With the exception of a brief caesura between 2010 and 2013, I have lived in Chicago for nearly 20 years now. I did not expect that to happen when I first came out here for law school. In fact, I had never even been to Chicago as a tourist until that fateful day in 2005 when I first drove into town. I have a very specific memory of nearly depositing my car in Lake Michigan out of awestruck disbelief at the majesty of the architecture looming into view, as I drove north up Lake Shore Drive for the first time. I couldn’t believe I was actually driving through a city like this. A real city, not some jumped-up podunk excuse for a town like my native (and instantly forgotten) Washington, D.C. It was love at first sight. It was a place I wanted to be. I met my wife and started a life and a family here. It is home.
It is for that reason alone that I would like to explain how our spirit was broken on this day, five years ago:
I want to tell you a story about how my city lost faith in itself. The end of May marks the five-year anniversary of the George Floyd riots. It is a dark memory to summon, nearly as dark as the five-year anniversary of nationwide Covid lockdowns in March, which are the riots’ immediate predicate and context. Many of the nation’s cities burned or experienced looting. Our national politics changed forever, for the worse. And half a decade on, Chicago still reels from the consequences in a way that few other metropolises do; we have arguably never recovered from the loss of confidence and shift in city politics the Floyd riots triggered. Your experience of them may be different — every state in the union witnessed at least some sort of civil unrest, after all — but this is mine.
I can only ask you to read the rest of the story. On this day in particular, it weighs heavily in my heart.