Unfinished Family Business
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Perhaps not, but the former acting mayor, now 68 and retired, has been lending his nephew a hand, giving him advice and making campaign stops with him. He’s greeted warmly. “We forgive and forget about old conflicts,” said the Reverend Sylvester Brinson at a ministers’ breakfast on January 29. “The Sawyers are perceived as a standing family with a rich history–just like the Kennedys.”
Kenny Sawyer, the 35-year-old owner of a catering firm, is hoping the family name resonates with voters. But Pat Dowell, who’s executive director of the Near West Side Community Development Corporation and who’s also challenging Tillman, says he should be judged on his own merits. “The former mayor is a nice man,” she says, “but I don’t know that Kenny has done a lot of work in the ward.”
Residents of Bronzeville thought they might finally get some answers from Alderman Dorothy Tillman about what really happened to Gerri’s Palm Tavern, the historic jazz club on 47th Street that’s now boarded up, about what would be done with the majestic Rosenwald apartment complex at 47th and Michigan, and about the fate of other stately but crumbling historic buildings in the area. Tillman, who’s notoriously tight-lipped on the subject of building preservation, was expected to be part of a panel at a “Toward the Bronzeville Arts Trust” meeting on January 25 and was supposed to talk about the problem-plagued, half-built Harold Washington Cultural Center at 47th and King Drive.
–Kari Lydersen
The board of election commissioners ruled against Avila, but he won on appeal. “The judge granted me everything but my legal fees,” he says, “which is unfortunate for me.”
