For your weekend reading: a profile of Ald. Daniel Solis.

Solis is the alderman of the 25th Ward, a territory that encompasses much of Pilsen, and on the Near West Side parts of University Village and the Illinois Medical District.

In 2005, Mick Dumke profiled Solis for Chicago Journal. Here's his piece:

The Man's man

A reformer in his younger days, 25th Ward Alderman Danny Solis has been criticized for being in the pocket of the rich and powerful. His detractors call him a sellout. He says he's just trying to get things done behind the scenes for his community.
By MICK DUMKE
Contributing Writer

Alderman Danny Solis steered his shiny black Chrysler 300 C Hemi-one of those new, high-powered muscle cars-off the street and onto a walkway between several athletic fields at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Parents and kids moved aside as the alderman kept driving, right into the middle of the youth soccer league picnic.

It was classic Solis. He was there because he needed to be there; he wanted to be there. The event was sponsored in part by his 25th Ward organization, and Solis always loves feeling responsible for getting people from the neighborhood together. He wanted to see all the kids safe and having fun, bouncing in giant inflatable playpens, playing carnival games and running around while their parents tried to keep up, all in full view of what he called the "beautiful" new housing development of University Village.

But it really wasn't the best place to be driving a car, and he didn't notice this until one of his aides hurried toward it, speaking into her walkie-talkie and then waving her arms for him to stop. When the aide finally caught up, she pointed to an empty area a couple hundred yards back. Solis retreated and parked. A compact figure, maybe five-and-a-half-feet tall, he made his way to a temporary stage, where he called out the winning numbers in a raffle that left several kids with new bikes.

"I want to say that you're in a great ward," Solis said flatly, even though he really meant it and wanted everyone else to believe it, too.

The incident said a lot about Solis. As one of the most powerful political figures in Chicago, as the highest-ranking Latino in the city, and as one of the people mentioned as a potential successor to Mayor Richard M. Daley, he has grown used to acting on some bold assumptions: about where he and the people around him need to go, about what needs to happen once they get there, about his skills and connections and ability to do it the way it should be done.

Everyone agrees he is a very smart, effective, and committed man. He cares about his ward, which includes some of the city's fastest-changing neighborhoods, places like UIC, Little Italy, Chinatown and Pilsen. And he believes he knows, more than anyone else, what to do to make them better. That's why he's surprised and sometimes outraged or hurt when someone challenges him. Isn't he doing what he could? Hasn't he always? Look around, he says. Isn't the neighborhood already on its way up?

"All I ask is that people judge me on what I've done," Solis said recently.

That's what people do. It's just that they don't always like what they've seen.

"As an alderman, he has to figure out what his vision of the ward is. And he's very focused when it comes to trying to attract business and jobs," said Ricardo Munoz, alderman of the nearby 22nd Ward and, frequently, one of Solis' political opponents. "Now, some people disagree with his vision."

That's a diplomatic way of saying that Solis has built up an impressive group of critics, people who accuse him of pushing changes through the ward without waiting to see if anyone else wants to go along. They say his ward is fast becoming one of the city's models of gentrification and community displacement. They say he's in it simply to acquire power.

In short, what Solis describes as being effective and efficient his critics call undemocratic and arrogant. What he sees as a story of someone who consistently tried to help people they see as a story of a radical who sold out.

Solis understands how they reached these conclusions. "Frankly," he said, "they don't know what they're talking about."

***

The June 23 City Council meeting was tame. This has become the standard for a council that typically follows Daley's lead on citywide issues and defers to the home aldermen on anything that affects particular wards. Surprisingly, the prospect of Wal-Mart moving into Chicago had sparked some heat just a month earlier. After fiery rhetoric on all sides, the council voted to accommodate one store while shelving plans for another.

"I thought that was a great debate," Solis said later. "I think we should have a lot more debate on issues. I think it would benefit not only the aldermen but the mayor. ... The next time I talk to the mayor, I'm going to tell him this is really a good idea."

