Washington, DC
May 23, 2011

On Monday, May 16, it was sunny but windy in Chicago. We entered Millennium Park in its splendour where just a few years ago it was a rail yard.

Conference President Elizabeth Kautz and I, along with Ed Somers and Tom McClimon arrived early, as instructed, and found seats in the sun to warm us from the wind.

Sitting there, I watched the mass of people on stage and off evolve into the hour set for the inauguration to begin.

My thoughts went back to the mayors of Chicago – Mayor Daley Sr., who would come to our meetings as the celebrity of that day and who always would talk to me about my children and his children. In our official meetings he was a man of few words. But if he nodded or even grunted, mayors followed him. He loved his mayors and his organization just like his son does. It was in the family. That’s the way it was.

The program begins and my thoughts come back. The announcer booms out “The Mayor of Chicago” and out Mayor Daley comes from the left. The crowd roars. They love him back now. He knows his people more than most. Chicagoans love him back. It’s emotional.

Then the announcer announces “Maggie.” They come out together. She looks beautiful in a red and black jacket. She pushes her walker to her seat and then they take it away. We worry about her health but she is radiant and she stands strong with a big smile. And she returns the applause clapping hard. I can’t help but think that maybe she is happy because she is getting her husband back today. They are political celebrities who not only love each other but, more important in their relationship of love, they like one another.

Then the man of the day is announced – the Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel. Throngs cheer. They are on their feet. It’s a new day. This is Chicago and I heard more than one of the younger people say, “I have never known any other mayor but Mayor Daley.” But here he, “Rahm”, is with family all beaming and I know as I have known before in history, it’s an era-passing moment.

In the moment of festivity and celebration, we now realize that we are attending an official meeting of the mayor and the city Aldermen, just like it would be if you were in city hall. So Mayor Daley calls the “session” to order and the clerk has to call the roll of each member of the city council. One by one they shout out ”here,” some louder than others. All 50 of them. Only takes minutes but it seems longer.

Grammy/Tony winner, songstress, Heather Hadley knocks the Star Spangled Banner clear out of Cook County. She hit the high note of “free” and went up three octaves. Her voice is pure, strong and accurate. Beautiful.

And then the moment comes, and the special moment when he raises his hand and takes the oath and Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel becomes Mayor Emanuel right before your eyes. The “Rahm” is gone. His name now is “Mayor.” From this moment on, they will shout his new name, Mayor, and he will turn his head when he hears it.

He marched straight to the podium and his theme was change, change, change. At the same time, he acknowledged how far Chicago has come since a generation ago it was referred to as “Beirut on the Lake.”

He praised and thanked Mayor Daley who “challenged us all to lower our voices and raise our sights. Chicago,” he said, “is a different city than the one Mayor Daley inherited, thanks to all he did. The magnificent place (Millennium Park) where we all gather is a living symbol of that transformation.”

He thanked Maggie Daley and ended his praise for both of them with these words: “Nobody ever loved Chicago more or served it better than Richard Daley. Now, Mr. Mayor, and forever more, Chicago loves you back.”

Then he went into his message. “I have big shoes to fill,” he said but with his wife, Amy, and children, Zacharia, Ilana and Leah and his parents, he could meet the challenge.

I loved his speech because he didn’t give us a lot of poetry and prose. He told Chicago what they must do. He challenged them to join him focusing on the quality of our schools, the safety of our streets, the cost and effectiveness of city government and the urgent need to create and keep the jobs of the future right here in Chicago.

Four issues – good public schools, public safety, streamlined city governments and job retention and job creation. Of the four that are equal in his charge to Chicagoans, there is no question that he is most passionate about public schools. He said that the decisions made in the next two or three years will determine what Chicago will look like in the next twenty years. He said, “In shaping the future, our children and their schools must come first.”

He throws out statistics about Chicago’s schools. “Today, our school system only graduates half of our kids. And with one of the shortest school days and years in the country, we even short-change those who earn a diploma. By high school graduation, a student in Houston has been in the classroom an equivalent of three years longer than a student in Chicago even when both started kindergarten on the very same day.”

And on a personal note, he said that many, including his wife have noted, “I am not a patient man. When it comes to improving our schools, I will not be a patient mayor.”

