Eight people were arrested Monday during a protest at Obama’s 2012 campaign headquarters. The rally, organized by social justice and anti-war group Catholic Workers, was the first organized demonstration — and the first instance of arrests — relating to the NATO counter-protests. It was small (just over two dozen participants assailed security and stormed the campaign headquarters and read a statement inside) but set a tone for actions later this week in asserting that the president and Democratic Party are protest targets alongside NATO generals and corporations like Boeing, who receive large government defense contracts.

For months the question has hovered over Occupy supporters, many of whom are attending NATO protests, partly organized by Occupy Chicago, from across the country: How many of them will manifest as Democratic voters come November? Will the energy that has brought hundreds of thousands into streets and parks across the country over the past half year be co-opted by the party machine? Of course, the small Catholic Workers demonstration is no indication either way. It will be interesting to watch, however, as the week of permitted and unpermitted protest actions continue in the city Obama calls home, the ways in which Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the president are willing to crack down on the dissenting crowds whose support they will ask for in November.

The Chicago Police Department is pitching the LRAD largely as a means to communicate with large crowds:

“This is simply a risk management tool, as the public will receive clear information regarding public safety messages and any orders provided by police,” Chicago Police spokeswoman Melissa Stratton told the Guardian.

However, during its first outing at a U.S. protest, during the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh in 2009, police blasted non-lethal sound waves from the device as a crowd deterrent. Unlike firing tear gas or swinging batons, deploying the LRAD does not create a dramatic media spectacle; indeed, videos from the Pittsburgh protests capture the LRAD emitting little more than a high-pitched siren. Those within the sound cannon’s range, however, have described immense pain and severe headaches and — in some cases — irreversible hearing damage. LRAD Corp., which produces the weapon for the military and domestic policing, said that anyone within 100m of the device’s directed sound path will experience “extreme pain,” according to Gizmodo.

“In Pittsburgh, they directed the LRAD at a crowd coming up the center of a wide street, then sent tear gas canisters down the sides of the street. Tear gas is painful, but everyone ran into the tear gas to get out of the LRAD path,” one protester who attended the Pittsburgh G-20 told me, asking to remain anonymous. Chicago’s Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy has recently expressed that he believes tear gas to be an ineffective crowd control device — and based on lessons from Pittsburgh, the LRAD can produce a painful enough effect to force crowd dispersal without the dramatic media impact tear gas creates; it’s certainly a more insidious weapon. (Indeed, the Chicago police riot during the 1968 Democratic National Convention went down in infamy partly because of the excessive use of tear gas.)

Norm Stamper, the former Seattle police chief who oversaw the policing of the Battle in Seattle in 1999, has learned some hard personal lessons about protest policing. Stamper resigned after his department was condemned for excessive use of force and tear gas against the ’99 World Trade Organization protesters; he has since become an outspoken critic of harsh crowd control techniques. Of the LRAD Stamper told Salon, “I’m not a fan. And it’s not just because I suffer from tinnitus. Everyone, without ear protection, is at risk for permanent hearing damage. Not worth it, as far as I’m concerned.”

Mayor Rahm Emanuel has assured Chicagoans that no taxpayer money will go toward covering any summit activity (federal and private money was secured for this purpose). However, Chicago organizers and participants in the counter-summit have nonetheless balked that money can be made available for such purposes, while public services, such as mental health clinics are being shuttered (six out of 12 of the city’s mental health clinics are set for closure, which sparked the week-long occupation of one clinic by staff and clients with the support of Occupy Chicago).

Occupy Chicago’s press committee late last week held a conference to give the media a preview of the week of protests. Although it was made explicit that actions would take place that have not yet been disclosed or even planned, scheduled protests include a march Tuesday organized by National Nurses United (who are paying for 12 busloads of protesters to get to Chicago from across the country). The NNU march will end with a musical performance by Rage Against the Machine guitarist and “guitarmy” instigator Tom Morello, and aims to speak out against austerity measures implemented by the G-8. Having changed original plans to hold the G-8 summit in Chicago the same week as NATO, G-8 leaders are instead meeting this week in the rural seclusion of Camp David. Organizers plan to make their opposition to the G-8 visible in Chicago nonetheless.

