Ethnic boundaries drive city ward remap process

With City Council's approval of the remap of Chicago's wards, Lincoln Park residents can rest easy knowing their neighborhood will not be split into five different wards. Not all neighborhoods were so lucky, however.

Among those, the 15th ward Ald. Toni L. Foulkes' predominatly African-American ward on the Southwest Side will now shift to a Hispanic population.

Alderman Bob Fioretti's 2nd Ward, originally occupying the majority of the South Loop, will now stretch along Lincoln Park's western and southern borders in a spaghetti-like fashion.

"Why was this done the way it was done? Who knows. This was controlled from the fifth floor and the silver-haired caucus. It was predictable," Fioretti told a Skyline reporter.

The effort to remap the wards was framed by the interests of individual aldermen versus aldermanic groups, such as the Latino and Black Caucuses seeking more wards with their ethnic majority, according to Larry Bennett, professor of political science at DePaul.

"There is a hierarchy in the City Council," Bennett said. "Some aldermen have more sway than others."

Bennett points to Ald. Richard Mell of the 33rd Ward and Ald. Edward Burke of the 14th Ward, who are among the elite aldermen. It was Mell who introduced the new "Map for a Better Chicago."

"I would take everything Alderman Mell says with a grain of salt," said Bennett, who calls the map's name "just a nice framing for a bad map."

Bennett said elite aldermen use the remapping process to preserve their seats in City Council.

"[The new map] is not very pretty from the standpoint of representing the local interests in a coherent way," he said.

In addition to aldermanic interests, Latino and African-American groups are fighting to maintain their voice in the City Council. Voting interests of minority groups are protected under a federal requirement for redistricting.

The African-American population has plummeted by more than 180,000 in the last decade, while the Latino population has grown by about 25,000. The white population decreased by almost 53,000. As a result, Latino neighborhoods were split on the north side and African-American wards were combined on the south side.

"Our position was to maintain African-American political power," Ald. Pat Dowell of the 3rd ward told the Chicago Tribune last week. "We've lost population, but we're still the largest population in Chicago and that fact doesn't change."

In the end, the Latino Caucus gained three seats to create 13 Hispanic-majority wards, and the Black Caucus lost one seat to make 18 African-American-majority wards.

There are fewer Latino aldermen partly because many Hispanic-majority wards are still controlled by white aldermen, such as Mell and Burke.

The new map is currently under review by the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund.