What if they called a protest march and Bobby Rush didn’t come?
What?
What if Bobby Rush, who once admonished young black men to be proficient in the use of at least two guns, now advocated gun control and refused a political contribution from the National Rifle Association?
Say again?
No matter the slogan “Panther to Politician,” no matter how many times it’s said that times have changed, no matter his decade as a savvy ward pol, the two contrasting parts of Bobby Lee Rush’s life are still jarring when juxtaposed.
Black Panther. United States congressman.
They are two tags Rush lives with and, indeed, uses to his advantage. If nothing else, they brought him instant notoriety in a freshman class of 110 faces who came to Congress this year, the most significant new group since the 92 who came to Congress in 1974 after the Watergate scandal.
As the Class of ’92 assembled formally in January, Chicago’s Rush parlayed that recognition (and some old-fashioned, hard political work) into a job as a Democratic freshman whip-an ultimate insider’s position. If any other Democrat had that position, it would be noteworthy. With Rush, it’s extraordinary-at least on the surface. In his biggest effort in the job to date, he worked tirelessly to get President Clinton’s budget passed by the House.
But deeper probing reveals an evolutionary process. Rush has noted that before he was a Panther, he was a Boy Scout. The ability to work within and lead a strong organization may just be the key to Bobby Lee Rush, street fighter-turned-infighter.
In May, the 21st Century Vote group organized a march to protest Mayor Richard M. Daley’s planned closure of a South Side medical clinic at 35th Street and Michigan Avenue, and the opening of a clinic at the Robert Taylor Homes. Rush, who had held a press conference in March to blast the decision, decided not to take part, but to initiate talks with the Daley administration to try to work out a solution, perhaps a privatization, of the clinic.
It’s a route he feels very comfortable with, and yet there’s just the slightest pause, the slightest hesitation when describing his role. He does not want to be perceived as being too close to Daley, nor much too far away, either, at least not yet, because Daley’s the one who’ll decide about the clinic.
“He (Daley) is the mayor of Chicago,” Rush declared in his new 70th Street congressional office. “I respect that. I’m a seasoned politician. I’m not a wild-eyed romantic, I’m a politician,” Rush said. “If I’m sitting at the table negotiating, then I’m going to be sitting at the table negotiating. I’m not going to be behaving in a very disingenuous manner on the 5 o’clock news leading the march.”
City officials say the march and Rush’s private meetings with them are both pushing them toward the goal of finding a way to keep the clinic open.
And he’s pulling it off without alienating either side. Dwayne Harris, head of 21st Century Vote, says Rush’s decision not to participate in the march didn’t hurt his reputation with younger people like Harris, 25, because Rush “takes a leadership role in our community.”
It’s just this type of conciliation and ability to bring factions together that is already making Rush a player in the U.S. House after only a few months on the job. But it is also his most criticized trait in some factions of the black community who accuse him of selling out as he represents the 1st District, which in 1928 elected the first black (Oscar DePriest) to the House in the 20th Century. It’s a problem many black members of Congress have had to deal with, especially those who rise to positions of leadership.
“To a certain extent it’s not a very comfortable position to be in, particularly when you have extremists in all camps,” Rush says. “My challenge is to try to find commonalities. I have my own experiences as a black man in America. I don’t, for convenience or political sake, put it on the shelf. I live with it every day.”
High marks, ugly insinuation
House Democratic Whip David Bonior of Michigan puts Rush “in the top three” of the 64 freshmen Democrats (the others unnamed) in terms of Rush’s work for the Democratic agenda this year. His job is to line up votes for the Democratic leadership, a sometimes hard-nosed job, but that’s not Rush’s style, according to Bonior.
Bonior said Rush was the first member of the freshman class to ask to become part of the Democratic whip organization and got votes among the three who eventually won whip jobs. “Who he is now is a result of his total life experience,” Bonior said. “There is a quiet passion in his voice, and you know it’s real.”
But there are those in Chicago who say Rush is now someone he has become despite his life experience. Perhaps his harshest critic is Lu Palmer, the former journalist who is a longtime political activist and WVON-AM radio talk host.
“What some of us say, including me, is that Bobby has just become 100 percent cozy with the Establishment. When you become that close to the Establishment, then the only way we can perceive it is that you are no longer a part of us-you are a part of them,” Palmer said, using words that evoke past days.
Palmer says Rush’s approach to the march was an example of his closeness to the Establishment and his inability to “raise hell.”
Rush dismisses most of the criticism from a man whom he says would have liked to be the congressman instead of him. But lurking deep in the consciousness of both men is a rumor that neither can forget.
It was before dawn on Dec. 4, 1969, when Chicago police officers raided an apartment where Panther leader Fred Hampton slept. The target of 42 shots, he died, along with Mark Clark.
Rush, the designated “minister of defense” of the Chicago Panther chapter, was not at the apartment but home with his family. Palmer keeps alive the question of why Rush was absent and the ugly insinuation that he might have had something to do with the police raid.
“He’ll do anything to see me defeated as a congressman,” Rush says. “He’s a jealous and an insane man. He wanted desperately to be a congressman from the 1st Congressional District, and he was bitterly opposed to Harold Washington because Harold Washington did not support him (Palmer) to replace him (as a congressman).”
Palmer says that the Hampton story “is out there, and you cannot ignore it.”
Back in the neighborhood
Salim Muwakkil, senior editor of Chicago-based In These Times, who follows the black community closely, said Rush is “considered by many people here who began with him in the independent political movement as something of a turncoat. They want to see him on the streets.”
