COMMENTARY MAYORS
Lessons
from
Harold & Rob
What Mayor Johnson should know as his first year in office continues By BRIAN MIER
R
obert Mier (1924-1995) was a professor of urban planning and public administration at University of Illinois Chicago and a leading expert on urban economic issues. Mier founded the University of Chicago’s Center for Urban Economic Development in 1978. During Mayor Harold Washington’s first term, Mier became the City of Chicago’s director of economic development and created “Chicago Works Together,” a city plan for development that became a national model for other large cities. In the winter of 1982 I was a junior at Gordon Tech High School (now known as DePaul College Prep). One of my best friends’ mothers was dating a guy named Big Tony. Big Tony was the owner of two pizza restaurants and a gas station and also our neighborhood’s precinct captain. He was a large man who drove a Buick and carried a .25 ACP Beretta in a holster discretely concealed under his silk suits. Tony, despite his macho posturing, was rumored to be “too soft” to become an actual member of the mafia. One morning he pulled over as my mom was walking down Bell Avenue. He rolled down his window and said to her, “We’re watching you Mrs. Mier.” At the time, my father, Robert Mier, was helping coordinate Harold Washington’s first mayoral campaign. Most of Chicago’s white population, including the working-class Bavarians in North Center (my old neighbor-
14 CHICAGO READER - JULY 27, 2023
hood), were hysterical over the possibility of having a Black mayor. My dad had warned me and my siblings that we were probably going to have rocks thrown through our windows. After one of the most racist mayoral campaigns in Chicago history, which saw the best performance of a Republican (the previously unknown-to-many-voters Bernie Epton) in a Chicago election in over 100 years, Washington went on to win with only around 17 percent of the white vote. Shortly after his historic victory, Washington asked my father to serve on his commission of economic development. Washington later moved him across the street into City Hall, where my father became the city’s director of development, a position that he held until he was fired on Mayor Richard M. Daley’s first day in office in 1989. During his time at City Hall, my father would often talk to me about daily events at his job. He sometimes called me from his city-issued car, a 1982 Chevy Caprice Classic that had a phone in it (a sure sign that you had made the big time back in the early 80s). After a while, the racist hysteria that swept over our neighborhood (“They’re going to replace the elevators in city hall with vines,” was a common refrain) gave way to begrudging respect for a mayor who prioritized neighborhood development over downtown development and manufacturing jobs over the service sector. I still remember my pride one evening when a neighborhood Teamsters Union truck driver told me what a good job his
The author’s late father, Robert Mier, at a presentation with Mayor Washington to discuss the city’s 1984 development plan “Chicago Works Together” COURTESY OF BRIAN MIER
local thought Washington was doing. Chicago is now a very different city. The brick two-flats in my old neighborhood that used to have two or three families living in them have been gutted and converted to $2 million single-family mansions. The streets around Bell School that were once patrolled by the Simon City Royals are now patrolled by people pushing expensive baby carriages. Many working-class north siders have been pushed to the northwest side or out to the suburbs. One thing today’s Chicago does have in common with the 80s is that a progressive is back in the mayor’s office. A lot of the major players in the Washington administration, including my father, who died of cancer in 1995, are long gone. I imagine that most people living in Chicago—especially those under 50—probably don’t even remember the Washington administration. I fear that Washington’s reputation conversion from progressive changemaker into a harmless icon after his death by mass media companies like the Chicago Tribune and WGN (both fought him tooth and nail on many policies while he was alive) has left younger generations with little substantive knowledge of what he actually did. I decided to write this article to share a few things my father told me about the times back then, with hope that the information might be useful to the movement that propelled Brandon Johnson to the mayor’s office. You can find further information from my father’s writings (like his 1993 book Social Justice and Local Development Policy).
WARNINGS The Johnson administration should expect heightened scrutiny from the federal government. Nearly every new policy initiative implemented by the Washington administration was audited by the Feds. Granted, this happened during the Reagan years, but I can’t imagine the Biden administration will be any friendlier to a progressive democratic mayor, judging how the DNC has bent over backwards to prevent progressive mayors from getting elected (most recently in Buffalo). There are certainly those interested in working to turn the Johnson administration into such a disaster that no one elects a progressive in Chicago for another 40 years. The Johnson administration should prepare to be attacked in the media for every attempt to provide affordable housing to the poor. During the Washington years, common attacks involved red-baiting (as happened to 46th Ward alderperson Helen Shiller), and constant accusations that the city was “putting development on hold” (one of the frequent proclamations of Machine alderperson Kathy Osterman). The new administration should prepare to be blackmailed into delivering on megacon struction projects. One of my father’s proudest achievements was helping block an edition of the World’s Fair from coming to Chicago. He was proud because mega-events like World Fairs, Olympics, and World Cups have
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