Washington S Lessons

It’s Thanksgiving and, quite naturally, my thoughts have turned to Harold Washington.

Not too many of his type are running for mayor, much less getting elected. The last thing anyone in Chicago’s power elite wants is Black people running around talking like Bernie Sanders. Hell, the powers that be have enough trouble putting up with the white Bernie Sanders.

But I don’t want to get too melancholy. There’s another, Trump-related reason I’ve been thinking of Washington these days.

I called Washington, then a congressman, for comments. He called me back when I least expected and left me scrambling to find a pen and paper to take notes as he launched into a dissertation ripping the Black aldermen as “scurrilous sellouts.”

I must make a confession: I didn’t know what quid pro quo meant.

Now, you have two choices when someone uses a word you don’t know. You can ask for a definition. Or you could plow on with the conversation, hoping to figure out the meaning from the context.