Chicagoskooled.com explores Chicago, past and present, with a focus on the city’s future viability. Our poking and prodding extends to other big U.S. cities also struggling right now.
I’m the instigator here, Matt Rosenberg. My new book ‘What Next, Chicago? Notes of a Pissed-Off Native Son” is for sale at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
I grew up and came of age in Chicago, over a period of about 30 years. My wife and I were married by a Cook County Divorce Court Judge. He said to us, “I don’t want to ever see you again.” But I’ve never said that to Chicago. I’ve always come back. And I had to come back in 2020 to see what had gone wrong. Now, in 2021, I’m here again.
What’s gone wrong? Not just the rioting, and looting, and violence. But the conditions on the ground, and behind the scenes, and during the long – very long – lead-up. The question presents itself: what does the near future, and then beyond, need to look like in big U.S. cities? Cities like Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and San Francisco? More of the same is not an option.
How we discuss race and responsibility? How does change actually come to K-12 public schools? Or does it, ever? How do America’s most troubled cities grapple with persistent and disturbing violent crime; ghost neighborhoods; escalating taxes, fees and public employee pension debt; endemic corruption and rigged rules of governance; and the growing competition between metro regions for residents and businesses?
The way we talk cities and social issues is broken. The current official rhetoric in cities such as Chicago relies heavily on fruitless tropes such as the Unified Theory of Systemic Racism, which deny personal agency and cleave the populace with racialist essentialism. We can do better. We must do better.
Our news and commentary focuses on policy and politics centered around these questions and concerns. Please feel free to contact me.
ABOUT MATT
Rosenberg lived in Chicago for 30 years and returned to live there again in 2020 to do field work for his book, “What Next, Chicago?” He worked on the Better Government Association-Chicago Sun-Times Pulitzer-finalist Mirage tavern undercover investigation in 1977; and helped elect reform alderman Marion Volini of Edgewater to the Chicago City Council in 1978. He drove a Yellow Cab in Chicago, and cut his teeth as a suburban reporter for the late Lerner Newspapers in suburban Chicago – covering crime, government, and regional airport issues.
He worked as communications and organizing chief for suburban Chicago mayors battling Daley II on regional airport planning, and did airport-related work in Seattle for communities around Sea-Tac Airport. He also served as a Senior Fellow at a Gates-funded surface transportation think tank in Seattle which successfully advocated construction of multi-billion-dollar deep-bored tunnel to replace a seismically-vulnerable elevated highway, and advanced new road-charging policies.
Matt was a Seattle Times op-ed columnist, a political blogger at sites including Red State, and founded and ran an originally-reported public records-driven 501(c)3 news database site called Public Data Ferret. He was later recruited as senior editor of a Mozilla-backed online daily news site The Open Standard, promoting open systems and open government. His writing has been in City Journal, National Review Online, The Weekly Standard, Jewish World Review, and American Greatness. Matt has worked in public policy, advocacy, journalism, and communications for more than three decades.