Occupy Forces Cancellation of Chicago G8 Summit

You may have already heard the news, but in case you haven't, The White House recently announced that the Chicago G8 Summit will be canceled on account of the Occupy Movement's incredible work organizing and planning resistance and demonstrations. Obama and company are moving the Global 1% summit to a remote location where masses of ordinary Americans won't be expected to show up and protest. The planners of the G8 are "cutting and running", so to speak, and changing their plans because of the resistance they expect to face if they "stay the course".

This should be seen as a victory for Occupy and the growing Left in the United States. And inasmuch as that is true, it should be seen as a serious defeat for Mayor 1% here in Chicago.

Rahm worked all of his Washington connections to bring NATO and the G8 to Chicago this Spring. At some point or other, it's likely that he used his leverage as former White House Chief of Staff to make a pitch to Obama something like the following: "Hey, trust me... bring the G8 to Chicago and I promise there won't be any fucking protests. And I'll find a way to raid the public purse to buy a bunch of riot cops and all the rest. Maybe I'll have to close a couple of libraries, schools and health clinics, along the way, but fuck 'em. So, what do you say?"

Obama, of course, said yes. And ever since Rahm public announced his plan to bring the G8 to town, he's been hammering away at anyone who's dared to question his decision. Of course, he never asked any actual Chicagoans whether they actually wanted to shell it out to throw a big party for the global 1%. But anyone who knows the Democrat Machine in Chicago knows that the Boss (whether its Daley or Rahm) simply does what the Boss wants around here. Asking the population what they need or prefer is not what the city government does in Chicago.

So, this time, Boss Emanuel decided that he wanted to throw a big party for the G8 on our dime. And he dug in his heels and used his command over the obedient City Council to force through anti-protest ordinances as well as measures that give him carte blanche to spend as much as he likes.

What's more, I think it would be fair to say that Rahm was excited about the whole thing. How could he not be? He and his minions planned and enthusiastically plugged it for months. He alone probably invested countless hours schmoozing with elites, chatting with millionaires, etc. to bring the representatives of the global 1% to town. Rahm recently said that "from city perspective, this will be an opportunity to showcase what is great about the greatest city in the greatest country." He was pumped.

But he didn't get his way. He lost. The G8 will not be coming to Chicago. Rahm's got to be pissed.

Of course, the ruling class politicians who organize these sorts of summits have an interest in concealing the nature of their decision to move the Summit. But try as they might, they can't fully conceal their intentions since circumstances make it so obvious that they're trying to avoid facing any public resistance to their agenda. Take, for example, the following statement from the White House:

"To facilitate a free-flowing discussion with our close G-8 partners, the President is inviting his fellow G-8 leaders to Camp David on May 18-19 for the G-8 Summit, which will address a broad range of economic, political and security issues," the White House announced this afternoon.

Yes, they moved it to facilitate a "free-flowing discussion". Translation: they realized that if they held the protest in the second largest city in the US, a city with a growing Occupy movement, that there would be massive public protests decrying the presence of a small clique of elites making decisions behind closed doors that will have grave consequences for the global 99%. This kind of mass showing of grass-roots resistance to the domination of the 1% in global affairs would, of course, disrupt their capacity to have a smooth, "free-flowing discussion." Better, then, to have it out in the middle of nowhere (see below).

That way there will far less public resistance to what is, quite obviously, a democratically illegitimate global organization.

But there's another dimension here is unlikely to be publicly addressed by Obama's White House. Let's not forget that it's an election year. Obama and the Democrats will be doing their best to try to rhetorically lull those sympathetic to the Occupy movement into voting for them. They will try to pose as the "party of the people", as the party that stands for taxing the rich and fighting for the 99%. But it's rather hard to do this effectively if there are massive protests underway in the President's hometown, especially since the very people on the streets will be the target of Democrat campaigning. A massive grass-roots confrontation has the potential to look rather bad for the man who desperately wants to position himself as the "President of the people" despite all of the evidence to the contrary.

So, once it became clear that the organizing efforts underway meant massive, large protests against the G8, Obama decided to renege on his decision.

Whatever he says publicly, we know that Rahm can't be pleased with this decision. Even the Boss of the Chicago Machine can be forced to relent when enough pressure is generated from below. We can take him on and win. He's not invincible. When we stand together and threaten to build mass movements that draw the majority of the population into active resistance, our leaders cannot fail to take notice.

This should be a lesson to everyone in Chicago fighting back against injustice and domination from above. We can stand together and defeat Rahm. We can challenge him and force him to back down. Because when the 99% stands together, it has a social power like no other. We--the 99%--do the work, we make this society run. When we are mobilized and organized, we have the ability knock our leaders off their thrones and force them to take notice.

Of course, in the midst of our victory celebrations, we have to be well aware of the challenges ahead. NATO, for the time being at least, is still scheduled to come to town. And, for all intents and purposes, NATO represents the exact same interests as the G8 (even the interests of French capitalists are served by NATO and they would be generally hard pressed to say otherwise). Still, we have a lot of work to do, probably no more or less than we had before us when both the G8 and NATO were slated to come.

But this victory has the potential to be a galvanizing factor as we move closer to May. It shows that we can win, it shows that what we do matters. Activists far and wide should seize upon the recent news to build the self-confidence of the movement and push participants to be even more ambitious in their demands. If we can win on this issue and force the President to relent, we can win on many others. We're just getting started.

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Joe Moreno: A Fighter for Chicago's 1%

Joe Moreno is the Alderman of Chicago's 1st Ward. Now, anyone who knows anything about Chicago knows that the City government isn't exactly a bastion of grassroots democracy. Typically Chicago city government calls to mind corruption, collusion with the rich and powerful, strong-arm tactics, and police violence. We think of the "Chicago Machine". Still, despite all of this, Moreno wants you to think that he's different. If you take his word for it, he is something of a progressive who stands up for justice, freedom of expression, and the interests of the 99%.

But Moreno is no progressive. He's a dogged fighter for the privileged and powerful.

Moreno, like the vast majority of his obedient colleagues on the Chicago City Council, recently voted for an ordinance that cracks down on the rights of protesters in Chicago. The intent of the ordinance is obvious: it is designed to criminalize and discourage legitimate protest. Rahm doesn't want there to be any dissent or protest this May when he is planning to host two of the foremost representatives of the global 1%: NATO and the G8. To make sure that there's no protest, Rahm is using a combination of fines, brute intimidation, and red tape to severely curtail Chicagoans ability to organize demonstrations. Like the recent austerity budget Rahm proposed which made punishing cuts to the living standards of ordinary Chicagoans, Moreno enthusiastically voted "yes".

Moreno recently penned a self-serving article in the Huffington Post offering a defense of his vote for the crackdown. It is a litany of half-truths and irrelevant fist pounding from start to finish. No matter what he says, his actions make it clear whose team he's playing on. Moreno is a staunch fighter for the 1%.

According to Moreno, it's OK that he voted to crackdown on protesters because "almost everyone agrees that having these two summits in our city is a great opportunity to solidify our rightful place as a world city."

That's just false on two fronts.

First, neither Moreno nor Rahm ever asked Chicagoans whether they wanted to treat the global 1% to a $65 million dollar party. I don't recall ever being given the opportunity to have a voice in whether or not the City would spend those resources on NATO/G8. In classic Chicago Machine form, Rahm and his lackeys on the Council just did it, just like they did with the infamous parking-meter privatization deal. They could care less what the rest of us actually want or need—the NATO/G8 summit isn't about us. Of course, Rahm and Co. have self-serving reasons to pretend as if the decision to host the summit was sparked by some grassroots initiative. But we know better.