Other actions specifically targeting NATO include a procession to the summit headquarters on May 20, during which veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars plan to hand back their service medals to NATO generals in protest against ongoing wars. Occupy Chicago also has plans for an unpermitted march to shut down Boeing’s main office on May 21, in opposition to the government defense contracts the company receives.

Occupy Chicago, CANG8 and other organizing groups have pitched all counter-summit activity as “peaceful,” prompting further outcry that the city is preparing a militaristic crowd control response, especially with the threat of the LRAD.

Clarification: An earlier version of this story suggested the LRAD was a new purchase for Chicago. The riot gear is newly purchased and CPD are preparing to use the LRAD, which they already owned.

Ellen Danin, writing in the Northwestern Journal of Law and Social Policy relates that: “Chicagoans learned about compensation events when CBS reported that the city’s parking meter contract required reimbursement for events like repairing streets. Public records showed that in the first quarter of 2009, the city was liable to the parking meter contractor for more than $106,000 in lost income during the slow months for street repair and street closings for festivals, parades, and holidays, as well as repairs and maintenance. At that rate, it is not unreasonable to predict that Chicago will owe roughly $500,000 a year to the private contractor.”

The city essentially acts as an insurer for the meter merchants, with the return being a one-time injection of roughly a billion dollars that the previous mayor, Daley the Second, haphazardly exhausted on closing budget deficits in the waning years of his two-decade tour at the helm.

With the current infrastructure deal, Emanuel has repeatedly claimed that this is not privatization: This is not like the parking meter deal. Can the public believe him?

Here is how the “infrastructure trust” works: the city pays for upgrades to its roads, rail or schools with dollars pooled by Emanuel’s friends from the banking and investment world. Meanwhile, the city retains “ownership” of the infrastructure, though this comes at the cost of having to ensure a revenue stream for the fund. Emanuel’s favorite example is his $225 million pet project to green-retrofit some of the city’s older buildings. The savings on energy usage stemming from the renovations are then extracted and used to pay off investors. Of course, the city could also sell municipal bonds to raise necessary funds, and then use the savings in energy costs to pay the loan back at a much lower cost to taxpayers. But then Emanuel’s friends (and campaign donors) would not be the richer for it.

While the mayor bills his plan as “bold” and “innovative,” the reality could not be further from the truth. Public-private partnerships (PPPs) have been around for decades in various forms and their track record is replete with delays, cost overruns and prolonged legal battles. What’s more, the beneficiaries of these investment mechanisms are the same rapacious Morgan Stanleys and Goldman Sachs that gave us the mortgage-backed securities scandal and the ensuing recession. Using the economic malaise they created as cause, they have ratcheted up their advocacy of PPPs as a means of helping cash-starved public entities finance capital-intensive projects.

The upshot is that they are holding us hostage all over again. They are using infrastructure built over decades with public monies as collateral to extract profit off of the back of taxpayers. A cursory look at some past projects of this nature demonstrates that PPPs are often inefficient, overly costly and inherently unjust.

The London Tube Nightmare

The granddaddy of all PPP debacles is the London Underground. Metronet PPP is the brainchild of former Prime Minister Gordon Brown. The contract design kept London Underground in public hands while privatizing the renovation and renewal elements to the system. As with the Chicago parking meter deal, the contract was replete with virtually unintelligible legalese designed to give the private partners an advantage in court, while also rendering public scrutiny of the contract exceedingly difficult. Bureaucratic costs related to drawing up contracts with external bidders ultimately surpassed 500 million pounds.

In the Guardian, Christian Wolmar notes that “the idea that the PPP would keep costs down has also proved fanciful. It is a recipe for disputes, which often end up in the hands of expensive lawyers. During the first contract, there is a mega dispute brewing over Tube Lines’ failure to complete the resignalling of the Jubilee Line which should have been finished this month and is now set to take until the autumn, with numerous extra weekend closures. In addition, the arbiter’s report says that claims involving a staggering £727m have been laid by Tube Lines, £500m of which are still outstanding.”

As bloated contractual costs and project overruns spun out of control, Metronet ultimately collapsed in 2008. A year later, the entire PPP went down with it after an arbiter refused to allow funds for the other private partner, Tube Lines, to do further renovations. The final cost to taxpayers is estimated at somewhere between 170 million and 410 million pounds, which does not account for the inconvenience of relentless service stoppages and construction delays. Former London Mayor Ken Livingstone complained at the time: “We are being asked to write a blank cheque in order to prop up failing Tube Lines. In other countries this would be called looting, here it is called the PPP.”

