Talk:Chicago City Council

I'm opening a discussion about indicating party affiliations on this page, since this issue has caused a number of back-and-forth edits. The core issue is that Chicago City Council elections are non-partisan, i.e. candidates do not have to run on a party line. Many aldermen, but not all, have formal roles in the Cook County Democratic Party. Some are registered Democrats but indicate their status as

Much of the recent edits have constituted a debate over indicating the affiliation of six members to the Chicago chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. The latest edit listed these six members as having a "Socialist" party affiliation -- but this is not accurate. Even if we were to say Democratic Socialist in their party affiliation, what would this mean? For example, Daniel La Spata is a Cook County Democratic Party Committeeman and Andre Vasquez ran for the same position in the 40th ward.

I think our goal should be to reflect the reality that Chicago politics involves overlapping party and bloc affiliations. I propose that we do some combination of the following:

1. Include a "Caucuses" column in the table. This would allow us to indicate, for example, that 19 aldermen are in the Progressive Caucus, and six of those are also in the Socialist Caucus.
2. Include a "Party affiliations" column in the table that can include multiple identifications.
3. Remove the color coding in the table, to stress that party affiliations are informational in this context.

I have reverted the most recent edits concerning party affiliations while we have this discussion. Please respond here with how you think we should proceed before editing these dimensions of the page. I invite others who have made edits along these lines to participate in the discussion: @Iamreallygoodatcheckers: @208.79.27.71: @173.165.84.41: @Mpen320: @Percy the 3rd:. Kumar (talk) 14:54, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

@Kumarhk: What is the deadline for consensus? On my lunch break, I voted that the table to remain as it was prior to the editing and add a section in the article about the various caucuses. This will require figuring out uniform standards for what constitutes a "caucus" in the absence of a credentialing body as opposed to how caucuses in the US House of Representatives work. Feel free to provide feedback to my remarks below.--Mpen320 (talk) 22:00, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

Just the same as Bernie Sanders' running in the Democratic presidential primary doesn't make him a Democrat, these aldermen's participation in Democratic Party politics doesn't necessarily make them Democrats. The two-party system forces candidates into these buckets, but out of convenience rather than steadfast belief. If Bernie had won, people would have certainly said that we had a "Socialist" president, regardless of how accurate one believes that title to be. These aldermen received DSA support and did not disavow it. We shouldn't be forcing the title of "Democrat" onto anyone in a nonpartisan election. 205.172.134.231 (talk) 17:06, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

As you will note from the article list: Daniel La Spata, Jeanette Taylor, Byron Sigcho-Lopez, and Andre Vasquez are self-identified members of the Democratic Party. In addition, all four of them ran for the office of Democratic Committeeman. This office is explicitly a leadership position in the Democratic Party. Additionally, Carlos Ramirez-Rosa is a former Democratic committeeman who was briefly a running mate on a Democratic ticket before resigning due to his views on BDS. To claim these five (of the six) are not Democrats is absurd. Their reasons for being members of the party are irrelevant to the fact they are affiliated. Your example uses ideology and political party interchangeably and that is not how political party affiliation works.--Mpen320 (talk) 18:07, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

Your arguments below convinced me that their party affiliation shouldn't be listed as socialist -- I wasn't trying to promote DSA; I was just surprised not to see these aldermen listed as socialists after their victories got so much press last year.

• I wasn't aware that DSA isn't a political party, but the way you explained it makes sense. However, if we had a parliamentary system, these aldermen would almost certainly identify as socialists.
• I still don't think participating in party politics makes you a member of that party -- the two-party system makes such participation almost obligatory.
• After reading your bullet points, I don't understand why party affiliation is listed on this page at all. Municipal elections have very little to do with national party politics. Combined with the obligatory nature of democratic party membership in Chicago, there is very little value to highlighting party affiliation.
• I'd like to see the suggestions that you and Kumar made implemented.205.172.134.231 (talk) 22:19, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

Kumar and I made very different suggestions so I don't know how we implement them both. I'll address what you've written above. 1) Whether we had a parliamentary system or not is irrelevant to what party one is a member of currently. Being or trying to be an elected member of the party's leadership definitely makes you a member. You'll notice that I have identified Rossana Rodriguez Sanchez as an independent. Why? That is how she identifies. 2) The party affiliation is for informational purposes just like the article on the Nebraska Legislature. 3) Now that we have established they are Democrats, why do you have an issue including that information?--Mpen320 (talk) 22:48, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

1) I don't think I agreed that they are democrats. They participate in party politics, an unfortunate, but necessary evil. I don't think anyone calls Bernie Sanders a democrat, and he's part of dem party leadership in the US Senate.

