How big a battle is 17 percent? The Chicago New Party’s spin on 17th Ward aldermanic candidate Chuck Kelly’s 17 percent showing against a Daley-backed candidate in the April election: “The New Party and its allies sent a message to Mayor Daley that nothing will be conceded to him and his allies without a fight.”
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One of the few benefits of segregation. “The lack of association between the location of CERCLIS [Superfund] sites and the residence patterns of African Americans owes much to the restricted areas where African Americans were forced to live early in the century,” write Brett Baden and Don Coursey of the U. of C. in their pathbreaking study on urban waste sites, released April 3. “The historically residential area from approximately 31st Street South to 71st Street South and from Lake Michigan to I-90/94 was never industrially developed, nor has it received hazardous waste. The fact that a significant portion of the African American population lives in that area, and that it still remains relatively free of hazards, weakens the hypothesis that discriminatory environmental practices have occurred against African Americans.”
Where the good times aren’t rolling. “In 1996, Chicago’s unemployment rate exceeded 9 percent in three ZIP codes that include Austin, Humboldt Park and South Shore,” reports Danielle Gordon in the Chicago Reporter (March). “Three other mostly black ZIP codes exceeded 8 percent unemployment.” (In Cook County as a whole the figure is 5.5 percent.) “These numbers … include only the 40 percent of unemployed who involuntarily lost their jobs and therefore qualify for state unemployment insurance.”
