YouSaid · the spoken record

Lori Lightfoot

lines on the record: 61
first: 2020-05-18
most recent: 2020-05-18
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“No, look, I don't know him, but I've had a lot of exposure to him. He used to come to police board meetings when I was a police board president, sitting in front of me. And he likes being provocative. He likes being controversial. He loves the media. But I also know that he is now the leader of the largest police union in my city, and I have to figure out how we can forge some kind of working relationship if it's possible. We've had some preliminary conversations. I'm expecting that we will be getting together relatively soon. I intend to give him the benefit of the doubt, but I'm not going to cut and paste my values to try to accommodate somebody whose values are very different than my own. Police officers are important. We need to support them, and I'm going to continue to do that no matter who their leader is. But I hope that we can reach some common ground for the benefit of his members, but also for the benefit of the department in the city.”
2020-05-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 386 — Mayor Lori Lightfoot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And you've got to make sure you empower that leader. But I'm also hands-on. You know, as I say to them all the time, I don't have time or inclination to be the mayor just of the police department, but I'm going to be hands-on and I'm going to be a president until I feel like we are moved to a different chapter in the history of this police department and we are just not there yet.”
2020-05-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 386 — Mayor Lori Lightfoot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Community. Those are hard things to do, but if you don't do those things and you don't do them consistently forever, you're never going to bridge that divide. And then inside of the police department itself, man-o-man, it is a complicated, tough organization. Cultural mores run deep. And it is a constant struggle. It's a battle. And you've got to have a very strong leader at the top.”
2020-05-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 386 — Mayor Lori Lightfoot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's not easy, obviously, and you have to really set the right vision for what policing has to be in the city. Like many things in public life, if you don't have the community on your side, you will never be successful. And effective policing depends upon the legitimacy of the police in the eyes of the community that they are sworn to protect. And understanding that kind of basic fact. You work everything else around that, meaning you've got to bring officers into communities and let them see the nuance and not just the crime statistics. You've got to bring the people into the academy so that they see officers in a very different light. You've got to put them in academia where they interact as human beings, not the cops and the”
2020-05-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 386 — Mayor Lori Lightfoot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We both have experience with UOC. What do they teach us? People are rational economic actors. When you have nothing and then there's this opportunity for something. And when drug dealing becomes the only form of economic activity that can get you money to take care of your basic needs. So our goal has to be obviously to lock up violent people and make the community safe, but it has to be grounded in a strategy of supplanting that form of the economy with another that's legitimate and gives people a pipeline for a lifetime.”
2020-05-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 386 — Mayor Lori Lightfoot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The Ed Burke's perspective, the guy hadn't come across with the money. He hadn't hired him to do the legal work. And so while this person probably didn't know there was a criminal conspiracy going on, the obedience to this power and doing something that didn't comport at all with building code or what is actual true job was, but the willingness to be a party to it because of powerful Alderman and his staff had commanded it. We have just tolerated corruption way too long. And, you know, gang violence is really complicated, but in short strokes, it comes down in my mind to poverty. It's the absence of. It's the absence of jobs, investments, money, good quality education.”
2020-05-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 386 — Mayor Lori Lightfoot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's a lot of fascinating things about the indictment, but to me, one of the most telling and I think response to your question is there's some dude from the buildings department that gets whistled to at Burke's ward office. He stays there for five or ten minutes, clearly got a set of instructions, and then dutifully went and on some trumped-up bases shut down a building site because”
2020-05-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 386 — Mayor Lori Lightfoot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Those are both great and big, complicated questions. On the public corruption, I think part of it is just because we've tolerated it too long. I don't think Chicago historically is any more corrupt than other places. New York, you know, Philadelphia, LA. But the tolerance for it in those other places became less and less over time. In my experience in 30 plus years of living in the city, The tolerance for it is still really great. You probably didn't read the indictment of Ed Burke, but I did.”
2020-05-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 386 — Mayor Lori Lightfoot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Way, but the thing that gives me then and now heart is I had people from every side of the V, meaning prosecutors, defendants, judges, a whole host of people from the bar in Chicago that stood up and said, I've worked with Lori Lightfoot, I know who she is, this is a person of integrity. Luckily, Posner cited that in saying, well, the public rebuke is enough, but if you've dealt with Posner, you know that he's undaunted by the facts.”
