In 2023, pick anyone but Mayor Lori Lightfoot
By: Shamontiel L. Vaughn
Tags: Chicago Politics, Lori Lightfoot, Defunding Police, Police Brutality, Black Women

In 2023, pick anyone but Mayor Lori Lightfoot

Photo credit: MacLean Center/Wikimedia Commons

When Lori Lightfoot was sworn in as Chicago’s first black female and LGBTQ+ mayor, my first reaction was the same as it was when she ran against Toni Preckwinkle. Who is she? I’m not someone who votes for “firsts” just because they’re shiny and new. I need to know your political and moral background before I fill in that ballot circle. Although I wasn’t over the moon and wow’d by Preckwinkle, I still leaned her way while voting for another LGBTQ+ candidate — Maria Hadden for the 49th Ward alderwoman, who ousted Joe Moore after a 28-year career. Why? I’d met Moore. I’d been to multiple neighborhood events of his, as well as participated in his $1 million participatory budgeting election so residents could declare what they wanted done in their communities.

I didn’t dislike Moore. I’d seen and talked to him on multiple occasions at el stops (“el” is what Chicagoans call subway train stops). But Hadden’s canvassers caught me outside one day and just sold me on this new woman who I’d never heard of before. More importantly, her own moral and political values did. I have yet to regret my voting decision and would vote for her again. But I just don’t see how anybody (black) isn’t reevaluating their decision for Lightfoot in the next election. And if you are a Chicagoan who shrieked at the idea of President-Elect Joe Biden potentially nominating former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel as his Transportation Secretary (although former Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg made the final cut), keep that same energy around election time.

Photo credit: Chris Dickens/Unsplash

I already felt a way about seeing Lightfoot’s text message alerts regarding a lockdown in less than a few minutes, with no access to trains or buses in downtown Chicago — knowing full well Black Lives Matter protesters were down there and had nowhere to go. Then there was the haircut she got while barbershops and beauty salons were shut down in Chicago. Her justification: “I’m the public face of the city” although “getting your roots done” was declared “not essential” for every other Chicagoan.

I wasn’t even mildly impressed when she temporarily allowed the Christopher Columbus statues to be taken down, specifically because she initially defended keeping up the genocide initiator for “historical” purposes. I also wasn’t surprised when she completely ignored Indigenous People’s Day to continue backing Columbus Day. The “fuck you” exchange between herself and Ald. Raymond Lopez (Ward 15) threw me off a little bit, but I don’t clutch my pearls over a few swear words.

However, what finally nailed the coffin for me was recent news that gave me the kind of deja vu moment from Emanuel. Instead of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald though, it was a video footage cover-up of a 50-year-old clinical social worker named Anjanette Young. The black woman’s home was broken into (Breonna Taylor ring a bell?), and she was forced to stay naked for 13 minutes while telling police they were in the wrong home 43 times. Although a blanket and a coat were carelessly thrown around her, they continued to come off, leaving an innocent woman (who was caught in the middle of getting dressed) exposed, humiliated and confused.

And Lightfoot’s rationale for trying to block airing video footage? “That was not something that happened on my watch,” she said at a CBS2 press conference.

It’s hard not to notice the wording of “if we mess up, we have to fess up” all while knowing that no punishment was made since Feb. 21, 2019 — even with nine body cameras recorded in a group of male officers. If she put herself in “that poor woman’s place” and it wasn’t on her watch, what’s the harm in releasing the video? How is it “ridiculous” to point this out? There’s something troubling to me about a woman — mayor or not, black or not — who sees a naked, innocent, black woman whose home was raided and was left feeling like a criminal for something she had no knowledge nor control over. One wrong move and this woman, with guns drawn on her, would’ve been an R.I.P. message on Twitter.

This was Lightfoot’s moment to publicly discuss how she would not tolerate this kind of behavior “under her watch.” But her bone to pick is that the woman violated a federal court order to not release the footage. While protocol was changed so that two supervisors must do a pre-check of a location before a drug raid like this, that doesn’t change the woman’s state of mind after an experience like this. Young has to live with this memory (and I’m guessing paranoia) forever.

I fully understand why a mayor must protect all citizens, including police officers, but this was one of those moments where basic human concern should’ve taken over politics. And once again, Lightfoot did not deliver. And once again, I will not be voting for her in the next mayoral election.