But Solis, the president pro tempore of the council, isn't one to provoke a lot of discussion during meetings. He sticks to the routine, never bothering with political theater, rhetorical flourish or unnecessary bursts of energy. This time, he was dressed, as usual, in a dark suit with a dark tie, and his ink-black hair was trimmed and parted on one side. The whole look suggested someone who worked hard for neatness. It was professional and neutral: It would neither impress nor distract.

In other words, it would allow Solis to stay out of the limelight and quietly, calmly, execute his role as president pro tempore. If something was said that he disagreed with, if he had something to say about an issue, he would probably have done it beforehand, in the mayor's office or face-to-face with one of the other aldermen.

Daley presided over the first hour of the meeting. Though nothing of legislative importance went on-the highlight was Alderman Ed Burke delivering an eloquent speech praising the city's firefighters-the mayor kept tight control, mostly staying on his feet and pounding the gavel or scowling at council members when the chatter rose to a volume he found unacceptable. In each instance, the talking stopped, at least for a time.

Around 11, the council clerk began reading "communications"--written announcements from the mayor about appointments, redevelopment proposals and tax increment financing plans that aldermen consider routine. The mayor stepped down from his platform and left the chambers. Most of the others followed him, heading for the lounge where they could enjoy a cigarette or sweet roll.

That's when Solis took over the meeting, moving into the throne-like chair Daley had just vacated. He had the gavel ready. And then he sat and listened.

The clerk read the briefs in a mechanical voice. Solis drummed his fingers on the table in front of him.

Committee chairs read their reports. After each, Solis, without looking up, announced, "Hearing no objections, so ordered."

The meeting continued in this vein until several people began talking at once during the report from the Police and Fire committee. Solis banged the gavel. The voices quieted for a moment, but not much longer. Solis banged again. Alderman Toni Preckwinkle was in her seat eating cheese popcorn as several others had a back-and-forth about zoning for adult bookstores. Finally Solis called a vote on adjourning the meeting. Some of the aldermen were already gone.

In the hallway outside, Solis walked briskly toward his office. "Today was a breeze," he said. "It's when we disagree that it's hard. But usually it all happens at committee level."

For a politician, Solis has a hard time with public appearances. He is the kind of guy who likes to like others; he gets excited when he sees students sitting in on City Council meetings, and, if greeted, he'll stop and patiently explain what's going on. Yet he usually stays to himself, dodging the reporters, lobbyists and activists gathered outside the council chambers. "A lot of people think I'm grumpy all the time," he said. "But I'm a lot friendlier than some people think."

When he saw Alderman Walter Burnett networking in an expensive suit, he had to stop. "This guy is always styling," Solis said, grabbing Burnett's jacket. He and several others teased Burnett for having a cable television show two nights a month.

"You're just doing this because I'm short, I'm African American and I'm young," Burnett said.

"Hey, I'm short, too," Solis told him.

"But you're the president pro tempore."

It was a good response. Solis laughed.

***

Most aldermen try to attract jobs and build new housing in their wards. Solis is proud that he's done this aggressively, but he also likes to point out that many other aldermen have overseen far more gentrification than what's happened in the 25th Ward. "But [critics] isolate me," he said. "I think they target me because they can't go after the mayor."

In truth, though, many of his opponents--most notably, political independents and community activists in Pilsen--are more than happy to attack Daley. Solis vexes and infuriates them because they believe he was once on their side.

It's undeniable that he has working class roots and a history of community service in Pilsen. Solis was born in 1950 in Monterrey, Mexico, and moved to Chicago with his parents when he was 6. The family, which eventually included another boy and four girls, ended up moving into a home at 21st and Paulina. Solis' father was a laborer in a West Side furniture factory while his mother held a variety of jobs, including working in a laundry. The couple put all their children through Catholic schools.

"We were very disciplined," said Santiago Solis, Danny's younger brother. The children were taught to respect hard work, service and the political system. "My father loved this country. He made a life for himself, bought a home, raised six kids, put us through Catholic school, went to church on Sunday."

After finishing high school, Solis did a stint in the Marines and then enrolled at UIC in 1970. Phil Mullins, one of his best friends from high school, was already there, taking classes and joining demonstrations. Solis was taken with the world Mullins introduced him to: debates over the war, protests to increase the Latino presence on campus and, on the upside, "free love and pot." "Oh yeah, I inhaled," Solis said. He let his hair grow long and added a bushy mustache and goatee.