Orange County’s Privatized HOV Lane

Almost equal in disrepute to the London Tube fiasco was the privatization of one high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lane on California’s SR-91. In the early ’90s, the Orange County Transportation Authority (OCTA) proved incapable of procuring necessary funding for implementation of the new HOV using traditional revenue streams, so instead developed a private partnership to construct and manage the project, which opened December 27, 1995.

This contract included “non-compete” clauses that prevented the public from providing necessary maintenance to the adjacent free lanes. The California Department of Transportation hoped to add new lanes between SR-91 and another recently completed public toll road. These improvements would have violated the non-compete terms of the contract, though CalTrans argued there were overriding safety concerns that permitted them to proceed with the construction.

The ensuing public row served to turn opinion against the private toll lane. Ultimately, the outcry led to passage of Assembly Bill 1010, which authorized OCTA to acquire the lane for $207.5 million in 2003. California’s earliest experiment with private financing of a publicly controlled entity, like the London Tube, came crashing to a premature halt on the heels of widespread public outrage.

What is most telling is that popular frustration centered on a principal term of the contract, which was publicly available for viewing prior to approval. Once again, a common ploy of instigators of these contracts is rendering the terms so confusing as to limit public scrutiny. Meanwhile, the mainstream press tends to focus on the bottom line and avoid the esoteric legal mumbo jumbo, much to the detriment of an enlightened public.

The SDX

California, ever the epicenter of political innovation, was also the site of another one of the most significant PPP boondoggles. In this case, Australian investment group Macquerie led an assortment of banks that invested in a new expressway from San Diego to the Mexican border, beginning with the project’s commencement in 2000 and lasting until the contract expiry in 2042.

However, faced with the challenges of the housing crisis and wider economic slump, the project faced persistent toll revenue shortfalls and ultimately filed for bankruptcy last year. Meanwhile, the cost of the project jumped from $360 million to $843 million, while being delayed for over a year. In the bankruptcy proceeding, the South Bay Expressway LLC was created to administer the road and ultimately purchased by the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) for $344.5 million.

This project received an initial $140 million boost from funds provided by the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA). TIFIA is designed as a tool to provide federal investment in PPPs. Interestingly, Rahm Emanuel cited the program as an example of a financing tool that his Infrastructure Trust is based on. However, this is a bit misleading, as TIFIA is composed entirely of federal funds used to augment existing finances for capitol projects. Meanwhile, Emanuel’s trust is composed of $1.7 billion in funds raised from private banks leveraged against a $200 million investment by the city.

Nonetheless, the two shortcomings of this project are particularly instructive. Its primary problem was the failure to meet the initial high-shooting projections initially set out. Traffic patterns are extremely difficult to accurately anticipate: a situation not helped by the backdrop of the worldwide recession and the location of this road in a region that was particularly burdened by the foreclosure crisis. The intrinsic uncertainty of usage of public infrastructure renders it a poor focal point for private, profit-driven investment. The reality is that parks, roadways and bridges require periodic capital investment irrespective of profitability. Public entities are far more well-equipped to finance these unreliable projects for the very reason that government is not motivated by profit.

The second problem this project faced by this PPP, like so many others, was its predilection to legal wrangles. SBX was involved in legal proceedings with InTrans, the toll system provider, and a number of construction related contractors. One source speaking with TollRoadNews called the governing contract a “sue-me contract” that was “made for litigation.” Given the immense costs seen by the London Tube PPP, this should come as no surprise. These projects seem to invite costly litigation just from their sheer complexity.

Toward Sustainable Investment in Infrastructure

PPPs are purported to make additional resources available for public expenditure on capital-intensive infrastructure projects. However, the opposite tends to be the case. A report published by the Public Services International Research Unit notes: “The great majority of PPP’s rely on a stream of income from payments by government – i.e. public spending…In a context where there are political demands to cut public spending, the existence of PPP’s creates greater threats to other spending on public services. This is because PPP’s create long-term contractual rights to streams of income, and so governments are legally constrained from reducing payments to PPPs.”

