If history is any indication, some of the aldermen I have interviewed this year will eventually wind up in jail. I will, with as much certainty as I can muster, predict that Walter Burnett Jr. will not be one of them. The alderman of the 27th Ward has already been in prison and the lessons he learned there are not forgotten.
The eldest of five children, he was born in 1963 and grew up in the Rockwell Gardens and Cabrini-Green public housing complexes. His father was a city truck driver and a precinct captain. His mother was active in the community, hosting block parties and working with the Jesse White Tumblers.
“When I was little, Cabrini was beautiful,” says Burnett. “It was racially diverse and safe. We used to sleep with our doors unlocked. But then drugs got bad and we lost the neighborhood.”
An indifferent student at Wells High School, Burnett didn’t have any goals “except to get out of high school. I did graduate but then just started hanging around, getting drunk . . . and I made a stupid mistake.”
That was getting behind the wheel of a car when he was 17 and driving two older men to Kankakee, where they robbed a bank of $3,000. They later stole a car and kidnapped its driver. They were arrested and charged with armed robbery, aggravated kidnapping and armed violence. Burnett, who said that he had not known that his accomplices were going to commit the crimes, pleaded guilty to armed robbery in exchange for the prosecution’s dropping of the other charges. He served a two-year prison sentence and was later granted executive clemency by Gov. Jim Edgar.
“I think prison may have been God’s way for me,” he says. “He gave me goals and I worked toward them.” Burnett stayed out of trouble, devoting time to reading and listening to motivational books and tapes, getting an associate degree in mechanical drafting and a certificate as an emergency medical technician, and joining the penitentiary boxing team.
Once out of prison and living with his mother, he spent a dispiriting month trying to find work. His father introduced him to the Cook County Board president, George Dunne, who arranged for an interview.
Burnett got a job as a draftsman for the county highway department. “I worked hard at my job but also hustled, going to college to study engineering, selling T-shirts and sunglasses, helping people move,” he says. He even sold the Tribune, working the off-ramp of the Kennedy Expressway at Division Street, a location now within the boundaries of his ward.
He also became a foot soldier in the Democratic Party organization. “A lot of people called me a ‘kiss butt’ and I did do anything I was asked to do . . . get coffee, anything. And I got to know every politician in Cook County. I worked on campaigns, was an aide for Jesse White,” he says. “I never thought about elective office because of my incarceration. I worked my way up by hard work and not being afraid to humble myself.”
He eventually became chairman of the Young Democrats and in 1995, with the support of Dunne and other party heavyweights, he ran for alderman of the recently remapped 27th Ward, a crazy jigsaw-puzzle piece that includes part of Cabrini-Green, the United Center and points west. (to see a map of the ward, go to www.cityofchicago.org and click on the “Your Ward and Alderman” link).
It was a tough race, which Burnett won in a runoff. He was victorious in his last election in 2003 with 88 percent of the vote and so is understandably confident about next year’s race.
“The challenges are many,” he says. “The transformation of public housing . . . we now have $500,000 homes next to public housing. My chief of staff still lives in Cabrini and I must deal with an increasingly diverse community, have people respect one another.”
He has been married to his wife, Darlena, since 1991, when he became stepfather to her then 20-year-old son, Jawaharial. Darlena works for the Recorder of Deeds office and Jawaharial is now chairman of the Young Democrats. The Burnetts also have a 10-year-old son, Walter.
The alderman is a deacon at his church and often visits with prisoners, “because it’s one way I can give back.”
What is the gist of his message to them?
“That jail is not the end of the world,” he says.
———-
rkogan@tribune.com
