Common at Millennium Network event

He made us laugh, he almost made us cry, he made me want to give him money to do good things. Former President Bill Clinton is still a rock star when it comes to politics—and last night he put that talent to good use. He needn’t have brought a Chicago-bred hip-hopper along—though I’m very glad he did. Common turned in a charming, intimate performance for donors, VIPs and favored guests (tickets were $100 in advance, $150 at the door), but the high-point of the night had already passed. The people came for Bill Clinton and they got Bill Clinton—at perhaps his very best.

Last night, the former President hosted and spoke at a launch event at House of Blues (which he says gave his foundation a great deal) for his Millennium Network, which supports his Clinton Foundation—an organization which has programs addressing health care, AIDS and development around the world. The idea of the Network is to spark an interest in global change initiatives and philanthropy in young people, particularly young professionals. While the turnout for the event was healthy, it wasn’t wall-to-wall, allowing for a lot of pleasant socializing among single folks during the two-hours of open bar, tuna tartar and mingling before a passionate Clinton took up the microphone.

Clinton is a riveting speaker, warm, likable, but also clear, anecdotal and emotionally affecting—especially when talking about the health-care situation of Africans. When Clinton told the story of a Rwandan woman who forgave a man who confessed that he had murdered one of her sons and offered her his life, some audience members were literally on the brink of tears. Clinton sees possibilities and that’s why he’s exciting—he talked with an infectious enthusiasm about ordinary Americans’ overwhelming ($1 billion) response to the tsunami, Bush’s AIDS and malaria program, and his own foundation’s upcoming efforts in Haiti to increase that country’s fish production and provide households with solar-powered flashlights.

Clinton’s remarks were so dense and thoughtful that I’d like to transcribe the entire talk—but in the interest of timeliness, here are some excerpted remarks that struck a chord with me.

On identity
“If you are a Muslim who loves your culture and loves your heritage and hates terror, how far do you go before you, in the service of your convictions and your country, you wind up being face-to-face having to kill somebody that looks like you and is supposed to think like you and be like you. I am not justifying what that man did. It will never be justifiable but I understand why it broke him. The world is full of people wrestling with these competing identities.”

On his mission
“I’m trying to build a world where we share our benefits, share our responsibilities and we have a shared sense of community.”

The power of the Internet
“Because of the Internet, if we bind together people with one dollar to spend, if there are people that think like they do, they can move the world.”

On change
“Ordinary people have more power to change the world than ever before.”

On his Millennium Network
“I want to create a network of givers. I want everybody on every continent to see themselves as a citizen with the power to change lives.”

On the challenges of rich countries
“Rich countries, the real problem whenever they need to change, is rigidity. The very purpose for which some system was set up is just preserving the system. We’re spending $900 billion more on health care than if we just had any other country’s health system.”

On the challenges facing poor countries
“In poor countries, the problem is not corruption. Although it is a problem, where it exists. The big problem is the lack of capacity and structure so that people that are just smart as we are can have the same thing we had growing up. Everyone of you, even poor Americans, there is a fairly high level of predictability between the effort you exert in school, on the athletic field and in the music room and the result you get. You can’t imagine what it would be like to live in a world when there is absolutely no predictable consequence to anything you do.”

On the surge
“The surge worked in Iraq because we were helping them do what they wanted to do.”

On progress in Haiti
“They were willing to face the truth. They have a very graphic memorial. Only by facing the truth did they acquire the strength to let it go. It’s the only country in the world where once a month, on a Saturday, every single adult from the poorest to the richest in the country goes out and spends a day cleaning the streets to show they are a proud people and will not be ground down by their poverty.”

The Chicago House, a social service agency that provides relief for homeless people impacted by HIV/AIDS, was able to book Clinton, who happened to be in town anyway for an event on the eighth. Clinton, who started the Clinton HIV/AIDS Initiative (CHAI) was no doubt an ideal choice to kick off the series and this crowd was thrilled to have him. He glowed as he entered the ballroom and delivered his trademark thumb gesture before taking the podium. As I gazed upon Clinton from the balcony where they placed the media, and where I gazed upon 1,000 plates of prime rib, fruit cups and cheesecake, I found myself straining to hear him several times, so please pardon the occasional paraphrasing in this post.

