LOOKING BACK ON EDITORIALS OF 2017
Our job at the Sun- Times is to stand up for you. Throughout 2017, our editorial page cajoled and scolded and whined and explained, doing our best to lead the conversation in Chicago and Illinois on a wide range of matters of importance to our city and state, our democracy, and your life.
As 2017 draws to a close, we thought you might like to revisit some of these editorials, among the 500 or so we wrote. And please know: the fight goes on.
The year began with a contentious issue of profound importance to every resident of Illinois; the state had not passed a budget in more than two years. Social service agencies were shutting down. Schools were cutting back. Bills were piling up, forcing the state to blow through your tax money to pay millions of dollars in late fees. It would be unconscionable, we wrote, to hold back paychecks for ordinary workers in this political fight, but the numbers showed the pain was great. Our public schools could have been hardest hit.
A state budget, with a substantial increase in money for schools, finally was passed.
When a small group of unelected Chicagoans, working with the Park District, announced plans to wipe out two public golf courses on the South Side to develop one “championship quality” course, we reported how the new course would destroy a nature preserve and likely cost duffers a lot more money to play. That plan now is being reconsidered.
As a rule, we also wrote, the folks behind the creation of the planned Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park, which would be next door to the new golf course, really should listen more to their neighbors and respond to their entirely reasonable demands. More public hearings — more community input — has been forthcoming, though still not enough.
We offered three ways the federal government could come to the rescue of far north suburban Zion, which is the unwanted home of a radioactive nuclear waste dump.
We urged parents to “just say no” to children playing tackle football until the kids become teens, the risk of brain injury being too real.
We threw our strong support behind a proposed law prohibiting prospective employers from asking, during job interviews, how much money you are paid by your current employer. You’re in a better position to negotiate a higher salary if they don’t know. The governor killed the bill, unfortunately, but we’ll be pushing the idea again.
All year long, in a stream of editorials, we championed ways to protect and improve the environment of the Chicago area, especially the quality of water in Lake Michigan and our local rivers and the purity of the air we breathe. We called out the Environmental Protection Agency for failing to stop a poisonous chemical spill. But we also, in a separate editorial, defended the EPA against drastic budget cuts by listing at least a dozen ways the agency has made Chicago’s environment cleaner and safer.
The Sun- Times editorial board has been an early and consistent champion of LGBTQ rights, and we remained true to that mission in 2017. We specifically urged the governor to get on board with three key reforms for LGBTQ rights. He signed all three bills.
Perhaps no issue is more important to Chicagoans, and to the future of our city, than the scourge of gun violence. In 2017, the editorial board kept up a steady beat for reform, especially with respect to our state and nation’s gun laws. Entirely related to that, we put the pressure on the mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel, to impose long- overdue reforms of the Chicago Police Department — though the Trump administration was backing off. And we called on President Trump to appoint a new U. S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois who would be an “anti- crime warrior.” We’ll see how that one goes.
We rallied to the defense of the Affordable Care Act. And we detailed how a proposed Republican replacement for Obamacare would be awful for Illinois.
We made a rather obvious point when the # MeToo sexual harassment scandal broke with the accusations made against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein. His defense was that he was an older fellow and did not know better. We pointed out that he was only 64 years old. He didn’t grow up listening to Frank Sinatra sing “The Lady is a Tramp.” He grew up listening to Helen Reddy sing “I Am Woman.”
We fought all year for the “Dreamers” — young men and women who were brought to this country illegally as very young children and should not now face deportation. We argued for a free and open internet. And we called for the Chicago City Council to regulate the practice of “contract sales,” an old Jim Crow scam in which poor people are sold houses on contract, without a mortgage, at exorbitant rates.
Chicago has two influential editorial boards — ours and the Chicago Tribune’s. We hold different values, write for different readers and care about different things. We believe the Sun- Times’ board, to put it respectfully, is a whole lot more on your side.
In 2017, never was that difference more clear than when the Tribune, in an editorial in early December, lavished praise on the historic federal tax plan cooked up by Trump and the Republican majorities of the House and Senate.
Somebody had to set the record straight, so we did:
“Pretty much every glowing claim about the GOP tax plan made in a Tribune editorial on Tuesday is hogwash, a triumph of one- dimensional ideology over three- dimensional reality,” we wrote on Dec. 6. “The plan is bad for Illinois, bad for Chicago, and bad above all for ordinary working people.”
We look forward to setting the other guy straight again, as necessary, in 2018. Send letters to letters@ suntimes. com. Follow the editorial board on Twitter: @ csteditorials.