Coronavirus Shutdown Gives Lightfoot Road Map To Chicago's Future

CHICAGO — Thanks to the new coronavirus, the rich part of town is a lot more like poor, forgotten neighborhoods like mine — boring with shuttered bars and not a single local joint in walking distance to go for a decent sit-down supper.

There aren't many taxis to hail, and it's always a long wait for an Uber. You can't pop into a local grocery confident you'll have every ingredient to fix a gourmet meal, or find a pack of toilet paper.

Storefronts where you could get your teeth cleaned, eyes checked, hair cut and toenails painted are all closed. Out-of-work neighbors worried about paying rent can't even stop in a tavern for a $4 shot-and-beer to drink their troubles away.

Neighborhood schools are shut down. Cops warn packs of people hanging out at parks that they have a choice: Go home or get arrested.

And maybe, in a city starkly divided by class and race, some good can come of it.

That was on my mind as the sun peeked over the garage Friday morning, when Mayor Lori Lightfoot called. We were supposed to chat about the state our city is in a year after voters elected her in a landslide, but my regular case of early morning pandemic-induced anxiety rumbling in my gut wouldn't have it.

I'm worried about my stubborn elderly parents, 93-year old grandmother, my sister the nurse and my girlfriend's father, a Minneapolis doctor working overnights on a COVID-19 unit.

Just stopping at Aldi on Thursday afternoon to pick up hot dogs, eggs and ice cream for my folks freaked me out. I even worry a little while watching Lightfoot on Facebook news conferences that she's standing too close to people, and sometimes touching her face against doctor's orders, while telling us, every chance she gets: "Stay home. Save lives."

So, I asked the mayor, "Are you scared, too?"

Of course, she is.

"This is a scary time, and I mean I literally have never experienced anything like this before in my life," she said. "It's hard to think about how to instill confidence and calm people so they don't panic about something that you literally can't even fathom the entirety of what it is, and how it, and how it gets there, how it seeps into people, and ..." if or when the end is coming.

And like many of us, Lightfoot said she struggles with balancing her fear against the responsibility of her very public job, worrying for her family, protecting herself and, well, you.

"I was on a call yesterday with some other mayors, and one of them said, 'We are the primary caretakers of our cities and our residents.' And it really resonated with me," she said. "I hadn't put it in those words, but I definitely felt it, and I've felt it more since this virus came to our doorstep."

The trick, Lightfoot said, is to maintain a calm focus on getting through "this."

"I have to be guided by the science, by the data — period. That makes it hard, because it's not a crystal ball, but in some ways it makes it easy because, it's not about me, ever," she said. "By that I mean, I'm not sitting here and thinking about: Oh, how can I take advantage of this to burnish my credentials? ... I'm not worried about my next job. I'm not worried about re-election, I'm not worried about those things."

That's a refreshing about-face from Lightfoot's mayoral predecessor turned investment banker, TV pundit and op-ed writer, Rahm Emanuel, who keeps advising Democrats to remember the COVID-19 pandemic is a good crisis they better not waste during an election year.

In fewer than 12 months, Lightfoot has endured what must feel like decades of crises — a teachers strike, historic budget deficit and global pandemic while the feds investigate corrupt aldermen and keep an eye on a police department the public doesn't trust.

"You look at [former Mayor] Rich Daley's tenure, he had to deal with many problems, but he was there for more than 20 years. I feel like, in some ways — in not even quite a year, because I wasn't sworn in until May 20th — we've been through a lot. I mean, a lot. But I hope people believe, because I certainly do, that we've risen to the occasion and we've met the challenge and will come out on the other side better."

With her city shut down by a virus that doesn't discriminate based on class or race, Lightfoot doesn't mean to sound trite when she says the coronavirus crisis has given her tremendous insight on the future of her City of Big Shoulders.

"In some ways, this pandemic is giving me a road map of what I need to do to fix certain things in our city and make it even more equitable. I knew them intuitively, and we started kind of down this path. But this pandemic and the way it's hitting, where it's hitting, has really strengthened my insight and my resolve on social equity items that continue to be at the top of the agenda because they have to be," Lightfoot said.

"You think about the recovery and rebuilding, because obviously economics will be a big part of it, but the human side of it also needs our focus and an enormous amount of energy."

Maybe one day, after enduring so much emptiness and loss, a more-resilient Chicago will resolve that a return to the way our city used to be — before the COVID-19 shutdown made our neighborhoods more alike than ever before — isn't good enough.

Not for anybody.

Mark Konkol, recipient of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting and Emmy-nominated producer, was a producer, writer and narrator for the "Chicagoland" docu-series on CNN. He was a consulting producer on the Showtime documentary, "16 Shots."

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