2) I'm okay with removing the socialist ID (or relegating it to a caucus column) but I think the dem party ID should be removed as well. It serves no purpose other than to confuse. These people are only dems out of convenience and it really has no bearing on their activities in city government.

3) I liked the ideas of an inclusion of a "caucuses" column, reforming the color coding (if the party ID is not removed completely), and drafting the "warning" for editors.205.172.134.231 (talk) 23:10, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

Thank you both for the discussion. After reading through the arguments, I am broadly in agreement with Mpen320.

• I agree that the party affiliation column should include self-identified party affiliations, and fixing the color coding issue will be helpful. Given that other Wikipedia pages for non-partisan legislative bodies do include a party column of this sort, I would be fine with keeping it here. I think we should expand the explanatory footnote about party affiliations to explain these issues more clearly and/or add explanatory footnotes for the DSA-affiliated member that their DSA affiliation does not constitute a formal political party affiliation.
• The problem with there not being formal rules on what constitutes a caucus in City Council does give me pause about including a caucus column. I think we can work out how to incorporate information about caucuses in this page separately, as Mpen320 suggested, and leave it out of the table for now.

Re: how long voting is open, I suggest we leave it open for 2 more days to see if any other editors want to chime in. Apologies if there's stated Wikipedia policy on how long votes are supposed to last and I've missed it (I edit Chicago-related pages periodically and do some other minor edits, but am not very familiar with the details of Wikipedia policy). Kumar (talk) 23:20, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

I have no idea if there is a set period of time a page must wait. Generally it is about reaching consensus which I think takes more than the time we have been discussing it. End of the week maybe? I don't know.--Mpen320 (talk) 00:10, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

---
Vote no policy change. I am against the mention of caucuses in the table listing the alderman. We never had issues when there was only one DSA officeholder (Carlos Ramirez-Rosa from 2015-2019) so I am confused as to how existing policy needs to be changed simply because there are now multiple members of that organization serving on the Council. I believe these edits are about promoting the Democratic Socialists of America. However, for the purposes of my recommendations, I will assume good faith that these edits are not an effort to make the section a promotion for the Democratic Socialists of America.

• The Democratic Socialists of America are not a political party. They are an advocacy organization that endorses in elections. They should not be included. By this logic, we would include Sierra Club membership in the list.
• There is no table listing for a legislative body I could find that includes caucus membership.
  • A blurb at the top about the high number of DSA members and a section in the article listing the caucuses and their current membership is sufficient to cover that the Chicago City Council has members of DSA.
• There are numerous “caucuses” and many members of the City Council are members of multiple caucuses. Caucus affiliation is better kept for individual articles and possibly a section on caucuses in the general article as proposed by me above. Most of the caucuses do not have websites or a lot of third party, notable coverage.
• Unlike the U.S. House of Representatives, there is no official caucus organization procedure. Anyone can just declare a caucus which creates a problem for Wikipedia between caucuses that are more organized (Socialist, Black, Progressive, Latino) and groups like the Paul Douglas Alliance.
• Only the party affiliation column should be blue/red/grey/etc. I don't know who changed it or why. This would mirror the Nebraska Legislature a de jure nonpartisan body whose Wikipedia article includes a listing of the legislators de facto party affiliations.
  • It would also mirror numerous other member listings including the New York City Council, Illinois House of Representatives, and Illinois Senate.
• I also find the community area column to be unwieldy, but I don't have Wikipedia policy to rely on other than aesthetics. A ward map makes far more sense in my opinion. We have several on Wikipedia that could be adapted for such a purpose. If you read Community areas in Chicago you'll see that "areas do not always correspond to popular conceptions of the neighborhoods" which minimizes its value as opposed to a county listing in a state legislature article.
  • As they exist now, they lack citation.
• Whatever we decide needs to be included as a “warning” visible to editors.
  • My opinion is “Political parties must be established political parties that run candidates in partisan elections and are based on the self-identification of the Alderperson. This will preempt a debate on whether Napolitano is a Republican (which he most certainly is) or an Independent (which is how he publicly identifies). Illinois does not have party registration and Illinois has open primaries.