Second, it's far from obvious that the NATO/G8 summit is going to do anything good for ordinary Chicagoans. As I say, it isn't intended to help out the 99% in Chicago—it's little more than a get-together for the 1%. Even some bourgeois economists are claiming that it will be a financial disaster. And it's absolutely criminal that Moreno thinks its better to spend $70 million (and counting) on a big party for the 1% when the city is laying off librarians, closing health clinics, cutting transit, closing schools, and cutting back on a number of different basic city services. If Moreno and Rahm actually cared about making Chicago a "world class city", they'd fully fund our public schools, fully modernize and expand our aging transit system, open new health clinics, and so on. But instead they are letting all of those basic social goods wither on the vine. And more cuts on are on the way. So it's ludicrous to think that a big party for NATO and G8 is what Chicago needs. Powerful groups like NATO and G8--which stand for the interests of the 1%--are the source of the misery of ordinary Chicagoans. They are stalwart defenders of the system that is forcing austerity down our throats.

If Moreno were, in fact, a "progressive", he could easily have put his foot down and fought for the basic interests of ordinary Chicagoans. Yet, rather than standing up against Mayor 1%, Moreno has decided to regurgitate Rahm's talking points about how the summit is such a "blessing" for all of us here in Chicago. Maybe it's a blessing for Rahm's resume. But it's a nightmare for the rest of us.

A progressive would have stood up against Rahm and his plan to spend millions entertaining organizations responsible for war, occupation, and economic exploitation. Moreno, however, did what the vast majority of his other obedient, conservative Council Members did: he did Mayor 1%'s bidding and betrayed the rest of us.

Rather than actually explain, in plain words, why he is so fond of the crackdown ordinance, in his article Moreno patronizes the vast numbers of people who opposed the bill (2,000 of whom, by his own admission, sent him emails urging him to vote no). According to Moreno, the thousands upon thousands of Chicagoans who criticized the bill just don't know what they're talking about. As Moreno puts it, there seems to be a big gap between "perception and reality." Translation: "C'mon guys... there's really nothing to worry about! The city government and the Chicago Police have a great track-record. They're trustworthy and I can assure that they how to "handle things". Or maybe you're just too dumb to understand the facts because you have some "special agenda"."

Wait, so you're not convinced by Moreno's suggestion that you're just too ignorant to see the facts for what they are? Well, don't worry. Moreno's still got more up his sleeve. He wants you to know that he's actually a big fan of protesting. That's right! He loves protests. Freedom of speech is something he absolutely treasures. So don't worry. His vote for the crackdown doesn't mean you can't still be pals. He loves the idea of protesting injustice!

It's just that he, like Rahm, doesn't want you to actually do it. Especially not this May when NATO and G8 are in town.

OK, so you're still not convinced by Moreno's apologetics? Well, not to fear: he's got one more piece of shit to sling against the wall in the hopes that something sticks:

It would have been easy for me to vote no on this ordinance. I know that I disappointed many of my supporters today. But, I don't want to be someone who refuses to compromise and doesn't give any ground. I'm not interested in beating my chest and becoming someone who can't get anything of substance done for my constituents.

Yes, it would have been easy. But Moreno didn't want to "beat his chest" and stand up for what's right. Instead he gave in to Rahm and the Machine because he wanted to continue to be someone who can, as he puts it, "get things of substance done for his constituents". Translation: "Look, if you didn't buy any of my other bullshit, then at least blame the Machine and not me. Because if I had opposed Rahm, then Rahm would have punished me. I'm weak: don't blame me, blame the Boss."

Still not convinced? Well, just fill out hundreds of pages of paper work a week in advance, pay a hefty fee for a permit, send in details on your proposed placards, prepare a detailed list of which contingents will be marching with you, and Moreno and the City will consider whether they feel like granting you the right to protest. In the event that they don't give you the permit, you can, well, shove it. Oh, yes, and don't forget to fund and publicly support your local Democratic Party in 2012 because without it we wouldn't have progressives like Moreno to stand up for the people!

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Rahm vs. Teachers

Before he was elected, Rahm made no secret of his desire to smash the ability of Chicago teachers to have a voice in their workplace. His campaign rhetoric was loaded with anti-union sabre-rattling as well as heaps of praise for privatization/charters. He garnered large swaths of business support with "tough" statements threatening to neutralize the influence of teachers over their own work conditions. His tone was bellicose and uncompromising. This is, after all, the same person who publicly said "fuck the UAW" and called left-leaning supporters of the Democratic Party "fucking morons". So, when you think about it, all of Rahm's anti-teacher baggage was to be expected, given his background in the corporate world and Chicago machine politics. His tenure in the Obama Administration, notable for its glowing embrace and ambitious extension of Bush's failed education policies, did little to assuage fears that Rahm would come down hard on teachers as mayor of Chicago.

But the most recent assault on Chicago teachers is a low blow, even for Rahm.

On labor day, no less, Rahm and Co. engineered a stunt that resulted in 3 CPS schools allegedly voting to waive the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) contract. Rahm (and the virulently anti-union big Chicago media empires like the Tribune) have lauded this as a huge step forward for "school reform". Glowing endorsements of these "courageous" teachers have surfaced all over the business-friendly media landscape in Chicago. What's going on here?

Let me fill you in on the background: The CTU is 30,000 strong, and has a contract with CPS in place which includes a clause that enables particular schools to waive aspects of the contract if the members vote to do so. Rahm ran for mayor pledging to extend the school day in Chicago without paying the teachers a dime for their increased work day. Of course, when workers are unionized into a 30,000 strong union, you can't just push them around the way that charter school administrators push around their non-union personnel. Unions are organs of workplace democracy that give workers a voice and the power to force bosses to listen. So, naturally, Rahm understood that he wouldn't be able to persuade the teachers to increase their work day substantially without paying them for the extra work they'd be doing. He understood that he'd have to ram it down their throats; negotiation, he must have thought, would be a waste of time. Of course, the teachers still have a potent weapon to resist his onslaught: the ability to shut down the entire CPS system with a 30,000-strong teachers strike. So, in the uncompromising, strong-armed manner for which he is infamous, Rahm used his Washington-insider connections to push through a bill in Springfield that legally restricts the right of teachers to go on strike. This doesn't, strictly speaking, mean that the teachers won't still strike; many public sector strikes are technically illegal. But it gives Rahm and his corporate allies yet another weapon in their union-busting arsenal. Succinctly put: Rahm wants to force the teachers to work longer hours for less pay, and, naturally, the teachers want, god forbid, to be compensated for the work that they do. Of course, teachers already do a large amount of uncompensated labor (e.g. grading, lesson-planning, etc.) and many contribute large amounts of their own money in order to purchase necessary school supplies for their students. They're already sacrificing a great deal. If there was a shred of justice in this system, the CPS teachers would first get fully compensated for the unpaid work they're already doing, and only then would a conversation about extending the school day take place.

It is in this context that we must understand Rahm's recent stunt. What happened was that Rahm and his allies engineered a "vote" among teachers at 3 CPS schools to extend the workday and thereby waive the CTU contract. From Rahm's perspective, this is tantamount to "courageous" teachers willingly accepting a lengthening of their workday for the sake of the "greater good". In his ideal world, all of the CTU would simply roll over and work longer hours. This would, of course, fix all of the social ills of our society, and puppy dogs and ice cream would float down from the sky.

Now, aspects of Rahm's position appear to have merit if you know nothing about the political context, or the concrete details of the "votes" (which I'll get to in a moment). And, predictably, this event has been given a context-free, tendentious portrayal in the business-friendly Chicago media. But, situated in the context of a general assault on working class living standards, and a particularly focused and dogged attack on public school teachers, it's clear enough that this is little more than a bid to undermine the CTU's ability to resist the coming onslaught from above. Despite all of the soaring rhetoric about "reform", this move has little to do with improving education as such.

