Monica Davey and Mitch Smith

Five months later, the mayor has found herself in a thorny spot: Facing off against tens of thousands of striking teachers who are demanding action on some of the very issues she promised to solve.

The teachers’ strike, which has canceled two days of classes for more than 300,000 public school students, is the most significant test so far of Lightfoot’s leadership. Standard strike issues, like pay, have certainly come up, but they have been eclipsed by the Chicago Teachers Union’s calls for more counselors for students, some of whom live amid daily violence; affordable housing for students in a city where home prices have forced residents to move away; and smaller class sizes than the ones some teachers said had swelled well over 30.

Lightfoot, a Democrat whose progressive agenda had won her a stunning sweep of all 50 of Chicago’s wards in April, was suddenly featured in chants outside schools Friday: “Get on the right foot, Lori Lightfoot.”

Downtown, teachers carried homemade signs calling her “Lie-foot” and claiming, in a harsh but Chicago-specific insult, that the mayor “puts ketchup on her hot dogs.” A radio ad from the union said Lightfoot’s “campaign promises don’t mean a thing unless she tells Chicago Public Schools to make good on them.”

“Our South Side communities, our West Side communities are littered with broken promises, unkept commitments,” Stacy Davis Gates, the vice president of the teachers’ union, said this week, alluding to Lightfoot. “This contract has to represent something different for the city of Chicago — it has got to represent something different. And she ran to do that. Period.”

For Lightfoot, a lawyer and parent who cast herself as an outsider when she ran in a crowded race to replace Mayor Rahm Emanuel this year, the challenges are complex. Chicago, a city of 2.7 million people, faces a strained municipal budget with a looming deficit, a serious pension crisis and a school system that has struggled with its finances (though in recent months they have stabilized somewhat, largely because of increased state aid).

“The fact is, there is no more money,” Lightfoot said Friday morning, after she and her wife handed out Cheerios to a roomful of students who — with no school — were gathered at a community center southwest of downtown. In negotiations, the city has offered teachers a 16% raise over five years, while union leaders called for increases of 15% over a shorter three-year term.

In an interview, Lightfoot dismissed suggestions that she was turning her back on her campaign pledges related to equity. Like union leaders, she said, she wanted more nurses in schools, more counselors, more social workers. But she questioned whether the city’s affordable housing policy should be set as part of one union’s contract negotiations, rather than in a broader conversation across the city.

Being at the other end of the strike, she said, did not mean she had walked away from her overarching goal of ending the sense that there are two Chicagos — divided along lines of race, wealth and neighborhoods.

“I’m a kid who grew up in low-income circumstances, whose parents struggled every single day, and I live those values,” Lightfoot said. “I hear people telling me every single time that I’m in some neighborhood on the South or the West Side — or really all over the city — that they’ve never met a mayor before, they’ve never seen a mayor who’s present and listening to them.”

The Chicago Teachers Union backed an opponent of Lightfoot in the election, and union leaders have said her approach to labor negotiations has irked them. Her representatives, too, have voiced frustration at the pace of negotiations and what they view as a lack of urgency by the union.

Still, relations are nowhere near as tense as they were between union leaders and Emanuel, who led the city through a divisive seven-day teachers’ strike in 2012; closed dozens of schools, many in black and Hispanic neighborhoods; and was known as “Mayor 1 Percent” by some critics.

After Lightfoot took office, many teachers said they had been hopeful about the chances of a favorable contract and were optimistic even as a strike date drew nearer. But the standoff at the bargaining table, and the resulting scramble by parents to take off work or enroll children in day camps, left some in the city re-evaluating their opinions of the new mayor.

“I’m seeing just a stubbornness: I think that she is mistaking intransigence for strength,” said Maressa Spinak, a special-education teacher who marched past City Hall on Thursday with a sign that said “I voted for change, but what I got was a Rahm in sheep’s clothing!”

Other teachers seemed more willing to give her time to reach a deal. John Johnson, a broadcasting teacher at Westinghouse College Prep on the city’s West Side, said he believed that Lightfoot respected teachers.

“I’m hoping that it’s going to be a day or two because I think that both sides are, like, right here,” Johnson said on Thursday.

