Interview with Ald. Andre Vasquez, Jr.
“Chicago Made Me What I Am”
In the Zooming interview that premiered on May 5, Ald. Andre Vasquez, Jr., of the 40th Ward explained to League interviewer Debby Halpern that he was born and raised here in Chicago after his parents moved from Guatemala. He saw that they worked many hours to bring him a better life and told us that gentrification caused the family to move a number of times, resulting in him attending four public schools.
After a career as a rapper (!) and in retail, he worked his way up to become an account manager for AT&T. Around 2015, when he began thinking about what he wanted to leave behind for his children, he met then-U.S. Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. The future alder became involved in Sanders’ campaign and learned how to organize. That experience led him to run against the City Council’s floor leader and chair of the Finance Committee, Patrick O’Connor, defeating him with 54% of the vote in 2019.
Watch the interview in full above or read the highlights:
In response to what he would like to see changed in the operations of the City Council, Ald. Vasquez listed several items:
Currently, committee chairs and vice-chairs are appointed by the mayor and then simply approved by the Council. Under Mayor Lightfoot, the number of committees increased by 2 to 18, and thereby increased the likelihood of at least two affirmative votes for the mayor’s proposals per committee. Ald. Vasquez thinks that this gives too much power to the mayor and allies in controlling legislation, as almost all proposals are sent to committee.
Moreover, each committee chair has complete control over the money allocated for the committee, with little oversight on who is hired as committee staff and what that staff does. Ald. Vasquez would like that money instead to be split among the alders for their ward offices and staff, so they all can provide better service to their constituents.
Ald. Vasquez would also like to see committee meetings continue to take place via Zoom or be hybrid. He explained that if the alders need to go to City Hall for committee meetings, there is often too much downtime between meetings, in addition to the time lost commuting to and from downtown.
The 40th Ward is on the North Side, running from Leland on the northward to Devon, and from the river on the west to Clark Street. Primarily residential, split evenly between home ownership and rental properties, the ward does have a number of restaurants and retail. The ward includes the neighborhoods of Andersonville, Lincoln Square, and Edgewater. On the ward map, there is a large blank area in the middle, which is Rosehill Cemetery. Besides property taxes and public safety, another key issue is the lack of affordable housing in this relatively affluent area of the city.