The City That No Longer Works

By KURT ANDERSEN

Chicago is struck, strained and strife-ridden

Their city has always been a scrappy place, even brutish, and Chicagoans tend to take a perverse pride in its streetwise, tough-guy posture. Lately, however, even diehard Chicago chauvinists are admitting that the chronic battles-economic, racial, political-may be getting out of hand. Last week the city's school system, third largest in the U.S. with 430,000 students, was shut down by a teachers' strike, the second in two years. Black and Hispanic youth gangs have kept up their amazing homicidal pace, killing six people in the two weeks since the offhand murder of Ben Wilson, a local high school basketball superstar, shocked and disturbed the city. Groups of white thugs have been attacking the homes of black and Hispanic families who dared to live among them. At city hall, the confrontation is more formalized and less violent, but it continues to muck up the municipal machinery: Democratic Boss Edward Vrdolyak and his bloc of 29 city council members, none of whom are black, have only very occasionally suspended their full-tilt feud with Mayor Harold Washington and his bloc of 21, of whom 16 are black.

Even before the 28,000 teachers walked out, the schools had plenty of problems. Many are physically crumbling, and this year the capital-improvements budget is just 7.5% of what it was a decade ago. Former Superintendent Ruth Love, dismissed last summer, is suing the school board, claiming it ousted her unfairly. The board, for its part, is suing the Federal Government for funds to under write a desegregation program.

Almost as soon as the strike began on Monday, the beleaguered board agreed to one union demand, promising to restore a 25% cut in medical insurance enacted just three months ago. The remaining issue is more contentious. Chicago teachers, now the fourth best paid in the U.S., have asked for a 10% increase, which would bring the average teacher's salary to nearly $29,000. The board is contemplating a one-year, onetime 10% cash bonus instead.

But the teachers want a real pay hike, and at one negotiating session last week they outlined possible cuts in student services that would pay for the raises. "Enough! No more! That's it!" cried Board Member Betty Bonow. "I won't make any more cuts." The union negotiators were exasperated too. "God," sighed one as she left Wednesday night's session, "if only Daley were alive." During Mayor Richard Daley's highhanded 21-year reign, when Chicago was calling itself "The City That Works," teachers went out on strike several times, but he personally intervened each time and forced a settlement.

By law, Chicagoans under 17 must be indoors or accompanied by an adult by 10:30 on weeknights, 11:30 on Fridays and Saturdays. More than 1,000 kids are arrested each week for violations of the curfew. The curfew has been used mainly as a means of controlling the tightly organized gangs of black and Hispanic youths-the Disciples, the Vicelords, the Egyptian Cobras-that terrorize their neighborhoods. So far this year, 133 Chicago youths have been killed in gang-related violence.

One infamous gang zone is the huge Cabrini-Green public housing project, a cluster of decaying high-rises on the near west side. Says an elderly woman who lives at the project: "They've all got guns or knives, and they act like they own the place." Not far away, at Crane High School, a large majority of the boys are said to be gang members or affiliates. "I'm scared all the time," says one girl, a junior at Crane. "Last year a boy standing right next to me in the hall was shot by another boy. And I saw a stabbing down the hall last week."

The most celebrated murder occurred three weeks ago. Ben Wilson, 17, a senior at Simeon Vocational High School, was an extraordinarily talented forward on the state champion basketball team and ranked academically near the top of his class. As he walked near Simeon one afternoon with his girlfriend, he made the fatal mistake of brushing past a boy who is said to be hooked up with a gang. "He pushed me," the angry young man told his pal. "Pop him." The friend drew his revolver and shot the 6-ft. 8-in. star twice in the chest. That weekend in the Simeon gym, thousands of people filed past Benjy Wilson's open casket.

The city is infected by white racist violence. Last month Auto Mechanic Spencer Goffer and his family moved into the Island, a white working-class neighborhood. The first night the Goffers spent in their new home, a mob of neighbors milled out front for six hours, shouting curses, throwing rocks through the windows and waving guns. The Goffers moved out the next day. In the same neighborhood, a Hispanic family's house was fire bombed on Thanksgiving. The same week, in a white neighborhood on the southwest side, a black family's house was set afire with a Molotov cocktail.

Earlier this fall Mayor Washington proposed laying off 500 of the city's 12,000-member police force as a budget-cutting measure. With Wilson's murder and the continued gang violence, however, the mayor's opponents turned the planned cuts into a hot political issue. They called instead for 500 additional police. Last week Washington backed down on the layoffs and announced a planned crackdown on five notorious gang fiefs.

Hardly a week passes during which the Vrdolyak forces do not try to embarrass the mayor. Or vice versa. "Neither side is willing to let the other side look good," says Northwestern University Urbanologist Louis Masotti. The polarizing, paralyzing power struggle appears likely to continue at least through the next mayoral election in 1987. But as Masotti warns, "Winning in 1987 may be an empty prize if our schools are in disarray, our social services deteriorate and our crime gets out of control." -By Kurt Andersen. Reported by Lee Griggs/Chicago

With reporting by Lee Griggs/Chicago