Attorney Frank Avila has been battling the Hispanic arm of the Daley machine since 1997, filing lawsuits, holding press conferences, and giving tips to reporters. Last week City Hall officials exacted a bit of revenge, kicking him out of a client’s disciplinary hearing. “We were following procedure–it’s nothing personal,” explains a City Hall press officer, then laughs. “Well, maybe a little.”
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The practice of using jobs to reward friends and punish enemies has long been a sore point with Avila, and much of his ire is directed at the Hispanic Democratic Organization, Daley’s main political operation in the Hispanic wards. Mention HDO or its leaders–including former Streets and Sanitation commissioner Al Sanchez and former mayoral chief of staff Victor Reyes–and Avila will start spewing invective. Mention Daley and he’ll rage that the mayor’s stifled the development of Latino politics by supporting only “slaves happy to work on Massa Daley’s political plantation.” As he explains it, “In this model it’s all top-down. Daley tells them you got to be against Meigs Field. You think Hispanics care about Meigs Field? But they go along. Even things against their people, like CTA cuts, Hispanic politicians have to get in line. You can’t have an independent voice. You know what they call someone who votes with the mayor 99 percent of the time? Disloyal. That’s absurd. That’s not democracy.”
In 2000 Avila successfully sued to have one Daley loyalist, 25th Ward alderman Danny Solis, bounced off the ballot in the race for state central committee of the Fourth Congressional District. (Avila established that Solis didn’t live in the district.) In 2002 he successfully sued to have another Daley loyalist, state senator Martin Sandoval, removed from the ballot for the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District. He often represents activists who take on the city, including those who are too broke to pay legal fees, and he doesn’t care whom they’ve associated with in the past. So it’s not surprising that he’s representing an organization regular turned renegade like Coconate.
At that point, Avila says, several police officers approached him. “They were polite about it, but they were insistent. They said, ‘You have to leave–take it outside.’ The department had this other guy–this big weight-lifter type with tattoos on his forearms–hanging around. He was standing there sending his tough-guy don’t-mess-with-me message.” Avila got the message.
Coconate refused to go to the hearing without Avila, and no union representative showed up, since he’d refused to work with the union after he was suspended. So no evidence was presented on his behalf. Murphy and a city lawyer went through the evidence other city lawyers had presented, and on Monday Coconate heard that he’d been fired.