But what about the details of the votes? Every day, more and more damning facts have come to light. First off, CPS had to bribe the teachers in order to get the votes they needed. They offered teachers increased compensation, and in some cases I'm told that teachers were offered iPads and other electronic goodies for their classrooms. We're talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars per school in increased compensation. Of course, this is only 3 out of 600 schools in the system. If CPS has the money to increase compensation no a system-wide scale, why are they crying poor and demanding that teachers accept longer hours for zero pay in the first place? Second, there is also evidence that teachers and other staff were under intense pressure from above to vote the way that they did. In addition, there is reason to think that protocol (as outlined in the legally binding CTU contract) may not have been properly followed, throwing into question the legal basis of the whole stunt.

Still, set that aside. Suppose these 3 schools really did have bottom-up, teacher-driven elections, and suppose that they did vote to extend their workday for increased compensation packages. What would this show?

It's unclear. This only 3 out of 600 schools. That's 0.5% of the CPS system. Since when does a 0.5% vote tally on anything signal a major news event? And if the teachers did willingly accept longer hours for increased pay, doesn't that cast doubt on the whole "work longer, get paid the same" argument put forward by Rahm and his minions? As I said above, if CPS extended the increased compensation on a system-wide scale, they'd already be on their way to giving the teachers what they've asked for in terms of raises and increased pay for increased work hours.

But these facts, inconvenient though they may be for Rahm, aren't going to slow down the assault on teachers. Only increased struggle can stop the onslaught. Sooner or later, Rahm will provoke a showdown in a bid to crush them once and for all. What our side needs to do is prepare patiently for this by building community support, building solidarity among the working class, and educating potential allies about the power politics playing out here. Rahm's aim, itself part of a national (global, in fact) political/economic trend, is to crush the bargaining power of public sector unions in order to push through cuts and austerity. Rahm is merely doing what the Scott Walkers and the Georgios Papandreous of the world have been doing for months. Through Tax Increment Financing schemes (basically huge slushfunds controlled by the mayor that are funded by skimming revenues from property taxes), he's continuing to funnel money to unaccountable corporate firms who need "inducements" and "incentives" to do business in Chicago. But Rahm and the city machine can't be bothered to give the teachers the pay they deserve or treat educators with respect. The priorities are clear.

Should the school day be lengthened in Chicago? Perhaps. It's not the silver bullet that Rahm makes it out to be, and it won't fix the structural social and economic problems that produce educational inequalities in the first place. But maybe it would do a bit of good and add some marginal benefits to the education system in Chicago. I'm not in a position to say one way or the other. But this much is clear: whether not the day should be lengthened should be decision that educators make themselves, democratically, in consultation with community groups and parents. It should not be decreed from on high by political cheerleaders for the privatization and corporatization of education. And should teachers be asked to work longer hours, they absolutely must be compensated for doing so. Moreover, as I say, teacher should get paid for all of the extra labor that they already perform before they are asked to do more uncompensated work. One has only to recall that many Democrats, Obama included, defended the bonuses raked in by bank bailout recipients to see the duplicity at work here. These robber barons, we were told, "earned" every dollar of compensation they received. Without such high pay, the old argument goes, these "exceptionally talented" simply wouldn't work in finance and the company would not be able to compete. The astronomical bonuses were necessary to motivate the "talented rich" to do the great things they do (e.g. like wrecking the global economy for a generation). But, you know, when it comes to rank and file educators, they're overpaid at $40,000/yr and should be worked much harder for less money, and so on...

One final thing. If I hear another oblivious liberal from somewhere outside of Chicago tell me that it "must be cool to have Obama's right hand man as mayor" I think I may have to puke on their shoes. First off, Rahm is a right-winger, even by the tepid standards of the Democratic Party. Second, his old "boss" is just as bad as he is. Here's an excerpt from Obama's Labor Day speech:

"When union workers agree to pay freezes and pay cuts, they're not doing it just to keep their jobs, they're doing it so that their fellow workers, their fellow Americans can keep their jobs."

"When teachers agree to reforms on how schools are run, at the same time they're digging into their pockets for supplies for those kids, they do so because they believe every child can learn. They do it because they know something that those seek to divide us don't understand. We are all in this together. That's why those crowds came out to support you in Madison and Columbus. We are one nation. We are one people. We will rise and we will fall together."

Translation: workers must accept living standard cuts because otherwise "we" (by which he means the government and the ruling class) will be "forced" to lay them off. It's not as if there are any other options here... like taxing the rich, ending the wars, and rebuilding US infrastructure with a major public works plan. Yes, Obama and the ruling class are literally "forced" to either push down living standards or fire workers and drive up unemployment even further.

And how about all of this "we're all in this together" rhetoric? It's funny, it only surfaces when the ruling classes need something from the rest of us. When they're banking, I don't remember them calling me up talking about how we're all in it together as far as the profits are concerned. And I don't recall hearing this "we rise and fall together" line when Obama was extending the Bush tax cuts at the same time that he slashed spending on health care, education and public transportation. If we're "all in this together", why doesn't he shield workers from all cuts by raising the marginal tax rate and ending the costly imperial ventures abroad? Because Obama is for Wall Street, not the jobless. He represents the ruling class, not the people.

Take note here. When it comes to cuts and sacrifices, suddenly "we're" all in it together. Suddenly gaping inequalities, racial hierarchies and oppression all disappear and, for the purposes of distributing sacrifices and burdens amongst the masses, we're one big happy family helping each other out. But when it comes to record profit margins, there is no "we" to speak of. When it's a matter of big private profits, Obama prefers to stick to the Reaganite refrain that the rich deserve their wealth because, well, "they've earned it". He makes sound as if the rest of us, working ever longer hours for stagnant wages to make this society run, are the ones getting a free ride. It's a simple formula: prosperity for the few, austerity for the many. And Democrat and Republican alike endorse it through and through.

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Awful NY Times Piece on Chicago Elections

From the NYTimes:

This city has had one mayor, Richard M. Daley, for 22 years, and, like his approach or hate it, Chicago has certainly grown used to it. So when Mr. Emanuel, the former chief of staff to President Obama, moves into the fifth floor at City Hall in May, it is expected to upend the politics of this city — not only because things have been mostly the same here for so long, but also because of Mr. Emanuel’s harsh style, his relationships and rivals, and the enormous challenges facing the nation’s third largest city.
“There will be more turmoil,” Kenneth Gould, a suburban Chicago resident, said recently, as the outcome of Tuesday’s race — an outright win by Mr. Emanuel — became increasingly likely. “Rahm will make more noise.”

First of all, this is going to be a totally smooth transition from Daley to Rahm. Chicago has merely exchanged one strong-man machine boss for another. There will be no "upending" whatsoever. On the contrary, Rahm will sit down in Daley's throne before the seat even has a chance to get cold. Business as usual is sure to continue. (For the record, I'm not convinced that any of the contenders were aiming to "upend" anything either. They were all machine-friendly candidates; no reformers in the whole lot, although Del Valle was marginally less bad than the rest. The main distinguishing feature of all of them, as Cornel West might have put it, was their "unadulterated mediocrity").
Second, why is the first person quoted on the election from a suburb? I don't know what "suburban Chicago" means. Either you live in the city or you don't. Suburbanites don't vote for Mayor. This much, however, is clear: Mr. Kenneth Gould probably doesn't want to pay Chicago property taxes and shoulder the responsibilities of funding the city of Chicago. Sure, he's probably happy to tell people he's from "Chicago" and opine as to how it should be run. But when it comes to actually being democratically responsible for the shared fate of Chicagoans, he'll likely admit that he's not really a "Chicagoan" per se, but a Blackhawks fan who lives near the city or whatever. I'm sure he's really happy in his single-family home in a tax haven far enough away from the darkness of the city, but close enough to his job (which is likely in city limits). These suburbanites like to play fast and loose with the mantle of "Chicago" when it comes to appropriating the things they like. But when it comes to actually sharing the burdens and benefits of social cooperation that Chicago makes possible, they prefer their exclusive sprawling enclave outside the city itself.
Why not begin the article with a Chicago voter? And if you are going to interview a Suburbanite, why not make clear that they are a different constituency with different interests from most Chicagoans? I feel like that bit speaks volumes about the perspective of the article.
My only remarks regarding Rahm are as follws. Grrrrrrrr.

