'Black/brown coalition' tests political waters

'Black/brown coalition' tests political waters


February 27, 2006

BY LAURA WASHINGTON. Copyright by the Chicago Sun Times

We all know New Orleans was meant to be a chocolate city. If Chicago Democratic Congressmen Jesse L. Jackson Jr. and Luis Gutierrez have their way, Chicago will thrive as a mochachino city. Hot coffee, sweet chocolate and steaming milk sound like the recipe for Chicago's body politic. One of the city's best-kept secrets is that its voter pool is now majority minority. At least 56 percent of the city's voting-age population is black or Latino, according to the latest census. South Sider Jackson and Gutierrez, of the Northwest Side, have teamed up to erect a "black/brown coalition."

Joy Cunningham is their inaugural project. They've already picked a winner. Cunningham is running in the March 21 primary for a seat on the Illinois Appellate Court. She is the only person of color in a five-way race. A la Barack Obama, she boasts exquisite credentials: Cunningham is general counsel for Northwestern Memorial Hospital, a former Cook County judge, assistant attorney general, appellate court clerk, and former president of the Chicago Bar Association. She should be a slam dunk. Yet, a la Obama, and many other minority candidates, she wasn't slated by the Democratic Party. The bosses favor candidates who are loyal to the party, not to the people. Sometimes, it seems, only hacks need apply.

The campaign has peppered the landscape of Chicago's black and Latino neighborhoods -- and the south suburbs -- with more than 160 billboards. Some sport super-size photos of the newly svelte Jackson, Gutierrez and Cunningham. Others feature Cunningham, Jackson and his protege, the Rev. James Meeks, a South Side state senator and Baptist pastor.

While Cunningham says she is "flattered" to have their support, she does not condone their spin. "I have put together a much, much wider base of support than just black/brown. My endorsements come from a broad spectrum of constituencies." She notes backing from an array of Chicago's top business executives, labor unions, gays and lesbians, as well as other elected officials from Rep. Jan Schakowsky to Rep. Danny K. Davis.

I'm all for the black and brown. It's time for blacks and browns to take charge of their political destinies. It's time to stop playing Step'n Fetchit to a party whose agenda doesn't mirror our own.

To be sure, black/brown is not only politically expedient. It's a natural alliance with socio-cultural roots. Take the current exhibit at the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum in Pilsen. "The African Presence in Mexico" showcases a "missing chapter in Mexican history that highlights the African contributions to Mexican culture" over 500 years.

The next election is not the ultimate end game for the Jackson/Gutierrez experiment. Both of them are running unopposed in their own re-election efforts. Both are mulling challenges to Mayor Daley. They are sitting on a bounty of political capital that could build the base they'll need to have a prayer of defeating Daley in 2007.

The last time black and Latino voters coalesced around serious political business was in 1983, when a coalition of blacks, progressive whites and Latinos elected Harold Washington as the city's first African-American mayor on a reform agenda.

Discontent is simmering again. Jackson and Gutierrez claim many of their constituents are fed up with a City Hall that is virtually paralyzed with corruption scandals. They argue Daley has neglected the neighborhoods. "It's been 20 years since a black/brown coalition has been tested on the ballot," Jackson says.

Daley critics can talk up a reform coalition. They can pray on it. But can they deliver? Maria de los Angeles Torres is agnostic on that question. Coalition-building, she notes, is about more than appearances -- it's about issues, says Torres, a top aide to Harold Washington and now director of the Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. "A content-driven coalition is more durable, more sustainable. It retains a certain level of accountability," she said.

Billboards aside, Cunningham has a strong shot. Still, if she wins, Jackson and Gutierrez will take the credit, and Gutierrez will anoint a Latino candidate for the next go-round. Right now, a compelling black/brown coalition should be putting together a multi-racial "Dream Ticket" of citywide and aldermanic candidates poised to attack the status quo. The 2006 mayoral primary is scheduled exactly one year from today. There will come a time -- and soon -- when the boys will have to decide who will be Numero Uno. If both run for mayor, black and brown will go down.