of a new car, and the idea of not having any car would keep me completely isolated. Because I’m living these days in a place where I’d be cut off from certain parts of the world.

EVEN THOUGH I live these days just a few blocks (an easy walk) from a Metra commuter station on the Rock Island line that runs from LaSalle Street station to Joliet’s Union Station – where in theory I can catch the Amtrak train that could take me to Springfield, St. Louis or point further on.

Some people don’t even have that much access.

City vs. suburb needs to end....

Which is why I was glad to see the Chicago Sun-Times report on Thursday that has the CTA and Metra trying to figure out how their lines can cooperate. Perhaps some people who now rely on that “red” line train from 95^th Street north to downtown can use a Metra Electric train just to the east to be able to make their commute to work when the CTA line is shut down for a major overhaul.

Because the idea that a system meant to get around Chicago proper and another meant to take people from suburbs to downtown just misses the point.



... for good of metropolitan area



MORE PEOPLE FROM suburban areas might be willing to use mass transit if they could more easily get to locations around Chicago – rather than having to take the trip all the way downtown, then try to figure out how to get to whatever neighborhood they want to go to via the CTA.

And let’s be honest. There are holes in the CTA system. I don’t see any el trains that go to the Hyde Park neighborhood. There, the Metra trains that happen to pass through get used for local transportation needs when they make their stops around 51^st, 55^th and 59^th streets.

Or you can take the fact that el trains only go as far south as 95^th Street – even though the Chicago city limit is largely 119^th Street, and dips as far south as 138^th Street in some points.

That’s a large swath of city ignored by the CTA (to the point where those residents have grown up expecting nothing in the way of mass transit, even though their tax dollars have to pay for it).

FOR THOSE CITY residents who have reasons to venture into suburban communities, life can be just as complicated – unless their business happens to be limited to specific communities like Evanston, Oak Park or Cicero.

Life doesn’t end at those communities right on the city border.

So as CTA officials try to figure out how they can use Metra trains to help their riders cope with the shutdown period next year, perhaps they can also engage in the kind of talks that could someday see us have a truly legitimate metropolitan transit system.

For the fact is that the Chicago area continues to grow (Peotone isn’t really as isolated a community as third airport opponents would like to think it is). Mass transit is going to have to grow along with it if we’re going to be able to go anywhere.

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Violent outbursts not any kind of evidence that we need “right to carry” in Illinois

We had a couple of violent outbursts on Friday within Chicago, both with circumstances prominent enough that they got significant coverage in the news reports of the day.

That also means we have significant discussion taking place on the Internet, including the usual half-wits who are eager to satisfy their mental image of toughness by packing a pistol. Yes, we have people who are claiming that these incidents might have been avoided – IF ONLY Illinois was not one of the few states with explicit laws against carrying a concealed weapon.

THEY ALSO ARE claiming that the city ordinances that prevent handgun ownership of any type (unless you have owned the weapon in question since before the law took effect in 1982) obviously are flawed, because these incidents show how “absurd” it is to ban local gun ownership – a fact they are desperately hoping the Supreme Court of the United States will strike down sometime later this year.

The nation’s high court may very well take such a partisan political act in ruling on a lawsuit that challenges the Chicago handgun ban.

But none of these arguments are swaying me (or anyone with any common sense) into thinking that the incidents that occurred on Friday would have been avoided – if only we allowed people to “pack heat” and shoot back if they are threatened.

If anything, the thought that there might have been people in the areas surrounding these two incidents with handguns who might have contributed to the amount of ammunition flying through the air scares me. It makes me all the more thankful we have the laws we have now, and dread the thought that we might lose them.

FOR THOSE OF you who were not paying much attention on Friday (or whose news focus for death was centered around the Metra commuter railroad executive who apparently committed suicide by being struck by one of his entity’s own trains), the incidents took place right in the heart of “State Street, that Great Street” and on the Dan Ryan Expressway (the major thoroughfare through the city’s South Side).

These shootings were not isolated incidents that occurred in some lower-income neighborhood that many Chicagoans never set foot in and most try to pretend does not really exist.