"I became aware of the issue of racism in this city and this country," Solis said, and he became more outspoken in his social and political criticism. This put him at odds with his father. "He would say this is the greatest country in the world. He had a third-grade education, he brought his family here, and he succeeded. ... And I would say, 'Dad, there's discrimination.' And he would say, 'Yeah, but it's a lot better than Mexico.' And I would say, 'Yeah, but you can't just accept it.'"

Solis ended up in jail after one demonstration. Among the others arrested were two Puerto Rican activists who eventually became members of the radical Armed Forces of National Liberation and served time in prison for plots against the government.

Mullins, though, said he and Solis were both concerned about keeping their politics relevant for people like their families.

"Those were times when I guess there was a lot of activism," said Mullins, now chief operating officer for the United Neighborhood Organization, a nonprofit specializing in community organizing, education and advocacy in Latino areas. "But coming from Chicago neighborhoods, we weren't intellectual activists. There was always a very practical bent to it. It was about getting stop signs, getting a new school."

This philosophy led Solis to study education, but he left college just short of his degree when he was hired at a Catholic school on the West Side. To make extra money, he began teaching GED classes in his spare time--and quickly saw the enormity of the high school dropout problem in Latino neighborhoods. By 1975, he and some other educators had founded an alternative high school, Latino Youth. Solis taught there and served as its director for the next five years.

In 1980, Solis moved into community organizing. It was another, more potent way to get some changes made, he believed. Some grassroots leaders from Pilsen wanted to create a citywide group that would push for Latino empowerment by using the techniques of Saul Alinsky, the father of grassroots community organizing. The timing was ideal: The new organization, UNO, emerged at the same time local politicians were taking note of the city's rising Latino population.

In Alinsky fashion, UNO compensated for a lack of financial power by recruiting large numbers of people and making their voices heard through demonstrations and community meetings that gathered thousands. If your power isn't in the form of money, the philosophy goes, it has to be in the form of people. You make people pay attention: If the mayor wants to stay in office, he'll work with you.

"During that whole period, I think I learned the basic understanding of politics and power and self-interest that I still have now," Solis said. "In order to make things better and change the quality of life, you have to have power. ... In order to have a relationship with elected officials or heads of corporations, you had to get their attention through an organized constituency."

The organization did so aggressively: At one point, UNO members were so outraged that U.S. Sen. Charles Percy had blown off a meeting with them that they went out and found him as he was making an appearance at a local radio station. Over the next hour, as Percy hid in a women's bathroom and UNO members pounded on the doors, news reporters showed up. The incident made big headlines, and Percy's re-election campaign faltered.

Solis took charge of UNO in the mid-80s and guided it into the school reform movement. As a result, UNO members were elected to Chicago's local school councils and the organization reaped thousands of dollars in foundation money to train them. UNO also became known nationally known for its work at helping process the naturalization applications of undocumented immigrants--thousands a year by the early 1990s. Politicians licked their lips over what they understood was a database of new voters.

At the same time, rifts had formed in the organization. Mary Gonzalez, who had first recruited the "young, talented" Solis to help create UNO, charged that he now wanted complete control "without being accountable to anyone," according to a 1994 article in The Chicago Reporter. In response, the Pilsen Neighbors Community Council, one of the original members of the organization, broke away. It still has frosty relations with Solis.

The rest of UNO stayed with Solis, and he pushed it ever closer to the political and economic power bases of the city. Daley, elected mayor in 1989, was one of the people Solis won the opportunity to work with--and he did so gladly.

Then Solis describes how he first forged ties with the mayor, he sounds as if he's describing a courtship: "I remember the mayor running as the major for education," he said. "And I think he was very impressed with the school reform campaign and the work that I had done. And I think that's when we first noticed one another."

Solis invited Daley to address 3,000 UNO members in a meeting at the Palmer House Hilton. Some of the mayor's aides advised him not to go, suggesting the audience was too "radical" and would rip him apart. But even as the meeting got underway, Solis kept working. He estimated he was on the phone for three hours trying to convince Daley he would be well-received.

