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Now they’re fighting over Roland Burris’s Senate appointment, of all things. I’m getting calls from black people saying, “It’s our seat!” and from white people saying, “How dare they say it’s their seat?!” I try to tell both sides that white, brown, black, or green, it really doesn’t matter who goes to the U.S. Senate–nobody who gets in would do anything to change our lives under Mayor Daley and Illinois House speaker Michael Madigan. It just goes to show you: the smaller the stakes, the more vicious the fight.
Don’t get me wrong: it’s not that I don’t appreciate a spirited political fight. I can even say a good thing or two about Council Wars, when a band of white aldermen led by Eddie Vrdolyak and Ed Burke ganged up against Mayor Harold Washington. It wasn’t pretty, but it’s as close as we’ve ever come to having a democracy in City Hall.
