Power to the People

Hendon's Fighting Fifth   

These days of sorry compromises in favor of war and big business, it is hard to find a politician who will actually fight alongside the people. But I may have found one: an Illinois state senator named Rickey Hendon, is now running for the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor.

Born in Cleveland Ohio, growing up in Chicago and Detroit, Senator Hendon is a college educated, media trained man who once wanted to be a preacher but can get down to street talk when necessary. Hendon’s got to preach vigorously to hold his podium. He represents one of the poorest, blackest, toughest districts in America, overrun with street drug sellers and returning prisoners.

The West Side of Chicago once employed thousands in factories, but in the 1970s, manufacturers fled to the suburbs and overseas. The  rich history of the "Best Side" is in buildings that remain. The  former Sears corporate headquarters on Arthington Street now houses the offices of U.S. Rep. Danny Davis, the Murphy-Hill art gallery, Homan Square cafeteria, and several government and neighborhood agencies. The graceful Garfield Park's gold dome can be seen for miles around. Closer up, you find streets of solid greystone houses, converted synagogues and shuttered blues lounges. Big band clarinetist Benny Goodman came of age in the 1920s on the Jewish West Side. Later theHowlin' Wolf prowled here, and the blues guitars of Magic Sam and Otis Rush rang out. Soul singer Tyrone Davis had a club on the West Side. During the 1950s  Dinah Washington lived here. So did the Black Panthers at the end of the 1960s.

The Fighting Fifth (the name he gave his senatorial district and his own softball team) teems with neighborhood organizations trying to get a handle on all the West Side’s problems. Hendon channels government money through these community groups, aiming to provide jobs and improve the lives of his constituents, many of whom slip through the cracks of Obama’s bank bailouts and middle class agenda. Redistributing wealth is Hendon’s goal. Money in the hands of everyday people gives them power to make choices. “People,” he declares, “you deserve a good life just like anyone else!”

Legislate and Appropriate!

Hendon says—and makes constituents repeat out loud—that his job as a senator is to “Legislate And Appropriate!” But with poor, less educated folks not used to handling large amounts of money, stuff sometimes goes wrong. The Chicago Tribune, a notoriously Republican newspaper, investigated Hendon’s 2008 afterschool project grants of $20,000 or more and found that some of the programs weren’t being carried out because their administrators were keeping too much of the money for themselves. Sen. Hendon argued that while other lawmakers earmark grants for large, well-established groups, he tries to spread the money to smaller, unproven neighborhood organizations. "These people deserve a chance, whether they succed or fail," he said

This year he seized on weatherization and capital grant money for the West Side—and has been scrutinizing the letters of people who are applying: “Don’t hog all the grant money for yourself. Do the projects you said you would do. I don’t want my name in the paper for wasting taxpayer money because some bozo go and act a fool.”

Politics 101

Sen. Hendon is not only getting money for people; he’s training them how to use it. That process is an amazing thing to watch. I have a front row seat every Monday, when he calls his constituents together in a small brick office building on the West Side’s busy, seedy main drag:

2929 W. Madison Street

. Week after week, people show up to hear each other’s announcements of community programs, followed by Hendon’s own political reports, grant instructions, and fiery pep talks. He’ll often drop juicy comments about other public officials. You can see how politics in Illinois is going by what he says--or doesn’t say. On Hendon’s good-guy list: his political mentor Congressman Danny Davis, and Governor Pat Quinn. One not-so-good guy: Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan.

Hendon brings political reality to the grass roots and shows people how to participate. He recruits volunteers to get petitions signed and validated. He brought a group from the hood to Springfield to help him throw a fund-raising party for State Senate President John Cullerton and say nice things about other public officials from all over Illinois. Taking to the dance floor kept Hendon’s Heroes pumped up for politics, and some of the politicos couldn’t resist stepping along with them

Training Mutual Backscratchers

Sen. Hendon is building an organization. If he can grow a grassroots group of mutual backscratchers who stay loyal to him and to each other, change can happen. As the last Democratic committeeman to be appointed by Mayor Harold Washington before he died in 1987, Hendon saw what happened when Washington left no organization behind him. Soon City Hall was back in the hands of the Daleys, much to the detriment of the black community and now, to other Chicagoans who are getting very tired of parking tickets and potholes in the streets.