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Straight Dope Chicago Responds

Read Cecil Adams's response to my post here.

I appreciate the response from Cecil. It is far more measured and charitable than my post was. Still, although I would be the first to admit that my initial post was a touch on the polemical side, I stand by what I said there. For example, I still disagree, as Cecil said in the original post that "The lesson many drew [from the "Time of Troubles" when Washington was mayor] is that meaningless elections = peace and prosperity, whereas democracy = bad". Perhaps the 25-30% who supported the Two Eddies crusade against Washington would endorse this claim. But I doubt that the majority of ordinary Chicagoans would.

That said, I felt partially vindicated after reading how much clarification there was in Cecil's response. I felt vindicated in the sense that the response largely argues that Cecil agrees with what I was saying (for the most part), whereas I'd construed him as disagreeing. I'm pleased to see that we're in agreement on more than I'd previously supposed, but I'm not convinced that we agree on everything.

Although this wasn't perhaps clear in my initial critique, part of the problem with Cecil's column on non-partisan elections had to do with what it didn't say. What I mean is this. If you didn't know the facts about Washington, race and politics in Chicago, you wouldn't walk away with a very accurate view after reading the column. Absent Cecil's recent clarifications and qualifications, the original column would leave you with the impression that Washington was a "problem" best avoided in the future. Compare and contrast Ira Glass's excellent piece on Harold Washington with Cecil's original column and tell me that the latter doesn't miss the mark.

Some of Cecil's points are well taken. I wouldn't want to argue that non-partisan elections are inherently racist. However, in certain contexts, when put to certain uses, they may absolutely be an instrument of perpetuating racial subordination. And in our case in Chicago, they are such an instrument. Using them cynically in order to prevent a non-Machine-sanctioned Black reformer from taking office again seems to fit the bill here. Cecil seems to agree with this much.

But Cecil's "second point" is that despite this unsavory history, non-partisan elections have their own merits as well. But what are these merits? This is where I get a bit confused.

In the original column, Cecil argued that the merit of non-partisan elections is that they force candidates to appeal across racial lines, whereas the older procedures didn't. I don't think this is true. To be sure, the old procedures had plenty of problems. But it isn't true that the old system didn't require candidates to appeal for support across color lines. The story of Harold Washington, as Cecil himself agrees, invalidates that worry. Furthermore, it isn't even obvious to me that "non partisan elections" encourage candidates to appeal across color lines. I don't see how eliminating primaries is a step in the right direction here, but I'm open to changing my mind. I do think that the non-partisan procedures were implemented to dilute the black vote, and I don't think they were ever drawn up to increase democracy. But I concede that the one-party Machine domination of Chicago politics may have been aided by the previous set-up (though it remains to be seen whether the new rules will have any effect on the health of the Machine... my own thought is that it will take a grass-roots struggle from below to really shake things up in Chicago).

One final thought about the idea of "appealing across racial lines". There is a reasonable sense of this idea and there is one that is problematic. The reasonable version is this. People of different races should be fully equal co-legislators, and should relate to one another on terms of respect. I myself endorse this rather abstract and idealized version.

But the problematic version is sneaky. It trades on the appeal of the idealized version above, while actually apologizing for already existing oppression. The problematic version basically interprets "appealing across racial lines" as "appealing to the prejudices and existing privilege of white people". In other words, "appealing across racial lines" means "appeasing those sitting atop the existing racial status-quo".

Thus asking white and black people to appeal to one another is not an identical request. Asking whites to appeal to black people means asking the historic oppressors to listen to, and take seriously, the needs and interests of the oppressed. Asking black people to avoid talking frankly about racism in order not to alienate mainstream whites is a different requirement entirely.

Of course, the most fundamental reason to combat and fight racism rests mostly on the "reasonable version" of the idea that I laid out above. You fight it because you care about the bigger struggle of fighting for an egalitarian society in which human beings encounter each other as equals in the fullest possible sense.

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Racist Bullshit in "Straight Dope Chicago"

From "Straight-Dope Chicago":

The idea of a nonpartisan mayoral election with a runoff if no one got a majority was first bruited in 1986, during the runup to the 1987 mayoral contest. The intent clearly was to avoid splitting the white vote again and letting Washington be re-elected. Richie Daley among quite a few others supported the plan, but an attempt to put it up for a city referendum failed...

A 1988 effort to push nonpartisan elections through the state legislature died, but the idea came up again in 1995, when Republicans took control of the General Assembly and the governor's office for the first time in 25 years. They used the opportunity to push through a long list of cherished measures that had gone nowhere while the Democrats were in control, one of which was nonpartisan mayoral elections in Chicago.

...Pretty much everyone else was in favor, and how could they not be? David Axelrod, who had worked for both Washington and Daley, told the Tribune, "It forces you to appeal to a broader constituency than to one ethnic or racial group."

Hard to argue with. Governor Jim Edgar signed the measure into law, and it's what we're using now. Is it fair? Yeah, it's fair. The fact remains that had nonpartisan elections been the rule in 1983, Harold Washington wouldn't have been elected, and breaks like the one that enabled him to become mayor are precisely what the system is intended to prevent.

Straight dope my ass. Straight racist crap is more like it. Here's some bits from earlier in the article:

For many Chicagoans, [democracy] is a frightening prospect. Those who've been around for a while recall that the last seriously contested elections took place during that brief period in the 1980s when the mayor of Chicago wasn't named Daley. This is now widely thought of as the Time of Troubles. The lesson many drew is that meaningless elections = peace and prosperity, whereas democracy = bad...

...However virtuous the system may look now, it wasn't put in place because of saintly considerations. Rather, it was meant to ensure that an electoral outcome a lot of people weren't too happy with never happens again.

The most famous mayoral election in Chicago history … well, I shouldn't say that; all the inter-Daley elections were pretty memorable. But certainly the one with the most dramatic consequences took place in 1983...

...white Chicagoans may not have been wild about the city's first woman mayor, but better her than the first black one.

Before I rip this article apart, just ask yourself this: to whom is it written? Who does the author mean when he talks about "most Chicagoans"? Who is "a lot of people" in Chicago?

[For a far more accurate account of the Harold Washington election in 1983 please listen ot the following excellent edition of This American Life on the subject here.]

Though the gloss given in "straight dope" suggests otherwise, the fact of the matter is that the way that most of white Chicago reacted to Harold Washington, who won the mayoral election fair-and-square (with far more grass-roots organizing and support than any Daley could ever hope to obtain), was absolutely outrageous and self-consciously racist. The way that the white-controlled City Council tried to thwart his reformist agenda was criminal and reprehensible.

But the tone of the straight-dope piece expresses none of this obviously unsavory truth. It adopts a tone of faux-objectivity that paves over the very real, disgusting attacks that Washington faced. It tacitly endorses the disgusting attacks by giving the voice of white outrage a veneer of credibility and universality. You'd hardly know from reading the article that white people make up only 1/3 of the population of Chicago- the article makes it sound as though "most", "many", "a lot of" Chicagoans are white, whereas a small fringe aren't.

Strangely, at one point the article complains that Harold Washington "split the white vote", but later on it defends the new (quite obviously racist) "non-partisan procedures" on the grounds that they force candidates to "appeal to more than one ethnic or racial group". This is flatly contradictory.