2020-05-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 386 — Mayor Lori Lightfoot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was fundamentally unjust. It's too complicated to explain here, but You know, I was a lowman on a tonal pole involving an international extradition. As you might imagine, as a junior lawyer in the office, I didn't make those kind of decisions on my own. I made them with my supervisor. But Posner, I think, frankly got over his skis and wanted to hold the U.S. Attorney's office responsible. There were some other, I think, dynamics going on between the Seventh Circuit and the office at the time. I got the short end of the proverbial stick. I pride myself on my integrity. I worry over, particularly when I was a lawyer, every word I wrote. When I was signing my name on a pleading, I wanted to make sure that with something I could be proud of and that I could defend. And I never have ever in 30 plus years of practice departed from that. Obviously the Seventh Circuit saw it in a different way.”
2020-05-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 386 — Mayor Lori Lightfoot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Particularly in a time like this where literally every single day I'm making tens of if not hundreds of decisions, micro decisions every day and big decisions every day but being able to have a sense of the pulse of people whose lives are going to be affected by what you're doing, that's a good thing. It makes things slower, but it's a better thing at the end.”
2020-05-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 386 — Mayor Lori Lightfoot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is kind of a unique collegial world. And of course you have discretion, but you're talking through these issues with your colleagues, with your supervisor on a regular basis. And so I learned a lot about collegiality from that experience. And I hope that my style as mayor, both with my team but also in embracing members of the public is much more collegial because of that experience. And what I know is that I'm very decisive. I can get to a decision pretty quickly. But the best decisions and the ones that are most valued are the ones where you bring people along on the journey from the very beginning. So, you know, I don't think that you do a plebiscite on every decision you can. You'll be paralyzed.”
2020-05-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 386 — Mayor Lori Lightfoot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I would actually say that my experience as a prosecutor was very different than what you described. First of all, it's an incredibly collegial place because you can't talk about what you do every day with the world. It's hard to have your spouse relate. And I know this from having drug Amy to a lot of events where there are a bunch of former prosecutors. She learned pretty quickly to say, no, no, I'm good. You go on your own.”
2020-05-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 386 — Mayor Lori Lightfoot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was already charted out, so I kind of fell into the opportunity, but it was the best thing that I could have ever done. Really taught me how to be a lawyer. It taught me the power of being a prosecutor, and by that I mean, you know, you do literally get to make decisions about people's liberty, who gets charged, what they get charged with, how tough you go or not. I mean, that is an awesome power that one can never underestimate. And I got some grief to be sure from my more liberal friends saying, why do you want to be the man? What I wanted to be was somebody who sat at that table because of the power and to bring my life experiences to those very nuanced, discretionary decisions that every prosecutor holds in their hand.”
2020-05-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 386 — Mayor Lori Lightfoot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, ironically, particularly given my brother's circumstance, I had always kind of been drawn to law enforcement. I'm a Rules girl. I believe in justice. And I thought about the FBI when I was in law school, but both because I was gay and also at the time the FBI had a rule that you had to travel to a different, live in a different city for your first five years. I didn't want to do that. So I just kind of put that ambition to the side. But I like the work I was doing at the firm, which increasingly became internal investigations and criminal defense work. And I work with a number of federal prosecutors, former federal prosecutors who suggested to me that if I was interested, I was not one of these law school people who had the ambition and my professional life.”
2020-05-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 386 — Mayor Lori Lightfoot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But something clicked over time in law school where I just felt like I'm not going to be happy if I'm not who I am. And to my parents credit, when I told them, they couldn't have been more gracious. They couldn't have been more lovely. And my father really, I think, was my mother didn't talk much about it because that's just what she doesn't do and she doesn't want to talk about something. She just shuts it off and moves on. But my father was lovely and couldn't have been more generous in embracing and loving.”
