Redlining Political Communities in Chicago and the United States: Part 4 - Hypothetical Searching for Leverage Through Justice and Identity with Mayor Lori Lightfoot, Discounting Past Missteps of Inexperience

This is part 4 of I don't how long series of essays that I've titled Redlining Political Communities in Chicago and the United States. The series takes up the topic of two separate racist "encounters" that erupted around one weekend at the end of May 2019 between two business owners in Chicago's boystown and the black LGBTQ+ community of Chicago as a way to analyze how geography and segmenting of populations can influence politics in Chicago and allegorically to the United States.

If you want to catch up and not start in the middle, you can read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

Then again, Lightfoot might go against the grain of her history. A viable profile of Lightfoot's public professional history comes from a combination of

• Lacking experience
• All of Lightfoot's public experience and power has come from political appointments and hired positions, not elected positions
• Being a person with minority/marginalized characteristics in a world of White Straight Male Supremacy

Lightfoot's lack of experience doesn't need much attention. Her time on organizations focused on overseeing the Chicago police force come off as more strategic, tactical, and "by the book" for an appointed position rather than lack of experience. The time as part of these organizations need more attention.

Nonetheless, Lightfoot has two glaring illustrations from further back that show lack of experience need a little attention. They are:

• Lightfoot disclosing an incorrect interpretation of facts based on directions/information from her superiors during an extradition hearing of a Norwegian national, which expedited a faster and possibly incorrect resolution. Parts of this article provide a little more context into the inexperience aspect of this matter.
  
• While working as head of the Chicago Office of of Emergency Management and Communication (911), multiple calls about a fire that led to the death of children were ignored or hung up on by staff. Lightfoot's department came under investigation for the staff's gross negligence. Records went missing and went into shredders. Apparently too much delegation, not enough communication, and not enough direct involvement by Lightfoot caused record keeping issues that made an investigation difficult.

Both of these missteps occurred early in Lightfoot's career. The extradition case proves more understandable. Lightfoot hadn't worked these types of cases much before, and she had worked off the direction and information of her superiors.

The Emergency Management and Communication matter is less forgivable since Lightfoot was the superiod. Also, after coming from a prosecutory career track, Lightfoot should have familiarity with the importance of keeping records for risk management in regard to liability and negligence. Considering all that, however, this appointment comes early during her public service management career track. This department, in particular, comes off as being in shambles even before Lightfoot took lead. Despite the egregiousness of this situation, it creates an impression of a disorganized department led by an inexperienced manager who should have known better but still made mistakes.

Neither of these cases of inexperience have much bearing on the current tensions if any of the sides appeal to Lightfoot. Mayor Lightfoot has reached one of the few top positions in Chicago, so she has only her cognizance to fall back on. The situation in Boystown has more to do with diplomacy but possibly a little coercion or influence peddling, though some amount of investigation, information gathering, and/or ad hoc legislation might be required.

The cases of past inexperience didn't rely so much on Lightfoot's personal execution of values focused on fairness and respect (though having a better grip on such values during those two moments of inexperience could have aided her in doing better jobs) but rather on

• Meeting job descriptions
• Following the judgment of superiors
• Using experience accumulated up to those points

Mayor Lightfoot has a lot more slack to use personal judgment, personal value, and personal discretion while also trying to stay on the good side of voters. In many ways, being mayor provides Lightfoot with more freedom to truly exert some muscle to actualize a positive end result rather than, as in the past, to mitigate harm reduction in a situation.

On the flipside, Lightfoot did a horrible job covering up her screw ups. These instances would have proven impossible to discover at the time if Lightfoot had good cover up skills. If someone in public office wants to cover up misdeeds, I want them bad at doing it.

Inexperienced now covered, onto how being in an appointed position could have given Lightfoot difficulty for showing her convictions.

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