As Maria Hadden spoke about the intricacies of political life in Chicago, the 43-year-old alderwoman was sitting in her car near East Rogers Park, watching a stranded garbage truck on the north-south street get towed, backing traffic up on the block. She was contemplating which person to call, because she figured someone was likely to call her.
Hadden’s ward on Chicago’s north-east corner is a little more than 2 sq miles – small enough for her to know every inch of it. As she strategized, one of Hadden’s constituents who was tired of hearing cars honking had taken matters into her own hands. “So she comes out and she’s got two brightly colored poster boards – like [a] 16x24 poster board – and she literally taped to the front and the rear of the stranded garbage truck handwritten signs that say ‘broken’, so that people would just be able to see it’s broken, and don’t come here and don’t honk your horn.”
