how a real dem does it- meet joe moore.

[mopinko]

text of joe moore's announcement speech. joe is my alderman, and my friend. he is exactly, and i mean exactly what a dem should be. this speech is a bit of a long read, but it is a blueprint for successful governance.




Text of Joe Moore's Announcement Speech
Dear Neighbor,

It's official! I'm a candidate for re-election as Alderman of the 49th Ward.

Yesterday I filed nominating petitions containing the signatures of 6,608 49th Ward residents and last night I made it official by announcing my candidacy in front of 250 friends and supporters at the Heartland Cafe.

Below is a written text of my speech remarks. Please feel free to share your comments with me. I look forward to a vigorous and thoughtful campaign.

Sincerely,

Joe Moore

JoeMooreAnnouncementSpeech.pdf (74 KB)

STATEMENT OF ALDERMAN JOE MOORE
ANNOUNCING HIS INTENTION TO RUN FOR
RE-ELECTION AS 49TH WARD ALDERMAN

Heartland Café, 7001 N. Glenwood
November 15, 2010

My friends and neighbors, tonight I stand before you to launch my campaign for re-election as Alderman of the 49th Ward.

The official start of the Chicago municipal election season began this morning when I filed my nominating papers containing the signatures of 6,608 49th Ward residents. This was by far the most petition signatures I have ever gathered in any of my aldermanic bids and reflects the wide support I have earned over the last four years.

I understand, however, that a petition signature is not a vote. It just gets me in the door. So for the next three months, I will redouble my efforts to reach out to every corner of our diverse community to talk about my record of accomplishments and, most importantly, to listen.

I've done a lot of listening since my last election. Elections have a funny way of making politicians sit up and take notice, and my close call in the last go-around told me I had some work to do and some fences to mend.

And so I re-instated the concept of "service" in the Ward Service Office. No longer are phone calls left un-returned and e-mails left un-answered.

My office receives over 10,000 individual requests for service each and every year. Despite this enormous volume, my office staff understands their primary obligation is to respond to service requests in a prompt and courteous fashion.

City service cuts and furlough days have greatly hindered our ability to fulfill requests as quickly as we would like, but you deserve to have your phone calls returned and your e-mails answered promptly so that you know we're doing our best to address your concern.

We still are not perfect, but we continue to strive for perfection.

I want to recognize my chief-of-staff, Betsy Vandercook who has been at the helm for the last three and a half years, Betsy is my resident fire fighter and crisis manager, putting out fires and solving crises in the office each and every day. She leads by example, regularly working fifty to sixty hours, getting the job done for the people of the 49th Ward.

I would also like to recognize the other members of the 49th Ward Service Office team-Mike Land, Wayne Frazier, and Luis Klein. They have stepped up their game. Working for me is by no means a 9-5 job. My staff understands the importance of being a visible presence in the neighborhood, not only during regular office hours, but also evening and weekends.

Though he doesn't work for me directly, my Ward Superintendent Greg Wagner is a valued partner on the Ward Service Office team. Greg does whatever it takes to keep the ward clean. A lifelong member of St. Margaret Mary's Parish, his roots in our neighborhood run deep. He shares my deep and abiding love for our neighborhood and possesses a work ethic that is second to none.

Thank you, Greg, for your service to our community.

The Service Office is also blessed with a team of wonderful volunteers and student interns who serve on the front lines, otherwise known as the Ward Service Office front desk. Their presence as the first line of defense allows my staff to be more effective in their daily work. Betsy deserves a lot of credit for recruiting these amazing volunteers and interns, whose invaluable assistance allows the rest of my team to be more effective in their daily work.

Thank you to all my volunteers and interns for volunteering your time to our community.

The last aldermanic election results also told me that my constituents didn't know what I was doing. Some of our most exciting and path-breaking initiatives, such as our community-based downzoning initiative that controlled unchecked development, didn't get the attention they deserved because people didn't know about them.

That wasn't your fault; it was my fault. I have learned that communicating what you do in government is almost as important as actually doing it. And in the age of the Internet, there is no excuse for any elected official not to provide free and open communication with his or her constituents.

Any 49th Ward resident who has signed onto my electronic newsletters now gets almost daily reports from me about issues of concern in the ward. Sometimes they're serious and sometimes they're fun, but know that each and every e-mail sent from my office is written personally by me, not some invisible communications firm or P.R. agency.

Improved service delivery and greater communication are certainly important, but tonight I want to spend a few minutes talking about building our community. Building a community is about much more than bricks and mortar.

Of course, I've been thrilled to shepherd the beautiful improvements to the Morse/Glenwood streetscape, and I'm looking forward to the similar streetscape we are implementing on Howard Street next year. The beautiful Howard El terminal and the state-of-the-art firehouse on Clark are welcome additions to our community. And it's been great to work through our 49th Ward Participatory Budgeting process to allocate my aldermanic menu funds.

But what I'm talking about here is building a community of shared values and mutual respect. In the four years since the last very bitter and divisive aldermanic campaign, we as a community have lowered our voices and raised our sights. At a time when our nation seems more polarized than ever, with vitriol spewing from the mouths of so many and gridlock becoming the norm, we in the 49th Ward have become stronger working together.

When Barb and I formed the 49th Ward Green Corps in 2007, we reached out to those who supported my opponent and invited them to join our cause. Despite our differences in the last campaign, all of us agreed on the common goal of building a greener, more sustainable community.

Together we launched a series of "Why Green Matters Here" workshops, which informed 49th Ward residents about the latest in environmental best practices. And we initiated the annual "49th Ward Community Swap," the brainchild of neighborhood resident, Autumn Franger, where people from all walks of life, from the well-off to the very poor, came together to trade their stuff, but more importantly, to interact as one community.

