DC: Tell me how your small-town background and big city experience will play a role in helping you make an impact and achieve success for the city.
LL: There are many experiences that I take from growing up in Massillon, OH. One is that I’ve always been able to navigate in lots of different communities. I’m not someone who feels uncomfortable being a stranger in a community that I’m not familiar with, because I’ve had to navigate in lots of different worlds. But I also think that the basic things that makes Massillon special is being loyal, community and looking out for each other. Those are the kind of values that really permeate and resonate across Chicago in neighborhood after neighborhood. Even in neighborhoods that are the most economically distressed and that suffer the most from violence, the thread of community and what that really means and how it manifests itself for us growing up in Massillon are things that I see across the city here. I bring that kind of sensibility as the next mayor of the city to make sure that we’re looking out for people in neighborhoods that need to be heard and who’s needs should be met.
DC: Chicago is a great city, but like any other major city has its challenges. What one significant change would you like to make happen during your first year?
LL: I want to make sure that our communities are safe. I am very distressed that too many of our kids are growing up where violence is their norm. That is a terrible statement about where we are. It affects them physically, emotionally, and they take that fear with them as a companion everywhere that they go and that becomes normalized. I don’t want that to become normalized. I want them to grow up in safe and healthy environment. When we were growing up as kids on a warm day, you couldn’t wait to get home from school to be outside with your friends to ride your bike and play games in the street. Kids in many neighborhoods across this city never had that luxury because of violence. And for them we have to do better. That is my number one priority. Night and day, that’s what I will be worrying about.
DC: Our Fete Lifestyle Magazine May issue is about inspiring women. Tell me about other women that inspire you and why.
LL: My mother clearly inspires me, but I also like to think about my grandmother. My maternal grandmother, Anna Lowery was born in 1898 and lived until she was 96. Over the arc of her life she saw many, many things like the invention of the car, airplanes, and electricity.
I clearly remember coming home on a break during my freshman year in college and I was telling her about the things that I was experiencing and the people that I met, and she just looked at me. She had this way of kind of cocking her head and looking in you in the eye and she said, “You living with white people?” Because for her, she was one generation removed from slavery and that was not a conceivable thing. Her whole life was when race dominated everything. When separation and segregation was the accepted norm. The thought that her granddaughter was going off to this college and literally living right next door to white girls was inconceivable to her and mind-blowing. She was tough and fearless; she worked hard for her family and sacrificed a tremendous amount. I was really lucky to get to know her as an adult because of the longevity of her life. My grandmother is an inspiration to me. I think about her every day. She’s been gone since 1993, but there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about Anna Lowery.