Even the International Monetary Fund warns that public investment in PPPs should be subject to strict scrutiny in a July 2009 publication: “Intervention measures should be consistent with the wider fiscal policy stance, be contingent on specific circumstances, and be adequately costed and budgeted.” The IMF also argues that PPPs related to weathering the economic crisis should include a “turn off” mechanism. A green paper published by the Commission of the European Communities in April 2004 even went further, recommending against PPPs as a tool to close any budget deficits. They argue that the mechanism should be employed primarily when the private entity is providing a specific field of expertise.

After all, why should anyone trust the same racketeers who precipitated the global economic crisis to make acute investment decisions on behalf of the people? All levels of government face serious fiscal constraints stemming from a range of causes, including the ongoing recession and regressive tax policy across the board. When financiers so generously offer to open up the purse strings to invest in pet infrastructure projects, the public response ought be: “No, thank you. Instead, we are going to raise the top marginal tax rate.” That would be a far more efficient and prudent way of beginning to tackle the fiscal crises in government.

Then there’s the backdrop: Chicago, the site of the notorious 1968 Democratic National Convention and police riot. The city of Barack Obama’s election night rally in 2008 — when a politician could still pull off a slogan like “hope” and it didn’t seem to everyone like a cruel joke. And, as of this month, a Chicago where protest rules and punishments for dissent are stricter than ever, thanks to ordinances recently passed through the city council.

“The ordinances, combined with Chicago’s history of spying on political activists, do not bode well for how the City will treat protesters at the upcoming G-8/NATO summits,” Heidi Boghosian, director of the National Lawyers Guild, told Salon.

The new rules, introduced by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and passed by the city council, include an increased number of surveillance cameras across the city; the ability for Chicago’s police chief to deputize trained out-of-state law enforcement personnel; increases in parade permit fees and heavier fines for violating parade rules; keeping public parks closed longer than usual each day; the requirement that “large parades” (almost every sizable street protest) take out $1 million liability insurance to get permits and for organizers to “agree to reimburse the city for any damage to the public way or to city property arising out of or caused by the parade.”

“When municipalities require that liability insurance be taken out by protesters before permits are granted, authorities are making it costly and burdensome for political groups to secure permits. Changing the requirements for obtaining protest permits is just one of many tactics that the Guild has seen used across the country in advance of large-scale demonstrations, all of which amount to an improper infringement on the right to assemble and engage in First Amendment-protected activities,” said Boghosian.

The insurance requirements and other parade restrictions give little incentive for organizers to apply for permits at all. In the well-founded understanding that mayhem will ensue and that many people heading for Chicago care little for permitted modes of dissent anyway, the city ordinances seem to disincentivize groups from taking on the burden of a permit, while not at all discouraging people intent on taking the streets from doing so.

Former Seattle police chief Norman Stamper, who oversaw the policing of the Battle of Seattle in 1999 and knows all too well the effect of repressive crackdowns on dissent, is skeptical about Chicago’s new rules to restrict marches, which include a requirement that protesters provide the city with a list of all signs, banners and sound equipment. “It could well backfire, its provisions provoking additional protest, and raising questions about how they would be enforced,” said Stamper.

Mayor Emanuel, in the face of immense opposition from protest groups and aldermen, conceded to drop an initial proposal to also increase fines for resisting arrest. Nonetheless, a press release from Occupy Chicago called the remaining ordinances’ passage through city council “a significant attack on democratic rights.”

“The mayor of Chicago has a clear choice,” said Bernadine Dorhn, former member of the Weather Underground and associate professor of law at Northwestern University, who spoke out against Chicago police actions at the 1968 DNC. “He can represent Chicago as an Open City: open the parks and public spaces, and welcome debate, dissent and arts … Or he can shut down speech and assembly, and prepare for the apocalypse: arm and prepare police for violence and confrontation, close the parks, schools and public places, and barricade the warmakers of NATO and G-8 as they meet for the new military/economic order.”

It seems Emanuel made his choice  and opted for preemptive crackdown, further setting the tone for tense scenes come May. When President Obama announced that Chicago would be the first U.S. city outside of Washington, D.C., to host a NATO summit, many residents expressed concern. University of Chicago economist Allen Sanderson told CBS Chicago that the summit could be a “potential disaster,” noting that the timing will see Occupy supporters “out of hibernation.”