Karoline Towner, who teaches middle school science, said she generally liked the mayor and was waiting to see whether she had learned from Emanuel’s struggles on schools.

“She’s kind of stern,” Towner said. “I think we’re trying to see who’s going to blink first.”

Even in a heavily Democratic city where support for labor unions is strong, Lightfoot faced conflicting messages on how to proceed. The editorial boards of Chicago’s two main newspapers, the Tribune and the Sun-Times, focused on the city’s bleak fiscal outlook and urged her to stand tough against some of the union’s demands.

But for many moved by Lightfoot’s campaign promises about neighborhood investment and equity in schools, the lack of a deal was discouraging, confusing and highly inconvenient.

Juliet de Jesus Alejandre, who lives in the Northwest Side’s Logan Square neighborhood, joined teachers and school support workers on the picket line Thursday with her 8-year-old twin sons. She said she planned to take off work part of that day to look after her sons.

De Jesus Alejandre, a community organizer, said that she hoped the union would get a fair contract, including for school support workers, and that she was disappointed in Lightfoot’s handling of the situation.

“We have two Chicagos: There’s a Chicago of workers and longtime residents,” said de Jesus Alejandre, who did not vote for Lightfoot. “And then there’s a Chicago that’s getting much more love and attention from politicians, for the rich and the elites who don’t use our public resources.”

The dispute with the teachers was, in some ways, a microcosm of the broader challenge facing Lightfoot: How to lead a city with limited cash and entrenched financial problems, while trying to create equity in a place that has struggled with segregation and disinvestment for decades.

The Rev. Marshall E. Hatch Sr., a minister on the city’s West Side, said he had not seen significant improvement in struggling neighborhoods in the few months since Lightfoot’s inauguration. “But the fact that the mayor is talking about it, that the teachers’ union is banging the drum about it, probably means that we’re in a better place,” he said. “We’re having the conversation.”

This article originally appeared in

Teachers' Strike Tests Chicago Mayor on the Issues She Ran On

CHICAGO — Lori Lightfoot swept into office as Chicago’s mayor this year promising to end inequities that have long divided the city. She would invest in struggling neighborhoods, she pledged, and put badly needed librarians, nurses and social workers in schools.

Stacy Davis Gates, the vice president of the teachers’ union, said this week, alluding to Lightfoot. “This contract has to represent something different for the city of Chicago — it has got to represent something different. And she ran to do that. Period.”

For Lightfoot, a lawyer and parent who cast herself as an outsider when she ran in a crowded race to replace Mayor Rahm Emanuel this year, the challenges are complex.

“The fact is, there is no more money,” Lightfoot said Friday morning, after she and her wife handed out Cheerios to a roomful of students who — with no school — were gathered at a community center. In negotiations, the city has offered teachers a 16% raise over five years, while union leaders called for increases of 15% over a shorter three-year term.

Being at the other end of the strike, Lightfoot said, did not mean she had walked away from her overarching goal of ending the sense that there are two Chicagos — divided along lines of race, wealth and neighborhoods.

“I’m a kid who grew up in low-income circumstances, whose parents struggled every single day, and I live those values,” Lightfoot said. ”

The prosecutor, Kim Foxx, had delegated the case to a deputy. But text messages released this week show that Foxx remained closely engaged with the case — and worried that her office was being too harsh on Smollett, who has a prominent role on the show “Empire” and who was accused of orchestrating a fake hate crime and lying to the police.

“Sooo……I’m recused, but when people accuse us of overcharging cases…16 counts on a class 4 becomes exhibit A,” Foxx, the Cook County state’s attorney, wrote in a text message to a colleague in March.

Her message went on, with what many assumed was a comparison to sexual abuse charges she had announced against R. Kelly, the R&amp;B; star. (Kelly’s lawyer has said his client is innocent.)

“Pedophile with 4 victims 10 counts,” Foxx said in the message. “Washed up celeb who lied to cops, 16. On a case eligible for deferred prosecution I think it’s indicative of something we should be looking at generally.”

She added: “Just because we can charge something doesn’t mean we should.”

