Chicago's Latino leadership group molds next generation
In a private room inside the upscale East Bank Club, a group of young Latino professionals that included staffers from several Chicago mayoral campaigns sat down recently to talk about a shared interest: power and how to get it.
Juan Rangel, co-chairman of Rahm Emanuel's mayoral bid and head of the influential United Neighborhood Organization, stood at the front of the room. Before him, he saw the next generation of Chicago's political leaders, corporate chieftains and cultural tastemakers.
As the city gears up to elect its first new mayor in 21 years, Rangel said Latinos are at a crossroads and, with his UNO colleagues, is preparing up-and-coming professionals for a place at the table, no matter who replaces Richard Daley.
"It's not about being altruistic; put that aside," Rangel, 45, told the 36 smartly dressed men and women who had gathered for a lesson in political hardball through UNO's Metropolitan Leadership Institute. "If you don't have power, you'll never get to first base."
The message lies at the core of MLI, a modern vehicle for Latino clout in Chicago that goes beyond the legacy of curbside protests in the 1970s and the traditional patronage system mastered by the Hispanic Democratic Organization in the '90s.
Rangel's vision of a new day for Latinos resonates in his decision to join Emanuel's front-running campaign, despite the presence of three Latino candidates, and represents a clear break from the days when ethnic communities stuck to their own.
UNO's 9-year-old leadership academy — binding together politicians, bankers, real estate agents, City Hall staffers and attorneys much like an Ivy League Club — has become an essential stop for ambitious Chicago-area Latinos.
In the process, MLI's broadening network of influence — among its 206 graduates are CTA President Richard Rodriguez, Ald. Proco "Joe" Moreno, 1st, and state Commerce Commission Chairman Manny Flores — makes UNO an even greater political force in Chicago.
"You can never get to the point of addressing issues in our neighborhoods if we don't have power," said Rangel, echoing an UNO mantra that stretches back 25 years. Rangel regularly casts U.S.-born Latinos as the 21st century equivalent of the Irish offspring who have been at the city's helm for decades.
Despite the steady growth of Latino college graduates and white-collar professionals, "Numbers alone aren't going to do it," said Rangel.
That assessment comes on the back of decades of political stops and starts for Latinos in Chicago.
In the mid-1980s, Mayor Harold Washington helped usher in a wave of progressive Latino leadership that included an advisory Commission on Latino Affairs. The Hispanic Democratic Organization was a vote-gathering juggernaut and Daley's chief source of patronage hiring before the group was brought down by federal prosecutors for employing old-style politics that no longer jibed with the law.
UNO was started in 1984 as a community organization in the spirit of legendary activist Saul Alinsky that fought waste dumping in South Chicago and inferior schools in Latino neighborhoods.
UNO eventually split from left-leaning Latinos by changing its focus from outside agitation to insider politics, said Maria de los Angeles Torres, who oversaw the Latino affairs commission under Washington. She now directs the Latin American and Latino Studies program at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
"You have people who say that the only way you can have an influence was by organizing the community and not getting involved in City Hall, the Alinsky model. UNO was founded on that principle," Torres said. "The criticism today is that they jumped into bed with Daley."
Among UNO's formative experiences was a battle with African-American leaders in 1986 over which architects would design the West Side Technical Institute on the Lower West Side, a project initially proposed by UNO to help Latinos get jobs, said Phil Mullins, who co-founded the group with current Ald. Danny Solis, 25th.
In the midst of that fight, Washington told UNO leaders that he wanted to protect political alliances with black aldermen on the South Side and therefore was siding with them, recalled Mullins, 60.
"Here we are, we've got architects, engineers from the Hispanic community that are willing to come in and build this thing," Mullins said, "and we did not have the leadership skills to maximize that."
Later, when UNO pushed for Latino representation on government boards, it was forced to face the fact that it didn't have enough qualified people.
"They'd challenge us back and say: 'Well, give me some people.'" Mullins said, "and we didn't have them, or the people we had we weren't convinced wouldn't get chewed up in some of these challenging situations because those boards are pressure cookers."