Clinton began by praising Chicago and noting that the Palmer House was both the place where he celebrated winning the Democratic nomination for presidency in 1992, and also offered up a touching anecdote about a rare picture he treasures of his father dining at the hotel decades ago. He acknowledged Veteran’s Day and used it as a segue into the tragic events at Fort Hood last week. Clinton talked of conflicts created by people and nations trying to protect their separate interests instead of coming together and uniting under common interests.

He described our health care system as unsustainable and noted that 85% of bankruptcies in this decade were generated by the health care crisis. He also stated that the rising health care costs were what crippled GM including the shocking figure that GM doles out $1,500 per car in health care costs while Toyota pays out just $100. He also warned of the dangers of government stimulus noting that Obama made the right decision at the time, but ultimately government’s job is to spark the private sector asserting that the ‘08 election was won the day Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy. “This election occurred on September 15, make no mistake about it.” Finally, Clinton tied in education and climate change, first praising Arne Duncan but also adding that every year since World War II, America has ranked #1 in the number of people with four year college degrees except for the last ten years when we dropped to #10.

But all of this was to drive home the point that no matter how much Congress and the President do to fix the nation, ultimately there will still be a gap between what the private sector can produce and what the government can provide. Hence the need for organizations like Chicago House. Clinton passionately extolled the virtues of social service agencies. “The rise of of a civil society is stunning,” he said as he talked of America’s one million foundations, half a million of which have sprung up since he took office in 1993.

Clinton directed comments toward the HIV/AIDS crisis and Chicago House, noting his own shame at the discriminatory policy that bars HIV positive people from entering the country (which Obama recently lifted). He also said that Chicago has the sixth largest HIV/AIDS problem in the country. “But you’re doing your job because you’re not the sixth largest city,” he said in a praiseworthy nod toward Chicago House and its efforts. He called us one of the best organized big cities in the world (although he’s obviously never ridden the CTA) and harked back to the beginning of his speech nicely by noting that every time folks invest in agencies like Chicago House, they’re putting their common interests above their individual ones.

As Clinton wound down he made a quip about Mad Men. “If I keep watching this program,” he mused, “Will I ever find a happy person?” His point was that the show, while enjoyable, serves a reminder of the mistreatment of blacks and women. Finally, Clinton hit it home with a couple-feel good aphorisms. “One of the things that makes life so rewarding is that people like us have the power to make a difference,” he said. “People betting against the U.S. will lose a lot of money.” Although we may take a while, “we finally get it right.”

With the recent economic downtown, major public programs in music, art, and culture around the country risk funding cuts. The TOC blog recently reported, then confirmed the death of the Chicago Outdoor Film Festival. With Chicago City Council meeting this week to decipher the city’s budget for 2010, Chicagoans are wondering, what else is going to get cut?

The thought of not having Movies in the Park, or free concerts at Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park next summer is nothing short of heartbreaking. Besides adding to Chicago’s rich cultural diversity, these programs also create jobs and contribute to Chicago’s increasingly tourist-friendly climate. As a preemptive measure the Friends of Chicago Music have started an online petition against cuts to Chicago music, arts, and cultural programs. The petition currently has 750 but they are aiming for a 1000. You too can sign the Save Chicago Music petition.

But, do not run to the picket line just yet. The Department of Cultural Affairs, which takes care of programming at Millennium Park, among other things, received its budget hearing yesterday. As Chicago Sun Times reporter Fran Spielman reported, the Aldermen mostly argued over preferential seating at Millennium Park. But no budget decisions have been made, yet.

Today, I spoke to the Department of Cultural Affairs assistant commissioner Kimberly Costello and she pointed out that all City of Chicago programs, not just cultural programs, are receiving budget reductions. Each department has yet to determine, however, how it will redistribute its budget. In the DCA’s case, no major programs–like SummerDance or the World Music Festival–will be cut entirely, Costello made sure to add. That’s good news—but it doesn’t mean we won’t see some scaling back in 2010.

Photo: Andrew Nawrocki

This morning, hundreds of demonstrators, many of them Service Employees International Union members and other labor reps, descended on the American Bankers Association (ABA) conference taking place at the downtown Sheraton Hotel & Towers to demand financial reform. Jesse Jackson, 49th Ward Ald. Joe Moore and various union leaders led the sign-toting masses up Michigan Avenue, a procession punctuated by snare drum beats and emphatic chants of “The banks got bailed out! We got sold out!”

