Leadership Quote by Harold Washington

"Business as usual" is one of politics' slickest euphemisms: a velvet phrase that covers up patronage, backroom deals, and the quiet expectation that regular people should stay regular - obedient, invisible, grateful for crumbs. Harold Washington spikes it with a refusal. The line sounds administrative, but it’s a threat dressed as civic housekeeping: the old machine can keep humming, but the city won’t.

The intent is both warning and invitation. To entrenched insiders, it signals that the traditional Chicago choreography - wards as fiefdoms, favors as currency, race and geography as leverage - is about to be disrupted. To everyone locked out of that choreography, it offers a kind of political dignity: you’re not just a constituency, you’re a veto. Washington doesn’t frame change as a personal crusade; he frames it as a new standard the city itself will enforce.

The subtext is coalition politics with teeth. "Any part of this city" is doing heavy lifting, rejecting the idea that reform is a boutique project for downtown liberals or a symbolic nod to Black neighborhoods. It implies a citywide impatience, an attempted realignment where resentment at corruption becomes a shared civic identity rather than a weapon used to divide.

Context matters: Washington’s mayoralty rose out of a historic fight against Chicago’s Democratic machine and the racial polarization that followed his election. The sentence works because it’s short, unromantic, and collective. It treats legitimacy as something earned daily, not inherited. In a city trained to expect deals, it promises daylight - and dares Chicago to mean it.