Former challenger Garcia calls on Emanuel to meet Dyett protesters
Cook County Commissioner Jesus "Chuy" Garcia called on Mayor Rahm Emanuel to meet with hunger striking Dyett High School protesters, saying it would help the mayor prove he's become a more inclusive leader following their hard-fought campaign this year.
With the protest in its 29th day, Garcia on Monday said he's convinced Emanuel can go a long way toward ending the impasse by sitting down with 15 protesters who say they have been going without solid food.
"I am very optimistic that can happen, and it will happen if the mayor decides this is going to be a different way of engaging communities in his second term," Garcia said while flanked by the hunger strikers and their supporters outside Emanuel's City Hall office. "I hope he finds the time to meet with them. They are reasonable people."
Emanuel met privately with several of the hunger strikers after they disrupted one of his public budget forums this month. But protester Jitu Brown said Chicago Public Schools undermined the talk by then going ahead with a plan to keep the Bronzeville neighborhood school open with an arts curriculum rather than the green technology focus the hunger strikers have proposed.
"We submitted a list of demands to Chicago Public Schools," Brown said. "We have a list of non-negotiables. I'll keep that to myself. But we do have a list of non-negotiables, and we're willing to talk, we're willing to negotiate (about other points). I would just like to say a compromise happens when two people come together and work out something that's agreeable to both parties. There was no compromise."
Emanuel's office did not respond to requests for comment.
In 2001, Garcia was aligned with protesters who staged a three-week hunger strike in the Little Village neighborhood and eventually convinced then-Mayor Richard M. Daley and CPS to build a new high school there. "It was cooler heads prevailing on both sides," Garcia said of the resolution of that protest.
This year, Garcia forced Emanuel into a runoff election before Emanuel won a second term in April, and throughout the campaign worked to portray the incumbent as an out-of-touch elitist who didn't value the opinions of the neighborhood residents whose lives his decisions affect. Emanuel eventually blanketed the airwaves with a TV ad in which he wore a sweater and spoke directly to the camera, acknowledging he "can rub people the wrong way or talk when I should listen. I own that."
