It ain't mine, but I wish it was. Enjoy the wise words of my 19-year-old brother, Neil.
As I am sure many of you are aware of, there are few things I love more in this world than Chicago. After years of exile in suburbia, I just recently moved into the city proper, blocks away from the loop, the Sears Tower, Millennium Park and other famous Chicago icons. Through this relocation, I have been able to truly and honestly witness the beauty that is Chicago today. I see a thriving, multicultural metropolis now more than ever relevant to the American experience, but the road to change was one littered with obstacles and challenges.
Chicago has long been divided into white and black sections, the two tenuously coexisting together but never mixing. As blacks fled the South to escape segregation and Jim Crow laws during the Great Migration, they came to northern cities like Chicago only to experience a different form of such segregation. As blacks settled in the deep south side of Chicago, whites fled, first to northern areas of the city yet to be "conquered" by the blacks, and then to the suburbs. What remained was a city marked by a color line, a barrier that was seemingly insurmountable.
This problem extended to other races. As immigration restrictions were slowly lifted in the 60s, many people came to Chicago from the shores of other countries in search of the American dream. The places where they settled in Chicago were dictated by their ethnicity or background. Indians came to Rogers Park and the famed Devon St. Chinese settled in Chinatown on the South Side. Mexicans came to Pilsen. Arabs arrived at Midway and built lives in Cicero. Ukrainians had a village, Greeks had a town, and the Italians had their own country, aptly named Little Italy.
This was old Chicago, a Chicago divided and marked, a Chicago that epitomized the typical American city. No event represents old Chicago more than the 1968 Democratic National Convention. The event itself was marked by a riot, yet the true black eye came as police, clad in riot gear, attacked thousands of anti-war protesters with teargas and nightsticks, and beat them into newspaper headlines.What followed was national outrage and a black eye for Chicago, one that doggedly continued to scar her face.
Over the past forty years, Chicago has conquered seemingly insurmountable barriers. New Chicago is one where blacks and minorities can count on the same services whites have enjoyed for years. Public schools are no longer all black or all white or all brown. Train platforms are filled with diverse arrays of people from all types of backgrounds, a reflection of the integration of the neighborhoods they serve. Now we are "The City that Works...for Everybody". And just as Chicago has buried the hatchet of the past, America has broken its own color line. On January 20, 2009, for the first time in history a man of color will take the highest office in the land.
250,000 people peacefully gathered in Grant Park to celebrate this monumental change. This event will define Chicago for years to come, just as the black eye that was the '68 DNC convention defined Chicago for forty years. Thousands of people came from all corners of the city, state, country, and world, and gathered at Chicago's front yard, Grant Park. Naysayers predicted rioting, looting, and violence. I can personally report that none of that happened.
Yes, I was lucky enough to attend the defining moment of our time. I am extremely thankful I was able to witness and participate in this monumental change at its epicenter. I am also thankful that I was able to bring my mother along with me, so that she too could witness the power of America at its best.. We joined together with blacks, whites, browns, people of all colors, races, religion, and ages to collectively say, "Yes we can. Yes we did. And yes, we will."
Chicago was long defined as the most segregated city in America, a land of segregation. Now Chicago can be defined as the most unified city in America, a land of unity.