No matter the outcome of this discussion, we will need to have a separate policy discussion on what qualifies a "caucus" for this article's purposes. In the discussion, I will make it a point that Socialist should qualify for that section.--Mpen320 (talk) 18:00, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

• Vote some change I like the idea of adding the caucuses to the column. It would give the reader even more incite into how this alderman may vote ore believe, and since the DSA shouldn't be mentioned in the political party column or the infobox infographic this caucus column will help show there membership as DSA in a fair way through showing the socialist caucus. When it comes to how the political party should be presented, I agree with Mpen320 that it should be based on the self-identification of the Alderperson. This is the precedent per other party representation in nonpartisan bodies. I touched on this above, but the DSA is not a political party, it should not be mentioned in the political party column or on the infobox infographic. I don't like the idea of removing the color coded table or infobox color chart, per the precedent of other nonpartisan bodies having them. Iamreallygoodatcheckers (talk) 08:56, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

Question: 1) How do we account for people who are members of multiple caucuses? For example, Carlos Rosa would be a member of the LGBT Caucus, Progressive Caucus, and Socialist Caucus? I have no issue mentioning caucuses in another part of the article. Plus, wouldn't voting habits be better in the actual alderperson's article or the actual caucus section I propose? Besides, some of the caucuses don't vote as a bloc (see the Black Caucus)--Mpen320 (talk) 14:40, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

I agree with you now. I really think we should mention the caucuses in another section, but the column idea is not the best idea. Iamreallygoodatcheckers (talk) 06:47, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

I agree that caucus information should be included in a separate section. How should we organize that section -- a table indicating caucus membership of each alderman, or a text discussion of the caucuses with links to the caucus pages where readers can find out membership information? Kumar (talk) 03:47, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

Chicago aldermen are technically nonpartisan, so the current partisan breakdown of the aldermen isn't that helpful. Should it be altered to reflect the existence of the Socialist Caucus as a distinctive bloc on the council, along with the 1-2 "Republican independents" (Napolitano and Sposato)?

I'm not sure what to do about the partisan identification, but I think it would be helpful to indicate caucus memberships once they are formalized. So this would include not only the (potential) socialist caucus, but also the progressive, black, Latino, LGBT, and women's caucuses. Kumar R (talk) 21:28, 29 May 2019 (UTC)

--I agree. I don't understand where the partisan information is coming from here? Is there some kind of official confirmation of this 'information'? It can't be personal registration bc there is no 'democratic socialist' party. And caucuses are just that, caucuses. Think such a designations needs to have some kind of verified system it's using. --Carl G. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.12.254.61 (talk) 23:40, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

Napolitano is listed as a Republican in this article, but on his wiki page it states he's independent. Should we change his political party listing to independent?Iamreallygoodatcheckers (talk) 01:37, 13 April 2019 (UTC)

It doesn't seem particularly impartial to have the sentence

Between 1974 and 2009, a total of 30 Chicago aldermen have been indicted and convicted of federal crimes such as bribery, extortion, embezzlement, conspiracy, mail fraud and income tax evasion. Three additional aldermen were indicted for similar offenses but two died before federal prosecutors could bring them to trial and one, Anthony Laurino (39th) was too sick to stand trial.[1]

positioned as it currently is.

Compare Boston's City Council page:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_City_Council

I don't think it's a "corruption focus" - it's only 2 sentences, 1 paragraph. These extraordinary facts on indictment and conviction rates belong in the lead since they are a key aspect of notability WP:LEAD. These statistics are verifiable WP:V from reliable sources WP:RS and referenced WP:CS. Burying them later in the article or deleting them would be more of a violation of WP:NPOV. Hugh (talk) 16:51, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Why do any clicks on the Alderman Vi Daley link to the page itself?

i need a way to write about the alderman!!! i would like to write about Vi Daley :) someone please help

The link has now been opened up for editing. Someone had linked it back to the same article. --Gerald Farinas 22:32, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

The position of alderman is technically non-partisan, and candidates have to get the parties to certify that they aren't members. Should we amend the chart of aldermen to not assign political affiliation? ~E$ 18:37, 11 August 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Erik a hanson (talk • contribs)

Do you have a reliable, verifiable source for this? Int21h (talk) 19:14, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

There are no parties in Chicago City Government, but there are a few caucuses that Aldermen have self-identified as. It would not be hard to go through and find sources for that.

