The Lincoln Scenario: How Rauner and Madigan Finally Ended their War for Illinois and United Illinois' "House Divided"

August 30 The updated, extended version of this piece is here at our Medium site.

Author's note: So is necessity really the mother of invention? If it is, here's a look at how close Illinois is today to a workable alternative to the politics of self-destruction that's fueling the fratricidal "War For Illinois". So far, three experts and two State Reps have commended this piece. Like it? Please help advance it. See how, below. Here's a Printable Copy.

On June 7 the Tribune declared it THE WAR FOR ILLINOIS

By mid-summer of 2015, a grinding yearlong power struggle between governor Rauner and House speaker Madigan had gridlocked into trench warfare. Mounting losses in precious time, energy, resources, services and money were bankrupting Illinois and destroying public faith and trust in government itself.

It became clear that for whoever won this contest, victory would be pyrrhic. The Land of Lincoln, in Lincoln's famous biblical phrase, would be "a house divided against itself": a state too polarized and weakened to be governable.

So at the eleventh hour, Rauner conferred with Madigan. Then, on prime time TV, he and three key Democrats took decisive action. With a single gesture of commitment to the future of Illinois, they ended the War For Illinois. Overnight.

Finally the governor and speaker had something really to smile about

The occasion was historic. It marked the end of the politics of self-destruction in Illinois. It broke the ever-tightening stranglehold of TV attack ads on political discourse here.

It also marked the beginning of the interactive political discourse that since 2015 has enabled Illinoisans to build a state that's competitive with other states and works for its residents.

This sea change resulted from two discoveries on the governor's part.  

The first came when Rauner asked himself why his inaugural budget-balancing call for shared sacrifice, backed by his own reduced annual salary of $1 without benefits, had failed to register with voters. Why had this sensible proposal fallen like a brick? Instantly he saw that, as a very wealthy man, he himself had to feel the same financial pain he’d be asking all Illinoisans to feel.

The second came when Rauner recalled his inaugural pledge to “fix years of busted budgets and broken government”. On reflection, he realized that his reliance on televised attack ads as a way of communicating with citizens - like his $20 million ad blitz attacking Speaker Madigan - was doing more to break Illinois government than to fix it.

With these discoveries in mind, Rauner approached Madigan. Saving Illinois, he said, means painful sacrifice shared by everyone. And turning Illinois around means dethroning the "Cash is King" political advertising that’s polarized Illinois for decades. “We’ve got to curb it," he told the Speaker. “It’s the only way out of the mess we’re in now.”

Madigan agreed, knowing that in Illinois, Rauner himself is King Cash. The two leaders then talked about how TV might connect citizens and government in ways that demonstrably serve all Illinoisans and move Illinois forward. It was quite a conversation. It led to conversations with owners of Illinois media. 

With Madigan's support, Rauner then initiated a series of constructive developments:

• He convened Madigan, Senate Speaker Cullerton and Mayor Emanuel to announce that he was donating $27.6 million of his own money to a special Saving Illinois fund, matching the $27.6 million in personal funds he’d donated to his gubernatorial campaign. This unprecedented, legacy-making sacrifice prompted comparable sacrifices from all three Democrats. (If not, Rauner would go it alone on all six steps below, empowered by their rejection.)

• The four leaders announced their historic sacrifices on Growing Illinois, the first of a series of monthly 60-minute primetime TV programs dedicated to making citizens and governments responsive and accountable to each other.

• Growing Illinois made national headlines, transforming Illinois politics overnight. Overnight, four goats became four heroes. Tigers changed stripes. Coming at a time of nationwide voter despair with government, 12.8 million Illinoisans now felt that their leaders might actually be in their corner and working on their behalf.

• In this sea-changed climate, Illinoisans rallied behind the Four Horsemen of Illinois with their own contributions to Saving Illinois. (Detroit, during its bankruptcy, received hundreds of millions of dollars in donations from long-time companies and residents.)

• An energized public and news media eagerly discussed the equitable implementation of shared sacrifice with experts like Ralph Martire of the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability and Lawrence Msall of the Civic Federation. Sacrifices ranged from increases in fees and taxes (sales, property or income) to pay freezes and salary cuts.

