Aldermen Wednesday temporarily derailed Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s appointment of a new top city lawyer over the Law Department’s treatment of Anjanette Young in her lawsuit over an infamous botched police raid.
The spat again delayed an expected vote on a plan to rename Chicago’s storied Lake Shore Drive in honor of the city’s Black founder Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable.
When the City Council began the usually ceremonial process of considering Lightfoot’s nomination of Celia Meza as corporation counsel during Wednesday’s meeting, Southwest Side Ald. Raymond Lopez announced he and South Side Ald. Jeanette Taylor would be deferring the action “in light of everything going on with Anjanette Young.”
Asked later why he took the step, Lopez referred to an order he and Taylor introduced last year instructing the Law Department “to terminate any and all efforts against” Young and her lawyers, and to “immediately negotiate” to end legal action related to Young.
Young and her attorney last week ripped Lightfoot and the Law Department for what they said was a lack of progress in both Young’s lawsuit and reforms to the Police Department.
Rather than wait another month to consider the Meza appointment at the next regularly scheduled City Council meeting, Lightfoot shortly thereafter adjourned the council until Friday to do so then.
The meeting’s ending was chaotic, featuring Lightfoot having a heated argument with Taylor in the wings of council chambers and various aldermen arguing with the mayor about proper procedure to reconvene Friday.
After the meeting, Taylor elaborated on her argument with Lightfoot. Taylor said the mayor told her she was “cutting out a woman of color” by blocking Meza’s appointment, which Taylor disputed.
“This was not about this appointment. This was about their mistreatment of Ms. Young,” Taylor said. “I’ve said to her and I’ll say to you all, ever since we’ve been in a global pandemic and she got this ultimate power, she doesn’t feel like she has to work with us and that is not how this is going to work,” Taylor said. “I’m not for it. I’m going to stand up for Ms. Young.”
She also said she told the mayor, “Don’t talk to me like I’m a child.”
The deferral doesn’t practically change anything for the law department. Meza will continue as the city’s acting top lawyer until the next meeting, when she’ll surely be confirmed. But the move by Lopez and Taylor is a sharp symbolic rebuke to the mayor and her law department
The abrupt ending to the meeting prevented aldermen from an expected vote on the controversial plan to rename Lake Shore Drive for DuSable.
The DuSable ordinance is instead set to be considered Friday.
After the original DuSable ordinance got temporarily blocked by opponents during a tense meeting in May, two different potential alternate plans were in the works in the hours before Wednesday’s City Council meeting: a possible compromise to re-dub the iconic stretch of pavement “DuSable Lake Shore Drive,” and the Millennium Park proposal.
Lightfoot’s own idea to name the downtown Riverwalk and a nearby park for DuSable didn’t have the votes to scuttle the ordinance proposing renaming Lake Shore Drive “Jean Baptiste Point DuSable Drive.” So the mayor’s administration instead worked on the compromise “DuSable Lake Shore Drive,” and proposed packaging it with the Riverwalk idea.
South Side Ald. David Moore, 17th, who sponsored the plan to rename the road that got stalled last month, initially said he might consider the compromise. But supporters of his Lake Shore Drive plan opposed the idea, and Moore said he didn’t think the 11th-hour offer from Lightfoot was made in good faith.
“We’ve been working on this for two years, and you beat a person down, then say you want to compromise at the last minute? That’s not real compromise,” Moore said.
Lightfoot has said many people are opposed to renaming Lake Shore Drive for DuSable, calling the current name “one of the most iconic assets the city has. When you say Lake Shore Drive, people know you’re talking about Chicago, and I think that’s very important.”
Moore argues giving DuSable such a lofty honor would be a unique way to bring the city together, and to show kids like those from his overwhelmingly Black ward greater possibilities in their lives.
©2021 Chicago Tribune. Visit chicagotribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
—-
This content is published through a licensing agreement with Acquire Media using its NewsEdge technology.
Just in case you ever wondered why so little ever gets done in government on any level.
They should rename State Street, State of Confusion Street. and Lake shore drive Swamp shore thoroughfare, as ther once “City with the Broad Shoulders” degenerates into the Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Talk about useless people with screwed up priorities. The crime is out of control and people are scared to leave their homes or walk anywhere. This is what these POOR excuses for leaders or poor excuses for human beings. Don’t pay them or give any of them any security until crime is at a level that human beings will accept. If society will accept and pay them to “lead” than that’s what they deserve.
For years, i’ve been saying ALL Politicians need an immediate 95% PAY CUT.. Then make it that THEY NEED TO GET A 70% or higher, vote from their CONSTITUENTS to get a pay rise… LINKED TO the cost of living adjustment military and the elderly get.. NO HIGHER.
