From the Sun-Times:

Mayor of Little Italy, wake up: The times they are-a-changin'

October 24, 2006
BY MARY MITCHELL Sun-Times Columnist
I've heard about the bullying tactics used by Oscar D'Angelo, the
so-called "Mayor of Little Italy." But there's nothing like seeing him
in action.

On Monday, D'Angelo joined a planning session of museum experts who
were in the city to explore the idea of building a Public Housing
Museum.

The proposed site -- a gutted low-rise building in what was once
CHA's Jane Addams Development -- happens to be in the shadow of
D'Angelo's kingdom.

Frankly, I didn't know why D'Angelo was involved in the discussion --
he hasn't lived in public housing, and he isn't an expert on museum
development.

But apparently there's an unwritten law in this city that nothing
goes up or comes down on the Near West Side neighborhood without
D'Angelo's approval.

A couple of years ago, he stirred up quite a mess when the city
accused him of engaging in some behind-the-scenes shenanigans in an
attempt to block the $600 million redevelopment of CHA's ABLA homes.

That bit of muscle cost the city's former planning and development
commissioner, Alicia Berg, her $133,000 job. A side letter for the
project from Berg gave two aldermen veto power -- a power that the
administration claimed would be used at the behest of D'Angelo.

At the time, D'Angelo was already in the mayoral doghouse.

Muscles in on meeting
First, he was caught making $10,500 worth of interest-free loans to
Mayor Daley's deputy chief of staff, then he was exposed as working as
an unregistered lobbyist to the tune of $480,000 -- while putting two
of Maggie Daley's friends in business at O'Hare Airport.

While these scandals may have slammed the doors at City Hall, they
didn't strip D'Angelo of his audacity.

Although Sunny Fischer, executive director of the Richard H. Driehaus
Foundation, was officially in charge of a gathering of museum experts
who were tapped to help shape the vision of the museum, D'Angelo all
but took over the meeting.

But he didn't just muscle Fischer. When he was asked by someone else
to share his insights about "Little Italy" with museum experts who had
come from New York, Georgia and South Carolina, D'Angelo seized the
opportunity to denounce poor black parents.

Reciting almost verbatim from his recent letter to the editor,
D'Angelo shared how he worked with boys from public housing and had an
opportunity to visit some of their homes "where two televisions were
on" and there was no quiet place for study.

"We'd work until 7 or 8 in the evening, and whenever I suggested that
they call home to advise their mothers that we were still working, the
usual response was it's OK, it's not necessary," D'Angelo said.

"That would never have happened in my community," he told the group.

For the life of me, I didn't see what that had to do with putting
together a Public Housing Museum.

'Not a museum, but a falsehood'
The vision for the museum goes back to the 1990s, said Deverra
Beverly, Local Advisory Council president for CHA's ABLA Homes.

"We knew the community was going to change. What we wanted to do was
leave a part of our own culture in this neighborhood. We had lawyers,
airplane pilots, doctors, all kinds of professions came from ABLA,"
Beverly said.

Her sentiments were similar to those expressed by George Randazzo,
the founder of the National Italian American Sports Hall of Fame at
1431 W. Taylor.

He told the story of a former ABLA resident from an Italian-American family.

"This guy owns 70 Taco Bells," Randazzo said. "But this guy comes
back here and walks over there because he is thinking: 'That is still
my neighborhood. All my memories are there.' "

But D'Angelo said he wasn't interested in the "seven doctors, seven
lawyers and seven black pilots" that came out of ABLA."

"If that's what it is going to be about, then it's not a museum, but
a falsehood," he said.

I was appalled. D'Angelo was behaving like he was running the show,
which is ridiculous.

He puffed up like a blowfish
The museum experts had come a great distance to help Beverly -- not
D'Angelo -- refine a vision that, if done correctly, could chronicle
the city's struggle to provide decent housing for the poor.

So these experts tried to reason with D'Angelo, pointing out that the
forum was only a discussion -- one way to figure out what the museum
could be.

Instead of calming down, D'Angelo puffed up like a blowfish.

"This is not something that you people want," he bellowed. "I am a
helluva friend and a rotten enemy."

It was shocking.

Obviously, D'Angelo doesn't believe that times, they-are-a-changing. They are.

He and others like him are the main reason the house that clout built
is teetering on shaky ground.