How Chicago’s mayoral race could shake up city politics (HBO)

For the first time in its history, Chicago will be a black woman as mayor. Lori Lightfoot, the former chairwoman of the police board, and Toni Preckwinkle, the chairwoman of the Cook County Board of Commissioners, finished first and second in Tuesday night’s election and are headed to a runoff in April. Whoever wins, it will be a historic event. It will mark the end of the most crowded and unpredictable mayoral race in the history of the third-largest city in the United States. And it was catalyzed by a tragedy five years ago and the protest movement that followed. In Chicago, the next mayor is typically pre-determined by what’s known as the “Chicago machine” — a system of patronage and financial connections run by the Democratic Party that makes most elections in the city a near-foregone conclusion. That infamous machine helped keep Chicago’s most famous mayor, Richard J. Daley, in office for two decades. It helped Daley’s son, Richard M. Daley, win reelection five times. And it helped Mayor Rahm Emanuel win two. But in 2014, a white police officer shot and killed a black teenager. It was, sadly, a common story in Chicago—until a protest movement forced change. The officer who killed Laquan McDonald was convicted of murder, and the state’s attorney general was defeated at the polls. Many Chicagoans blame McDonald’s death, and police brutality toward black men and women in general, on bias in the system. The movement sparked by his death has not subsided; the public and the government have spent the next five years grappling with how to reform government and its institutions. Ultimately, this public discontent forced Emanuel to drop out of the mayoral race. That opened the floodgates for a 14-candidate race, the largest in the city’s history. For the first time in decades, the machine wasn’t in control of this race. So no one really knew who was going to win. The protest movement — the young people who helped create this moment in Chicago — has spent the last few months trying to transfer momentum from the streets to the ballot box. Subscribe to VICE News here: http://bit.ly/Subscribe-to-VICE-News Visit VICE News for more: http://vicenews.com Follow VICE News here: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vicenews Twitter: https://twitter.com/vicenews Tumblr: http://vicenews.tumblr.com/ Instagram: http://instagram.com/vicenews More videos from the VICE Network: https://www.fb.com/vicevideo

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