If common sense is so common, why does Alderman Andre Vasquez have none?
Here is an article about one of the six Democratic Socialist (DSA) members of the Chicago City Council, Alderman Andre Vasquez of the 40th Ward, that will, well, just grab you.
In order to fully understand Mr. Vasquez, it is necessary to delve a bit into his background. For the last 11 years, the Illinois and Chicago transportation departments have been working on the Redefine the Drive project, which will retool Chicago's iconic North Lake Shore Drive (LSD).
A public hearing was held last week at Truman College about the groups' favored proposal, dubbed the "Essential Plan." Under this blueprint to redesign LSD, sensible improvements to seven miles of beautiful roadway were laid out and included plans to remove the traffic light at Chicago Avenue, add bus-only lanes on the southern end of Lake Shore Drive, straighten the Oak Street S-curve, and the add more park land.
An innovative plan to reconceptualize one of Chicago’s most celebrated roadways — The Drive — what’s not to like?
If you are a far-left Chicago politician, plenty. Using one of their favorite words, "reimagine," the leftists, who turned the public hearing into a mini-COMINTERN, want a bus-only lane for the entire stretch of the North Drive — a lane that could possibly be shared by toll-paying automobile drivers. The progressive aldermen who attended that protest certainly want fewer car lanes. The "Essential Plan" keeps the number of LSD lanes, for cars and buses, at eight.
Funding has yet to be lined up for any plan, "essential" or not, so all these arguments could be over nothing.
Among the elected officials at the protest included members of the Illinois General Assembly and several members of the City Council, including two Democratic Socialist members of that body, Alderman Vasquez and Alderman Daniel La Spata of the 1st Ward.
This issue has been discussed with Alderman La Spata at length before, so it is time to take a closer look at Alderman Vasquez, who told Ben Joravsky in a podcast that he is "a Sanders socialist."
A onetime battle-rap artist, Vasquez spoke at the protest, and he chose not to remain silent afterwards. A commentator on X remarked about the rally, "Let’s be honest, 50-100 anti-car activists showed up. Lake Shore Drive sees over 155THOUSAND cars every day, that’s more than [the] Red Line’s entire daily ridership in 2019! This group isn’t a representative sample of anything."
Quite true.
This post on X led Vasquez to rap back: "Let’s be honest: The number of pro-car activists that showed up was ZERO."
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Does that make Vasquez anti-car?
As for his observation that “zero” pro-car activists showed up, the alderman was almost certainly correct. The people who like things the way they generally do not show up to protests. If Vasquez and his allies were honest at their rally, that they want to ban cars in one lane — or perhaps more — from Lake Shore Drive, then some counter protesters, perhaps a majority of them, would have crashed their socialist shindig.
Spotted in the crowd, because leftist arguments always begin with irrational appeals to emotion, were two telling signs, "No lakefront expressway" and "Lake Shore Drive kills children." North Lake Shore Drive, minus the larger S-curve, is essentially the same road, expressway or not, that it has been for decades. Lake Shore Drive, however, is not a killer of kids.
It’s fair to speculate that a great majority of Vasquez's 40th Ward constituents, as with the rest of Chicago, favor keeping North Lake Shore Drive, with a few improvements, the way it is — and with the same number of lanes for cars. The alderman is either naive or he's pushing an unpopular agenda. Actually, it is likely both.
Vasquez has other agendas.
Crime was the biggest issue named by voters in the 2023 municipal elections. Yet Vasquez, on the December 22, 2022, Ben Joravsky Show, betrayed his naiveté about law enforcement when he stated:
"In our current system, police should serve three core functions: Investigation, apprehension, and emergencies, right?
Wrong.
What about decades of proven success of police officers patrolling streets and being at the right place and the right time when a crime is committed? What about the confidence and ease of mind that is enjoyed by citizens knowing that law enforcement is a visible presence in the community?
When then, we ask, are the police needed?
Explaining when CPD are needed to Joravsky, Vasquez ridiculously asserted:
"What do we call them for? Cat stuck in a tree, homeless person, somebody's got a substance abuse issue, there's a domestic fight."
Far from the only circumstances CPD are required, citizens of Chicago are in need of officers when there is a fistfight in an alley, when there is the sound of gunfire, when vandals are breaking windows, for carjackings, and when a car is driving recklessly on a side street. Police would also be called upon, for example, if an 11-year-old boy were to be killed while attempting to defend his mother from an enraged domestic abuser on parole. Officers would also necessary if, for instance, three teens were to be shot, one fatally, in, say, the Arcadia Terrace neighborhood.
While Mr. Vasquez rightly points out officers do settle domestic disputes, rescue house pets or assist addicts on the street, the 40th Ward alderman suggesting police responsibilities are so limited is a deliberate and ignorant undervaluing of policing. That Mr. Vasquez glossed over the more important responsibilities CPD fulfills was entirely for political purposes.
As with the alderman’s hopes for Lake Shore Drive, it is a safe estimate that the majority of Vasquez's constituents disagree with his crackpot theories on policing. Unfortunately, they are getting what they deserved for twice voting him into office. Furthermore, residents in the 40th Ward eligible to vote who declined to turn out at the polls deserve Vasquez even more.
Elected as alderman in 2019, Vasquez prevailed in an election that was similar to the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s — both sides deserved to lose. The then-incumbent, Patrick O’Connor, had been in office for 36 years, much of that time was as City Council floor leader for mayors Richard M. Daley and Rahm Emanuel. During Daley's reign, the disastrous parking meter and Skyway deals were negotiated and approved by overwhelming majorities in the City Council — it is hard to imagine O'Connor's fingerprints weren't all over both fiascos.
During the 2019 campaign, O'Connor unsuccessfully tried to make an issue of the homophobic, transphobic, and misogynistic lyrics used in music during Vasquez' rap career. At the time, the failed ex-rapper maintained the stage name Optimus Prime. Vasquez’s rapping career, for the most part, appears to have ended in 2010. Vasquez has offered some contrition for those lyrics, and no one, yes, not even an uncultivated Democratic Socialist, should be held to the standards to which they were held in their formative years, especially if they express genuine remorse for their offensive antics.
However, Alderman Vasquez has demonstrated he has not fully stepped away from the rap microphone.
In 2020, one year into his first term on the City Council, at an event called the Winter Block Party, Optimus Prime (Vasquez) performed his rap, "We the People."
The lyrics are surprisingly G-rated for Mr. Vasquez, who is known for uttering profanities in abundance during the earlier stages of his music career, but at the end of the tune he belted out, Vasquez shouts during his mic-drop: "When I say alderman, you all say Prime!" The acknowledged Democratic Socialist is then seen repeatedly grasping his crotch.
That was not a mic drop — it was a mic dropping. Here's a rap of ours about Vasquez, one we intone without resorting to seizing our crotch.
"When I say alderman, you say Socialist! Alderman! Socialist!"
Lake Shore Drive exists for cars, and yes, buses too, sharing all eight lanes.
One final rap: "When I say Lake Shore, you say drive! Lake Shore! Drive!"
Drive meaning, cars being driven in all lanes. As it always has been. Essentially so.
Finally, Mr. Vasquez, we have one more message for you: Chicago needs more police. Uninvolved Chicagoans, you need to get involved. Leftists like Vasquez thrive when apathy dominates.