On crime, he centered on young people here too, pointing out the memorial in Roseland with 220 names of children killed by gun violence, with 150 new names to be added. “What kind of society have we become when we find ourselves paying tribute not only to soldiers and police officers for doing their jobs, but to children who were just playing on the block...the memorial does more than mourn the dead...It shames the living” and he prodded every adult “who failed those kids to step in, stand up, and speak out. Kids,” he said, “need to be in schools, on play grounds and in our parks, not frozen in time on the side of a grim memorial.”

As to city government reform, he took a hard line against the status quo and said where he asked for new policies and changes in city government, “I guarantee the one answer I will not tolerate is: “We’ve never done it that way before.”

As to jobs, he called on his people to make Chicago the best place in America to start a business, create good jobs and gain the knowledge and skills to fill the jobs of tomorrow. Pointing out that Chicago lost 200,000 jobs over the last decade, he said, “No city can thrive by shrinking.”

He ends his speech in a staccato rapid fire manner as he cites students and schools he has visited. These are his children. He is speaking from his heart and you know it’s in his gut too. He will be tough and constructive. And you feel he will have the adults and parents with him, following his tough love and practical approach. He means business here. And he is ready to dive in and go to work.

Reverend Charles Jenkins of Chicago’s Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church gave a stemwinder of a prayer. He covered the waterfront asking for God’s guidance to keep the Bulls winning games. High school senior poet Chanel Sosa, a finalist in the poetry slam competition, “Louder than a Bomb,” rendered her own poem that touched on the ugly and the pretty, the diversity and the truth about the people of Chicago.

The most beautiful of all for me though was Ms. Clarissa Bevilacqua, a fourth grader who walked on stage alone with a violin almost as big as she is and she played “America the Beautiful” in front of the microphone with not one mistake, the melody going out all over the park and when she hit the high bridge in the last stanza, she performed a fluttering of notes before her precise strokes put the music above the park in the sky headed toward heaven. It was beautiful. I wish I could hear it again.

And then it was all over. We spoke to friends including Bill Daley and then it was waiting for the Vice President’s motorcade so we could get our car and head to O’Hare.

In the car, I thought about our new mayor of Chicago. He helped raise the money and he was key in getting Bill Clinton elected; he served as President Clinton’s senior advisor and we worked closely with him to pass the Crime Bill and the COPS program which caused crime to drop to a 25-year low; he served three terms in Congress and there is no doubt his leadership in 2005 as Chair of the DCCC made our friend, Nancy Pelosi, our Speaker. Then as Chief of Staff for President Obama, he was there for us pushing city initiatives in the recovery legislation.

Now he’s ours. He’s coming to Baltimore for our 79th Annual Meeting. His inaugural was all about us, the priorities of The U.S. Conference of Mayors. It’s reassuring.

President Kautz said goodbye at O’Hare and we headed to Los Angeles.

In Los Angeles, I, along with key staff, spent eight hours with incoming President Antonio Villaraigosa at his house in strategy sessions as we look to the year in front of us. He becomes our 69th President in Baltimore next month.

Washington continues to be confused about who they are and where they are. I continue to be encouraged by the mayoral leadership in our cities today. In the Great Recession, mayors have held our country together. The continued leadership of Burnsville Mayor Elizabeth Kautz along with Past Presidents Mayors Riley, Plusquellic and Menino and the future leadership of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and our new Veep Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter backed up by our new mayors, such as Chicago’s brand new Mayor Rahm Emanuel, and others, old and new, we shall prevail. It’s an exciting time for the Conference, the mayors and cities and our future. Let’s come to Baltimore next month to celebrate knowing that if we work together with one voice, we will show America and Washington what we already know: Our cities are our future, where the people are, where the jobs are and we have always said, “Strong leadership at the metro level making our cities stronger will give our nation, America, the economic strength to economically and socially compete and retain our leadership in the world.”

aid, “Strong leadership at the metro level making our cities stronger will give our nation, America, the economic strength to economically and socially compete and retain our leadership in the world.”

Baltimore is THE place for mayors in 2011 for our 79th Annual Meeting, June 17-21.

If you haven’t registered, do it now. We need you to be with us and you need to be there for you, yourself and your city.

Register now. Contact Carol Edwards (202) 293-7330 or cedwards@usmayors.org.

See you soon in Baltimore!