The decision to stick with Chicago for the summit and amp up protest controls shows a president willing to co-opt and clamp down on dissent for his own purposes. As Sanderson warns, however, Obama and Emanuel might come to regret their choices. Occupy Chicago have already answered the new ordinances defiantly, announcing, “Mayor Emanuel, you’ll see us in the streets of Chicago: our streets.”

“We must face the truth,” Emanuel said in his inaugural speech. “It is time to take on the challenges that threaten the very future of our city: the quality of our schools, the safety of our streets, the cost and effectiveness of city government, and the urgent need to create the jobs of the future.”

“The decisions we make in the next two or three years will determine what Chicago will look like in the next 20 or 30.”

Emanuel inherits a city with big financial problems. His transition team predicted a $700 million budget shortfall next year, but because of some controversial decisions by Daley — most notably the push to privatize parking meters — he has limited ways to pay for school improvements or repair the city’s aging infrastructure.

In his speech, Emanuel walked a fine between bluntly assessing the city’s problems without being directly critical of the departing mayor.

“From the moment I began my campaign for mayor, I have been clear about the hard truths and the tough choices we face. We simply can’t afford the size of city government that we had in the past, and taxpayers deserve a more effective and efficient government than the one we have today.”

Emanuel also showed that he would not be shy about wading into national politics, referring to efforts in other Midwestern states to eliminate union rights for many public employees as part of budget cuts.

“I reject how leaders in Wisconsin and Ohio are exploiting their fiscal crisis to achieve a political goal. That course is not the right course for Chicago’s future,” he said.

Emanuel, who represented Chicago in Congress before he went to Washington to become Obama’s senior aide, made his mayoral ambitions known more than a year ago during an interview on Charlie Rose’s PBS talk show, saying it was “no secret” that he wanted to run for mayor if Daley did not seek re-election.

When Daley announced last fall that he would not seek a seventh term after 22 years in office — a longer tenure than any other mayor in the city’s history — some wondered if Emanuel had some prior knowledge when he made that comment.

But if he did, that didn’t stop him — just days before Daley’s stunning announcement — from renewing his lease with the tenant who rented his Chicago home while the Emanuels lived in Washington.

That decision to rent his house was at the center of the biggest obstacle standing between Emanuel and the mayor’s office: the legal battle over whether he was a resident of Chicago and eligible to run for mayor.

The fight ended with an Illinois Supreme Court ruling in his favor — but not before an appellate court panel knocked his name off the ballot, citing his time away from the city.

Once that issue was out of the way, Emanuel simply steamrolled over his opponents.

Branded as a Washington outsider by other candidates, Emanuel didn’t miss an opportunity to remind voters that, unlike his opponents, he had friends in high places, even as he sought to convince Chicagoans that he was one of them.

Armed with a $14 million campaign war chest that dwarfed those of his opponents, the only question in the last weeks of the race was whether Emanuel would get enough votes to avoid a runoff.

Emanuel, who kept his temper and his famously profane vocabulary in check during the campaign, ended up collecting 55 percent of the vote. In his last election campaigns, Daley was accustomed to collecting more than 70 percent.

Emanuel seemed to allude to his reputation when he spoke about school reform.

“As some have noted, including my wife, I am not a patient man,” he said. “When it comes to improving our schools, I will not be a patient mayor.”

Once elected, Emanuel wasted little time putting his administration together, bringing with him a number of people from his days in Washington.

For key posts, he went far outside the city. He hired the schools chief in Rochester, N.Y., to run the city’s massive education system. He went to Newark, N.J., to find his police superintendent rather than promoting from within. And where Daley hired a local newspaper reporter as his press secretary, Emanuel hired his away from the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington.

In his speech, Emanuel thanked Daley for his service to the city, noting how the “world class” park where he was speaking had once been an abandoned rail yard and “nagging urban eyesore.”

“A generation ago, people were writing Chicago off as a dying city,” the new mayor said. “They said our downtown was failing, our neighborhoods were unlivable, our schools were the worst in the nation, and our politics had become so divisive we were referred to as Beirut on the Lake.”

When Daley took office in 1989, “he challenged all of us to lower our voices and raise our sights. Chicago is a different city today than the one Mayor Daley inherited, thanks to all he did.”

