Nearly two hours after a 15th Ward community meeting was scheduled to start, Ald. Marlene Carter met head-on with an angry crowd of about 100 people Wednesday night and tried in vain to explain why she voted to elect Eugene Sawyer as acting mayor.
”I`m not scared,” Carter told the grumbling crowd. ”If I was scared I would have crumbled under the pressure. I know the hecklers in this room,”
Carter added, pointing at a young man seated about three rows from her. ”You threatened me twice yesterday.”
About an hour before Carter arrived at the meeting held in the Lindbloom Park field house, 6054 S. Damen Ave., Bruce Crosby, Carter`s chief of staff, read a letter from the alderman saying she would not attend the meeting because of threats against her life and threats against her family.
Normally, one police officer is present at Carter`s weekly field house meetings, park officials said. Wednesday, there were four.
Before Carter arrived, Bobbie Ross, 52, stood up and said: ”She wasn`t afraid of us when she wanted us to elect her. She shouldn`t be afraid of us now.”
Ross said: ”I worked for her. People worked for that woman who didn`t even want her. They worked for her because of Washington.”
”I feel very betrayed,” Ross added. ”Very much so. It`s not so much that I was for Sawyer or (Ald. Timothy) Evans, but she didn`t bring her decision to the people that elected her.” Carter was first elected alderman in April, 1986.
She normally holds a community hearing at 7 p.m. every Wednesday in the field house. The crowd started to arrive at 6:30. About a half-dozen persons stood outside holding placards. The largest said, ”Why didn`t you stick with the 26?” referring to the 26 aldermen who had formed a council majority for Washington during his second term.
Carter failed to show up by the 7 p.m. starting time, and the longer her arrival was delayed, the louder became the grumbling.
”She sold us out” was a commonly heard expression. It referred to Carter`s vote for Sawyer instead of Evans, of the 4th Ward, at the stormy City Council meeting Wednesday morning.
About 8 p.m., some people began lining up in the field house to sign petitions to remove Carter from office.
After Carter arrived, she pretty much controlled the meeting but several times got frustrated with the angry crowd and turned from them and put her hands to her forehead. ”You`re not listening,” she said loudly.
Carter asked her daughter, Marsha, 22, to leave when she got into an argument with a woman seated in the crowd.
Carter told the crowd her vote for Sawyer was ”a hard decision.”
”I want you to understand this was the biggest vote of my life,” she said.
Carter said that ”no meeting” was held with white aldermen. ”We, the 18 black aldermen, met. . . . People talk about the 26, but Harold Washington made the 26.
”The white aldermen had a solid 25 votes and what they said to us was we will give you these votes for whomever the majority of black aldermen agree on.” She said 13 signed an agreement to support Sawyer.
”I signed an agreement and I maintained a principle,” Carter said. Of the aldermen who also had signed to support Sawyer but later voted for Evans, she said, ”I saw them fall off gracefully. I saw them fall off shamefully. I saw them fall off anyway they could. But I gave my word, and I`d do it again.”
One woman in the crowd shouted back: ”No you won`t; you`re through in this ward.”
”I might be through, but I had to stand on my principles,” Carter said.
