My view is I should have been Miss Massillonian, and I wasn't. I think the reason I wasn't was because I was black. Frankly, I was told later I should have been. But they were afraid if they elected a black girl as Miss Massillonian, it would have been a scandal.

Both my brothers played football. My mother had season tickets as a school board member. I was in the band, my sister was in the band. The thing was, the unifying civic activity was obsession over high school football.

I'm not a person who puts things out in writing and policy prescriptions and is not intending to follow through.

So, yes, I became the vessel into which people poured their hopes that we can have a different kind of city. I recognize that, but in politics, sometimes it's good to be lucky.

We have a lot of taxpayers in this city who deserve to get every nickel of their tax dollars that they're entitled to from Washington, and I intend to make that happen.

You know, when you get the White House operator and they say, 'Just a moment for the president of the United States,' that's a pretty heady moment.

The whole circus surrounding Ed Burke, I knew immediately from my days as a federal prosecutor, was very, very serious.

To make blatant racial appeals or just blatant appeals only targeted to the LGBTQ+ community, I didn't think that that was a winning formula, and it's also inconsistent with who I am.

I live in a world in which I have a very, very diverse group of friends.

I know every trick in the book, in terms of schemes and fraud.

I believe that everybody is entitled to a presumption of innocence.

We have been embarked on what I would call a proactive strategy that looks at our gun violence as a public health crisis, which is what it is. That means we look at the root causes of the violence.

I want to make sure that I am the leader that respects the fact that kids all over the city and hopefully all over the country really understand that they can do anything that they want to do, that they set their minds to do, as long as they've got good, strong support from adults and love to support them.

We've got to do everything we can to speak to and protect our immigrant communities.

The only thing you have in your life is your integrity.

Fundamentally, we need to make sure that our neighborhoods are safe - all of our neighborhoods.

Building channels for people to believe that the city sees them and hears them and is willing to invest, is going to be critically important, and we have to start that right away.

Breaking the back of the Chicago machine, it's quite monumental.

But there are parents out there who feel like they have been shut out from the process of how their children are educated, and that's never a good thing.

If aldermen are doing their job right, they should be the ones who are closest to the vibe and the beat in their neighborhood and have a very important role to play on a number of different issues, but not a unilateral, unchecked right. That's gone as soon as I take office.

For more than two decades Chicagoans have routinely traveled to neighboring cities like Rosemont, Elgin, Joliet, Gary and Hammond to gamble. If people in Chicago want to gamble, then they should be able to gamble in Chicago at a city-owned, land-based casino.

Retired public service workers make up the backbone of the middle class in so many of our communities.

You know, I can't afford to take anything for granted.

And I would like to have a good, productive relationship with members of the City Council, but I'm not going to allow them to undermine what the people's choice was and what the people want, which is change.