Emanuel’s swearing-in completed an interesting role swap between City Hall and the White House: Emanuel’s replacement as Obama’s chief of staff is the outgoing mayor’s younger brother, William Daley.

In a mark of Emanuel’s continuing ties with Washington, Vice President Joe Biden attended the inauguration, as did William Daley, Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geitner and two other cabinet secretaries.

“We must face the truth,” Emanuel said in his inaugural speech. “It is time to take on the challenges that threaten the very future of our city: the quality of our schools, the safety of our streets, the cost and effectiveness of city government, and the urgent need to create the jobs of the future right here in Chicago.”

“The decisions we make in the next two or three years will determine what Chicago will look like in the next 20 or 30.”

Emanuel’s swearing-in completes an interesting role swap between City Hall and the White House: Emanuel’s replacement as Obama’s chief of staff is the outgoing mayor’s younger brother, William Daley.

In a mark of Emanuel’s continuing ties with Washington, Vice President Joe Biden was in attendance at the inauguration, as was William Daley, Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geitner and two other cabinet secretaries. Also scheduled to be there were the ambassadors of Mexico and six other countries.

Emanuel inherits a city with big money problems. Not only has Emanuel’s transition team predicted a $700 million budget shortfall next year, but because of some controversial decisions by Daley — most notably the push to privatize parking meters — he has limited avenues to fund efforts to improve schools and repair the city’s aging infrastructure.

It’s a challenge Emanuel has not shied away from.

Emanuel, who represented Chicago in Congress before he went to Washington to become Obama’s senior aide, made his desire to be mayor known more than a year ago during an interview on Charlie Rose’s PBS talk show, saying “it’s no secret” that he wanted to run for mayor if Daley didn’t seek re-election.

When Daley announced last fall that he wouldn’t seek a seventh term after 22 years in office — longer than any other mayor in the city’s history — some wondered if Emanuel had some prior knowledge when he made that comment.

But if he did, that didn’t stop him — just days before Daley’s stunning announcement — from renewing his lease with the tenant who rented his Chicago home while the Emanuels lived in Washington.

That decision to rent his house was at the center of the biggest challenge standing between Emanuel and the mayor’s office: the legal battle over whether he was a resident of Chicago and eligible to run for mayor.

That fight ended with an Illinois Supreme Court ruling in his favor — but not before an appellate court panel decided that Emanuel’s time away from the city made him ineligible to run and knocked his name off the ballot.

With that out of the way, Emanuel simply steamrolled over his opponents. Branded as a Washington outsider by other candidates including former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun and former Chicago schools president Gery Chico, Emanuel didn’t miss an opportunity to remind voters that, unlike his opponents, he had friends in high places, even as he sought to convince them that he was one of them.

There was the campaign stop by former President Bill Clinton and the visit to Chicago by the Chinese President Hu Jintao — a visit, Emanuel reminded reporters, that included a private meeting between the two.

Armed with a $14 million campaign war chest that dwarfed those of his opponents, the only question in the last weeks of the race was whether Emanuel would get 50 percent of the votes plus one vote to avoid a runoff.

Emanuel, who kept his temper and his legendary profane vocabulary under wraps during the campaign, ended up collecting 55 percent of the vote. In his last election campaigns, Daley was accustomed to collecting more than 70 percent.

Once elected, Emanuel wasted little time putting his administration together, bringing with him a number of people from his days in Washington.

For key posts, he went far outside the city. He hired the schools chief in Rochester, N.Y., to run the city’s massive school system. He went to Newark, N.J., to find his police superintendent, choosing the head of that department rather than promote someone already in the department. And where Daley hired a local newspaper reporter as his press secretary, Emanuel hired his away from the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington.

In his speech, Emanuel thanked Daley for his service to the city, noting how the “world class” park where he was speaking had once been an abandoned rail yard and “nagging urban eyesore.”

“A generation ago, people were writing Chicago off as a dying city,” the new mayor said. “They said our downtown was failing, our neighborhoods were unlivable, our schools were the worst in the nation, and our politics had become so divisive we were referred to as Beirut on the Lake.

“When Richard M. Daley took office as mayor 22 years ago, he challenged all of us to lower our voices and raise our sights. Chicago is a different city today than the one Mayor Daley inherited, thanks to all he did.”