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writing for godot

Creative Entrepreneurial Chicago: Antithesis of AltRight Aims and Machinations

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Written by George Monroe   
Friday, 22 September 2017 13:17

 

Despite the daily barrage of destructive pronouncements and actions by the Trump Administration, government leaders of the City of Chicago are collaborating with business leaders to offer support for innovative ideas to reinvent the river that runs through it.  An Ideas Lab called River Edge has invited nine leading architectural firms to develop and share their creative visions.

The city government, led by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, offers opportunities and supports to the Chicago business community.  It expedites trips through complex processes overseen by relevant city departments. It also provides legal protections that are needed to create and operate viable profit-making business enterprises. In turn, businesses put energy and resources into innovative ways to prosper while working to improve the quality of life for the city’s residents and visitors.

A showcase of the goals and current efforts of River Edge Ideas Lab is now on display at Expo 72: 72 East Randolph Street in Chicago.  The public is invited to view the colorful exhibits and share their thoughts on what resonates with them. For additional information see:  ChiRiverLab.com

Take a tour through this exhibit guided by the savvy young men and women who have   put it together. Witness the colorful displays of creative improvements superimposed on enlarged photographs of actual city features alongside the river. See the proposed designs to enhance them for both enjoyment and commercial utility.

This project to reinvent the Chicago River certainly embraces the basic premises for creative reconstruction of America’s cities cited in the new book by Michael Bloomberg and Carl Pope entitled, Climate of Hope: How Cities Businesses and Citizens can Save the Planet.

The aims and efforts of this project are in stark contrast with the ego-centric aims and efforts of those who have currently captured our national government.  Greedy old men (and a few women) focused exclusively on acquiring fortunes and protecting them have bought and stolen their way to control of elected offices and cabinet appointments. They are interested in monopolistic control rather than innovative improvements of aging infrastructure or any other public goods that cost money they believe should belong to them. It hurts to know that President Trump and his minions are working to help them destroy our inclusive democracy and replace it with a plutocracy managed by a select few.  It hurts even more to realize that they are following a destructive plan devised by someone who gained fame and fortune in Chicago.

While on the faculty at the University of Chicago, economics professor Milton Friedman realized that the individualist doctrines embedded in the writings of Ayn Rand were what greedy power seekers everywhere wanted to hear.  He designed a program to rapidly change existing governments to the free market design and claimed it was validated by his research. Friedman and his students of free market economics were able to spread this illusion around the world as scientifically proven economic gospel. They educated and coached powerful dictators like Augusto Pinochet as he tried to implement it with “shock and awe” in the stunned South American country of Chile. The U. S. Government led by George Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld also tried to implement it with a blitzkrieg of “shock and awe” in Iraq.  The catastrophic results are still unfolding.

Friedman’s design does work to create the instant change sought by a few. However, it comes at a terrible price for many. Torture, and even killing, are sanctioned as last resort tools to create the conditions for full and unwavering support of unregulated free market capitalism. Guided by Friedman and his “Chicago Boys”, Pinochet “disappeared” more than thirty thousand resisters during application of this design in Chile.  For the full details of it’s disastrous effects in that country and other places around the world, read the internationally praised book by Naomi Klein entitled, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.

A resilient Chicago has met many potentially destructive challenges. It resolved them with a “can do” attitude and plenty of local talent. This creative and constructive application of resources was immortalized by literary giant, Carl Sandburg, when he described Chicago in one of his poems as “City of the Big Shoulders”.  The moral imperatives gifted by the Universal Mind to all of the major religions are transparently creative and constructive. The best examples of how Chicago puts it’s big shoulders to work resolving critical issues are clearly in harmony with those imperatives. Long after the terrible Trump administration and the destructive Friedman economic design have been dispatched to the trashcan of history, forward-looking city development efforts like  Chicago’s River Edge Ideas Lab will be finding new ways to build a better future. 

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