If Harold Washington indeed "split the white vote", then in what sense didn't he already have to "appeal to more than one racial group"? Moreover, if the "problem" for those wishing to maintain white political hegemony in Chicago was that Washington won by "splitting the white vote", in what sense were "non-partisan" procedures (which, if we believe Cecil Adams, are supposed to split the white vote) the "solution"? This is obfuscatory non-sense. On the one hand, the "straight dope" story is that Washington committed the sin of "splitting the white vote" and was, therefore, attacked by the Machine for having done so. On the other, we're told that the "solution" to the Harold Washington "problem" was the "non-partisan" mayoral procedure, which, we're told, has the virtue both of solving the Washington "problem" and forcing candidates to appeal to voters across racial divisions.

The fact is that the "power brokers" that the article seems to side with did not want there to be a Black mayor and they used every available means to try to thwart his plans and have him removed.

The article also suggests that most white Democrat Chicagoans voted for Washington, whereas some voted for the white Republican. In fact, 90% of white Democrats defected from their party to vote against Washington for the (white) Republican, whose campaign slogan was "Epton for Mayor: Before it's too late".

The bottom line is this. As I've noted elsewhere, the typical white racist line in Chicago is a Hobbesian one. Their paranoid, irrational view is that Chicago can either have (a) a chaotic, disastrous "rule of barbarians" if it allows full democracy, or (b) it can have an autocratic white ruler who "maintains order". Though some white apologists for the Machine may reproach Daley in certain respects, most consent to its top-down domination of politics insofar as it ensures the political subordination of the "barbarians", i.e. the people of color in Chicago who make up 2/3 of the population (1/3 Black, 1/3 Latin@). This is the politics of white paranoia playing itself out (listen to the This American Life episode for more details here.)

Despite the actual divisions, inequalities, and the demographics and history of Chicago, most of the mainstream white population in Chicago thinks it deserves permanent domination over the municipal and county government. Thus when a white candidate runs for Mayor, that's just "normal". But when a person of color runs it's "divisive" and "racially exclusive". As the "Straight Dope" article suggests, it's a "problem", it's "an outcome a lot of people weren't too happy with", which they want to make sure "never happens again".

This "analysis" of recent Chicago electoral politics seems rather nakedly racist. And it appears in affiliation with Chicago's so-called progressive publication no less. While The Reader is easily the best leftish news and analysis one can find in Chicago (certainly it's many, many light-years ahead of worthless tripe like the Trib or Sun-Times), I'm always bothered by how goddamn white (in the pejorative sense) the publication is. What I mean is that it is consciously written by and for a slice of the white population in Chicago but nonetheless understands itself to be a publication representative of the city writ large.

In reality, The Reader does not really express the needs or interests of people of color in Chicago. Indeed, even when it adopts a sympathetic attitude towards the other 2/3 of Chicago, it typically does so from an outsider, observer perspective, rather than from the perspective of fellow city-dwellers and comrades. It's not that I'm arguing that the Reader should focus exclusively on the topic of race and nothing else --but I think it's problematic how little it reflects the social or political interests of black Chicagoans. That can and should change.

Most of the time, there is not a lot of discussion of race in the Reader. So far as I'm aware, there is no regular input from a person of color in the paper about issues facing people of color. In a city so segregated that sociologists had to invent a new word to describe it ("hyper-segregation"), you'd think that the allegedly progressive publication in the city would be a bit more sensitive to the historic and ongoing subordination of black people in the city of Chicago. But apparently not. Hence you find ridiculous "maps" of Chicago among some of these folk which don't even bother to include much of the west-side or south-sides on the map of the city.

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"Rahm the Reformer"

The first sentence of an article about Rahm's run for Mayor in the Chicago News Cooperative:

"Rahm Emanuel, who boasts tight relationships with President Obama and Mayor Richard M. Daley, could credibly portray himself as the mayoral candidate most able to continue Mr. Daley’s legacy of avoiding legislative gridlock and getting things done."

"Avoid legislative gridlock" and "get things done", huh? That's certainly one way to put it. Another would be that Daley used an elaborate patronage system to circumvent democracy in order to enrich himself, his friends, and corporate elites to the extent that these are distinct groups.

And what's not to like about the things that Daley "got done"? How about the "hundreds and hundreds of millions of property tax dollars intended for the poor that he showers on the rich (yes, I'm talking about tax increment financing again). And [how about] the way he's fired teachers while giving raises to central office bureaucrats and farmed out charter school contracts to acolytes like the United Neighborhood Organization. [Or how about] how he bleeds the police department through attrition while telling us he's adding more cops to the force." (for more on this see the Ben Joravsky's "Me and My Mayor" here).

Or, how about Daley's obsession with privatizing public assets by selling them off to rich friends at criminally low prices? How about how he used his clout to force through midnight deal to privatize all of Chicago's parking meters, costing the city billions? How about his fight for a multi-billion dollar, taxpayer-funded throw-away party (i.e. the Olympics) amidst infrastructure, schools, and municipal institutions in dire need of adequate funding? Or, how about his way of "getting things done" as Cook County State Attorney? During his tenure in that position, the Jon Burge torture scandal went down, where (aside from the fact that people were tortured) hundreds of (mostly black and brown) Chicagoans were sent to prison (or Death Row) for crimes they didn't commit, for which there was no incriminating evidence. Is that "getting things done" as well?

This CNC article is complete drivel. It is a view from the top. But it's not just a view from the top -it's a view from the top that purports to be something else, i.e. a universal, common view appropriate for the mass of Chicagoans. But the view from the bottom looking up is much different. It doesn't have to do so much with the P.R. tactics of moneyed politicians or the back-and-forth between various Aldermen and other rip-off artists associated with the Machine. Such trivial blathering among elites is of little consequence to the vast majority of us. Yet, this is constantly held up in front of us as though this was the be-all-end-all of politics. We are encouraged to think that such blather is important, worthy of being studied and internalized by any person "up" on recent events.

But what falls out of this picture is the massive gap between the interests of ordinary people and the conservatism of our political institutions. Instead, ossified political institutions, such as they are at present, appear as a neutral backdrop to reality itself. Something so complicit and unreflective should not be able to pass for journalism.

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Crude vs. Sophisticated Anti-Gentrification Arguments

As a socialist, it goes without saying that I do not think that housing, land-use and urban investment should be controlled and run solely in the interests of profit. Thus, I am a critic of what's called gentrification. But to be a socialist, or to oppose the reign of landlords and rich developers over and above tenants and the masses of people, is to be against gentrification for a specific set of reasons. Unfortunately, one rarely runs across such reasons in most mainstream discussions of gentrification. Instead one gets a straw-person account of the critical position, wherein the opponent of gentrification is against it for merely "cultural" reasons (e.g. they hate coffee shops, artisan bread bakeries, sidewalk beautification projects, etc.). The struggle for or against gentrification thus becomes a struggle for or against certain consumer preferences, for or against certain consumer lifestyles ("gritty" bohemian or working-class life vs. the clean-edged modern design of frou-frou bars and restaurants). This is a distortion.

At its absolute worst, the pro-gentrification crowd frames the debate as follows. There are two choices: (1) economically depressed slum plagued by crumbling infrastructure and high crime, or (2) an economically growing neighborhood (increasingly populated by rich white people exclusively) in which property values are on the rise and commercial investment revitalizes housing stock, roads and schools. Having framed the argument in this way, the pro-gentrification folks (for an excellent example, see the strictly disciplined political line taken over at Uptown Update) have little trouble in ridiculing any and all critics: they simply prefer crime-ridden neighborhoods that have crumbling infrastructure and no jobs.

Or, to take the "cultural" manifestation of this framing of the question, we could say that the opponents of gentrification simply hate the following things in themselves: modern architecture, artisan cafes, coffee shops, art galleries, bars and restaurants, boutiques, etc. In other words, the opponents of gentrification just have a problem with such "white" things as bread, coffee, art, good schools, and jobs. Insert the racist "culture of poverty" argument here to give the claim a "scientific" veneer.

