Thirty years ago, Devon Avenue was a bazaar of kosher delis, synagogues, and bagel shops. Today, businesses like Gitel’s Kosher Pastry Shop share the street with Bombay Video, Islamic Books & Things, Sona Chandi Boutique, and Taj Sari Palace. What hasn’t changed are the names of the local politicians. Devon Avenue is still represented by an all-Jewish cast: Alderman Berny Stone, Representative Lou Lang, Senator Ira Silverstein, and Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky.
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“Many of us have gone to fund-raisers and we’ve gone to meetings, and we still don’t feel we’re in the door,” says Ann Kalayil, past president of the Indo-American Democratic Organization. “We are in the process of drawing maps ourselves. We want to be part of the hearings, we want to make noise, we want to call legislators.”
“The immediate goal,” says Kalayil, “is to be as strong as possible as a community so that we can have better leverage, better access.” She says most Asians believe “we don’t have the numbers yet” to run for office themselves, though if an Asian did step forward “we would encourage them.”
Out in the suburbs, ethnic identity may be less important than it is in Chicago’s wards. In 1994 Juventino “Ben” Fajardo, a Filipino immigrant, became Glendale Heights’s village president, the first Asian-American municipal head in Illinois history. Fajardo was elected a trustee by running on a ticket with a candidate for village president who was bidding for the village’s small Filipino vote, and when the new president died Fajardo was named to succeed him. He ran for the office in 1994, relying on Filipinos to raise money and provide campaign volunteers while his platform emphasized public works and an end to the bickering on the village board. He won with 63 percent of the vote and was reelected two years later.
