Progress Illinois

During an April 25 conference call to unveil the Obama campaign's 50-state voter registration drive, deputy campaign manager Steve Hildebrand sounded genuinely exasperated as he tried to steer reporters to the topic at hand.

Despite his best efforts, those on the call didn’t request any further details about the effort. No one posed questions about the drive's goals or how the campaign thinks it could affect Obama’s general election prospects. Instead, they brought up the latest distractions: What does the campaign make of Jeremiah Wright’s new comments? Are advisers worried that Obama has a problem attracting working-class white voters? And so on.

The media’s lack of interest is hardly surprising. While voter registration drives are invaluable, they’re also dry and tedious – not that exciting to participate in or to write about.

But some new data indicates that, come November 5, we may find ourselves looking back at this year’s intensive voter mobilization efforts as what put Obama – and down-ballot Democrats nationwide – over the top.

If you sit on a porch along Stateline Road in Calumet City, Illinois, and look across the street, you're not looking at Calumet City. You're not even looking at Illinois. Your neighbors across the way live on Stateline Avenue in Hammond, Indiana. That these two towns exist in such close proximity illustrates a unique factor in the May 6 Indiana Democratic primary. In certain parts of the Hoosier State, Barack Obama could enjoy something akin to a home-court advantage. Whether or not he does may be determined by the small army of Illinois volunteers who are crossing the state line (or, in some cases, the street) to talk to their neighbors.

"This is the only way to do politics," Ted Loda told me as we recently walked the quiet residential blocks of Hammond. "Going out and talking face to face with voters about the election and learning from them […] and educating them."

Two years ago this week, spurred by Wisconsin Representative Jim Sensenbrenner's punitive immigration bill H.R. 4437, immigrants and their allies flooded America's streets in the largest immigration marches in recent U.S. history. In Chicago alone, 300,000 demonstrators turned out to voice their support for comprehensive immigration reform, including an estimated 70 percent of students from predominantly-Latino schools. Thanks in large part to this public condemnation of the legislation, the U.S. Senate voted it down, a significant victory for the growing immigrant rights movement.

Sadly, the political landscape regarding immigration hasn't improved much since 2006. Legislators in Washington D.C. balked on comprehensive reform in 2006 and 2007 and a bill now floating through Congress is almost as toxic as Sensenbrenner's. Meanwhile, Latinos in Chicagoland are facing problems beyond border concerns – in education, housing, and employment -- that have yet to be addressed adequately. So on May 1, citizens will hit the streets in honor of International Workers' Day, speaking out against legislation that criminalizes immigrants and the broader inequities the Latino community faces.

What should Chicagoans expect at the demonstration this Thursday?

In her flattering 2005 profile of America’s “5 Best Big-City Mayors,” Time’s Nancy Gibbs opined that Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley “wields near imperial power, and most of Chicago would have it no other way.” Fast forward three short years and a lot seems to have changed.

While Daley won re-election handily in 2007, capturing 71 percent of the vote to seal his sixth consecutive term, he’s siphoned political capital at an uncharacteristically consistent pace. Meanwhile, a group of alderman, including veteran progressive council members Toni Preckwinkle (4th Ward), Joe Moore (49th Ward), and Ricardo Munoz (22nd Ward), have created the so-called Independent Caucus, one that Preckwinkle assures me will “shed some light on difficult issues that face the council.” In existence for almost a year, their growth has been humble, but momentum is on their side, and before long they could represent the city council’s first formidable opposition bloc in 25 years.