Now everyone with a brain should know that this framing of the "debate" is complete bullshit. No rational person wants crime, crumbling infrastructure, underfunded schools, slumlord-ruled housing, unemployment, etc. Moreover, there is little reason to think that the yet-to-be-dispossessed simply have different "cultural" preferences that motivate their criticisms of gentrification. In contrast, what the critics of gentrification oppose is precisely the prescribed choice imposed on us in the framing of the question discussed above.

Here's an example. Take the Lawndale neighborhood on the West side of Chicago. Traditionally, Lawndale was always a working-class neighborhood populated by various immigrant communities and, more recently, black people. At one time Lawndale was a center for the working-class Jewish community in Chicago. It has, to be sure, seen its up's and down's, but today it is in worse shape than it has ever been. The reasons why are not particular to Lawndale whatsoever: de-industrialization, capital flight, severe population loss, ruthless criminal landlord practices, racism, etc. all ravaged the community from the 1960s onwards.

Martin Luther King, Jr. actually moved to Lawndale in the late 1960s in order to draw attention to the severe neglect and poverty afflicting black people in Northern cities (it had been a favorite position of many moralizing white liberals in the 1960s that racism was merely a problem in the South).

Today, Lawndale is dire straits. It has hundreds of liquor stores but only one grocery store. (Jonathan Kozol writes that it had in the early 1990s "one bank, one supermarket, 48 state lottery agents ... and 99 licensed bars." and that, according to the 1980 census, 58 percent of men and women 17 and older had no jobs). This is a familiar story. Most of the big companies and factories that employed the community in the first half of the 20th century have closed down or moved overseas to find more easily exploited labor. Today the roads in Lawndale are in such bad shape that they were recently featured in an article in the Chicago Reader.

So, what hope does a neighborhood like Lawndale have as long as investment, land use, and so on are controlled by profit-seeking capitalist investors?

Within the coordinates of profit, Lawndale is not a neighborhood populated by a community of people with needs, talents, and interests. On the contrary, from the perspective of capitalists, Lawndale is one of two things: either its a profitable investment or it isn't. And, surprise surprise, profitable investments are typically those that lure in the spending capacities of the rich, most of whom are white. The result is that the social problem, the injustice, of Lawndale doesn't register; capitalism is deaf to human needs when they aren't backed by cold, hard cash.

So, just imagine that capitalists tried gentrify Lawndale (they've attempted to do it, by the way, in the crumbling East Garfield Park neighborhood on the West Side). Suppose that residents of Lawndale, even some who'd been living there for 30+ years, were beginning to be priced out of their own apartments by rising rents and costs of living. Now the residents' political anger at this situation wouldn't have anything to do with so-called "cultural" preferences. On the contrary, their anger would be over the fact that they are given an unfair and oppressive choice: either accept broken schools and crumbling roads, or get out and make room for the rich.

When seen for what it is, gentrification presents us with a deep contradiction in capitalist development. And we forget at our own peril that capitalist control of land use and housing isn't natural or inevitable. It's made by human beings. And what human beings have made they can tear down. But community, democratic control over land use, housing, and investment will not be on offer unless it is demanded by pressure from below.

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Racism, "Uptown Update" and Policing Comments

As a resident of Chicago's Uptown neighborhood, I regularly read the neighborhood blog, "Uptown Update", because it has unparalleled coverage of what's going on in the hood. As a source of updates, facts and news in the neighborhood, there really isn't a better source. From what I've seen since I've lived here, UU has done a lot of good and is in many ways a great neighborhood forum and conduit for community.

But they run a tight ship over at Uptown Update. They have a strict political line and they always see to it that current events are massaged to bolster their political aims.

On the issue of gentrification, they are unequivocally, undeniably, openly very much in favor of it. And by 'they', I don't mean just the authors of the blog, but especially some of their readership.

Given my experience posting comments on their blog, I know that they very strictly police what gets put up and what does not. First of all, nothing is posted until a site administrator publishes it. They don't go and police after the fact, but they screen every single comment on their website.

Now I know that doesn't necessarily mean that the blog's authors therefore agree wholeheartedly with everything that gets posted. But I've noticed some trends.

When I attempted to post a critical comment about a post on gentrification a couple of months ago, the folks at Uptown Update decided not to allow my comment to go up. It wasn't shrill or beligerent; it was a short, tightly-argued paragraph attempting to complicate the facile choice that UU was pushing on the issue (i.e. "either we can have a violent slum or we can have Lincoln Park North: there is no alternative"). I've had similar experiences when it comes to posting comments that have a critical angle that complicates the line UU is pushing: they just don't want to hear this stuff and they don't want anyone else to either.

But for all that policing and scouring of comments that they do, they sure let a lot of racist bullshit fly on their comment boards. Here's a recent gem:

" jimo says: August 13, 2009 4:54 PM Let me guess, if we had more programs out there to help these troubled youths, we wouldn't have these problems, right? LOL

What a pack of animals...can't wait for new members to move into WY...

How sad....

JJO"

The context of the comment is a recent gang scuffle (i.e. a shouting match with some bottle throwing and shoving) in Uptown that was captured on video by a resident and made it on the evening news. The first 'prefatory' comment suggests that if these teenagers had grown up in different social circumstances, it wouldn't have made much difference (i.e. they're 'essentially bad'). The next comment, "What a pack of animals", refers to the black teenagers involved in the scuffle in the video. When "Jimo" says "can't wait until new members move into" Wilson Yard, a new development in the area that will include social housing for low income residents, "Jimo's" basically saying that any (black) people who might move into the social housing are animals and criminals (and, presumably, shouldn't be allowed to move in at all). Combine that with "Jimo's" preface and you have yourself a pretty fucked up conservative tirade complete with dehumanizing claims about poor black residents in Uptown.

So stuff like that gets airtime all the time over at UU, but if you dare say anything critical they silence you.

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Racism, Class Power and Democracy

Within the framework of neoliberal 'development' prescriptions, it is 'bad policy' to enact laws in a 'developing nation' which imposed higher taxes or regulations on foreign corporations operating in that nation. Imagine the following semi-true scenario: we're in South Africa in 1995. After decades of oppression and Apartheid, finally universal suffrage is extended and a Left-wing government promising to fight for universal health care is elected by a margin of 80%-20%.

In this case the democratically-elected government of a sovereign nation has an overwhelming majority and has the strong popular backing of more than 80% of the electorate. The Constitution of the country states that the legislative branch of government, backed by a democratic mandate, has the sole power to make laws as it sees fit within the limits set by the Constitution.

Unfortunately this isn't how it works under capitalism. Say the hugely popular government wants to impose a new corporate tax to fund a social program aiming to provide health services. Say they have more than the enough votes to easily pass the law.

We can imagine the companies who would be taxed saying in response: if you tax us heavily we will leave the country. Capital flight, massive job losses and economic turmoil will be the result. Still want to try and tax us?

Make no mistake: this is a threat. And it is one that no government could possibly ignore. As soon as the government heeds the threat, it becomes clear that the legislative branch is neither as sovereign or powerful as it would seem on paper. Despite overwhelming popular support, a small clique of capitalists, themselves accountable to no democratic vote, have an inordinate amount of leverage over what becomes law (and this is already assuming that they haven't done anything to game the process via lobbying). In this case political power is subject to democratic principles but economic/class power is not. The result is that undemocratic concentrations of economic power have bargaining clout and leverage over democratic political institutions. This is especially lopsided in 'developing' nations whose economies may depend very heavily on foreign investment.

But neoliberals see no problem here. They would merely comment that it would be 'bad policy' to raise the taxes on corporations. Instead the job of governmental institutions is to create a 'good business climate' and create conditions favourable to large accumulation of profits by business. This will bring jobs, investment, etc. Democracy may actually get in the way of this process, according to the neoliberal line, so it is not particularly useful in 'development' to have wide democratic participation. Let the capitalists and 'experts' organize and coordinate participation.

