EDITORIAL: Lightfoot needs all of us to help her build city of fairness, hope

The new mayor is asking the City Council to reinvent itself and become a true collaborator in governing. For that matter, she is asking the same of us.

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Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot blows a kiss to her mother during her inauguration ceremony on Monday.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot blows a kiss to her mother during her inauguration ceremony on Monday.

Associated Press

“I campaigned on change, you voted for change and I plan on delivering change for our government.”

So said Chicago’s new mayor, Lori Lightfoot, and a few moments later, she turned around on stage and looked 50 aldermen right in the eye.

The crowd at Lightfoot’s inauguration at the Wintrust Arena on Monday jumped to their feet, and we thought it was pretty great, too. We liked it even more later in the day when Lightfoot signed an executive order apparently stripping the aldermen of their corruption-soaked powers of “aldermanic prerogative.”

From now on, Lightfoot said, aldermen will have a “voice” in City Hall department decisions about zoning changes, licenses and permits in their wards, but not a veto.

Lightfoot was laying down a challenge — fight this reform at your peril — but also extending an invitation. She was asking the City Council to reinvent itself and become a true collaborator in governing. She was, for that matter, asking the same of the rest of us.

“Each of us needs to ask, ‘What can I do?’” the mayor said. “Your city surely needs you.”

If that sounds naive or pollyannish, so be it. We’ll take a little of that right now. For all the formidable challenges facing Chicago, the city’s strengths are so much greater, and we welcome Lightfoot’s message of good government and inclusiveness, with its echoes of Harold Washington and Barack Obama.

Our prediction is that the City Council ultimately will acquiesce to the loss of aldermanic prerogative. They know Lightfoot was elected in a landslide because Chicagoans are hungry for reform. They know she’s got the wind at her back and they do not.

They know that yet another alderman, Ed Burke, has been charged with attempted extortion involving a restaurant remodeling project in Burke’s ward. And they know editorial pages like this one will hammer them if they don’t come around.

They might even understand that ending aldermanic prerogative is, on balance, good for honest government, just so long as city departments consult with them — without deferring to them — on ward-specific issues.

The simple fact is, though, we don’t see how an old-guard alderman could sit on that stage on Monday and not see how things have changed.

There was the drum circle, for one. At a mayor’s swearing-in.

And there was a gay chorus, an all-black string quartet and a prayer for guidance from a Muslim cleric.

There were three women of color taking the oath of office for Chicago’s three city-wide elected offices — Mayor Lightfoot, City Clerk Anna Valencia and City Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin.

And, in the most dramatic proof of change, there was Lightfoot taking the stage with her wife, Amy Eshleman, and their daughter, Vivian.

“I stand here today,” Lightfoot said, “inaugurated as Chicago’s first black woman and first openly gay mayor.”

There were cheers like ones you never heard this side of San Francisco.

Chicago’s got tough fights ahead. No secrets there. For starters, Lightfoot must plug a $750 million budget hole, and come up with $1 billion more for pensions over the next three years. If she has a plan, we haven’t heard it, but every conceivable solution will make somebody howl.

But as we listened to Lightfoot’s first big speech as mayor, before a gathering of people as happily diverse as any you’ll ever find, we were reminded of just how far Chicago already has come.

“For me, this has been a city of opportunity,” Lightfoot said. “It’s been a city of hope.”

So many other Chicagoans, ourselves included, would say the same.

Now the job, Lightfoot said, is to create “a city of fairness and hope and prosperity for the many, not just for the few.”

That’s not a job for a mayor.

It’s a job for a whole city.

Send letters to: letters@suntimes.com.

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