Yet community, conciliation and organization are touchstones in Rush’s life, and there’s hardly a place in his South Side district he can go without being recognized. Whether it’s the Paris Hair Weeving barber and beauty shop, Ike and Jean’s Restaurant, or the Checkerboard Lounge, he’s recognized. Few call him “congressman”; more call him “alderman,” reflecting the decade he spent in that job before coming to Congress. Nearly all call him Bobby.
He gets a haircut at Paris Hair Weeving from Jack Holloway, who wears a gold chain around his neck emblazoned: “Just Jack.” Holloway is a former boxer and jazz enthusiast who was in the Panthers with Rush.
Rush on Holloway: “He keeps me grounded.”
Holloway on Rush: “I can depend on him.”
Rush, who was born near Albany, Ga., came to Chicago at 7 with his mother and four brothers and sisters. He lived on the near North Side, went to Franklin Elementary School and attended Marshall High School. He served in the Army from 1963 to 1968, stationed at a Chicago lakefront anti-missile base during the Vietnam War. But he says he became disenchanted because of a superior officer from Alabama who he thought was biased. After Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, Rush went AWOL and joined the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee. He was later discharged honorably.
He moved as a young man to the South Side and after the Panther days, tried to sell insurance. He struggled at first and later got pretty good at it, but he missed politics.
There were delinquent child-support payments in that period for his three children by his first wife-a fact that came up during his primary campaign against then-U.S. Rep. Charles Hayes. He later went back to college to get his degree (with honors) from Roosevelt University in 1974.
Evolving positions
He met his current wife, Carolyn, in 1975, after she volunteered for his aldermanic campaign. They became friends long before they were married. She now works for Ald. Madeline Haithcock (2nd), Rush’s successor.
Rush on his wife: “She’s a very astute politician, but she doesn’t let that totally define her. It defines me.”
Rush proudly points to signs he had erected in the neighborhood designating “Muddy Waters Dr.” in an area he hopes to revitalize someday as a blues district patterned after Beale Street in Memphis. He recalls the night a few years ago when guitarist Eric Clapton strolled into the Checkerboard Lounge and sat in for a set or two.
It’s all for the neighborhood-the work in Congress, the work at home, and yes, the position against guns. It is a position that has evolved as much as the man who now advocates it.
A question about that position launches Rush, now a gun control legislation sponsor, into one of his long, slow, answers that shows as much of the thought process in the delivery as it does in the words.
“First of all, in the ’60s, when I was a member of the Panther Party, we advocated the use of firearms to defend yourself,” Rush says. “Particularly in your house, especially in your house. That was in response to the issue of police brutality, which was much more wanton in the ’60s. That is not to say it does not exist today, but it’s not as flagrant as it was (pause) so the association with guns was (pause) more political-the expression of a political statement.
“Today (pause) there have been a number of changes. One, violence, the use of guns, is much less controlled now than it was in the ’60s. There’s no discrimination regarding the use of high-tech weapons. In urban, inner-city areas (pause) neighbors are more apt to be the victims of violence. And frankly, young people have access to guns and utilize those guns to terrorize communities and neighborhoods (pause) at a very alarming level. So, my position on guns has changed.”
But would a young Bobby Rush have listened to Rush, today’s 46-year-old grandfather, on the subject of guns? There is another long pause.
“I doubt it.” He explains, “You see, I could make an exception for one young person (who wants a gun for protection). But that’s not the general characteristics of someone who uses guns today.”
A chance to govern
Rush’s first big move into politics was with Harold Washington, who is clearly Rush’s hero. Unpacking boxes of pictures for his new Chicago office several weeks ago, Rush proudly showed off several shots of him and Washington together in 1983 when Washington was the new mayor and Rush the new alderman. Rush added to his political titles in 1984, besting the old William Barnett organization a second time on the South Side to become 2nd Ward Democratic Committeeman. Rush supported Washington the way he now supports Clinton, arguing that each deserves a chance to show that he can govern.
While playing in the big world of Washington, D.C., Rush’s goal is always the same: get better jobs and a better life for his people at home.
That goal has been furthered in some ways that make his old allies cringe. When state Democratic Chairman Gary LaPaille sought Rush’s support in his bid to defeat former Chairman Vincent Demuzio in 1990, the same year Rush also became 1st Congressional District Democratic Committeeman, Rush agreed to support him in exchange for being named deputy chairman and getting more blacks in top positions in the party.
He similarly supported Richard Phelan in his bid for president of the Cook County Board, and Phelan responded by increasing the number of county contracts let to minority-owned firms.
Rush said it was Phelan’s late wife, Carol, who died in December 1989, who convinced him that Phelan was no racist despite questions about his membership in two private country clubs that did not have black members.
“I didn’t see how anyone who was married to her could be a racist,” Rush said, citing her community work and gentle personality. As for Phelan’s motivation in coming to Rush for support? “I don’t think he was looking to me for cover in the black community. Helping to elect a county board president was important to create an ally for the black community.”
Rush’s first major piece of legislation, a bill designed to increase the availability of capital and credit to areas in need of redevelopment, is directed at the community, especially people who may not be comfortable with conventional banking, because they rarely deal with regular banks.
Part of his motivation for seeking (and getting) a seat on the House Banking Committee was to press such legislation.
No matter what the current issue, somehow any discussion of Rush must come around to the past and the Panther legacy.
“I carry, probably more than any other individual, the battles of the Panther Party since the Panther Party,” Rush said. “I didn’t disappear into some far-out land, I didn’t go into some kind of drunken stupor. I’ve run and been involved in public life and always been associated with the Panther Party at every instance of my involvement in public life. Nobody can take that away from me.”