And that's what happened: Daley came by and received "a big hero's welcome." The next morning, Solis saw Daley again at a meeting and they greeted each other warmly. "That was the start of our relationship," Solis said. "He knew I would keep my word."

Skeptics would say that Daley knew Solis would go along with just about anything he wanted. From that point onward, UNO supported most of Daley's positions and proposals, ranging from school issues to a plan to open a downtown casino. And the mayor appointed Solis to the boards of the Regional Transportation Authority and the Chicago Housing Authority.

In 1996, 25th Ward Alderman Ambrosio Medrano was indicted as part of the federal Silver Shovel corruption probe. When mayoral aides approached Solis about serving as a replacement, he accepted.

"I thought that would be an interesting challenge-to try to improve the quality of life on a different level, as an alderman instead of an activist," he said.

The move disappointed some fans of his activism and surprised many of the people closest to him. But Mullins said he understood. "A lot of activists prefer to not be at the table because, frankly, it's easier to picket," he said. "But if you want to have influence, you're going to want to get to the table."

***

Solis has clearly won that influence, and he's spent the last eight years exercising it. He is blunt about the fact that he covets power. Having power, he believes, isn't good or bad as much as it is useful-it enables you to get things done.

Others are clearly aware of-and sometimes daunted by-his power. Many former colleagues and current opponents say they are disgusted with him, dismissing him as an autocrat in the ward and an "ass-kisser" in the mayor's office. But when a reporter calls, they clam up. One said that, while he isn't afraid of Solis, lots of people are. Everything that happens in the ward goes through the alderman, and Solis could cut them off from city services and grants.

When asked to cite his accomplishments, Solis talks about "quality of life" improvements like streetscaping and school refurbishments that, he says, have helped improve Chinatown and will soon make Pilsen "the best Mexican and Mexican American community in the Midwest."

He's also not shy about touting a pair of "successes" that have deeply divided the ward, particularly among Pilsen residents: the 1998 creation of a Tax Increment Financing district and the ongoing expansion of UIC. Led by state Sen. Jesus Garcia, opponents of the TIF plan, which called for freezing certain taxes to attract commercial development, feared it would usher in gentrification. Solis argued it would bring jobs.

The debate turned nasty. Aided by soldiers from the Daley-allied Hispanic Democratic Organization, Solis backed political neophyte Antonio Munoz in a successful challenge against Garcia. With Garcia out of the way, the TIF plan went through. Solis recently said it has produced 2,000 new jobs.

The $700 million UIC expansion technically hasn't touched Pilsen, and most of the university and Little Italy areas didn't become part of the 25th Ward until the last round of redistricting in 2002. But, like the TIF plan, it upset affordable housing advocates in Pilsen who were concerned their neighborhood might be redeveloped next.

"One of the biggest concerns here is that people will get pushed out," said Alejandra Ibanez, who for the last year has been the executive director of Pilsen Alliance, a grassroots organization that has frequently clashed with Solis over development issues. Before that, she worked with Garcia. "We have an industrial TIF in Pilsen. UIC is at our front door. [Redevelopment is also] happening lot by lot. The property taxes are escalating in the city and in Pilsen. People are worried."

Over the last year, "anytime we questioned the wisdom of allowing developers a free hand in the neighborhood, [Solis' staff] would say, 'What's wrong with cleaning up the neighborhood? What's wrong with cleaning up the riffraff?'" added Dorian Breuer, a leader of the Pilsen Greens.

Solis said he is committed to keeping Pilsen affordable and Mexican; he is working on a program that will provide grants to longtime residents who want to fix up their property, he said. But he also says that Pilsen needs to continue to "improve" so that middle class residents want to stay.

Over the last year-and-a-half, the two sides have renewed their hostilities. In May 2003, some Pilsen residents received a letter in the mail informing them that a private developer wanted to build up to 100 new condominiums at 18th and Halsted. To do so, they needed to rezone the area. The letter announced that the issue would be taken up at a city zoning board meeting three weeks later.