2020-05-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 386 — Mayor Lori Lightfoot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, coming out at the University of Chicago Law School in 86-87 was not the place that I would have anticipated doing that. You know the law school at that time. It was hyper-constructive. There are very few people of color, but interestingly, there were actually a lot of gays in the law school. And that really helped me. I have still to this day incredible friendships among a lot of gay men and women that I met during that time. And it really helped me see that I could be my authentic self. I worried a lot about losing my parents. My parents were really going to church every Sunday, every Wednesday, and a couple other days in between conservatives. I didn't know at the time, of course, I didn't know anybody gay that was when I was growing up. And of course, with benefit of hindsight, I did. And so I spent a lot of years worrying about losing my parents.”
2020-05-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 386 — Mayor Lori Lightfoot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and the days after how things were so tumultuous, I walked through the city hall lobby to view his body. I was at UIC when that infamous rally was held and people who were saying no deals, no deals had already cut their deal.”
2020-05-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 386 — Mayor Lori Lightfoot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And seeing the machine in all of its warts and glory and then understanding the excitement that he ignited, particularly in Black Chicago and the kind of progressive lakefront liberals, as they were called in those days. And, you know, I remember Election Day really, really well. And I left in the morning and I planned to vote after I came home from class and I had like 10 notes on my door saying, hey, you haven't voted. Hey, you haven't voted. Now that was not my experience and I thought how the hell do these people know I didn't vote yet? Because I didn't understand At that stage, the dynamics, but it was like nothing that I'd ever seen. And then I remember really clearly hearing the news.”
2020-05-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 386 — Mayor Lori Lightfoot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I remember him because when I was a junior in college, I took a semester and worked in Washington and attended American University. And I just by chance happened to be in a committee hearing as a young staffer when the announcement came out that he had won. And he was in Washington. He's being congratulated by his colleagues. So I was fascinated from him of him from a distance. And then fast forward several years later, I never knew him as a mayor, as a human being, but yeah, he clearly was one of the most fascinating, charismatic elected officials. I think the city and maybe this country has ever seen. And coming here in 86 when he was running for re-election,”
2020-05-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 386 — Mayor Lori Lightfoot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“With the young men that were both cooperators but also the young men that were, we were arranging plea deals for. Some of the men that I prosecuted here on the streets in Chicago ended up in a facility in Myelan, Michigan, when my brother was there at the same time. So that made four interesting conversations with him and with my parents. Look, when you have a family member who is locked up, it has incredible impact, emotional impact. You can't, my brother was still locked up when my dad died, and he didn't get to say goodbye. And I know that haunts him. So there's nothing about the incarceration of human beings that is easy, that is simple, even the people that are the most dangerous. And that are psychopaths. And some of them are. That's somebody's kid. That somebody's sibling. And you can never forget that. And I certainly never.”
2020-05-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 386 — Mayor Lori Lightfoot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, it really did from the very beginning. When I was going through the final stages of my background check as a federal prosecutor, my brother was a fugitive. And I had to sign allegiance form, which I still makes me angry. I'll use that word, that I was going to be loyal to the Constitution and how the laws, because my brother was a fugitive from justice. Yeah, and of course, like with seeing my father and the men in the eyes of really hardworking men of color, I of course thought about my brother when I was prosecuting Chicago Street gang members. And it made me want to know their stories. It made me want to understand how they came to choose the life that they chose. And we had a range of interesting conversations.”
2020-05-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 386 — Mayor Lori Lightfoot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Kind of. We go through ebs and flows. He came and he was here for the inauguration and our context has kind of slowly diminished over time. My brother, you know, he struggles with addiction still. He's now 60-something years old. He's got some physical challenges, but not having any skill that's transferable. He'd love to be wearing a suit every day and being in office. That's just not realistic when you've been a guy on the streets for most of your life. And so the hustle is very still, very alluring to him.”
2020-05-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 386 — Mayor Lori Lightfoot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Five or six years ago, he lives now in the same town that my mother lives in. But when you're a 60-something year old man and you've never really had a legitimate job in your life and you've spent the entirety of your growing up years on the inside, that does something to you.”
2020-05-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 386 — Mayor Lori Lightfoot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was really hard. It was really hard on us as a family. I've told this story. But yeah, for some people, and my brother was definitely one of them, the street life is almost like a narcotic in and of itself. It is incredibly alluring. And my brother started kind of going in a different direction when he was a teenager. I can remember when he was probably 13, 14 years old hanging out with a group of guys, some of whom beat him to jail, some of whom died. He had a friend who was killed in a robbery when he was a teenager. But my brother was determined to really take a very different course. And he ended up spending most of his adult life locked up. The last was 17 years in federal prison. He got out now probably.”
