I was deeply saddened to hear Mayor Rahm Emanuels recent remarkscriticizing efforts to create the first affordable housing for veterans and people with disabilities in Chicagos Northwest Side neighborhood of Jefferson Park.

Residential segregation in Chicago has never been an accident. The corollary of this bitter truth is that today, intentional efforts by citizens and elected leaders to transcend our citys segregation will not be free of contention, least of all when the deep fault lines of race and class are touched by a civic discussion. In this ongoing conversation, Emanuels recent words that anti-affordable housing activists need to be heard functions as an acquittal of racial animus, masquerading as a white-washed call for process.

I commend Ald. John Arena for his leadership and vision. The community process that he implemented was both rigorous and thoughtful. Hundreds of neighborhood residents attended informational meetings and some of them were contentious. Whats right is not always popular, and whats popular is not always right. Arena is demonstrating both care and leadership for his community. To call for more time and space to honor the tired historic forces seeking to retrench segregation is to dishonor the future we are collectively reaching for.

Fifty-one years ago, around the same time that Martin Luther King Jr. marched for open housing in Marquette Park, a parallel march for open housing occurred in Jefferson Park, equally met with bricks and violence.

What is different today on the Northwest Side is that amidst the resurgence of prejudice and hateful energy by some factions in Jefferson Park, there is also an energetic movement growing among anti-racist, largely white, homeowners, who are as committed to opening their community to new neighbors, as others are to keeping it closed.

King prophesied, The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. If this is true, it is made so only through the intentional acts of everyday citizens and courageous elected leaders who take stands where they can especiallyin their own communities and within the policy-making spheres they can reach to bend that arc in the direction it must go.

Jesus Chuy Garcia, commissioner, Cook County Board

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The fight for affordable housing in Jefferson Park continues - Chicago Tribune