About 20 of the neighborhood's grassroots organizations and churches banded together in opposition, demanding that Solis hold a public hearing before the zoning board met. "The alderman didn't seem concerned that there really isn't any true commitment to community participation," said Ibanez. "He responded, but only because we put the pressure on him."

Solis agreed to hold the community meeting. Hundreds showed up, almost all of them ripping the project. "In public, with the news cameras on, he said, 'If the community's against it, so am I,'" said Ibanez.

The alderman said he didn't want to push the project through over community opposition. He still thinks nixing it was a mistake, though; it might have produced $10 million in neighborhood improvement funds, he estimates.

Breuer fears it's just a matter of time before another battle ensues. "Solis is very active in working with developers--this is among the fastest-developing wards," he said. "There's not a lot of confidence in him."

When he hears these charges, Solis gets irritated. "That is not true," he said. The real issue, he said, is that "there's probably more community organizations here than in any other part of the city, and they all buy into this idea that there's this conspiracy out to get them. There isn't."

Medrano, the former alderman who served 21 months in federal prison, believes Pilsen residents need more education and help in dealing with rising property values. In 2003, Medrano attempted a political comeback by challenging Solis. "Everybody has a different style," he said. "My style was basically an open-door policy. Everybody who came to my door, I basically gave them some of my time. I don't know if that's the case with Alderman Solis or not. ... [But] I certainly thought I would be more accessible."

Medrano gained 36 percent of the vote to Solis' 55 percent. A year later, he was elected Republican committeeman of the ward, but now emphasizes that he and Solis are on good working terms. He noted, "I don't think I would be considered much of a threat to him."

Other community and business leaders defend Solis. David Betlejewski, executive director of the Eighteenth Street Development Corp., said the alderman has helped bring millions of dollars and hundreds of jobs to the ward. "Aldermen can be very rigid and set in their ways. He tends to really sit and think about things," Betlejewski said. "And I think you'd find that the vast majority of people in Pilsen are in favor of development."

Still, following the latest battle, the grassroots coalition requested several meetings with Solis. He never showed up in person. Frustrated, they collected enough signatures to put a referendum on the March primary election ballot that required a community meeting before any zoning change. It passed with nearly 95 percent of the votes.

"He's now made a commitment to having a community process, but it's taken a lot of work to get him there," said Ibanez.

The activists pressed for the referendum "because they are scared," Solis said. "I said, 'If you want public meetings, fine, we'll have public meetings.'"

But he remains perplexed by all the criticism. "It's hard to understand those people. Some of it is just petty jealousy. They wish they were in this position. And some of it is that they're not doing critical analysis on the issues. If you just look at this neighborhood, how it is now and how it was nine or 10 years ago, there's a big difference."

He shook his head and laughed. It wasn't a very happy laugh. "Maybe I'm getting like my critics. Maybe I think there's a conspiracy out there."

Solis may be held to a different standard than other politicians. People who are upset at what they see as his failure to listen and look out for the working class always seem to have, in the backs of their minds, the belief that he has flipped sides.

"He's got to understand where we're coming from as organizers and activists," said Ibanez. "He should be more proactive. He should see himself not only as a politician, but as an activist. He's got a lot of power. I would assume he should know better."

Or maybe Solis was never the radical that some think. "The object is to win," said Mullins, his longtime friend, and Solis emphasizes that he's always believed that, even as he's moved from the outside in.

But the issue is worth exploring, because, when and if Daley ever steps down, or if something unforeseen happens, Solis would be considered a leading contender to take his spot.

Solis himself is coy about his political future, repeatedly saying, "I'm happy with my job" and "We have the best mayor in the country."

But he won't rule anything out--he can't. If power is a license to get things done, and if Solis continues to want to be one of the people deciding how and when and where to get things done, then some of his choices will be made for him: He'll seize the opportunity to acquire more power. Even if it means sustaining a few more blows.

"That's politics," he said with a shrug. "As a guy, it gets me down. But I have a 3-year-old son and three daughters. I'm starting to pick up golf. I've won three elections. I have a good working relationship with the best mayor in the country. Some people aren't going to like me, but I'm fine. I'll play with my son and go to movies with my wife."