About Sharon

If you want to elect a candidate of the people, a truly independent Democrat in Illinois’ 7th Congressional District (CD) – someone who was actually elected by and does her best to represent the people – then Sharon Denise Dixon is your candidate.

She may be the only truly independent member of the Chicago City Council. In many ways the 2007 City Council elections were contests between candidates backed by Mayor Daley and candidates backed by Chicago’s unions over allowing big-box stores (i.e., Wal-Mart) in Chicago. Mayor Daley supported and the unions opposed Wal-Mart. But both the Mayor and the unions backed Sharon’s opponent, a 12-year three-term incumbent!

As a block club president who had never run for public office before, Sharon had no institutional, political or financial support, while the incumbent was endorsed by (as advertised in his literature) U.S. Senator Barack Obama; U.S. Congressmen Danny K. Davis and Luis Gutierrez; State Senator Rickey Hendon; State Representative Art Turner; 28th Ward Alderman Ed Smith; former President of the Cook County Board of Commissioners, Bobbie Steele; the Chicago Sun-Times, Tribune and Defender; the Chicago Federation of Labor; SEIU 880; SEIU Illinois; Teamsters Joint Council 25; Chicago Fire Fighters Union; Sheet Metal Workers – Local 73; UNITE-HERE, Local 1; Mayor Daley (who gave her opponent $45,000); 24th Ward Council of Block Clubs; Soul Slate; the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce PAC; ACORN; IVI-IPO; Citizen Action of Illinois; and all of the other initial candidates who ran against him, except the person who finished last with few votes.

With no institutional political or financial support, Sharon finished 2nd in voting in a strong field of seven candidates in the February 27th municipal elections, and won her 24th Ward aldermanic seat by a mere 192 votes in the run-off on April 17th. The incumbent’s financial report showed $313,000. Sharon’s campaign spent about $75,000 – most of it her own money.

Alderman Dixon was sworn into office on May 21, 2007. In 2008, she ran for 24th Ward Committeeman and won with 78% of the vote. She continues to register new voters, do change of address cards and educate voters, even as she seeks to serve her constituents as its historic first female Alderman.

Her first major task was to begin physically cleaning-up the ward – a ward that had largely been ignored since the civil disturbances of 1968 following Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination – and she began to deal with the drugs, crime and violence issues in the ward with monthly meetings with the Police Commanders in Districts 10, 11 and 15. Tragically, the 24th Ward has the most homicides of any ward in Chicago in 2009. She has started to attract new businesses, rehab and build new and affordable housing, develop the ward economically and create new jobs. Sharon is Alderman of one of the poorest and most difficult wards in Chicago, but she has accepted the challenge and works hard and aggressively to represent her constituents and fulfill her responsibilities.

Sharon grew up at 3541 West Lexington in the Lawndale Community. She attended William Penn, Thomas Jefferson and Jacob Beidler and graduated from Leif Ericson Elementary School in 1977. At the age of ten she was accidentally shot with a pistol – the shot barely missed her head – and both hands still bear the scars. An outstanding student, Sharon graduated from Manley High School in just three years (1980). Along those same lines, after onesubstantive conversation with Sharon, Congressman Danny Davis said to her, “You must have been the smartest one in Manley High School.”

Sharon has worked in various jobs since the age of 13, which enabled her to buy her own clothes, and in time various cars and houses. She began part-time as a CETA worker and worked for 11 years at the Cook County Hospital in the Dietary Department as a Food Service Worker. Sharon was later promoted to Dietitian Assistant.

She is a graduate (1985) of the University of Illinois (UIC), majoring in Criminal Justice. Sharon worked as a flight attendant for American Airlines traveling throughout the nation and world, before working in corporate America for General Electric. Sharon then worked for Northwestern Memorial Hospital in the Magnetic Resonance Imagining (MRI) Department. The Ada S. McKinley social service agency employed her for the two years before she became Alderman. She quit in October (2006) to campaign full-time door-to-door for the Aldermanic seat. She is a few hours short of completing her Masters Degree in Social Work (MSW) at Loyola University.

