History isn't just about the big events. It's about the story that emerges when you string together the big and small plot twists of our day. 2013 has been a historic year, with LGBTQs breaking barriers and one of the most powerful governments in the world screeching to a halt. How will we remember this year five years from now or even 50?
The LGBTQ community has been making headlines all year long. In July, Laverne Cox became the first trans woman of color to have a leading role on a mainstream television show. Jennifer Pritzker became the first openly transgender billionaire when she came out in September. After being proposed almost every legislative session since 1994, the federal Employment Non-discrimination Act ( ENDA ) finally it made it out of committee. This November, while all eyes were on the culminating passage of Illinois equal marriage, the U.S. Senate quietly passed ENDA. The gradual integration of LGBTQ people into the social and cultural fabric of our country is inspiring, and I am proud to be a part of it. However, I think future generations will come to see this millennium as defined by privatization, the mechanism that is efficiently restructuring the world economy.
Locally, we see how rhetoric about financial instability has created the context to undermine decades of public policy targeted at improving the lives of everyday city residents. About 50 years ago Lyndon B. Johnson launched the so-called war on poverty by broadening the government's role in education and healthcare, starting programs like VISTA, Job Corps, Head Start, Legal Services and the Community Action Program.
Today, Mayor Rahm Emanuel launched his own war on the poor, closing public mental health clinics, public schools, and defunding community organizations. Simultaneously, he has shifted resources into privately run charter schools, financed a CTA overhaul that lines the pockets of Ventra, and launched the "building a new Chicago" campaign that courts gentrification. Privatization is certainly not new. We saw it rearing its head in ex-Mayor Daley's decision to sell Chicago's parking to a Morgan Stanley partnership. However, 2013 was a strategic year to leverage global financial insecurity to implement sweeping change.
The outcry for smaller government has not been all bad. It also brought about Gov. Pat Quinn's historic decision to close 10 Illinois correctional facilities. Two of those prisons were juvenile detention centers and one was a prison where prisoners endured solitary confinement 24 hours per day. The reality is that it's expensive to be the nation leading in number of people incarcerated. Warehousing people is socially unredeeming and expensive. Quinn's decision would have been impossible to imagine in the hard-on-crime climate of the '80s and '90s. Luckily, a growing amount of research indicates that community-based alternatives can strengthen community while supporting individuals in rebuilding healthier lives. Our government's actions set the tone for the economy, not only because of the scale of its spending but also because it circumscribes what is possible.
Non-profit agencies ( LGBTQ-focused or not ) have always had to navigate the tensions between private and public interests because they receive grant money from private foundations and also from the state. With a sharp decline in state funding, nonprofits are being forced to align themselves with corporations and business interests. After moving to Chicago, I was surprised to learn that the Center on Halsted had contracted its waiting area to Whole Foods and that there was a Walgreens in the Howard Brown Health Center. How were these non-profits not only endorsing but integrating for-profit entities? The answer is they have to, because our world is changing. Once there were wealthy individuals who set up foundations out of some mixture of guilt, altruism, and the need for a tax haven. Today there are corporations run by shareholders who make decisions on facts ( not personal values ), who are eligible for TIFF money, and who hire fancy accountants to skirt their taxes.
Why would a business give money away to the government when they could spend it cultivating influence in customer's communities? Our nonprofits increasingly become a mechanism for social marketing, a factory for good community relations, an interactive product placement commercial. And it works. I shop at Walgreens because HBHC is the best medical provider I've ever had. I spend money knowing that HBHC is more able to provide affirming, quality care to uninsured people because of their relationship with that business. However, on a larger scale, I worry. I worry that the kind of world I hope and dream for is less possible. I worry that this will be the last generation where bright and bold people get Master's degrees in education, social services, community development. Not only are those some of the lowest paid degrees, but I'm getting the message that they aren't even what it takes to be successful in those industries. Why spend 5-8 years in school learning how to do your job well if someone who is successful in business is going to swoop in and call all the shots? Today a leader is a more specific variety of a salesman, one with a vision.
André is the founder of the Trans Oral History Project, co-founder of Project Fierce Chicago, and a working board member of Orgullo en Accion. When André is not rabble-rousing, educating, or building community, you can hire him to photograph events and portraits by contacting him at andrealanperez@gmail.com .