Now fast forward to Chicago in the early 1980s. The demographics break down roughly as follows: 35% black, 35% latino, 30% white. But you would never know this from glancing at Chicago's political institutions.

In 1976 Lord/His Majesty/Mayor Richard J. Daley keeled over dead while in office. By law, the man designated to succeed him was President Pro Tempore of the City Council, William Frost. But because Frost was black, he was literally locked out of meetings and deliberations set in place by the white-majority City Council to determine who would be acting-Mayor after Daley died. A couple of days later Michael Bilandic, a white man, was declared acting-Mayor.

A power-struggle was set off within the Chicago Machine over who would be the next Big Guy. Ruptures in the Machine opened up space for a challenge from below from Chicago's black and latino majority. Over 100,000 black and Latino voters were registered for the first time to vote by community organizers. Harold Washington, a U.S. Congressman at the time, surprised everyone when he eked out a close victory in the Democratic primary (which, in Chicago, is usually tantamount to winning the election; The Republican Party is meaningless here).

Harold Washington, Mayor 1983-87

In 1983, Washington was poised to become the first-ever black mayor of Chicago in heavily-Democratic Chicago. But after Washington won the primary, over 90% of the whites in Chicago's Democrats deserted the Party and registered as Republicans to vote for the G.O.P. challenger. This was totally unheard of.

The most frequently-aired argument against Washington was something like the following: if you elect a black man, Chicago will "become another Detroit". Jobs will go, High-rise public housing projects will be crop up everywhere, crime will sky-rocket, and another wave of severe White-flight will devastate the city's tax base.

You might say that allowing the government of Chicago to actually reflect the make-up of the people who live there would be 'bad policy'.

Now I see a lot of similarities between the imagined South Africa case and the Chicago case. In both cases, we see that when political democracy is actually extended enough to pose a threat to existing relations of power, counter-threats from elites follow. And they are in a position to make threats because of disproportionate concentrations of power outside the political realm. What I mean is that if whites didn't have the economic power, wealth, ability to move to the suburbs, etc. that they currently have, they wouldn't be in a position to make these kinds of "this city will become Detroit" threats. Can you imagine the black population threatening 'black flight' and telling white elites that they'd better listen up and change their ways? Of course not, because the black population in Chicago is not in the position of power that white elites are.

This is an unbelievably unjust state of affairs. In effect, the black population is told the following: either you stay in your place and accept that the majority-white Machine is in charge, or you can feel the wrath of disinvestment, job loss, white flight, and economic turmoil. Either we run the show, or you can have another Detroit.

What's interesting is that the "Detroit card" isn't really a cynical threat for many whites in Chicago. They believe it. They are scared, paranoid and worried that the "urban crisis" of the late 1960s/early 70s could happen again. And this is why so many whites who have qualms about Daley and the Machine vote for it again and again. But whether or not whites vote, a 30% sector of the population should not be able to even cast a veto on potential mayoral candidates. Yet the reality is that this 30% constituency largely calls the shots. Democracy? I don't think so.

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Here's a Cookie: I Like My Women Natural Edition

Dear Sexist Sticker Guy, 

On my walk home from the train, there's a telephone pole that you decided to use as your soapbox. You took a US Post Office sticker, slapped it on the telephone pole, and wrote the following in graffiti-style text: 

I can't see your face underneath all that makeup, girl. 

Maybe you think you deserve a cookie because you like your women natural. Maybe you think you're sending a liberating, woman-positive message. Never mind the use of "girl" to get this point across. Never mind your male gaze bullshit in which the proverbial woman's (oops, sorry, "girl's") makeup prevents you from seeing what YOU want to see (i.e., her face). Never mind the fact that I, who never wear makeup anyway, am subjected to your stupid little scolding every time I walk around the corner of Lawrence and Clark.

So fuck you, sexist sticker guy, wherever you are. Women neither apply nor remove makeup for your benefit. And they certainly don't give a shit whether you can see their faces. You're a tool.

Sincerely, 

An Unwilling Reader in Chicago

P.S. You want a cookie? Here's your cookie. In fact, you don't even deserve this cookie, but I'm really excited about this recent initiative, Feminist Cookies, put together by the 52 Acts Blog. Go check out this neat cyberfeminist project! Especially you, Sexist Sticker Guy. 

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Fighting school-closings in Chicago

Article here.

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Reminder: Cars kill people.

According to an article in today's RedEye (an outlet of the Chicago Tribune), there were fifty-six pedestrians killed in traffic accidents in Chicago in 2008. As the article points out, there are a LOT of pedestrians in this city. Chicago was named the 4th most walkable city in America by the organization Walk Score, and I can vouch for the awesome walkability of my own neighborhood.

But even at the small intersection I have to cross to reach the El, or the Asian groceries nearby, motorists don't give a damn about pedestrian safety or the right of way. When pedestrians get their long-awaited walk signal, cars taking left and right turns hover like panting dogs, waiting for you to cross, inching closer and closer to your fragile human body with their giant steel-framed monster. And those are the nice people. Many motorists decide to take their chances, and dash out for a screeching left turn before you've taken three steps.

And don't get me started about the Garfield Red Line, where commuters determined to catch the next bus have to cross literally six lanes of expressway-bound traffic.

Yeah. So it's not difficult to imagine people getting killed. As the Department of Transportation spokesman said, "The most difficult part of this is changing driver behavior."

The article is informative and lays out several ways the city is working on reducing pedestrian deaths. Check out the particularly sneaky move in which undercover police officers, posing as pedestrians, pulled over and issued warnings to motorists who failed to yield to them. I would have paid money to see that shit.

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Moment of Zen: 3 Questions I've Been Asking

1. I've been noticing lately how new friends seem to relate to me and my partner differently because we're together. There's an assumption that we're always together, or would rather be with each other, or that we don't need as much outside social engagement as single people might. Are long-term monogamous relationships a fundamentally anti-social institution? Do they create the perception of separation between Us and Them? Do they box us into our apartments and homes, and keep us from relating to the rest of the world with any true freedom? What about the nuclear family?

2. Chicago has seen a few warmer days in the past few weeks, and I've noticed how different it feels to walk around without a bulky winter coat on. Namely, people around me are noticing my body again. Is there a kind of freedom in covering ourselves up for winter? Leaving, as some Muslim clothing does, only the eyes exposed?

3. All this talk of material excess seems to have everyone reassessing our priorities. For the first time in a while, our culture is asking questions about how much money is enough money, whether a salary can be too high, and how much material wealth we really ought to possess. Is this a good thing? I don't want to sound like a certain blogger who suggested that all this job loss is going to lead people towards better lives. In most cases, job loss just leads you to pain and suffering. But is there any way that our recession can build a healthier society in the long term? How can we make that happen?

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'America's most miserable' magazine: Forbes is the winner!

Alright, so I'm quite aware I'm being baited on this one. Also, I understand that responding to anything in the magazine[sic] 'Forbes' is basically the equivalent of tee-ball when it comes to exposing it for the moronic, tight-wad bourgeois drivel that it is. Nonetheless I have to say something about their recent "10 most miserable cities in the US" list.

Chicago, according to this list is #3. Why? Well because Chicago is the capital of "lousy weather, long commutes, rising unemployment and the highest sales tax rate in the country".

Rising unemployment, last I checked, was a nation-wide (global, to be exact) trend that is increasing rapidly due to macroeconomic factors. Find me a large city that is not experiencing increasing unemployment. Read about NYC lately? I'm sure Boston, San Fran and LA are surging right now in terms of job creation.

