We asked Documenters to interview friends, family and colleagues about the upcoming election.
By Natalie Frazier
2020 (Photo: Linghua Qi)
2022 was a year of political upheaval for Chicago. About a fifth of alders are either resigning or no longer planning to run for another term, citizens are vying for 66 newly created Police District council positions, and the city has a new ward map for the first time in 10 years. In all of the hullabaloo, reliable and useful information about our local government can get lost.
That’s why City Bureau decided to task our Documenters (regular folks who sign up for free trainings and paid opportunities to do civic work such as documenting public meetings) with interviewing their families, friends, neighbors, acquaintances and coworkers about the upcoming municipal elections. We learned some super interesting stuff, too. For example, only 4 out of our initial out of 24 respondents knew that we’d be electing people on the city’s Police District Councils.
Who did the interviews and who did they interview?
City Bureau’s Documenters are fairly representative of Chicago. They live in almost all of Chicago’s 77 neighborhoods and vary in age, race and education. For this project we focused on communities where 90% or more residents are people of color, though all types of communities are represented in the overall interview pool. The 12 Documenters who conducted the interviews represent neighborhoods such as Beverly, Archer Heights and Logan Square, are between the ages of 24 and 52 and identify as Asian, white, Black and Latinx/Hispanic.
The 24 community members they interviewed represented neighborhoods such as Austin, Humboldt Park, Bedford Park, Little Village, Uptown, Mckinley Park and Lakeview and have lived 3 to 75 years in Chicago. Interview respondents were racially diverse, they ranged in age from 22 to 88, and their news consumption habits varied from reading local Chicago news daily to almost never.
What did we learn?
While 24 interviews with family and friends don’t constitute a scientific poll of the city, the responses and anecdotes they provided begin to paint a picture about the connection between Chicagoans and their understanding of local government. (Graphs below by Jim Daley of the Chicago Reader.)
Here are a few themes that emerged:
Accountability is key.
Interviewees want accountability from candidates, city officials and police.
“They’re [public officials] doing the usual politricks.”
“I want more accountability.”
Are there too many candidates?
An overwhelming majority of the interview respondents feel like there are too many people running for mayor and city council spots.
“They got too many people on the ballot.”
Interviewees described a need for less “fluff” and more thorough and honest reporting.
One respondent feared that news outlets were only reporting on news that adhered to their own agendas.
“I want a roundup. Where can we make a comparison of candidates that are running?”
Respondents were very passionate about public safety and policing.
“People don’t feel safe here.”
“They need to do away with AR15s. They need to go back to the military.”
“Why are we criminalizing children’s behavior as opposed to handling it in school?”
Affordable housing is a huge concern.
“Why do we have all of these schools that were shut down and homeless people with no place to go?”
People feel unequipped to vote.
“The problem is that they don’t teach people how to plan for voting.”
“I don’t really like voting. I just feel like it’s a way to make people feel like they’re a part of the government when I don’t think it really makes a difference.”
“They tell you to vote and all of these issues [unemployment, youth disinvestment, policing] is why I don’t.”
Interviewees were dissatisfied with Mayor Lightfoot.
The majority of respondents voiced dissatisfaction with the way Lightfoot has handled the pandemic and her response to legitimate concerns from citizens and other elected officials.
“People are kind of hitting a breaking point with her [Mayor Lightfoot].”
“Are you trying to help people or are you trying to get reelected?”
What’s next?
Register to vote and work your local polls.
Read local news & sign up for the Newswire.
City Bureau is using these survey results, in addition to other interviews, to inform our coverage in January & February.
Sign up to be Documenter.
Documenters are still interviewing and submitting submissions so stay tuned for updated results and new ways to get involved with the project!
We’d like to thank all of the Chicago Documenters who contributed to the initial leg of this project!
Javanna Plummer, Pachina Fletcher, Mare Ralph, Aryssa Burton, Janetta Pegues, Anna Mason, Chris Ridgeway, Gloria Valle, Ryland Pietras, Tattianna Howard, Kevin Pearson, Justin Agrelo, Wendy Wei
Documenters applied for a special assignment through our website documenters.org and attended a mandatory training on interviewing. Documenters then found 1-3 people to interview, recorded their interviews, and inputted the answers into an Airtable form. Special thanks to Jim Daley who co-hosted a Documenters workshop about data analysis, edited this blog and created the data visualizations pictured above using flourish.studio.