I wanted to research former aldermen in the 43rd ward -- is there a template that could be added to Chicago city council pages or something? Victor Grigas (talk) 06:07, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

I added a "see also" tag linking to the page List of Chicago aldermen since 1923. Kumar R (talk) 21:30, 29 May 2019 (UTC)

This 1904 image is public domain and yet is of such low resolution as be functionally useless. No text is readable in the image. It should be removed from the article or reproduced at an informative resolution. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wistungsten (talk • contribs) 05:34, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

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Me and another Wikipedian both noticed at the same time just now that the number of DemSocs listed on the Council was five, rather than six. That error has been corrected, but can someone make a new parliament map for the Council? Also, the DemSocs should be positioned to the left of the Democrats.

https://tools.wmflabs.org/parliamentdiagram/parlitest.php

TotusFloweo1917 (talk) 10:36, 21 June 2019 (UTC)TotusFloweo1917

The Chicago City Council is a nonpartisan body. However, like most Americans, they generally affiliate with a political party. There seems to be some confusion so I'd like to lay out my sources for some of the elected officials.

• Rossana Rodriguez. In her IVI-IPO questionnaire and according to Russ Stewart's column on committeeman elections she is not running for Democratic Committeeman despite being the Alderman. A Google search does not contradict these sources (as much as I hate calling Russ Stewart a source on anything.
• Maria Hadden. In her IVI-IPO questionnaire she does not explicitly identify a political party. Neither does she do so on her campaign Facebook page. There is a fundraising page that identifies her as a Democrat, but I don't believe that meets Wikipedia:Reliable sources.

--Mpen320 (talk) 05:12, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

@Kumarhk and 205.172.134.231:To save time if our current consensus remains constant. I kept the community areas. I don't love it, but I know it took a lot of time and a lot of effort and to not include without justification feels wrong.--Mpen320 (talk) 03:07, 10 June 2020 (UTC){{Composition

@Mpen320: Thanks, I appreciate that. I realize the community areas column looks pretty unwieldy. I was trying to achieve something similar to the "Residence" and "Borough" columns on the New York City Council page, as I liked how they provide a sense of where the districts are located. Maybe it would seem less unwieldy if we listed fewer community areas per ward? Kumar (talk) 01:52, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

@Kumarhk: Do you think a column in which community area the alderman resides combined with an indication of predominantly in which region on this map their ward is? I'm not going to push for strong changes one way or the other.--Mpen320 (talk) 02:32, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

@Mpen320:} Sorry for the very late reply. I'm open to the community area of residence + region idea -- do we have a good source for aldermen's residence information? The only thing I can think of is election filings, but it would take quite a bit of work to collect that address data and convert it into community areas. As a short-term fix for now, I can just reduce the number of community areas mentioned. Kumar (talk) 03:47, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

@Kumarhk:. It's not a top priority to me. I think it took a lot of time and effort so it should stay SOMEWHERE in the article. You are right that election filings (which would be a IL Board of Elections search) would be the only surefire way, BUT I want to point out often it is on their official or campaign biographies. Personally, I'd feel weird linking to their actual home addresses. I know it's public information, but still.--Mpen320 (talk) 06:43, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

@Mpen320: I agree that it feels weird to link to their home addresses. If I find some time in the future I'll try to grab the residence information from bios, etc. In the meantime I'll leave the composition table as it stands right now. Kumar (talk) 17:29, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

The most recent city council election was the 2019 Chicago aldermanic elections.^[1] The current term began on May 20, 2019.^[2]

Aldermanic elections are officially nonpartisan; party affiliations below are informational only. Council members also self-organize into caucuses, or blocs that address particular issues.^[3] Active caucuses include the Progressive Reform Caucus, the Black Caucus, the Latino Caucus, the LGBT Caucus, and the Socialist Caucus.^[3][4]