“Lightfoot’s own idea to name the downtown Riverwalk” or Lake Shore Drive or ““DuSable Lake Shore Drive,” I think Lake Shore Drive should be renamed “Murder Walk Drive” in honor of all of the murders that take place in Chicago, because of drama queen, incompetent Mayors like Lightfoot or Rahm Emmanuel. In other words, liberals as politicians or in any walk of life are incompetent.
They already have enough headstones to pave the enitre street with, Just like in Schilndler’s list.
BUT unlike Oscar Schilndler, Those are not “SAVED names”…
A fist fight is in order for these 2 prominent black women. I wonder who would win?
The heavy one!!!
“Moore argues giving DuSable such a lofty honor would be a unique way to bring the city together, and to show kids like those from his overwhelmingly Black ward greater possibilities in their lives.”
What a crock of excrement. Worthless symbolism that will do absolutely nothing to solve the city’s crime problems.
From Wikipedia: “Chicago is considered the most gang-infested city in the United States, with a population of over 117,000 active members from nearly 60 gangs. Gang warfare and retaliation is common in Chicago.”… “Former Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy blames Chicago’s gang culture for its high rates of homicide and other violent crime, stating “It’s very frustrating to know that it’s like 7% of the population causes 80% of the violent crime…The gangs here are traditional gangs that are generational, if you will. The grandfather was a gang member, the father’s a gang member, and the kid right now is going to be a gang member.”
How is renaming Lake Shore Drive going to make one iota difference in Chicago?
AND how “honored” do those LIVING ON lakeshore drive, feel about being forced to have their street re-named!
Do the gang members really know who their father and grandfathers are?
This is the root of the problem. Children raised without a father.
Hell, do any of them CARE TO FIND OUT who their ‘baby daddies’ were?
“’I’ve said to her and I’ll say to you all, ever since we’ve been in a global pandemic and she got this ultimate power, she [Lightfoot] doesn’t feel like she has to work with us and that is not how this is going to work,’ Taylor said.”
How about that, even their own are sick and tired of the tyrannical dictatorship the Dimms have absolute, de facto.
is a LOST CAUSE as long as democrat VERMIN run that city!
Dummycrat Vermin has run that city for over 100 years. Chicago is a lost cause like most of California, Portland, Minneapolis, Seattle, and New York City.
That is why we must STOP THEM spreading out anymore than they already are..
Lightfoot loves the name Du Sable,,,,Sable being a Siberian marten with a shot tail and dark brown fur,,,,Just like herself. Another version of racial color fixation first, workable reality last.
The democrat party has manipulated and pandered to their black “property” for decades. After sucking up to a “sure thing” voter base, the left now as found that slave has become master. All large urban areas are completely being run into the ground by “elected” black affirmative action substitutes. And we see the results throughout the nation of democrat run cities formerly ruled over by white racist politicians posturing as compassionate, tolerant, and caring individuals. So funny yet so sad. The decay, destruction, rise in unemployment, escalation of violent crime, exodus of productive people and viable/legitimate businesses is testament to the failure that the Biden tag-alongs can claim credit after the Obama Reich initiated the racial division that we are all seeing. Communists couldn’t beat us militarily and they realized a winning strategy of internal cancer their left wing ameriKan komrades have put into practice.
IN no way, would i call it funny.. SICKENING more like.
How about renaming it “BLM Murderers and Racists Road” in order to give Lightfoot and her fellow anti-American far-leftists their proper credit?
why not “The George Floyd Memorial Drive”? After all, criminals control Chicago!
THIS **** OF RENAMING THIS AND RENAMING THAT is nothing but libs appeasement of a certain race, in order to garner their pathetic votes. And chicago is a total mess, especially since this incompetent joke somehow got elected.
AND NOTE, rarely if ever, do they get the INPUT Of those living there, about whether they WANT such and such, renamed….
Anytime you’re filled with racial hatred, or any kind of hatred, you’re not going to solve any problems because your hatred will blind you to any sort of wisdom, maturity or intelligence! And those of us with God’s wisdom and some common sense intelligence see that all around us now!
Nothing should be named after anyone in government, or the military.
Lightfoot should be named ex-mayor.
SHE needs to be named “PRISONER XYZ”
Two black women arguing over how to benefit two other blacks at public expense. Do whites in Chitcongo have any representation at all anywhere?
Not in that city!
If you will only interview with same color then I no longer care about anything you have to say.
This is the problem, trying to work with Mayors, Governors or Democrats like this, that have such maniacal egos that they think everything they want, say and do needs to be followed, no questions asked! They’re tyrannical dictators, there’s nothing else you can call them…And tell me what tyrannical dictator ever listens to anyone! Insanity has a mind of its own, and it’s all about self!