On State Street, police say a man walked into the Old Navy store and headed for the basement where he believed his girlfriend who worked at the store would be.

The Chicago Tribune reported that police said that when he found her, he shot her. Police said he then turned the weapon on himself. Both are dead.

STATE STREET BECAME a crime scene, as customers in the store at the time fled the building when they heard gunfire. Between trying to regroup all those people to find potential witnesses and control access to the building following the incident, State Street was not a pretty place to be.

This incident appears to be a case where someone who wasn’t thinking straight singled out a specific person – even though as of when I wrote this commentary, it wasn’t clear what provoked the man to want to shoot his girlfriend.

I suppose other people were at risk because the man could have been a poor shot and hit someone else. Although police pointed out that the area of the store where their two bodies were found was a part of the building restricted only to employees.

Which is why I find it absurd that people are trying to use this incident in particular as one where we as a society would have been better off with more firearms in the area.

WOULD WE REALLY be better off if, in the confusion of what was taking place, someone had decided to try to be heroic and fire off a shot or two in self-defense? It just strikes me as more ammunition in the air, and the potential for someone else to wind up with a bullet embedded in their body.

As for those who say that if the woman was armed, she could have shot her boyfriend, all I have to say is that she’d now be facing some sort of criminal charge.

The other incident was the one on the Dan Ryan, where about an hour-and-a-half after the Old Navy incident, a man and a woman were injured when gunfire was aimed at their car while they were driving on the expressway near 91st Street.

The man was struck by bullets. The woman was cut up by shattered glass. Police say a car drove alongside their vehicle when someone began firing bullets at them. In this incident too, police do not know what provoked the shooting.

NOW I KNOW some people may remember the 1991 film “L.A. Story” and the scene depicting Steve Martin’s character, Harris K. Telemacher, driving on the freeway on the first day of spring (“Open season on the L.A. Freeway”), dodging bullets while his wife, Trudi, used a revolver kept in the glove compartment to fire back.

“Don’t point it at me,” he says.

“Sorry, I don’t know gun etiquette,” she replies.

The absurdity of the scene is what makes it kind of funny on the big screen. Does anyone think that if it had become reality on Friday and we had occupants of two cars exchanging gunfire that we as a society would be better off?

WE PROBABLY WOULD have had dead or wounded in both vehicles, and injured people in surrounding vehicles. A higher body count. Which is why I can never see the “logic” in having Illinois join the ranks of states that permit people to take their weapons with them when they mingle in public.

It also is a series of conditions that people ought to keep in mind before engaging in mindless rhetoric about how much of a burden city residents have faced for the past three decades due to Chicago’s gun ban.

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Will Todd Stroger get I-57 some day?

For those who are curious about every form of trivia, the namesakes of Chicago’s expressways are as follows:

Jane Addams – First U.S. woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, and founder (left) of Chicago’s Hull House, the site of which takes up land that the University of Illinois at Chicago wishes it could change into something more commercial, but doesn’t dare.

William G. Edens – A banker who sponsored Illinois’ first highway bond issue in 1918. Without him, we might still be driving around on dirt or gravel roads.

Dwight Eisenhower – The former general who “won” the Second World War and the president who signed into law the measure creating all interstate highways, which means he had to get something named after him.

Bishop L.F. Ford – Former presiding bishop (left) of the Church of God in Christ on the South Side. With more than 8.5 million members, he qualifies for membership in the Road Namesake Club.

John F. Kennedy – The former U.S. president who conservatives are still convinced only won because Mayor Richard J. Daley turned out the vote in Chicago’s “river precincts.”

Ronald Reagan – Former U.S. president who was born in Dixon, Ill., and attended college in Eureka, before ditching Illinois for a life in California.

Dan Ryan – Former president of the Cook County Board. I wonder what current president Todd Stroger will get named for him someday – we still have the Chicago portion of I-57 nameless.

Adlai E. Stevenson II – The attorney from Bloomington (right) who served as Illinois’ governor and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, but is mostly remembered for getting his butt kicked twice by Ike.

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