We are stronger working together.

We worked with the Rogers Park Business Alliance and scores of neighborhood volunteers to launch the Glenwood Sunday Market. In just a few months', time the Glenwood Market has become one of the most popular boutique farmers' markets in the nation, so popular, in fact, that we have launched a winter version of the Glenwood Sunday Market.

The Market not only provides 49th Ward residents with healthy fresh produce, but it has become a community gathering place, a neighborhood town square.

We are stronger working together.

Who would have thought that an election could become a community building exercise, but that's exactly what happened last April when our community came together to vote in the nation's first Participatory Budgeting election. Not only did I give my constituents real power to decide how to spend their tax dollars, but election day itself took on the feel of a county fair, as over 1,600 49th Ward residents gathered at the Chicago Math and Science Academy to cast their ballots as one community.

We are stronger working together.

"Follow Me on Friday," a simple idea of one of my volunteers, Deborah Rice, became an instant success and a low cost way to promote local businesses and build community. Each week I pick a local restaurant or watering hole where anyone in the ward can join me on an informal basis after work on Friday for some appetizers and a drink. What originally was intended as a one-time event, soon blossomed into a neighborhood institution with a growing following. As one Follow Me on Friday attendee told me last week, fun activities such as Follow Me on Friday make her feel good about our neighborhood.

We are stronger working together.

No greater example exists of the power of a community working together than our efforts to clean up the apartment building now known as Reside on Morse. Located at the northeast corner of Morse and Glenwood, that building was long a source of much crime and disorder on Morse Avenue. With the help of CAPS beat 2431 under the leadership of Kevin O'Neil and other community activists, my office worked with the city to apply pressure to the landlord to sell his building to a responsible owner.

More than any single event, that building's turn-around has contributed to the renaissance of Morse Avenue.

We are stronger working together.

Does that mean we no longer disagree? Of course not. We are a diverse community with a diversity of perspectives and points of view, but we should always express our disagreements in an honest, open and respectful fashion where personal attacks and questioning motives are no longer part of the equation.

We are stronger working together.

And what of the future?

We certainly are not immune from the effects of this horrible economic recession. Literally hundreds of people in the 49th Ward have lost their homes or are facing the possibility of foreclosure. At the same time rent levels are out of the reach of many tenants and landlords are struggling with vacancies and trying to make ends meet. Though hundreds of units of affordable housing have been created during my tenure as alderman, the need for affordable housing far outpaces the supply and much more work remains to be done Many innovative ideas for addressing our affordable housing crisis have been proposed and are worthy of serious consideration.

I have called upon our community leaders and some of the greatest minds in the Chicago affordable housing community to join with me in an Affordable Housing Task Force to evaluate these proposals and perhaps develop some proposals of their own. There is no shortage of talent in our community and no shortage of bold and creative ideas.

We are stronger working together.

Though we have made significant progress over the years, crime and social disorder continue to affect our community. We are blessed with strong community leaders who work tirelessly for a safer neighborhood. For nearly twenty years under community policing, our neighborhood has worked hand in glove with the 24th District police at a proactive approach to fighting crime. It is no coincidence that crime rates began to fall with the advent of community policing.

Tragically and inexplicably, the Daley Administration's recent decision to reduce drastically the number of community policing officers threatens to gut this important initiative. Working our neighborhood crime-fighting leaders, I will push the new mayor to restore community policing funding and reverse the Daley Administration's penny wise and pound foolish approach.

We are stronger working together.

In spite of the worldwide economic recession, new businesses continue to open in our community. In the last year alone we have celebrated the opening or expansion of new businesses on Morse, Glenwood, Clark and Howard. In addition, the Howard Street business district east of Clark next year will receive the same type of facelift that Morse Avenue is now undergoing.

And I have been working closely with the City of Chicago Department of Community Development to acquire on behalf of the city the old Lerner Property site on Howard and Ashland. If the city is able to acquire the property, I will begin a thorough community process to determine what should be done to improve this long-standing eyesore.

We are stronger working together.

There are many places in our ward where I could have announced my re-election bid, but I chose to be right here at the Heartland Café. Some might suggest I chose this stage because of its track record as a successful launching pad for elected officials. After all, David Orr, Harold Washington, Barack Obama and most recently Governor Pat Quinn all spoke here at critical points in their wining campaigns, and perhaps I was hoping a little of that karma would rub off on me.

But actually I chose the Heartland tonight for a different reason. For thirty-five years Michael James and Katy Hogan have built not just another restaurant, but a community. A community where all are welcome. A community where differences are not just tolerated but embraced. A community where doing good is valued more than getting ahead. A community that recognizes we are all in this together. In short, a community much like the 49th Ward.

Two months ago, Michael and Katy's backs were against the wall. Mounting bills threatened to close their business. The Heartland was on the verge of going dark, and dozens of people were at risk of losing their livelihood.

Our community came together and answered the call. Like an urban barn raising, hundreds of people flocked through these doors to lend a helping hand. Within days, people organized fundraisers and tens of thousands of dollars were raised. Many others made sure to include the Heartland on their dining excursions and to shop at their store.

No fingers of blame were pointed, no fault was apportioned. All that mattered was that the owners of a valued neighborhood business were in trouble and needed our help. Today the doors of the Heartland remain open and Katy and Michael remain very much an integral part of our neighborhood.

In many respects our wonderful 49th Ward community mirrors the Heartland. We have faced our challenges over the years, but with each new challenge we not only survive but grow and thrive.

Indeed there is nothing we can't do if we all work together.

Friends and neighbors, four years ago you gave me another chance to prove that I still had it in me. I thank you for that opportunity, and I hope I have earned your confidence. I'm at the top of my game, and if you honor me with another four years, I promise you the best is yet to come.

Thank you very much.