The realization led Mullins and others at UNO to create the Metropolitan Leadership Institute.
At MLI's private monthly sessions, Mullins, Rangel and invited speakers who have included Daley share their wisdom on the public arena and how to get ahead in Chicago.
With required reading that includes Chris Matthews' 1988 book on Machiavellian politics, "Hardball," lessons in the 12-month program include understanding that all professional relationships are flexible. Debate, often just for the sake of provocation, is another key component.
"They really help mold your ideas," said Rodriguez, the CTA president, comparing his time at MLI in 2005 to "putting on a new set of glasses."
With a mix of self-promotion honed at MLI and connections made through the city's largest Latino organization, Rodriguez, 40, has seen his public career jump from overseeing operations at the Chicago Housing Authority to a rapid series of department-head appointments by Daley.
"You say, 'This is what I'm really good at.' And they'd say: 'Have you ever thought about this?'" Rodriguez said, about Rangel and Mullins. "'Have you looked into this arena?' Or, 'Let me introduce you to somebody over here who may have a need.' It all kind of just happens."
Many program graduates are college-educated children of Latin American immigrants, hungry to validate their parents' gamble on the U.S. Others are multiethnic, with deep roots in Chicago.
Their kinship showed one recent weeknight inside Rumba, a chic pan-Latino restaurant in the River North area that's a gathering spot after MLI sessions.
At the bar, several Latino aldermen joined men and women with MLI buttons on the lapels of their tailored suits in half-shouted conversations over blaring salsa music. One group dissected the upcoming aldermanic elections with the rapid precision of Japanese chefs.
"We've got your back," two MLI veterans assured an alderman who expressed dismay over a sizable list of opponents in his re-election campaign. "We'll put together a fundraiser for you."
John Garrido, a Chicago police lieutenant who is among a few Republicans in this year's MLI class, is using his campaign for 45th Ward alderman as the "leadership plan" required of MLI participants.
Though Rangel and Mullins are Democrats, Garrido counts them as among his closest advisers in his bid to replace outgoing Ald. Patrick Levar, who is backing another candidate.
Following the UNO directors' suggestion, Garrido recently showed up unannounced to introduce himself to Polish community leaders meeting inside the towering Polish National Alliance building in Forest Glen.
Garrido's Polish-born wife, Anna, joined him, charming the group by speaking Polish as the couple worked the room. He came in with a long list of law-and-order initiatives and walked away with a bit of advice from the Poles: Play up the wife more.
That kind of political thinking hits UNO's sweet spot. The group's leaders stress that gaining power precedes being able to make any kind of difference in the community.
Critics of Rangel, whose UNO also operates charter schools, say his work for Emanuel contradicts UNO's message of Latino empowerment. Especially troubling for some is Emanuel's stance, in Congress and the White House, against taking on federal immigration reform.
Though Emanuel's campaign says he favors immigration reform, the candidate in 2007 famously called the issue "the third rail of American politics."
"Juan Rangel is a great leader for our community, but his alignment with Rahm Emanuel … I would question his judgment," said state Sen. Martin Sandoval, D-Chicago, who is backing Carol Mosley Braun's mayoral campaign. "What does Juan Rangel tell one of his (charter school) students when his parents are being deported tomorrow? How does he face the mother who says, 'My husband is being deported, Juan'?"
His voice rising, the normally even-keeled Rangel said UNO is working to make Chicago's Latinos savvy advocates for neighborhood improvements.
"By that, I mean really changing the community and not just being another minority group," he said.
Rangel sat inside his tastefully decorated West Loop office, listening as an aide interrupted with a quick update on nascent plans for an indoor soccer field on the Southwest Side. Within his reach was a hard copy of "Let Them Call Me Rebel," a biography of Alinsky. On the wall hung a 1990 picture of a mullet-haired Rangel delivering a speech from a sidewalk, his eyes wide with purpose.