“We will find you and be fair to you wherever you are.”
I was listening to an old This American Life (TAL) episode last week, episode #84, originally broadcast over 10 years ago.
Breaking form for TAL, instead of picking a topic and playing a variety of stories on that theme, they have an hour long episode about Chicago’s first black mayor, Harold Washington.
It’s an interesting episode, it uses this one story to dig a little bit into American politics and race, and it makes a lot of good points that might make one really hopeful. They even make the connection between Chicago 20 years ago, and the candidacy of the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, Senator Obama.
But the one gem that I love most of all is a quote from Mayor Washington about fairness. It seems that in Chicago, (and everywhere else in the world) to the victor belongs the spoils. The group that puts a mayor into office gets a bigger slice of the pie. But that was not how Harold rolled. He insisted on being fair. Every program and initiative he pushed through benefited whites and blacks equally, much to the chagrin of some of his supporters. They expert a speech from the mayor, he says:
“No one, but no one in this city, no matter where they live, or how they live is free from the fairness of our administration. We’ll find you and be fair to you wherever you are. “
(Listen to the clip here) I recommend having a listen, he is a great orator, and the clip is only 1 minute 30 seconds.
That quote tickles me to pieces, but it occurs to me that the internet and Advice Network embody this idea as well. For the first time ever, we are all free to get our name, or ideas, and our advice into the world.
