So the Harold Washington post that had been germinating in my head for a while made it up onto Chicagoist today. I think it turned out pretty good. The Washington story is a hard one to tell, for lots of reasons. It's such a saga, for one, and if you aren't at least a little familiar with the history of Chicago politics, it can be difficult to understand the backstory. It's also intensely personal for many people - even for me, and I wasn't there. (I might have been the most politically astute seven year old on my block, but still, too young to vote, volunteer or take an active role in city politics). Nevertheless, listening to Harold speak, seeing video of him, even campaign ads, brings back such Technicolor memories. I'm eight, nine again, sitting on the floor in my grandparent's living room, listening to the news and my uncles and cousins yelling and arguing about the Eddies and the union and the steel mills. It's as though I've internalized someone else's memories and nostalgia of a time that I never knew.
The girl and I have been talking about Harold a lot lately. She's cool like that; gets lefty politics, knows what she believes and why, but is still curious. Her and I come from parts of the city that many people don't know. Her from the Southwest Side, and I from the far Southeast. This past week has brought back some memories and feelings from a time long ago. Things that happened 25, 30 years ago, things that I didn't understand but knew or thought were bad, terrible horrible things have come rushing back into into my now bigger world. And through the lens of my adult life, they hurt a little more now.
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I've noticed how easy it is to manufacture memories. Drinking at some Polish tap room on a Saturday night, sitting on a beat up couch at a party where you hardly know anyone, listening to music on an old Pioneer sound system. It's as though the entire experience has already been manufactured to be remembered fondly. It's a disposable memory, created and used as easily as it is tossed aside for the next good feeling. There's almost a hedonistic quality to it. 
Salim Muwakkil had a great piece in In These Times about the air of nostalgia surrounding Harold Washington's tenure.
It may be comforting to dream of those days and gloat about the triumphs and the promise of that era. But the Washington years happened because people were not dreaming or awash in nostalgia—they were awake and active.I wonder if, in all the remembering of those difficult four and a half years, we Chicagoans, like the Baby Boomers in their remembering of the Greatest Generation, have forgotten about how much work, pain and effort is required to really make something great.
Images via Harold! Photographs from the Harold Washington Years, and discarnatequern/Yonah Lewis
