a new web page <\/a>that will help Chicagoans explore the rich history of their city government.<\/p>\nThe web page features more than 800 newly digitized audio clips recorded between 1970 and 2012. The page includes captions, indexes to legislation and City Council journals and links to related historical archives. <\/p>\n
The recording that showcased Washington\u2019s joie de vivre was played Wednesday before a live audience at Muse Coffee Studio, 747 S. Western.<\/p>\n
Joining Valencia in a panel discussion of Chicago history were former lakefront Ald. Helen Shiller (46th), one of Washington\u2019s closest City Council allies, former Chicago Board of Education President-turned-radio talk show host Rufus Williams, and Dario Durham of the 77 Flavors of Chicago podcast.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat you get through the sound bite is his joy and his humor and his spirit. And all of that, he applied to his city that he loved,\u201d Shiller said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe also had a huge amount of opposition\u2026 He was a challenge to the powers that be and they weren\u2019t about to let that go. But this particular moment in history was significant because this was just a month before\u201d the special election in a handful of wards that gave Washington control over the City Council, ending the infamous power struggle known as \u201cCouncil Wars.\u201d<\/p>\n
Williams said the cheerleading clip proved that Washington was \u201clarger than life… And he was fun\u201d at a time when \u201cthere was no better place to be\u201d than Chicago.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou had Jim McMahon who kept pissing off the commissioner because he didn\u2019t want him to wear headbands. So Jim wore headbands with his name on it. You had the Refrigerator, bigger than life in every way imaginable, who then became an offensive player, and the Refrigerettes, who\u2014 you can\u2019t see them from the audio \u2014 but they were full-sized women and they were fun.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEven now 40 years later, we look back and\u2026 there has not been a better football team than the 1985 Bears,\u201d Williams added. \u201cTo a person, they were characters.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another recording featured former Ald. Leon Despres (5th) demanding in 1973 that the Council journal include the resounding defeat of three resolutions that he said \u201cwould have lifted the veil of secrecy over police records of use of excessive force and killing people.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHad we not had this audio recording clip, we wouldn\u2019t have known\u2026 that there are actually things missing from the journal that was on the record,\u201d Valencia said.<\/p>\n
The recording reminded Williams of the importance of police body cameras. \u201cFinally, there\u2019s a way to see differently than what we\u2019re told. And it wasn\u2019t until Laquan McDonald that we really started here to see\u2026 the things that people have talked about,\u201d Williams said. \u201cSo many different stories came out. This gives a sense that somebody was really listening.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shiller said complaints about police brutality were growing in the 1970s, culminating in creation of the Office of Professional Standards to investigate allegations of police wrongdoing.<\/p>\n
One of the first things Washington did was take OPS out of the Police Department and replace it with an independent office, Shiller said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was very frustrated that he had very little ability to control what was happening in the Police Department,\u201d Shiller said.<\/p>\n
An audio archive of recent Chicago history would not be complete without a recording of the City Council debate that preceded the 2008 deal to privatize Chicago parking meters. Then Ald. Billy Ocasio (26th) cast one of only five \u201cno\u201d votes on that day, after bringing a piggy bank to the debate as a prop.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the sound of parents taking money out of a kids\u2019 piggy bank. Not having anything in the piggy bank. That\u2019s what we\u2019re talking about here today,\u201d Ocasio said.<\/p>\n
Williams recalled that Chicagoans who once paid 25 cents an hour to feed the meters are now paying $6.50 an hour.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo think we couldn\u2019t have done that on our own \u2014 and the money was gone in 18 months,\u201d Williams said. \u201cAll of that money could have gone to us.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Forty years ago, the Bears were marching toward their only Super Bowl championship after shutting out the Los…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":731590,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2070],"tags":[374,692,391,2493,7,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-731589","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago-bears","8":"tag-bears","9":"tag-chicago","10":"tag-chicago-bears","11":"tag-chicagobears","12":"tag-football","13":"tag-nfl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116019222656667527","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=731589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731589\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/731590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=731589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=731589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=731589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}