By Kay Bolden
There used to be a saying in Illinois, among Black people of a certain age: Once you get 50 miles south of Chicago, you might as well be in Mississippi. Joliet, of course, sits just barely inside that 50-mile hot zone, and like all border cities, we have had both the best and the worst of the political left and right.
Situated between the big-city life of Chicago and the villages and farmland of the downstate, our town was built on factory jobs and small businesses — or it was until the 1980s, when the plants closed, and the jobs moved overseas to exploit poor workers of color in developing countries.
Like Chicago, our town in the past was integrated in public spaces, but rigidly segregated in living and working spaces. Like Mississippi, some lunch counters and hotels and stores were “white only.” Except they didn’t hang up signs — you just had to remember which was which.
Today, the political divisions between us seem just as stark as the social ones — until you take a closer look and see the common thread running through them.
In national elections, Illinois is reliably blue; Chicago out populates the rest of the state by a hefty margin. It is the historical home to what’s fondly called the Chicago Democratic machine, which efficiently (and sometimes brutally) maintained control of the local government. The mantra of “vote early, vote often” may be a punchline now, but it was rooted in past reality. Chicago has been delivering Illinois to the Democrats for generations.
But voting for Democrats has never protected Black Illinoisans from institutionalized racism. The state that sent Barack Obama to the U.S. Senate and then the White House also has some of the most segregated public schools of any metro area in America, and some of the most vicious, anti-Black police infrastructure.
Democrats in Illinois rely heavily on the loyalty of Black voters but do little to combat the daily consequences of systemic racism right here in our own backyards: generational poverty, substandard education, mass incarceration, health care inequities, and pollution and manufacturing waste in our neighborhoods.
If we should have learned anything from the chaotic Trump years, it’s that voting for president is important, but voting in local elections amounts to life and death for Black communities.
Local politics is where Dems lost the 2016 presidential fight in battleground states around the country. It’s in local elections — where turnout is low overall, and abysmal in communities of color — where the real decisions get made.
Real decisions–like whether your name is purged from the list of registered voters without notice. Real decisions–like whether the polls in your precinct will have enough working machines on election day, instead of forcing voters to wait for hours.
Real decisions–like city law enforcement rules, and whether police officers are held accountable for their actions or allowed free rein over Black and Brown residents.
It is local school boards that oversee regulations about what your kids can wear or how they can style their hair–or what books they’ll see at the school library, and what “version” of history they are taught.
It is in local processes that decide how district boundaries are drawn, and whether gerrymandering is allowed or stopped in its tracks. (Take another look at Mississippi, where the population is 40% Black, but hasn’t sent a Black person to the U.S. Senate since Reconstruction.)
It’s where rules are made and unmade, and where power is shared equally or hoarded by the few.
If we let unscrupulous partisans make policies that disenfranchise us — if we don’t hold them accountable at the city, county, or state level — we end up with a polarized national landscape like the one we have now.
If 50 determined voters show up at consecutive city council or county board meetings, asking questions and demanding answers, their presence can shine a bright light on policy decisions.
If 50 people make calls, attend committee meetings, email their council reps, and sit in the mayor’s office, they can burn a hole in backroom political deals.
I’ve heard Chicagoans say, “Roaches will scatter in the light of day.” We need to turn the bright lights on our local politicians and see who runs.
Traveling downstate in my childhood, on train trips to visit family in Mississippi, the Black porters would walk through the cars, reminding us in whispers to move to the “colored” car before we crossed the Big Muddy (the Mississippi River). It wasn’t safe to cross into Jim Crow states without being “in our place.”
But the blue face of Chicago and the red hands of downstate, and all the cities and villages and farms between them, aren’t really as different as they appear on the surface. They are all places where Black voters are taken for granted, routinely marginalized, and growing ever more convinced that the Dems and the GOP and the so-called independents are all playing the same race game.
As the 2022 midterm election approaches, whether our fractured political system will start healing itself or crack wide open depends on a multitude of factors — not the least of which is Black voters driving policy, transparency, and accountability in local elections.
In Illinois, where it’s easy to be complacent in our reliably blue bubble, this inertia must be overcome if we are to survive. Kay Bolden is a features writer for The Times Weekly, News – Kayb@thetimesweekly.com
