SUSAN BUCHANAN, VILLAGE TRUSTEE FOR OAK PARK, ILLINOIS
Photo provided by Susan Buchanan
Interviewed by: Molly Conover, Summer Collaborator
Susan Buchanan is a Clinical Associate Professor and a family and occupational medicine physician at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She has dedicated her career to caring for vulnerable populations and investigating workplace and environmental hazards. Her research focuses on these hazards and their impacts on women’s reproductive health and the health of minority, low-income, and immigrant workers. She proudly uses her decades of medical experience to guide and inform her work as a village trustee in Oak Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, where she is committed to promoting sustainable practices and racial and gender equity in her community. Her place of special meaning is anywhere where she can find a quiet, peaceful moment in the outdoors-- these days, her backyard.
Dr. Buchanan has been a feminist and an activist since her early days. Her first political acts included breaking her school's “no pants for girls” dress code in third grade, and teaching a black co-worker how to swim at the all-white country club where she worked the summer before starting college.
Though Dr. Buchanan has been fighting for a more just world her entire life, the 2016 election served as an awakening, both to the profound and plentiful injustices in this nation, and to her power to do something about them. After listening to two particularly inspiring speeches, she saw no option but to take matters into her own hands and run for office herself.
Unable to bear the thought of letting Obama --and her community, down-- she decided to run for village trustee. Finding campaign help in books, friends, and community groups, she got to work. Dr. Buchanan was one of 13 people running for 3 open seats. After a long, hard, and cold campaign, she came out on top-- and the hard work had only just begun.
Her trusteeship has been primarily dedicated to addressing two issues: racial equity and the environment. A recent national TV series highlighted in the prevalence of racial discrimination in Oak Park schools, so her community and fellow trustees share this priority. Her desire to promote renewable energy and install solar panels on all flat-roofed government buildings, however, has not been met with the same response. Though she feels that much of the Oak Park community considers this an urgent issue, she is the lone, urgent voice on the village board constantly pushing for their community to innovate and stay ahead of the curve.
Dr. Buchanan knew she wanted to center her trusteeship around race and the environment, two issues she has spent decades thinking about as a physician and a citizen. She is not afraid to admit that there are also many issues that she is not an expert on; and, as she learned in her career in medicine, faking it isn’t an option. When she doesn’t have the information she needs to take a stance or make a decision, rather than pretending, she asks for help.
One of the barriers Buchanan was most surprised and frustrated by during her first year in office was the complexity of what she considered to be a relatively small town’s government. Oak Park operates under a village manager structure meaning that she and her fellow board members do not have the power to set meeting agendas or discuss specific policy issues unless they are on that agenda. Dr. Buchanan considers one of her biggest successes as a trustee to be the forming of a climate action plan working group, which she initiated and saw through. This, something she was ready to do on her first day in office, was something she was only able to accomplish after learning the ins and outs of the governance structure she must work within.
When asked what message she had to share with young women, Dr. Buchanan remembered some empowering words that her father spoke to her when she was a young woman. She echoed his statement: “you can be anything you want to be,” and hoped that her words would inspire young women to use their power and lead us into a more equitable future.