Emanuel fires back at Chris Kennedy

The Chicago Tribune reports:

Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Friday called Democratic governor candidate Chris Kennedy’s claim that the mayor is making Chicago “whiter” and wealthier a “hallucinatory” insult.

Emanuel said he’s “looking forward to ideas, not insults” in his first public comments since Kennedy on Wednesday accused him of leading a "strategic gentrification plan” forcing African-American residents out of the city.


“It is easy to cast blame and point fingers,” the mayor said. “Where are the ideas? Where are the solutions, real solutions to real challenges that make those challenges opportunities?”

Emanuel also quoted a Chicago Tribune editorial that was critical of Kennedy’s comments. “As the Chicago Tribune referred to it today as imaginary, hallucinatory,” he said. “I hope nobody ever describes any of my ideas that way.”

Kennedy was holding a news conference about gun violence in North Lawndale on Tuesday when he singled out the mayor.

"I believe that black people are being pushed out of Chicago intentionally by a strategy that involves disinvestment in communities being implemented by the city administration, and I believe Rahm Emanuel is the head of the city administration and therefore needs to be held responsible for those outcomes," Kennedy said.

Federal census figures show that in 2010, a year before Emanuel was first elected mayor, Chicago's African-American population totaled 895,294, or 33.2 percent.

Census data released last year showed the number of black residents declining to 793,852, about 29.3 percent of the city's population. That continued a long-term decline in African-American population, as Chicago also lost 177,404 black residents between 2000 and 2010, census figures showed.

Gentry liberals look to "relocate" black folks....