• Promising revenue generating ideas were advanced. Wholesale eliminations of essential programs and mass job cuts (like the 1,400 public school layoffs planned in Chicago) were avoided.

• Final shared sacrifice decisions, made by the legislature, were written into law. The likelihood of bond defaults in Chicago and Illinois decreased. Credit ratings rose.

Illinois turned around, though not quite as Governor Rauner had envisioned.

Illinois never banned political advertising. Far from it. But since 2015, the TV attack ads that once polarized Illinoisans have complemented and coexisted with the vital, televised interactions of citizens and governments initiated by interactive programs like Growing Illinois.

Thanks to its Four Horsemen, Illinois has turned itself around. Illinoisans’ newfound ability to connect, cooperate and construct gives the state a competitive advantage over other states. Illinoisans have always taken enormous pride in their sports teams. Now they can take pride in their leaders and in themselves as Illinoisans.

Longtime Chicago educator and media entrepreneur Steve Sewall, Ph.D., designs and implements civic media formats and writes about links between ethics, education, government and media at chicagocivicmedia.com.

Action Steps. Like these ideas? Help advance 'em!

• Leave a comment at "comments" below
• Tweet hashtag #endattackads, post to Facebook, Instagram & your maiden aunt, etc.
• Email Steve Sewall (with the help of three people much can be accomplished)

And/or ask the people below to read/disseminate/publish the piece:

• Email your state rep and/or senator - contact info here
• Write a message to Governor Rauner
• Phone Speaker Madigan at 217-782-5350
• Email State Rep La Shawn K. Ford (I'm Rep Ford's Media and Community Advisor)
• Email State Rep Laura Fine (she likes the piece)
• Email Lawrence Msall (Civic Federation, c/o lschulte)
• Email Robert Martire (Center for Tax and Budget Accountability) (said the piece is "well written")
• Email Chicago Tribune Editors Bruce Dold or Gerould Kern

 

 

How Spike Lee's Chiraq Can Help Chicago Deal with Youth Violence - Part II

PRINTABLE COPY (2100 words)

Here, for what they're worth, are six thoughts (mostly about media) for Spike Lee and anyone who wants to see youth violence brought out into the open so Chicago can deal with it effectively.;

Where to begin? How about with gang territories. This Chicago Police Department map, taken from the Crime Commission's 2012 Gang Book, defines them:
 

If Chicago was a body, and this map an x-ray whose colored portions represent cancer, the diagnosis would be malignant. At some point in Lee's Chiraq, perhaps during a meeting of the mayor and his senior police officers, this map might appear as a flip-board chart.

Spike Lee is a master storyteller. And knows the story of gang violence: that this "unsolvable" problem is rooted in all kinds of other "unsolvable" problems: poverty, joblessness, poor schools, broken families, a broken criminal justice system and, in most cases, racial discrimination or segregation. 

He knows also that gangs recruit kids from broken families who need powerful leaders to look up to and troubled peers to identify with. All this, we can be pretty sure, will figure in his account of black-on-black violence in Chiraq.

So how might the film's story take shape? Myself, I'm no master storyteller, so far be it for me to dream up the quixotic cast of characters and the multiple pungent storylines that Lee will conjure up to get all of these concerns across in, say, 120 minutes of pure magical entertainment. 

Lee's film, by one report, may have elements of comedy. Dark comedy. Presumably very dark, given its subject matter. A comedy, perhaps, about the absurdity of approaches to solving youth violence, especially black-on-black? The core absurdity might be this:     

 Chicago has never even tried to solve youth violence. 

This thought - the first of my six - puts into an appropriately ludicrous context all of Chicago's efforts, past and current, to deal with youth violence:

1. Chicago's police have tried (and failed) to contain youth violence within poor non-white neighborhoods. 
2. In recent years, our public health professionals have tried to reduce youth violence with elaborate, data-driven programs which, even when successful in their pilot tests, have never replicated citywide (a shortage of funds, goes the lament). 
3. Over the years, our leaders have swept youth violence under a carpet. Past mayor campaigns have been no different from the recent one. 

