In five days Brandon Johnson will be our new Chicago Mayor....

Here's my humble advice

First, the cops:

So far, we seem to be on the same wavelength.  You pre-hired at least an interim police chief from the inside. Who also grew up in Chicago.  Plucking 34-year veteran and retiree Fred Waller out of retirement to serve temporarily as chief (and also third in command before he retired) fits the bill.  Growing up in Englewood (where my dad also grew up) and Pullman, too, is perfect.  Couldn’t think of any better profile, any better combination of what he has to offer.

Maybe things will go swimmingly and Waller will not go back into retirement? If he does go back, don’t try what your recent predecessors tried, no matter who the panelists on the commission recommend.  

We don’t need anyone from Dallas, Newark—or the FBI.  Been there, done that, didn’t work.  

When Lightfoot pick David Brown went out one morning after BLM leveled a strip of black-owned small businesses on the South Side, all he could talk about was himself. At his press conference on site, all he babbled about was how the kids called him an “Oreo” and how insulted he was.  And how he wasn’t one.  I watched this and I knew he was wrong for the job. But he kept it anyway.

A chief has to know Chicago from the ground up, has to have a nice personality (think Terry Hillard) and has to have risen through the ranks.  Whoever it is will do fine as long as the the person knows Chicago—from living here and working as a cop here. It just works.

Second, the infrastructure:

Remember the way Mayor Rudy Giuliani fixed the broken windows in New York and the crime came down?  And the quality of life went up?   Well, I spend a lot of time on Chicago’s crumbling, uneven and broken sidewalks and you must fix them.  Broken windows are not the problem here; broken sidewalks are.

Because navigating them everyday, whether young or old, physically fit or not, is like hiking in the Himalayas if they were also covered in potholes.   

Everyone everyday who traverses them is facing an enormous chance of getting severely injured, not to mention overfilling hospitals and overusing painkillers.

Fix them. Every single one.,

Third, to thine own self be true, but to us, BE NICE:

We have been abused by recent mayors.  The corruption under Daley that left us in the lurch; the wise-guy ways of Rahm that proved his utter contempt for us; and Lightfoot yelling at us like a shrew. We have PTSD.

She yelled at those who didn’t want to take an experimental vaccine that didn’t work.  And she closed the doors of private institutions to those people, too—while yelling.  She yelled at those who didn’t want to vote for her, and then yelled that we shouldn’t vote at all if we didn’t vote for her.

You seem nice.  And you don’t seem to be corrupt, and you don’t seem to be a wise guy.   Or someone who would yell at your constituents.  You seem to have a nice family (I know your wife is nice because she was one of my students at Columbia College).  And you seem to have a commitment to the City, unlike your runoff opponent who didn’t even live here.

If you get the dog you said your kids wanted after the election, I have compassionate animal lover friends who want you to get one from a City-run shelter. One of those friends is freaked out by the number of sweet animals not cared for in the shelters and who are ultimately killed.  

To get pets at a City shelter is a nice way for nice people to prove they are nice.

Looking forward to Monday.