Chicago Politics

Tuesday is the big election, which has stolen my "work on the house time."
Instead I've been trying to save our ward from a candidate who was convicted of accepting bribes the last time he was Alderman. (for non-Chicagoans a ward is a section of the city that to a certain extent, runs independently, by an Alderman. If you need anything done, you call your Alderman, or Ward superintendent. The primary is the election that counts, and is on Tuesday).

I'm happy to report that the Illinois Supreme Court just ruled that the convict on the ballot can not run. Yeah! The really troubling thing about the whole thing was that despite the fact that he was convicted of accepting bribes, he had a lot of support in the community. I don't quite understand that. But then again, this is Chicago, and there's a whole bunch of things that I just don't understand around here).

Besides for the convicted felon, we also really like our Alderman, think he's honest, works hard, and really cares for the community.

Anyway, I've been campaigning for our Alderman, and have signed up to be an election attorney on election day. Basically, that means that I'll be the "go to" person if any fraud happens, or if any fires start to fester at any of the polling locales. It should be a pretty long day with my showing up at 5 a.m. and working until very late. (there was talk of 4 a.m., but I'm hoping that won't apply to me!)

Through my work on the campaign, I did get to meet Mayer Daley this weekend, which was pretty exciting.

As an added bonus, at two of the "coffees" our Alderman did in our neighborhood, I put in a plug for our CAPS meeting (community policing). At the first one, a gentleman was reluctant to come to CAPS, so I approached him and put in a plea that law-abiding citizens have to take a stand against crime, reporting crimes if need be anonymously. Today, I saw this guy again, and another person interested in CAPS, and the guy I met last time was espousing that we must call the police anonymously. Makes me happy that perhaps I made a difference.

Glenn got some work done around here though-he did some compound in the rental apartment. Not too exciting, and wouldn't otherwise warrant a blog post.