Mayoral Candidacy of 2019

The mayoral candidacy of 2019 is significant because Rahm Emmanuel is no longer running for office. This indicates potential for real, better changes in Chicago. In this unit we studied the analysis of how a speaker appeals to their audience's mind, and what purpose they desire to portray using the tools of rhetoric. Such as genre, occasion, logos, pathos, and ethos. Individually we chose a candidate to research and rhetorically analyze in order to get in their mind and portray them in a speech. We had to depict their character and language style in an answer to a political question concerning a city conflict. Troy Laraviere was a speaker at our school, as well as my candidate of choice. He is a former principal and President of the Chicago Principals and Administrators Association. My class and I interviewed him to understand his future vision for Chicago. Meeting him in real life benefited the process of writing the speech.

I created a video acting out his response. In this scenario, Troy has just gotten off the red line and he enters an uber. The uber driver recognizes Troy and asks him a question about public transportation out of curiosity. Below is the script:


How will you create a better system of transportation for low income neighborhoods?

As someone who knows the experience of daily transportation, having just gotten off the Red line myself, I know that there is a better way for the people who struggle to reach their occupation. First you need to understand that there is a disinvestment in the South and West sides of Chicago. It increases unemployment rates and people are forced to move to the suburbs to be near where they work. Now, when families need to focus on their job or career, they realize reaching it is a job itself. Not only that, but the wages they pay to ride builds up, eating at their income. This isn't limited to adults. Even high school students have to scrape up money to get from place to place, when free fare can be a possibility. As a teacher and ex-principal, I have seen it with my own two eyes, how hard students work just to make it to school early and back in time. It isn't just an exhausting process, it stifles their desires to stay after school longer to pursue an interest. It eats away at their sleep schedule because their homework becomes more of a burden after coming home so late. It tones down their mental abilities to focus and stay motivated. There are three things the CTA needs to begin improving on. One, accessibility, Two, increased speed, and three, frequency. One: There is an unequal lay out of access to train lines. For an example, The Red line and the Blue line run 24 hours, yet the Pink line and the Green line stop running early. This is the favoritism of one urban community over the other. There is a form of gentrification in public transportation. Very recently, there was a 203 million dollar revamp of the Wilson Red Line train stop. 203 million dollars. Now why would they do that? It is used to attract higher income folks, so they will have easier access to their downtown offices. Once again, the minority communities are ignored in these decisions.

PKA. Transportation, 2018