By Thomas Yau<\/p>\n
On a cold Tuesday morning, 70-year-old Prexy Nesbitt goes from door to door to canvass votes for mayoral candidate Jes\u00fas “Chuy” Garcia.<\/p>\n
The veteran activist, born and raised on the West Side of Chicago, is a strong critic of incumbent Mayor Rahm Emanuel.<\/p>\n
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[vimeo 120635639 w=500 h=281]<\/p>\n
\u201cHe changes his color and his tune according to where he is\u2026. The only people he cares about is the one per centers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
This is not Nesbitt\u2019s first encounter with politics.<\/p>\n
When the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. marched into Marquette Park in 1966, Nesbitt was part of the security detail. When Nesbitt, a former high school football player, failed to intercept a rock that was flying toward King, he remembers the civil rights movement leader saying \u201cYou big old football player, you can\u2019t even catch a rock,\u201d<\/p>\n
In the late 1980s, he was also a special assistant to late Mayor Harold Washington.<\/p>\n
For Nesbitt, this mayoral election carries a lot of weight.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we are at a real important crossroad in the United States, but especially in Chicago between whether this city continue just to serve the rich and powerful, or whether we can really get the city to be available to poor people that aren’t millionaires,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Rachel Birkhahn-Rommelfanger, who knows Nesbitt since she was three, is often impressed by the man\u2019s passion.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen Prexy is working on this campaign, we hadn\u2019t been talking a lot recently. And he like calls me one day, and he\u2019s like Rachel, I\u2019m gonna go door knocking, do you want to go door knocking with me?\u201d<\/p>\n
Although he has a lot of disappointments over the city\u2019s politics, Nesbitt thinks that there have been positive changes over the years by people\u2019s participation in politics.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a much more open system today\u2026. I can remember time when this system shot down people,\u201d he said. \u201cIn my ward on the West Side, we elected an independent alderman\u2026. The following Saturday after he have been elected, he was shot to death in his office.\u201d<\/p>\n
He was talking about the 1963 murder of Benjamin Lewis, the city\u2019s first black alderman.<\/p>\n
Now with Garcia enters a runoff election with Emanuel in April, there seems to be a bigger chance for changes.<\/p>\n
\u201cI haven’t lost the hope in the ability ordinary people to learn things and to get involved to make change. It takes a process. It takes a long time. My parents raised me to be a long distance runner, not a sprinter,\u201d Nesbitt said.<\/p>\n
By Thomas Yau On a cold Tuesday morning, 70-year-old Prexy Nesbitt goes from door to door to canvass votes for mayoral candidate Jes\u00fas “Chuy” Garcia. The veteran activist, born and raised on the West Side of Chicago, is a strong critic of incumbent Mayor Rahm Emanuel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":8769,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[321,30,243],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-election2015","category-public-affairs","category-winter-2015"],"yoast_head":"\n