2020-05-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 386 — Mayor Lori Lightfoot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Ran for election and then for the rest of my time in school, she was a member of the school board. So frankly, that helped a lot. But when I got to high school and then it was one public high school in my town, I started then seeing black kids, some of whom I knew from church, but a lot of whom I didn't know. And it was a struggle because I stood out like a sore thumb. I talk like I talk now. I didn't, as they said, talk black. And there was a lot of you think you're better and a lot of the petty crap that happens in junior high and really in high school. I experienced a lot of that. But I had my mother in my ear constantly, literally, but also figuratively telling me to push myself, to do the best I could, not let people bring me down.”
2020-05-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 386 — Mayor Lori Lightfoot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, yes and no, right? I grew up in the late 60s and early 70s and while it was Ohio, not Alabama, segregation was still an issue, you know, blatant on the table, racial discrimination was still a thing. There were certain things I couldn't do and I knew places I couldn't go because I was black that my classmates were going to. And yeah, I mean, I definitely struggled with my identity as a black person for a long time growing up in very white environment. I think the thing that was helpful to me is I was a good student. So I was always one of the best in my class, best in the school. That made a huge difference. And then when I was in seventh or eighth grade, my mother got appointed to the local school board. And then she”
2020-05-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 386 — Mayor Lori Lightfoot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When he left my elementary school for the entirety of the rest of the time that I was there, which was about five years from first grade to sixth grade, I was literally the only black kid in my school. And in my town, it was black and white. There were tiny, maybe two or three families that were Latinx. So yeah, I grew up for most of my schooling until I got to high school as being either the only or a small handful of black students in an otherwise white school.”
2020-05-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 386 — Mayor Lori Lightfoot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that look, the town was incredibly segregated. And at the time that my parents were making a decision about where they could buy, they wanted to buy, well, we lived in this area for the entirety of my life. We moved probably into a house that was about four or five blocks away from our rental home. But they wanted to us to be able to stay close to the friends that we had known our entire growing up years and to be in the same school system that we had known. So my parents really sacrificed everything for us as children. And really, the way in which they lived their lives was about what was best for us. And so that really drove the decisions. And you're right. When I have a brother who's six years older than me,”
2020-05-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 386 — Mayor Lori Lightfoot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It definitely deeply influenced me to see my father worrying every single day about basics, the utilities, its car payment, rent, and then we were fortunate enough to move into a house and have a mortgage. I never wanted to struggle in the way that he did. And I didn't know where my life would take me, but I knew that I wanted to have some economic freedom at least so that I could help them, which I have done, but also be able to help myself and have some freedom. You know, when you have to worry every single day about staying in your house, about somebody coming and taking your car, about just being able to get through the day financially, that takes a toll on you. And that was a story of my parents' life for much of their married life. Together”
2020-05-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 386 — Mayor Lori Lightfoot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm much more like her in terms of personality. But just a good, decent human being. And I think a lot about him every day. I see my father in the faces of men of color who are working their tails off to have some dignity. Sorry”
2020-05-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 386 — Mayor Lori Lightfoot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Shaped and confined his world. But my dad had a great sense of humor. He loved life, but he had to work hard every single day. I talk a lot about my mother because I spent a lot of time with my mother as a kid because my dad was working two and three jobs every day. And just to, you know, he worked his full-time job and then he would come home and eat and then he'd go and do work at night. And then on the weekends he was a barber. So he cut people's hair and shine shoes. That's what my dad in. And Sundays were really the only day where I got to see my dad for the entirety of the day because his work life was six days a week. But he's a very, very different person than my mom in some ways very different than me.”
