On the hot and humid evening of Thursday, August 1, several dozen people gathered in a union hall near the corner of Jackson and Homan to oust Mayor Daley from office. The room was sweltering, but for the most part the rhetoric stayed cool. Convened by the Accountability Committee (TAC), a newly formed activist coalition, the meeting was more tactical planning session than pep rally. The overwhelmingly African-American audience appeared to take neglect of and hostility toward the black community–as evidenced by the shortage of affordable housing and the low number of blacks in top city jobs–as a fact of the Daley administration. The question wasn’t why the mayor should go. The question was how.
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As people fanned themselves with TAC literature, voting rights activist Bruce Crosby explained the group’s mission: to avoid yet another mayoral election characterized by a powerful incumbent steamrollering a late-arriving and underfunded challenger, like Bobby Rush, or Roland Burris before him.
Leak, who wasn’t at this meeting, later said he has no intention of running for mayor. Yes, he believes revolutionary changes are needed–Chicagoans need to “free ourselves from this violence that’s tearing our city apart”–but he doesn’t think those changes are best made by a politician. “This city doesn’t need a mayor,” he said. “It needs a prophet.”
The Bud Billiken parade steps off this Saturday, August 10, at 10 AM at Martin Luther King Drive and 39th Street, and runs south to 51st Street. For more information on the Accountability Committee contact newmayor2003@juno.com.