Since January, the peculiar, roller coaster case involving Smollett has exposed an array of divisions and disagreements among Chicago’s leaders, and hundreds of text and email messages released this week from and to Foxx only underscored those tensions. The messages involving Foxx and her office also suggested that Foxx remained aware of developments in the case even as she publicly distanced herself from it.

The messages also paint a picture of a prosecutor’s office that failed at first to grasp the level of attention on the case, appearing overwhelmed by the criticism it faced when it abruptly announced in late March that it was dropping all of the criminal charges against Smollett.

Foxx, who was elected as Cook County’s state’s attorney three years ago amid criticism of her predecessor’s handling of a police shooting case, has faced her own firestorm over the Smollett case, and lingering questions about her role in it and about her office’s handling of it.

In February, Eddie Johnson, the Chicago police superintendent, held an impassioned news conference to accuse Smollett, who is black and gay, of staging an attack on himself on Jan. 29 to seek publicity. Smollett had told detectives that two men placed a rope around his neck, poured a chemical on him and used the phrase “MAGA country,” referencing President Donald Trump’s campaign slogan. But Johnson said the report was faked, flatly stating: “Mr. Smollett is the one who orchestrated this crime.” Smollett has maintained his innocence.

Only weeks later came the prosecution’s announcement that the charges against Smollett had been dropped, setting off fierce criticism from Johnson and from Chicago’s mayor, Rahm Emanuel. Not long after, dueling protests took place outside Foxx’s office. Members of a police union called for Foxx’s resignation, while counterprotesters denounced the police union. The county inspector general is now reviewing the handling of the case.

And the debate has reached beyond Chicago.

“The more we learn about this, the more it stinks,” Herman Cain, the conservative commentator and former presidential candidate, said in a Facebook post about the release of Foxx’s text messages this week.

DeRay Mckesson, an activist, said on Twitter, “Venom directed at Kim Foxx is about taking down an African American reformer.”

Foxx’s role in the case had always been complicated. She said that she was removing herself from the case and assigning it to one of her deputies once it became clear that Smollett was a suspect. Before that point, Foxx had contact with a representative for the actor: She told a family member that she had asked that the FBI take over the investigation, The Chicago Tribune reported.

Ultimately, the prosecutor’s office offered shifting explanations for why it had dropped the charges against Smollett. At first, prosecutors in Foxx’s office said they were exercising discretion in part because Smollett’s crime was a relatively low-level felony. Later, Foxx said there were doubts about whether the evidence was strong enough for a conviction.

The messages, released through an open records request, showed that prosecutors were aware of Smollett’s case long before he was charged and were frustrated by apparent leaks from Chicago police officials to local news outlets.

“Here is the leak from detectives,” wrote one aide, Robert Foley, before charges were announced. He sent along a link to a news article.

And, the text messages show, Foxx continued to follow the case closely and speak about it with Johnson, though she had turned the handling of it over to a deputy.

“On plane awaiting takeoff,” Foxx texted March 8. “Eddie just called. Did we indict Smollett on any additional charges today? Need to know ASAP. He’s about to do an interview.”

Later that month, when the charges had been dropped, more text messages showed prosecutors scrambling to explain their decision and respond to criticism, including from Trump. Those messages revealed surprise when reporters turned up at the courthouse for the dismissal hearing, and a scramble to accommodate interview requests from local and national outlets.

“Just wish I could have anticipated the magnitude of this response and planned a bit better!” one employee of the state’s attorney’s office texted. Another responded: “There’s really no planning for this.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/17/us/kim-foxx-emails-texts-jussie-smollett.html" id="9a97cac6-0dd1-3d4b-ac97-4535ea4521b5">The New York Times</a>.

Chicago Prosecutor Worried Her Office Was Too Hard on Jussie Smollett, Messages Show

CHICAGO — A day after a grand jury indicted actor Jussie Smollett on 16 felony counts, Chicago’s top prosecutor was privately having doubts.

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Monica Davey and Mitch Smith

Articles written by the author

Teachers' Strike Tests Chicago Mayor on the Issues She Ran On

Teachers' Strike Tests Chicago Mayor on the Issues She Ran On

Chicago Prosecutor Worried Her Office Was Too Hard on Jussie Smollett, Messages Show