Rickey is making it his business to groom candidates. Among other Hendon heroes, Dottie Walton http://waltonfor9thdistrict.com/ is running with his endorsement for the 9^th Senatorial district seat held for 29 years by another black politican, Arthur Turner. Hendon and Turner have both declared candidacy for the state’s second highest office, Lieutenant Governor, and Turner’s son Arthur Jr. is running against Dottie.

In a candidate forum on the West Side in October, Sen. Hendon criticized the elder Turner for supporting a bill which would have allowed police to collect DNA samples from people’s mouths at a routine traffic stop. (People in the community know that corrupt cops have sometimes planted evidence and framed people for crimes they didn’t commit.) He also challenged Turner: “In your 29 years in office, what have you done for the people of this district? How much money have you brought home?”

For his part, Sen. Hendon managed to grab $40 million from the state’s 2009 budget to start a West Side branch of Chicago State University. The university’s interim president told the ChicagoTribune www.chicagotribune.com/news/watchdog/college/chi-chicago-state-31-aug31,0,7740389.story that he was blindsided by Hendon’s effort, but advisory committees at State had been talking about a West Side branch for several years, and Hendon made no apologies. He wants to see a four-year college on the culturally under-recognized West Side, with needy West Siders employed to build and maintain it.

Bring the Troops and Money Home

Sen. Hendon has repeatedly urged President Obama to bring our troops home from Afghanistan and Iraq, and bring the taxpayers’ money back home too. He points out the link between the war and the cheap heroin that has flooded the West Side, regardless of whether the Taliban or other factions hold power in Afghanistan. www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KL16Df01.html It’s not the first time Hendon and Obama have disagreed. They nearly got into a fistfight on the state senate floor when Obama voted to cut funds for a West Side child welfare office. Hendon tells the tale in his book about the 2008 presidential campaign, Black Enough/White Enough, www.amazon.com/Black-Enough-White-Obama-Dilemma/dp/0883783096

More Hendon Sayings:

ON STREET GANGS: “If I see somebody’s kid out there clowning on the street at 3 a.m. in the morning, I tell them to go home. I need my sleep! If you talk with authority with these kids, and show you’re not afraid of them, a lot of times they will hear you. Get to know these kids on the corner. They can get their buddies to register to vote. In fact they are the only ones who can talk them into it. It’s one way for these young people to get a piece of I.D. so they can get a job.”

ON POLITICS: “You have to make some compromises to get anything done in politics. Maybe this time I didn’t get you your grant or get your kid a scholarship. But remember, I’m dealing with representatives from all over the state of Illinois, when I’m down in Springfield, and a lot of them don’t want the people on the West Side to have nothing. NOTH-ING! We got to fight for everything we get. And the higher office I hold, the more I can get for you!”

ON THE FINANCIAL CRISIS: “They shouldn’t give bailout money to the banks. They just hold onto it. They should give $5000 to everyone in my district, ‘cause I know y’all will spend it!”

ON CAMPAIGN FINANCE: “If y’all help me raise the money for these yard signs, I can vote all the time the way you want me to instead what some big company wants.”

I’ll probably not like all of Rickey’s choices of political bedfellows, nor some of the high-level tradeoffs he might make to get money for his peeps. But if his organizing actually puts more power in the hands of ordinary people, he might be creating a model to get our country out of the hell that it’s in.

Rickey Hendon opens and closes his meetings with a prayer, usually by one of the local ministers. But sometimes he gives the closing prayer himself, and his confessions are revealing. “God, please forgive me for cussing out Gov. Quinn this week. He’s an honest man and he’s trying to do the right thing. Help open his eyes so he can see what’s really going on.”

Mondays at 5:30  

Open your eyes too. Take a look at Senator Rickey Hendon. Be there at 5:30 p.m. on a Monday at 2928 W. Madison. You might like what you see. Might be your next Lieutenant Governor. Check his official campaign site:     
http://www.hendonforltgov.com/