2020-05-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 386 — Mayor Lori Lightfoot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My dad's been gone for 10 years and I miss him every day. I have. I have a picture of the two of us inside my bed that I look at at night and I look at it in the morning. He had a very hard life. And in some ways, I think he never recovered from growing up in the South. And then adding proverbial insult to injury, growing up not really having an opportunity to live out his life's ambitions, getting sick so early on in his early 20s, losing his hearing. So being a black man with a high school education and then a profound disability just really”
2020-05-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 386 — Mayor Lori Lightfoot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I worry a lot about them in particular. Now, we also know from the arc of this virus that congregate settings are places where this virus just spreads like wildfire. That's why our Department of Public Health has been very active and engaged with senior centers, nursing homes, and other settings like that because it's so critically important that those places understand the data have every support possible and that they are getting testing of their workers and the residents who live there.”
2020-05-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 386 — Mayor Lori Lightfoot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I think a lot about that as I talk to healthcare workers, as I talk to the unions who are concerned, and also just the folks that run these facilities. I know from my mom's experience, and I hope to God it's a million times better than it was when she was out there, they are on the front lines. They don't get the training that they should get and they don't oftentimes get the kind of equipment to keep them safe. I think it's a different world now, and part of that is because many of these workers are unionized. But we know that there are still other workers, mostly women of color, who are in the care community, who are taking care of seniors. At the end of my mother's work life, she took care of people who were sick and shut in, made the meals, bathed them, and just kept them company. Those workers, they're invisible to men.”
2020-05-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 386 — Mayor Lori Lightfoot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“First, again, we've got to be guided by the data. And the sports league executives that I've talked to, of course, are thinking about how do they get their players back in the field for the obvious reasons. Their most valuable asset, of course, are the players. And every single one of those professional sports teams has really strong, robust unions. So I have confidence that there'll be a meeting of the minds about what makes sense. If I had to predict right now, again, looking into my non-existent crystal ball, I do think that sports will start. There could be some delay, but I don't think they're going to start with fans in the stadiums in the first instance. I just don't see that as a possibility.”
2020-05-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 386 — Mayor Lori Lightfoot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We can't, there's no way anybody who can guarantee what's going to happen in the fall is making it up. There's no guarantee they can be given”
2020-05-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 386 — Mayor Lori Lightfoot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's probably not smart, but we can do it in lots of different ways. We can spread out the spaces because there's lots of different spaces that are available in schools where we can hold classes. They're going to be remote learning that's done, I think, at the city colleges level. Maybe we repurpose some of those spaces. I think the way in which we can think creatively about how to bring our children back with their teachers, there's no limit to that. And we've got to explore every opportunity because of how important it is for those youngest of children to find that connection with their beloved teachers.”
2020-05-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 386 — Mayor Lori Lightfoot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Being able to play safely. All of those things are critically important, particularly for our youngest kids, and that doesn't happen when you're seeing your teacher for the very first time ever on a digital screen. So for those kids, when I think about it, it's really important that we get them back in school. Now, again, we're not going to do it in a way that puts anybody at risk. We're not going to do it in a way that isn't consultative with the entire ecosystem of the school environment, the principles, the teachers, the aides, you know, the lunchroom staff, all of those people are important for the lifeblood of a school. And we got to do it in a way that we keep them safe and we keep the children safe. But absolutely, I have an ambition that if we keep trending in the right direction, we want to get our kids back in school. And it may not be full time 30 kids in a classroom.”
2020-05-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 386 — Mayor Lori Lightfoot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, my law department tells me that every day. Look, my ambition is to get our kids back in school this fall. We have done, I think, yeoman's work on remote learning, but the reality is we have a huge digital divide in various parts of our city that affects our young people's ability to connect up with the internet, Wi-Fi access, and we will end up spending multiple tens of millions of dollars to address that issue. And we got to address it because it's a larger problem. But what I also know is I think about the little kids, when my daughter was a three-year-old going to pre-K, the social emotional learning that happens in that environment, when they're away from their parents for the first time and they're with other kids and they're with their teachers and they start to learn the love of learning, structure of school.”
2020-05-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 386 — Mayor Lori Lightfoot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's cathartic, and I get it. But I go back to what led me to close it, and we had done a lot of education around social gathering, the danger of clustering in two larger groups. We talked over and over and over again. And people just flat out ignored the guidance. And what I want to do is when we reopen the lakefront and we will, we do it in a way that's smart and that, you know, unfortunately in many of these things, we have to play to the lowest common denominator. The person who's just not going to pay attention, what do we do to make sure that we can keep that person safe and minimize the risk that they're going to pose to other people? So I've gotten a lot of very interesting suggestions from residents. We're working with a lot of the lakefront aldermen on a plan. We'll get there, but we're just not ready yet.”