Lousy weather. Alright, point taken. It's cold here. But its fucking cold in Boston, Providence, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and NYC as well. I hardly hear anyone say "I'm moving to Boston (or Philly, NYC, etc) just for the winter because its fucking beautiful up there this time of year!". The only place that has good weather in the winter is Florida and Southern California. Is this news to anyone? The summers are gorgeous in Chicago, and the fall and springs can be quite nice as well. But I guess I should move to a retirement home in a resort-town in FL so that I can enjoy the good weather and the tax shelter.

Which brings me to the next source of 'misery' in Chicago: the high sales tax. Yeah, its fucking high. It should be exchanged for a progressive city income tax (or better yet: federal funding allotted relative to federal tax revenue generated from the city, so that rich tax-evaders can't simply to try to move away from city taxes). But that's not what the idiots at Forbes would say: They give '#4 most miserable' Memphis 'extra points', for instance, because TN has no state income tax. Bwahaha. Didn't Forbes himself run for President as a Republican on a platform to scrap the federal income tax and replace it with a sales tax on the order of 28-35%? According to this moronic logic, Forbes should be rejoicing at the highly regressive city sales tax in Chicago and praising the city for having no income (or other, more progressive) tax. At least Chicago exempts food purchases from its exorbitant sales tax, which is not something I can say for other 'tax shelter' states like TN, for example, who hits their residents with a whopping 9.25% sales tax on all FOOD puchases. But TN gets 'extra points' from Forbes for having no state income tax. I'm sure the real beneficiaries of TN's lack of an income tax (the schmucks who live in the plantation-mansions in Bellemeade) really sweat paying an extra 9.25% on their food purchases.

Finally, Chicago is miserable because of 'long commutes'. This has got to be the worst complaint o this pathetic 'top ten' list. Long commutes for who, exactly? The morons who drive themselves from the loop to Glencoe (40 min north of city limits) every day? I thought we were talking about the CITY, not the stupid cookie-cutter suburbs surrounding it. Getting around town is extremely easy using trains and buses in Chicago, even if you are going from one end of the city to another. Also -if you are one of the douchebags that actually reads Forbes regularly, then likes are you have the cash to live virtually whereever you like, which means you could very well live quite close to your cushy place of employment. Where's the commute there?

The article also mentions that Chicago is trying to get the Olympics which, they suggest, might help improve transportation in the city. But that's rather vague, isn't it? I certainly hope the anti-tax zealots at Forbes aren't insinuating that the transportation infrastructure (which is all publicly owned) will improve with more funding (i.e. higher taxes). Also -which infrastructure are they talking about? Mass transit (rails, buses), the roads, the prevalence of bike-lanes, the interstates? They don't bother to say. That's because this isn't a serious article... its a largely a thinly-cloaked jab at the city "where one if its own just became the most powerful person in the world". It's almost as though Obama is the reason Chicago is so high on the list, and the rest of the 'knocks' against it are contrived to fit this end. Nonetheless, I dont want to suggest that anything about the criteria that Forbes uses is legitimate: its crude, suburbanite white conservative crap.

In fact, if we apply the criteria Forbes seems to rely upon consistently, it seems to me that the #1 most miserable city in America is clearly New York City. After all, unemployment is on the rise there, the city budget is in trouble, its not warm and tropical, commutes are 'long' and busy if you're trying to drive your Bentley from lower Manhattan to the Hamptons every day, the city has much higher taxes than Chicago, and its pro sports teams didn't win championships last season (the Giants just went 0-1 in the playoffs and the Yankees stunk).

But the only thing, however, that is really miserable here at all is this criteria used by Forbes to evaluate 'cities' (nevermind that they hardly discriminate between alpha world cities and small towns). According to their logic, the place to be right now (assuming you are an old, crusty, filthy rich straight white man) is some unincorporated tropical island that has no taxes whatsoever, nice beaches, no minorities (except for servants, of course) and is conducive to effortless drives from the country club to the beach mansion.

I guess things like the following are not relevant when evaluating a city:

-How walkable it is (fyi Chicago is the #4 most walkable in the US)
-How good the schools are (k-12, amount of Universities in area)
-Intellectual climate (public lectures, events, symposia, etc.)
-Culture (music, art, theater, film, museums, etc.)
-How cosmopolitan and diverse it is
-Architecture
-Natural beauty (umm... like natural bodies of water, for example)
-How Bike-friendly the city is
-Amount of space allotted for public parks
-Political climate
-Safety factor for non-heterosexuals
-Race relations
-Cost of living
-Comprehensiveness of public transit
-Food possibilities
-History
-Pollution factor

Etc, etc...

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Terrible amateur photgraphs from downtown Chicago last night.

So, I got lucky and scored a ticket to Obama's election night event in Grant Park last night. This enabled T and I to get some slightly-better views of the crowd, the jumbotron .... and not really Obama. He was tiny. If I leaped in the air, I could glimpse him. Maybe. But the beautiful energy in the crowds -- which stood, walked, cheered, and booed on their best behavior -- was certainly worth witnessing. My photos are terrible. I kept thinking, "Do it for the blog!" but my camera wasn't super cooperative. Still, here are the highlights:


Crowds walk along Michigan Avenue, heading towards the entrance at Congress Parkway.


Bike was TOTALLY the way to get to this event. Crammed trains, no cars allowed!


Congress & Michigan was a popular place to meet your friend and get in line together. The Obama campaign had issued "plus one" tickets, where one ticket admitted two people.


After the second ticket checkpoint, the crowd came to a complete standstill and it took at least thirty minutes to reach the metal detectors and security check. During this time, the crowd strained to hear the CNN announcements about Pennsylvania. The security people were EXTREMELY thorough. I'll happily let you search my purse if it means our President-elect is safer.


When we arrived, there was still space to breathe in the park. Chicago skyline in the background.


When Obama came onstage to speak, the cameras were out in full force .... that's him on the jumbotron.


Joe Biden has secretly become my favorite candidate. I sort of squealed when he came onstage. I like his snarky delivery and Cheshire-cat smile.


T lifted me up so that I could see the crowd behind us. No breathing room now!


As we exited the park, throngs were still lined up, listening to the dramatic Hollywood music that they were playing as the Obama and Biden families did a meet & greet onstage.


Unbelievable masses of people, moving down Michigan Avenue (closed to cars!). Taken from the steps of the Art Institute.


Another one from the steps of the Art Institute.

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Rewarding citizens for eco-friendly decisions

On my lunch break on Saturday, I chatted with one of my fellow teachers about his new, zippy little car. As it turns out, because his new car is more fuel-efficient than his previous one, he will receive a tax credit around 10% of the car's value. I can't find state-specific information on the credit my friend received, but our government also offers tax credits to folks who purchase gas-electric hybrids and other eco-friendly vehicles.

Today, Sunday, I learned that Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) intends to increase fares in 2009 by more than 20% in some cases. This means that, instead of spending $75 per month for my unlimited monthly pass, I'll have to spend $90. I don't relish the idea of spending more on transportation, and I'm well aware that many Chicago residents can barely afford their present transit costs. Chicago has some of the highest fares in the nation.

(soapbox alert)

So where is the tax credit for public transit riders? Where's the government-sponsored, monetary reward for people who commit to a car-free life?

Car-free residents help ease traffic congestion and pollution. Car-free residents do not contribute to expensive wear and tear on our roads. Car-free residents give their cities freedom to build something besides a new parking garage. (Indeed, car-free residents are the only people who do not bitch about parking.) Car-free residents patronize local businesses within walking distance of their homes. Car-free residents, by riding CTA, help create public-sector jobs with living wages and good benefits.

Thousands of Chicagoans are making these earth-friendly, economical, constructive choices every day. And what do their local, state, and federal governments do? Punish them with higher fares, crumbling infrastructure, and slow service.

Hell, CTA riders don't even want a tax credit! They want stable fares and reliable transportation. And yeah, a little more appreciation and a little less bullshit would be nice.

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