the city was too small. I had, of course, heard about Uptown in Chicago, and the challenges. So I wound up here in 1976. I waited tables. I did photography, took pictures for attorneys. Ultimately we started our own print shop in order to print our own newspapers and magazines. Campaigns for alderman First campaign for alderman (1978) A special election was called for May 16, 1978 in the 46th Ward when Alderman Chris Cohen, first elected in 1971, was re-elected in 1975 but retired in mid-term to head the Chicago regional office of the United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. On March 6, 1978, Ralph Axelrod, chief administrative assistant to Cook County Sheriff Richard Elrod, and ward committeeman since 1973, slated himself for alderman. At the time, Shiller was 30 years old and the editor of Keep Strong, a leftist magazine. Shiller's first attempt at elected office was to join a multi-way challenge to Axelrod. "I ran for alderman of this [46th] ward in 1978. I was terrified. I was very shy, afraid to speak to more than five people at a time," Shiller recalled in 2003. Shiller picked up much of the support that Young Lords founder and leader Jose Cha Cha Jimenez had in Jimenez' unsuccessful challenge to Cohen in the 1975 elections. He was running primarily as a defence against the FBI's CointelPro repressive program and to expose the displacement of Latino and lower income areas from the lakefront and near downtown by the Richard J. Daley machine. He still received 39% of the vote coming in second in a three-way race. Shiller's base of support was the same geographic center of the ward, an area of high density, low-income families between Broadway and Clark Street. Shiller campaigned pledging to work to keep the disadvantaged of Uptown from being displaced by gentrification. Independents including Aldermen Dick Simpson (44th), Martin J. Oberman (43rd), and Ross Lathrop (5th), and former alderman and mayoral candidate William Singer (43rd), endorsed Angela Turley, founder of the Organization of the Northeast (ONE), a community group. Turley was also unanimously endorsed by the 46th Ward Citizens Search Committee, a group of 50 ward residents who interviewed 10 candidates. Turley and another candidate Carl Lezak, a former priest and former director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), were challenged and stricken from the ballot by the Chicago Board of Elections Commissioners,