On Tuesday, over 300,000 Wisconsinites chose democratic socialism – an economic and political system run by and for the working class – as the future they believe in. Our chapters of the  Democratic Socialists of America are proud of the work that we did to get our member Francesca Hong within 4,000 votes of winning the Democratic nomination for governor.

In the face of organized money and a political establishment hell-bent on keeping working people out of power, DSA and the Hong campaign gave corporate Democrats and their wealthy donors a literal run for their money. 

Fran won nearly 40% of the vote despite being outspent, having limited national support, and facing a barrage of attacks from both the far right and the Democratic Party establishment. Working class Wisconsinites are ready to demand more. 

But the political terrain is uneven. Wealthy elites subvert the democracy of our elections through their control of the corporate media and the lobbying of our politicians. They promote “electability” myths, claim Fran’s platform is too radical, and focus on 6 year old social media posts — anything to avoid discussing Fran’s policies. Despite their efforts, Fran’s unprecedented success makes clear that her platform is extremely popular with working people. There is tremendous support across the state for strong unions, universal healthcare, universal childcare, and AI policy that puts workers and communities first. She united socialists, progressives, independents, and even conservatives around their shared interests as workers. This is what democracy looks like. 

This campaign was always about more than getting a candidate elected. It was about empowering working people to organize in their workplaces and communities, and build the lasting power we need to have real control over our own lives. DSA organizers have built and run dozens of regional committees around the state, and we’ve been humbled to see the ways volunteers have identified our movement as their new political home. Our membership is growing at an unprecedented rate, and new chapters are forming in every corner of the state — proving that socialism is gaining influence not just in Madison and Milwaukee, but all of Wisconsin.

In the fight to defeat Tom Tiffany and Republicans up and down the ballot, the hundreds of thousands of people who voted for Democratic Socialist politics will be critical. Those Wisconsinites want to see that vision reflected in the nominee’s campaign. No matter what, DSA will continue the fight for a Wisconsin that works for the working class to empower workers to demand what they deserve and organize for a democratic socialist future.

If that’s a future you want to live in, go to dsausa.org/join and become a member of your local DSA chapter. There’s work to be done and a world to win, and we’re just getting started. 

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By: B. Greer

The terms “abundance” and “supply” are unavoidable in the housing affordability debate. 

The Healey administration’s plan to address the housing crisis, “Achieve a State of Housing Abundance” confidently states that a “lack of supply is the root cause of our housing cost crisis.” The state is correct that Massachusetts needs more homes, as does most everywhere, but treating the supply shortage as the root cause mistakes an outcome for an explanation. 

The problem is not simply that the market has failed to produce enough housing, but that housing is produced, financed, owned, and governed through institutions that benefit from the very scarcity that the Healey administration cited as the sole culprit.

The housing crisis grew out of an inherent contradiction in how housing operates. For tenants and workers, it is shelter: the place people live, raise families, and recover from work. For developers, contractors, and labor, it is a commodity: something built, bought, and sold through the market. For owners, lenders, investors, and towns, it is an asset: a source of rent, wealth, credit, and tax revenue.

Clearly, these roles do not fit together neatly. Shelter requires affordability and stability. Commodity production requires profit. Asset ownership depends on rising rents, rising land values, and protected resale prices. 

The same system that asks housing to become affordable also demands that it stay expensive. High prices generate rent, support land values, secure loans, and protect local tax bases. The crisis we see today is the logical outcome of a system expected to provide affordable shelter, produce profit, preserve wealth, secure debt, reward investment, and sustain municipal finance.

Supply-Side Limitations

Private development responds first to profit, not need. 

My work as a designer focused on multifamily housing has taught me that projects only move forward when expected rents or sale prices can cover land, construction costs, financing, and profit. Private development can add homes and ease pressure, but when rents fall, prices weaken, or returns shrink, capital pulls back. 

The market does not keep building just because working people need homes.

