Mayor Richard M. Daley’s veto of the “big-box” ordinance and the City Council’s reversal in support of him get us back to where we started, but it does nothing to address the urgent issue:
Urban poverty is eating at the heart of Chicago.
Thousands of jobs at $6.50 an hour will not change the fact that there are no one-bedroom apartments in the city that a person working at minimum wage can afford.
Public transportation is too costly for many to use.
And the county hospital emergency room remains as the primary health-care provider for thousands.
For years there was a man who begged on the corner of Madison and Clark.
He was there seven days a week, rain or shine, winter and summer.
I asked him one day, “How much do you make on a good day?”
He answered, “About $60, maybe more.”
If we do the math, we see that he could make more money begging than working. In real terms, he was a shrewd businessman.
There is something fundamentally wrong with a society in which it is more profitable to panhandle than to hold a job.
The mayor’s veto and the council’s agreement do nothing to humanize the city. They say that they are prepared to go to Springfield and to Washington to raise the minimum wage for all.
If they mean it, then now is the time to go, and there are many of us who are willing to go with them.
But if they do not act immediately to get a real living wage for the people living below the poverty line, then it will be Chicago politics at its cynical best.
