Making Our Research Relevant, Holding Our Profession Accountable: A Case of Responsibility and Opportunity in Chicago and Beyond

• In Event: To Know Is Not Enough: Commissioned Essay Writers—Sunday (Coffee)

Abstract

When Richard J. Daley announced in late 2010 that he would not seek re-election as Mayor of Chicago, residents of every background and political orientation experienced a kind of
collective lightheadedness. This was the longest sitting mayor in Chicago history, after all—outdoing even his legendary father by a year—and the first to voluntarily vacate the office in over 50 years. The political moment—part hope, part fear, and part giddy speculation—opened a flood-gate: veteran politicians as well as novices rushed to create exploratory committees and began gathering petitions and raising money for possible campaigns; community organizers mapped strategies to mobilize people around their key issues; and artists and activists came together in imaginative interventions. The possibility for revolutionary changes in Chicago A.D.
(After Daley) was a dizzying and seductive prospect for many, including us, and each of us was swept into the maelstrom in one way or another—organizing, meeting, creating—or in many
ways at once. Working to suspend rightly-earned cynicism, we recognized that even in a city like
Chicago where legislation and public office is perhaps the thinnest realm to generate power,
visibly organizing to state what we wanted for this office, and our city, mattered.

Authors

• William C. Ayers, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Kevin Kumashiro, University of San Francisco

• Erica R. Meiners, Northeastern Illinois University

• Therese M. Quinn, University of Illinois at Chicago

• David O. Stovall, University of Illinois at Chicago