Death of a City

I have been going into my downtown office almost daily since June, but I now mostly drive and not train, park, do what I need to do, and then quickly leave without going more than a block from my office. But on the Tuesday lunch hour I decided to walk around a bit to see what the city’s heart looked like after months of pandemic and renewed riots and looting over the weekend.  I gripped my pepper spray tightly in my right hand and began my self-guided tour.

It was a brilliant late summer day, warm and dry, the kind of day that normally draws throngs of workers out of their cubicles out on their lunch break to stroll with the tourists taking in the city sights.  But not today.  Today, the streets were nearly empty, though, sans a few mostly masked people scattered here and there and beggars posted on nearly every street corner and in front of every Dunkin’ or Starbucks that was opened, their zombie-like appearance and the scene conjuring up images of the dystopian Will Smith film I Am Legend.

I walked toward State Street (that formerly Great Street), past the trash in the streets and the boarded up storefronts and office buildings.  Many stores still had unswept piles of shards of glass in front of them.  There was little traffic and the stillness at midday was unsettling.  It was more like an early Sunday morning than a midday, midweek scene in the loop.   I finally made it over to Michigan Avenue.  Several buildings were boarded up, and many of the retail stores.  I walked past the outdoor tables of the restaurants that would normally be fully occupied with a line waiting to get in on a gorgeous day like today.  Sadly, as I passed by each one, they had no more than one or two tables taken.

I turned down Michigan Avenue, walking toward Pauline Books and Media, the Catholic bookstore operated by the Daughters of St. Paul and braced myself for what I was about to see.  The good sisters were looted the last time around and I fully expected to see shattered glass, and statues and books strewn about.  As the store came into view, I was overwhelmed with emotion to find it intact.  This time around, the looters bypassed the store.  Nothing had been touched.  All of the statues and crucifixes were safe in their glass displays.  Not a book was out of place.  I chatted with one of the nuns and she said that an alarm went off but it was for something else and they prayed and prayed.  I bought a copy of St. Augustine’s Confessions and some bookmarks and when I checked out, one of the good sisters talked to me about God’s grace.  Ironically, I had attended Jennifer Frey’s lecture on Flannery O’Connor’s vision of grace in A Good Man Is Hard to Find earlier this year, about how somehow we find grace and redemption in the darkness.  (Here it is if you are so inclined   https://www.lumenchristi.org/event/2020/02/flannery-oconnor-vision-of-grace-jennifer-frey).  The brief conversations with the sisters have given me a lot to think about after seeing the results of the nihilism and destruction that has been wrought upon the city.    At least the Catholic bookstore was spared in this city with such a strong Irish, Polish and Hispanic Catholic backbone.

But that island of hope cannot mask the reality of a dying city.  Macy’s has given notice that it is abandoning Water Tower.  Navy Pier, a premier tourist attraction has announced that it may close.  The looting damaged the Ronald McDonald House.  Of course, we hear almost nightly new stories of the terrible violence in the city, the murder of children, the carjackings, the hold ups.  With murder and mayhem all around, Mayor Lightfoot announced the establishment of a “statue review committee” to determine which statues are offensive, begging the question of why the concern over inanimate objects when black children are being slaughtered each weekend.

As I toured the wreckage, the reality began to sink in, that this great city will never be the same.  Carl Sandburg’s City of the Big Shoulders has been reduced to a slightly upgraded version of Mogadishu.  The Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads, and Freight Handler to the Nation is now a shadow of its former self, less safe than Kigali, Rwanda.

The runoff of population that was already underway and accelerating with the threat of Pritzker’s “Fair Tax” will turn into a flood.   Baby boomers that looked forward to downsizing and living in a condo downtown to enjoy the culture and restaurants have taken that off the table.  Dinner and the Lyric Opera or Chicago Symphony loses its appeal if there is a real threat of a carjacking awaiting you.

O’Connor’s short story involves death and grace and I urge you to read it—it’s very short and meaningful.   I am desperately searching for God’s grace in this--- the death of a city.  I have had to write several eulogies and tributes over the course of my life for individuals that have passed from the scene.   Soon it appears that I will have to write one not for just a person, but for an entire city, a city where I have very deep roots (part of my family has been here since the Great Chicago Fire).   My tour was like seeing your once robust, lively father hooked up to monitors and breathing tubes in the hospital in his last days.   It is almost incomprehensible that he is in this state, helpless, hanging on, never to be the person he once was.  Like a person that eventually concedes to disease, injury, and bodily breakdown, this city’s body is collapsing under the weight of decades of corruption, graft, gangs, and violence. 

This is what the death of a city looks like.