Demonstrators are angry that the ABA and several large banks are using some of the $17.8 trillion in federal bailout money they received (allegedly $35 million) to lobby against Congressional action on financial reforms, including cutting executive pay and bonuses for some bailout recipients and the creation of the watchdog Consumer Financial Protection Agency. The so-called “Showdown in Chicago” was the third consecutive day of protests. On Sunday, protesters got the backing of Sen. Dick Durbin, who said banks should help consumers struggling with foreclosure after falling victim to predatory lending. Yesterday, they invaded the headquarters of Goldman Sachs, asking the company to donate its entire bonus pool, more than $20 billion ($630,000 per employee), to prevent foreclosures.

Standing out in the crowd this morning was Stan Wiklinski, who donned a Superman-like costume and called himself “Downsized Man.” An IT engineer from New Jersey, Wiklinski was laid off from Credit Suisse, a banking company where he said he saw firsthand how self-serving the industry could be. “They laid me off and this quarter they showed a profit,” he said. “Funny how that happens.” As Downsized Man, Wiklinski is collecting stories from the recently jobless on iwasdownsized.com. He said the plan is to turn the site into a book. Every end is a new beginning, it seems—even for downsized men.

Moore announced today that his constituents will decide how his $1 million of “menu money,” the funds allotted annually to each alderman for ward infrastructure improvements, will be spent.

“Next year, I am ceding my decision-making authority to the residents of my ward through a process known as participatory budgeting in which all 49th Ward residents will be eligible to vote directly on the infrastructure projects that will be funded in our community,” Moore writes in an e-newsletter. “I’m not just asking for your opinion—I’m asking you to make real decisions about how we spend our money.”

“The 49th Ward will be the first political jurisdiction in the nation to try such an approach,” Moore writes. “If this process works, I will make it a permanent fixture in the ward and hopefully inspire other elected officials to do the same in their communities.”

Starting November 3, community meetings will be held over the next couple of months, which will culminate in a ward-wide assembly for residents to vote on where the money will go.

How do you think Moore’s million should be doled out?

The question returned on Monday night, when Conroy’s play My Kind of Town received a staged reading at the Theatre Building as part of the Writers Bloc festival of new plays.

Conroy introduced his play by pointedly describing it as a work of fiction, with the familiar disclaimer that any resemblance to actual persons or events was coincidental. Be that as it may, the intertwined stories that make up My Kind of Town will have strong resonances for anyone who followed Conroy’s  reporting. A state’s attorney rises through the ranks, trying to repress her knowledge of systematic brutality. A couple struggles with the unjust conviction of their son, a death row prisoner. A cop publicly defies reports of illegal interrogation practices, while privately his family comes to terms with what he’s done. In the spaces between the interwoven stories, a prisoner convicted through his torture-driven confession marks the passage of time by tearing years from a calendar; at the play’s end, he’s still there, confronting the audience with a stony glare.

Conroy and director Thomas Weitz recruited a stellar cast for this performance. Ora Jones took the night off from her Margaret Dumont act at the Goodman to lend a complex humanity to the part of Rita Jeffries, the mother of the death row prisoner, while James T. Alfred, currently tearing up the Court Theatre stage as Levee in Ma Rainey, delivered a pivotal monologue, describing in ferocious detail what went on in the interrogation rooms. Perhaps the most arresting moment of the piece was the combative speech delivered by A Red Orchid’s Danny McCarthy as Jack Gunther, the police commander bearing a coincidental resemblance to Jon Burge, unapologetically defending the torturers’ actions.

As that moment might suggest, Conroy avoids easy answers in the play, which humanizes the officers of Area Two even as it casts a wide net of responsibility for the scale and duration of the torture. The play ends with us wondering whether state’s attorney Maureen Buckley (Wendi Weber) will reveal what she knows in court; in a post-show Q&A, Conroy remarked, “I wanted everyone in the audience to wait for someone to finally tell the truth.”

