From now until the municipal election on Feb. 24, every local politician who hasn’t given a rat’s butt about you will suddenly discover your front door. There will be political literature highlighting all they want to do for you. They will politely forget to remind you of all the things they have done to make your life miserable.
Not a one will smile and tell you they voted for the red-light cameras or the speed-light cameras. They won’t tell you about their aldermanic menu, which gives them over a million dollars a year to spend on revitalization projects that never seem to find a way to employ the very residents who need that work the most. They won’t grin and tell you that it was their vote that increased the taxes on your cellphone bill. Everything they did that made your life miserable won’t be addressed by them because if it was, they would have a new title called “replaced.”
There is no “primary” for the municipal election. The rule is that whoever gets 50 percent of the vote — plus one — wins. So if three people vote, whoever gets two of the three votes is the winner. In a three-way race, the top two vote-getters would go into a race and again the winner takes all.
In the upcoming election, it is time for us to exercise our most basic privilege which is to hire and ultimately fire our elected officials. With that in mind, I have designed my own Voter Receipt Badge for you to proudly wear on Election Day. Simply put, we’re gonna red “X” him out of office the same way he has red X’d our neighborhoods.
Election Day is the only chance you have to send a message to politicians that their behavior has consequences. If you don’t think it matters, then go back to election night on Nov. 4, when the results began to show that Quinn wasn’t going to win. He truly believed that the black vote would do for him in 2015 what it had done for him in 2011. Even the phony minimum-wage question on the ballot wasn’t enough to get people to come out and support him. When the cost of the license plate renewal sticker is more than a minimum wage-earner earns in a day, Quinn deserved to lose and a bunch of others should have lost with him.
But that election is over and the city sticker, which also costs more than what a minimum wage earner makes, should now incentivize them to pay back the folks who disrespect you and don’t give a damn about you. Yes, you,the voter can fire the mayor! It should take less than two minutes of your time and you might end his political career forever because in the world of politics, it is permissible to try for a higher office and lose. But lose the seat you sit in and in most cases you’re toast. Every female in the city should want to fire the mayor for the profanity he used in disrespecting Karen Lewis.
Every voter who has seen the red X’s on buildings in their neighborhoods should fire the mayor. Every parent who has seen what he is willing to do to children attending public schools should fire the mayor. Every retiree who watched him salivate over raising the premiums on retired city workers’ insurance premiums should fire the mayor. Every city employee who has had to deal with his administration should want to fire the mayor. Every driver who can’t get from point A to B without a red-light camera, speed-light camera and those darn bike lanes in neighborhoods where ain’t no one rode a bike down the street in 50 years should fire the mayor.
And if I haven’t written about your pet peeve, fire him anyway. Wear the badge proudly and know that you have done your civic duty in the best way yet!
CONTACT: westside2day@yahoo.com
www.arlenejones.blogspot.com