2020-05-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 386 — Mayor Lori Lightfoot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I wouldn't say soon, but we are working on plans to be able to open up the lakefront. Look, I get it. I love the lake. There's nothing more calming to me than taking a drive on Lakeshore Drive, finding that little secret spot, which I won't reveal, that I go to just to watch the water and the waves.”
2020-05-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 386 — Mayor Lori Lightfoot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He said that before, and we know that's not true. It's just simply not true. Now, everybody who's named Donald Trump that wants a test can get one, but that's not true for you or me.”
2020-05-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 386 — Mayor Lori Lightfoot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Physical test kits to be able to make sure that we can open safely. And the fact that literally as every man or woman for themselves is a terrible indictment of the federal response, but also it makes it really difficult for us to cogently be able to tell our residents that they're safe because we're scrambling literally every single day following every lead to have a small handful of tests that we can put into a community center or a federally qualified health center or pushing our labs and our hospitals to ramp up their testing capabilities. But it's this scramble and adjuta that's been developed because of the void left by the federal government.”
2020-05-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 386 — Mayor Lori Lightfoot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No doubt, there's no doubt that he's making it harder, but he's making it harder mostly because the federal response has been so halting. And it's been that way really from the very beginning of this pandemic. It was too slow. There wasn't a plan. They weren't bringing us into a lot of the early things that were necessary that they were dictating that had to be operationalized at the local level, particularly around airports and screening and a lot of that. We're on the ground here. We have to take responsibility for that. And they weren't talking to us. And it was very clear that they didn't have a plan. More recently, and we've been well positioned with things like PPEs and vents because our public health department really prepares all year long. But the one thing that we absolutely need to have some uniformity on is testing. We need the...”
2020-05-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 386 — Mayor Lori Lightfoot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just because I don't really think that in this time, in the daily press briefings, that he's offered things that are really helpful and constructive for me as a leader or really for people, residents of Chicago. And in many instances, there's been a lot of reporting on it, of course. He said things that are just downright, dangerous, and dumb. So I don't spend a lot of time kind of trying to unravel the psyche of Donald Trump on a daily basis.”
2020-05-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 386 — Mayor Lori Lightfoot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Do inside some of what we do outside. I think there are ways given the great venues that we have to bring those experiences outside. I do think that that is possible.”
2020-05-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 386 — Mayor Lori Lightfoot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Your body, and I think your mind has an expectation that when a days get longer, when the sun is shining, it's time to be outside. It's time to reconvene with people that you may not have seen during the winter months. So we have to manage that and deal with that reality. And so I've been reading a lot as our Department of Public Health about how we can safely convene, particularly outside. And I think there's opportunities for us to not move away from the diligence about social distancing. That's going to be what's, I think, for the foreseeable future. But I do think that there's a way in which we can gather outside safely with limitations, certainly mask, certainly hand sanitizers, smaller groups, but listen to music. See and play. You know, all the kind of things that we would ordinarily”
2020-05-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 386 — Mayor Lori Lightfoot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I mean, those are all the things that we worry about and talk about on a daily basis and really multiple times a day. Look, we as humans, and I think certainly as Americans, take our physical liberty very seriously. And we like to gather in groups. And our city is really built around having fun, recreational, and entertainment options. That's one of the things that make Chicago special. And as the weather gets warm, and while we didn't have the terrible winter that we've had in”
2020-05-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 386 — Mayor Lori Lightfoot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, there's no question. I mean, we never envisioned that we were going to have the City of Chicago go at a loan strategy. We have to have partnership, both partnerships and helping us think about what the policy prescription should be. But of course partnerships in terms of the money and the revenue. And we've been very fortunate already when we announced, for example, our Invest Southwest program, which is investing in exactly these same neighborhoods We put up money from the city, but we were joined by Bimo Harris Bank that put up $20 million. And then we got another 10 from Starbucks and on and on. We can't do these things and move the needle in a meaningful way without partnerships of the philanthropy community, but also the business community.”
2020-05-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 386 — Mayor Lori Lightfoot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source