Mayor-elect Lori Lightfoot celebrates Tuesday during her election night party in Chicago. Image: Kamil Krzaczynski /AFP/Getty Images

The day after Chicago Mayor-elect Lori Lightfoot became the frst black woman to lead America’s third largest city, Lightfoot addressed head-on her view of the city “most pernicious problems: entrenched segregation, gun violence and economic inequality” writes NPR.

The mayor-elect cited the “fractured relationship” between the Chicago Police Department and the public as a “critically important safety issue.”

The nature of policing by the department "has not adequately taken into account the segregation in our city and that race does matter," she said in an interview with NPR's Morning Edition. That disconnect "has left many people feeling like the police are an illegitimate occupying force and we've got to change that around because literally lives depend on it."

Chicago Mayor-elect Lori Lightfoot from her campaign website.

Lightfoot will be Chicago's first openly gay mayor, after winning Tuesday's runoff election against Cook County Board President and county Democratic Party leader Toni Preckwinkle. Both African-American women ran as progressives, operating outside the sphere of Chicago's legendary,

As public member station WBEZ reported, "The free-for-all campaign represented a sharp contrast to almost every past election in a city that has been synonymous with Democratic machine politics and bossism for nearly a century." well-moneyed political machine.

Lightfoot said she is struck by the magnitude of the moment.

"I think that the people who come from communities like me as an African-American woman, as a member of the LGBT community, we haven't sat in the corners of power," she said.

"It's quite the opposite. We've been discriminated against. We've been locked out, and we've been excluded. And to have someone like me representing these multifaceted communities now be on the cusp of being the mayor and what I think is the greatest city in the world, I think gives a lot of people a lot of hope --and it is a milestone in a long journey that will continue to demonstrate though that we're making progress."

Lightfoot cited another goal, that of "Breaking the back of the Chicago machine, it's quite monumental." Here is a campaign video from Mayor-elect Lori Lightfoot’s campaign website.

Lori Lightfoot joins 12 other African-American women who are governing some of the largest US cities. They include Acquanetta Warren, Fontana, Ca; Catherine Pugh, Baltimore; Deborah Robertson, Rialto, Ca; Keisha Lance Bottoms, Atlanta, Ga; LaToya Cantrell, New Orleans; London N. Breed, San Francisco; Lovely A. Warren, Rochester, NY; Muriel Bowser, Washington DC; Sharon Weston Broome, Baton Rouge, La; Toni N. Harp, New Haven, Conn; Vi Alexander Lyles, Charlotte, NC.

Part of the crowd at Thursday night’s Trump March 28, 2019 rally in Michigan started chanting "AOC sucks," referencing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), after Donald Trump Jr. criticized her ideas. After all, the president’s son is such an authority on American politics, and his father loves women targets, in particular.

“Think about the fact that every mainstream, leading Democratic contender is taking the advice of a freshman congresswoman who three weeks ago didn’t know the three branches of government,” the president's son told the crowd ahead of his dad’s speech. “I don’t know about you guys, but that’s pretty scary.”

After Junior’s remark — AOC calls him ‘Junior’ — the crowd broke into the "AOC sucks" chant. Read Charlotte Alter’s cover story 'Change Is Closer Than We Think.' Inside Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Unlikely Rise’. We hope that AOC will just ignore the chants, because they may be with her all the way to 2020.

The Trump crowd loves to denigrate smart women because females with brains that function on overdrive have a very small place in their universe. Daddy’s girl Ivanka Trump, Trumpsters embrace. Do you see a pattern here? I’m sure that Trump had a proverbial heart attack when Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — hardly a member of the Trump family inner sanctum — showed up on the cover of last week’s TIME magazine.

“You guys, you’re not very nice,” Trump Jr. responded to the crowd shouting “AOC sucks”. “And neither is what that policy would do to this country.”

Junior is speaking about the Green New Deal.

The Senate on Tuesday blocked legislation to advance the Green New Deal resolution to the floor on a procedural vote, with most Democrats voting present. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) set up the vote to test Democratic Party’s unity over climate change.

It’s true that many Senate Democrats didn’t want to publicly back the resolution’s ambitious goals. Now, various supporters of the climate change measure, including Ocasio-Cortez herself, are focusing on new, smaller bills in an effort to get back on the offensive on climate change heading into 2020.

AOC is a quick study, in our opinion. The more that she’s made into the devil incarnate by Republicans, the more committed this AOC is to stand behind her. Now only do we share an acronym, but we share common values. Being older — if not wiser — we are more circumspect that the Bronx-Queens Congresswoman about creating change. But we need AOC’s passion, intellect and her voice. The Republicans can try to discredit the young Congresswoman, but we see major streaks of informed, truth-telling brilliance in her latest speech. Here’s a sample from the video below:

"When we talk about the concern for the environment as an elitist concern, one year ago I was waitressing in a taco shop in downtown Manhattan. I just got health insurance for the first time a month ago. This is not an elitist issue. This is a quality of life issue. You want to tell people that their concern and their desire for clean air and clean water is elitist? Tell that to the kids in the South Bronx which are suffering from the highest rates of childhood asthma in the country. Tell that to the families in Flint whose kids, their blood is ascending in lead levels, their brains are damaged for the rest of their lives. Call them elitist. You're telling them that those kids are trying to get on a plane to Davos? People are dying!"

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is having her feet held to the fire in a way she probably never anticipated. Unlike ‘Junior’ the young woman has a dedicated relationship with her constituents, and that IS HER JOB! AOC has a voice, and she’s willing to use it. Note that her national poll numbers are under assault, which is why this political rising star needs some steadfast support from established voices that offer her some cover. Anne of Carversville is such an example of blocking and tackling for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.