Sharon became a community and political activist when she couldn’t get her garbage picked-up, street swept, trees trimmed or sewers cleaned. Backed up sewers flooded neighbors’ basements and standing water was a health hazard on the block where she currently owns a home, the 1600 block of South Central Park Avenue.

As a result, Sharon started the 16th-to-18th Street Central Park Avenue Block Club. As President she focused on bringing the community together with a positive approach and productive efforts, such as “the cleaning initiative,” which paid local young people $10/hour to clean up their community. It helped to instill good work habits, rewarded work and provided a sense of pride for the young people and their neighborhood. The project was funded by a grant Sharon secured from the Steans Family Foundation.

Sharon had been involved in providing residents with information regarding community entitlements and other issues in the community, such as reducing property taxes and housing issues – e.g., the Greystone Initiative in the North Lawndale community and the issue of rent control housing vs. housing vouchers on Douglas Blvd. She had worked with various Lawndale community organizations, such as Neighborhood Housing Services (NHS), working together in 2005 on a neighborhood beautification project with children engaged in planting flowers and shrubs to beautify their community. She has been concerned about the saturation of drugs in the Lawndale community and her block club was the first to secure a blue light camera to drive the drug dealers off the corner of 16th and Central Park. She has worked to quell violence and improve police/community relations. Her block club was also responsible for new streetlights and for planting 28 new trees to line and enhance the street and environment along Central Park Avenue.

On August 6, 2005 (40th Anniversary), Sharon went to Atlanta with the RainbowPUSH Coalition to participate in the largest march to make sure the temporary sections of the 1965 Voting Rights Act were extended for another 25 years – which happened in 2006.

On October 1, 2005, Ms. Dixon organized a major kick-off event in the 24th Ward for the Illinois Voter Registration and Verification Campaign. It included a mobile voter registration van, a bake sale, a clown providing a magic show, balloons for the children, a back-to-school give-a-way, hundreds of free hot dogs and hamburgers, music entertainment, and a well attended press conference with the following elected officials in attendance: Congressmen Danny K. Davis (7th), Bobby Rush (1st), and Jesse Jackson, Jr. (2nd); Cook County Commissioner Bobbie Steele (2nd); the Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, Sr. and the Rev. Derrick Fitzpatrick; Aldermen Ricardo Munoz (22nd) and Michael Chandler (24th); State Senators (and the Rev.) James T. Meeks (15th), Kwame Raoul (13th) and Jacqueline Collins (16th); State Representatives David E. Miller (29th), William Davis (30th) and Constance A. Howard (34th), and Cook County Tax Appeals Commissioner, Larry Rogers. Many Lawndale residents saw this event as “historic”!

As President of her block club, she organized three annual Christmas Socials, Holiday Turkey give-a-ways and back-to-school give-a-ways for students living within the radius of her block club. She also gave away back-to-school supplies to approximately 120 children. Her block club won first place in a Lawndale “Radical Block Club Makeover,” a contest sponsored by the Lawndale Christian Development Corporation (LCDC). Most recently, as Alderman, she has given away hundreds of turkeys and hams to seniors in the five senior homes in the 24th Ward during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays.

Cook County Commissioner Bobbie Steele singled Sharon out to receive the 2005 “Unsung Hero Award” for her community
work.

In 2006, Sharon prepared and passed out informational fliers, organized a local demonstration, made placards and hung lavender and black ribbons on neighborhood trees to highlight the genocide occurring in the Darfur region of Sudan (Africa) to raise political consciousness about this issue. She was also an active member of the NAACP’s Westside Branch.

Finally, let’s end Sharon’s story with two small but interesting historical notes, not about her, but about the 7th CD. First, in his one term in Congress Abraham Lincoln represented the 7th CD – which then was located in the Springfield area. Second, more recently, the congresspersons representing the 7th CD have originally come from the 24th Ward.