Given that no one in Chicago has come up with a solution to youth violence, what's the use of insisting that a solution be found?  The answer isn't hard to see:

Youth violence is the kind of problem that you either solve or you don’t. And when you don’t, it only gets worse. That's been the history and the lesson of youth violence in Chicago and other cities since the late 1960's, when the problem first erupted.

That's thought #2. A wake-up call. It's a dark insight into the obvious: America's utter befuddlement on the matter of youth violence. And the beauty of this insight is that it's common knowledge to many and perhaps most Americans. It provokes outrage and outrage. Lee will have a field day with it.

But it also requires careful handling: sensitivity to competent presumably non-racist policy makers at local, state or national levels who truly see youth violence as fundamentally unsolvable: as a problem will always be with us. Like poverty. And racism. 

And up to now, it's worth noting, history has been on their side. The trend, however, may be on Lee's side.

Will policy makers like these flock to see Chiraq? Will the film open their minds to the possibility and feasibility of solution? 

And will it prompt policy makers from the White House on down to abandon the mindset that equates youth violence with gun violence?

And will wake its viewers to the fact that gangs and drugs are distinct problems that must be addressed as such?

About gangs: many years ago, a South Sider opened my eyes to the fact that if I could wave a magic wand on a Sunday night to make all drugs in Chicago vanish overnight, I'd still wake up Monday morning with a hundred thousand unemployed gang bangers standing around looking for a way to make money. 

So: how to determine who belongs in jail and who is capable of building a decent life? And how to help the latter group build decent lives? Those are major challenges for any viable solution to youth violence.

About drugs.  A third thought here: Chasing the Scream, a history of drug prohibition and legalization in America by journalist Johann Hari. 

The reasons for the strange title of this essential but hard-to-stomach book become clearer and clearer as you read it.

I've always had doubts about the wisdom of legalization. I think about the profiteers in Colorado making marijuana candybars. Or about Big Tobacco salivating over the huge demand for marijuana. 

But these doubts vanish into thin air as I follow the irrefutable pro-legalization logic of Hari's harrowing account of the pathetic origins, sordid history, and horrific outcomes of the War on Drugs. 

As Hari documents, this war was created, nationalized and globalized singlehandedly by a single paranoid but enormously dedicated bureaucrat named Harry Anslinger.

Hari demonstrates beyond any reasonable doubt that the War in Drugs, while intended Angslinger to reduce drug addiction and drug-related violence, has exacerbated both, and done so exponentially. 

That said, I am convinced that legalization alone, even if carefully staged and strictly regulated, will not come close to solving the nation's youth violence (gand and drug) problem. 

Another component is needed. As a filmmaker, Spike Lee already lives in it. It's the public, community and commercial media that either connect or disconnect us when it comes to defining and solving systemic problems like youth violence. 

This insight takes us to uncharted territory: to a question about media which, paradoxically, our media-driven society has yet to ask itself:

What roles will the media that comprise America's public communications system play in addressing systemic problems like youth violence? 

This question is thought #4. In 1992 a former Chicago Mayor raised it out of frustration with Chicago's media. Richard M. Daley charged that Chicago media "glorify trouble makers and neglect problem solvers." Huge insight, succinctly put.

Mayor Daley saw that youth violence isn't just a public safety or police problem or a public health, or medical problem. He saw that it's always, and equally, been a public communications, or media problem.   

As a media man, Spike Lee understands how decades of sensationalized, if-it-bleeds-it-leads news coverage of youth violence have spread fear, apathy and mistrust throughout America's cities. 

He understands how this coverage has polarized races, estranged young people and adults, and sown mistrust between citizens and government.

But Mayor Daley wasn't saying only that media have exacerbated youth violence. He was also implying that media can help solve it. How? Quite simply by focusing more on problem solvers. To this I would add: by using their powerful interactive tools to make problem solvers of all Chicagoans.

Among other things, Lee's Chiraq could be a film about media. It could remind its audiences that while Americans live the most connected age in history, our interactive media are doing next to nothing help us shape best futures of our cities and nation. 

I note that in 2013, one member of Chicago's mainstream media - the Chicago Tribune made an effort to treat Chicagoans not as passive, dumbed-down bystanders but as active, intelligent problem solvers.  But the Tribune's initially promising New Plan of Chicago project unaccountably went silent a year later. 