The complexity of My Kind of Town led to a lively discussion, abetted by the connection many audience members bore to the events. One woman, who had carried out psychiatric evaluations of prisoners, noted that Conroy’s play, in its depiction of the effects of torture on victims and families, accurately showed that “sometimes when you break something, it can’t be fixed.” Visiting from Oregon was former Chicago special prosecutor Jeff Kent, who left the city in 1985 frustrated with pervasive corruption; Kent praised Conroy’s writing for its “beautiful ambiguity,” showing how each character rationalized his or her conduct, and noted that “there are few profiles in courage” surrounding the story.

Conroy himself could be counted as one of the few. His play still has some rough spots, but it delivers a passionate and thoughtful indictment of the culture that enabled these abuses. He noted that Monday could easily be the last time it’s seen on a stage, a point that drew a collective groan from the theater. He’s a savvy guy, but let’s hope he gets proved wrong about that.

The big question locally has got to be this: After the Olympics debacle, will Obama go out of his way not to look like his administration is helping out Chicago? And if so, did Chicago 2016 in some significant sense screw Chicago (and likely other big cities that would benefit from national urban initiatives) out of future Obama administration assists?

If the administration is politically smart (which, surprisingly, is still an open question), the answer to that question, unfortunately, should be yes. If comprehensive health care reform goes through and Obama gets his groove back, he might have cover to help us out on mass transit, etc. But if not, there’s a logically persuasive argument to be made that Chicago 2016 may have helped alienate this city’s biggest political asset.

Here’s the kicker: The very existence of a Trib story in which Jarrett goes on the record to throw Chicago 2016 under the bus constitutes evidence that the city might be in the administration’s dog house for a while. Move over, Bo.

Ben Joravsky: I have two thoughts on the subject of an Olympics for Chicago, actually three. But the first point is that we are such a corrupt and inefficiently run city, in which there is no legitimate public discourse that I truly don’t believe we’re capable of putting on a games. I take a look at how the city’s been run for  the last ten years, and it’s really distressing in terms of the lack of oversight and the lack of discourse and there’s sort of an attitude inherent in Chicago that the way to get things done is to have one powerful person and so we’ll have to live with it whatever  consequences comes from that. And I just don’t think that’s the model for good planning. I truly don’t believe that. Now, people may disagree with me on that and think “Oh, you need a tyrant to do anything these days.” I personally don’t believe that so it makes it difficult to imagine any good plan coming out of Chicago, but that’s said, the two thing I would have liked to have seen is number one—the obvious one, is, if you have a great expanse of undeveloped land in Chicago that is baffling all planners—like some of the old steel yards on the South Side, well why don’t you try to put that to use? Now, the comeback, John, is that that’s incredibly expensive, to which I say “Yes. You’re absolutely correct.” But if you’re going to make an investment of this kind, if you’re really going to use the Olympics as a spark or development, for economic development to change the city, to improve it than it’s not. Let’s spend the money, you get what I’m saying? I don’t have a problem with spending the money if I think it’s going to be a wise expenditure or a wise investment.

John Dugan: That’s the thing— in my ideal version of the Olympics there would be lasting infrastructure.

Ben Joravsky: You know, John, the thing that struck me about this, this Olympic plan from the get-go— I sound like a broken record—internally it’s a schizophrenic plan. On the one hand, they didn’t want to spend a lot of money buying land and having to clear away, or clear away toxins out of land, so in order to save money they went to public land which is parks, and they treated it like it’s undeveloped acreage that can be just easily developed, and they were proud of that. “Oh, our costs will be minimal, because we’re using park land.” Like that in itself is not a sacrifice that people are being asked to make. The second problem though, the inconsistency is that if they were going to take park land, than they have to convince the public that they were not going to deprive the public of a valuable piece of park land. So they would say, “Don’t worry. We’re going to start the construction very late in the process”—which of course no one really believed, “And when we’re done we’re gonna immediately take away most of what we built, so it’s just going to be temporary.” So there is no legacy. If you watched the show last night where Mayor Daley and the Obamas made the presentation to the IOC, one of the gentleman from the IOC asked the question, “What is your legacy?” It’s a fundamental inconsistency, but I think really the IOC agrees with you. They want to see something left over from the Olympics. So it’s sort of like a calling card, you know, a city can say, “Look what we have because of the great Olympics.” The Olympics can then use that as a promotional piece. Chicago wasn’t giving them that. Chicago was promising to get rid of just about everything they put down so they could reassure people that they weren’t gonna lose their parks.