The Audacity of Hope

space with booths of blond wood that seat maybe a hundred people. On any day of the
week, about that many people can be found lining up—families, teenagers, groups of
matronly women and elderly men—all waiting their turn, cafeteria-style, for plates
filled with fried chicken, catfish, hoppin’ John, collard greens, meatloaf, cornbread, and
other soul-food standards. As these folks will tell you, it’s well worth the wait.
The restaurant’s owner, Mac Alexander, is a big, barrel-chested man in his early sixties,
with thinning gray hair, a mustache, and a slight squint behind his glasses that gives him
a pensive, professorial air. He’s an army vet, born in Lexington, Mississippi, who lost
his left leg in Vietnam; after his convalescence, he and his wife moved to Chicago,
where he took business courses while working in a warehouse. In 1972, he opened
Mac’s Records, and helped found the Westside Business Improvement Association,
pledging to fix up what he calls his “little corner of the world.”
By any measure he has succeeded. His record store grew; he opened up the restaurant
and hired local residents to work there; he started buying and rehabbing run-down
buildings and renting them out. It’s because of the efforts of men and women like Mac
that the view along Madison Street is not as grim as the West Side’s reputation might
suggest. There are clothing stores and pharmacies and what seems like a church on
every block. Off the main thoroughfare you will find the same small bungalows—with
neatly trimmed lawns and carefully tended flower beds—that make up many of
Chicago’s neighborhoods.
But travel a few blocks farther in any direction and you will also experience a different
side of Mac’s world: the throngs of young men on corners casting furtive glances up
and down the street; the sound of sirens blending with the periodic thump of car stereos
turned up full blast; the dark, boarded-up buildings and hastily scrawled gang signs; the
rubbish everywhere, swirling in winter winds. Recently, the Chicago Police Department
installed permanent cameras and flashing lights atop the lampposts of Madison, bathing
each block in a perpetual blue glow. The folks who live along Madison didn’t complain;
flashing blue lights are a familiar enough sight. They’re just one more reminder of what
everybody knows—that the community’s immune system has broken down almost
entirely, weakened by drugs and gunfire and despair; that despite the best efforts of
folks like Mac, a virus has taken hold, and a people is wasting away.
“Crime’s nothing new on the West Side,” Mac told me one afternoon as we walked to
look at one of his buildings. “I mean, back in the seventies, the police didn’t really take
the idea of looking after black neighborhoods seriously. As long as trouble didn’t spill
out into the white neighborhoods, they didn’t care. First store I opened, on Lake and
Damen, I must’ve had eight, nine break-ins in a row.
“The police are more responsive now,” Mac said. “The commander out here, he’s a
good brother, does the best he can. But he’s just as overwhelmed as everybody else.
See, these kids out here, they just don’t care. Police don’t scare ’em, jail doesn’t scare
’em—more than half of the young guys out here already got a record. If the police pick
up ten guys standing on a corner, another ten’ll take their place in an hour.
“That’s the thing that’s changed…the attitude of these kids. You can’t blame them,
really, because most of them have nothing at home. Their mothers can’t tell them
nothing—a lot of these women are still children themselves. Father’s in jail. Nobody