I wish I knew why. But I do know that the Tribune never sount to explore the enormous profit potential of treating Chicagoans as smart problem solvers.

The Tribune's New Plan aside, the missing link in the search to end youth violence in Chicago has always been hidden in plain view. Ironically, It's been staring us in the face whenever we were glued to our TV sets watching some news anchor drone on about the latest horrific episode of youth violence in Chicago.

The solution? It's easy to see. Spike Lee could nail it in a single 90 second scene set, perhaps, in Mayor Emanuel's office on the fifth floor of City Hall. Imagine the Mayor, hand on chin, listening to a trio of hoody-wearing teenagers who had just led a protest of several hundred Englewood kids that made the evening news. The kids demanded to see the mayor. They were protesting the behavior of police who put their hands on their guns when are merely talking with young people. 

What, they wanted to know, was the Mayor going to do to stop this behavior? And when

At the end of the meeting, one of them - a round-faced kid, perhaps, with big thick-rimmed glasses - might hang around long enough to make another point:

Chicago won't solve youth violence problem until all Chicagoans - citizens of all ages and City Hall - are working together to solve it in Chicago's media.  

There's your fifth thought. It's a dream, of course, a vision of a community that's learning to trust itself sufficiently to solve the "unsolvable". 

Sound like idle fantasy? Look hard at the mess we're in now, it  could be Chicago's best and only chance to secure its future. To realize it, a transformation is involved, a sea change. The destructive attitudes fostered in media must become constructive.

Chicago is currently crippled by destructive attitudes. The task for media is not just to serve the community as suppliers of information to a receptive public. It's also to serve as  mediators of information and ideas generated by an active public interacting with the city's leaders. The task for media, in short, is to act as a mediating media. 

This process must be gradual one. Media need time to explore and develop credible, trustworthy ways of connecting Chicagoans and their leaders. And of connecting children and adults, city and suburban residents, liberals and conservatives. 

And because commerical media exist to make a profit, these ways would be profitable. Thought #6 is therefore a thought about profit:  

• Media will be tapping an as yet untapped and undiscovered market. Potentially it is the largest of all possible large markets: the Market of the Whole of all members of any sized community: the market of all citizens interested in the betterment of their own lives and the health of the communities they live in.
• The model for connecting Chicagoans and their leaders will evolve from the extraordinarily effective and profitable modle that media have developed over the years to connect Chicagoans with their pro sports teams: the Bears, Bulls, Hawks, Cubs and Sox.
• The profit potential for media is suggested in this ten-point analysis by communications expert Dale Peskin 
• The gradual transformation might begin with Chicago Civic Media's low-cost, high impact Full Story project before moving on to more exiting and more interactive ways of engaging Chicagoans in the search to end youth violence. 

One last blossom, or rather a bunch of 'em. Chicagolanders won't be motivated to solve youth violence unless they can clearly see the need to do so. 

1. Chicago's city planners agree that in a global economy Chicago and its suburbs are increasingly sharing a common destiny. As never before, what impacts one area impacts all areas.
2. Youth violence afflicts Chicago's suburbs in ways that are often overlooked by Chicago's newsmedia.
3. Chicago has lost hundreds of thousands of lives to gangs and drugs. At least a million.  This does not include the tens of thousands of lives lost in Chicago's suburbs.
4. As for the economic costs, the chart below shows that youth violence has cost Chicago billions of dollars in lost wages, lost productivity and lost tax revenues as hundreds of thousands of Chicagoans fled the city for the safety of the suburbs. While indirect and difficult to quantify, the impact on the suburbs of losses on this scale are substantial.

For Chiraq to point Chicago towards a solution for youth violence, it cannot overlook the roles to be played by modern interactive technologies in empowering Chicagoans of all ages to define and solve the problem. Sound impossible? Not if Spike Lee is the storyteller I think he is. And the one Chicago needs. 

 And not if he can nudge Chicago to look back at its historic "I Will" spirit in order to reinvent itself as a "We Will" city unified by, and dedicated to, its commitment to not some but all of the children who are its future.