The abundance movement wants to recreate the rate of residential construction we saw in the postwar era. However, the postwar boom cannot be separated from the massive federal subsidies that supported its construction. We do not have the modern suburb without the GI Bill, Federal Housing Administration-backed insurance, and the creation of the interstate highway system. Since the postwar boom, and subsequent pullback of government support, housing construction has sporadically materialized as a declining series of booms and busts shaped by recessions, credit conditions, land prices, and construction costs.

The role of states and cities rise and fall within that larger cycle, while their relative position depends on material conditions like land, labor costs, infrastructure, and regional growth pressure. 

Massachusetts can reform zoning and strengthen public policy, but it cannot replicate the building rate of a state like Florida without the available land and market conditions that make that scale of private construction possible. Massachusetts has set a goal of 220,000 new homes by 2035, but so far it has not built the public institutions needed to build, preserve, and keep that housing affordable. Unsurprisingly, we aren’t on track. 

What Needs to Be Done?

All three sides of the housing contradiction must urgently be confronted. 

Massachusetts, and the Healey administration, must protect housing as shelter, build and repair housing beyond the limits of private profit, and weaken the power of landlords, banks, investors, and wealthy towns to benefit from scarcity. More homes are necessary, but new housing becomes an affordability strategy only when public power determines where it is built, who controls it, and whether it stays affordable.

The blueprint forward is simple. Housing must be defended as shelter. In both gentrifying Boston-area neighborhoods and Gateway Cities across the state, the goal must be reinvestment without displacement. That means rent control, eviction protections, and prioritizing affordable housing.

Second, housing production must become a public responsibility. When expected returns fall, the market slows, even if people still need housing. Massachusetts needs public financing, infrastructure investment, and a state social housing authority capable of building and preserving homes directly.

Legislation should be passed mandating that municipalities allow  apartments, remove parking minimums, and allow smaller residential lots that can accommodate smaller homes. Exclusive suburbs like Milton and Wellesley should also have to use public land for social housing and meet enforceable regional housing obligations. Communities that hoard access to jobs, transit, schools, and high-value land should not be enabled to push all housing construction  into working-class neighborhoods.

These are not separate crises. Displacement in high-rent neighborhoods, abandonment in older industrial cities, and exclusion in wealthy suburbs are different expressions of the same housing contradiction.

The housing crisis cannot truly be solved without federal action, but Massachusetts cannot wait for Washington to move first. If scarcity is protected through law, finance, and land ownership, then those are the forces we have to confront here.

This will not be easy, but there is no other option. Massachusetts must protect tenants, build social housing, and challenge the system that organizes housing around scarcity. Despite the recent loss in the Massachusetts Supreme Court, the need to push for rent control has not ended.

Boston DSA Housing Working Group Co-chair Tim Scalona addressed the problem clearly:

As rents explode and few affordable housing opportunities exist without a years-long waitlist, tenants risk an eviction notice after each health emergency or job loss.

The task now is to fight for an equitable future, building by building, city by city, and law by law.

B. Greer is the Housing Justice Campaign Lead for Boston DSA and a senior designer focused on multifamily housing. He is currently working on the social housing proposal in Cambridge alongside CHJC.

The post OPINION: Healey’s Abundance Relies on Institutions Keeping Us in Scarcity appeared first on Working Mass.

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Seattle DSA stands in solidarity with the more than 140 immigrants currently organizing a hunger strike at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, WA. It’s being reported that these brave community members have not eaten in more than 24 hours in protest of the continued inhumane conditions that they and their fellow detainees are being subjected to. 

The GEO Group owned facility has had more than 10 hunger strikes organized by detainees just since the beginning of 2026, a clear sign that the conditions in the already horrific facility are deteriorating as Trump’s regime continues to pursue a blatantly racist immigration policy which has led to death and disorder all over our country. 

Like so many current events, this specific crisis sits at the crossroads of our society’s systemic xenophobia and crony capitalism. Our tax dollars are being paid to the GEO Group, a corporation which donated millions of dollars to Trump and his endorsed candidates, so that their private corporation would be given multi-million dollar contracts to confine, abuse, force work, and starve tens of thousands of our neighbors and family members that have been arrested by ICE.

Seattle DSA demands an end to all forms of immigration detention. We specifically demand the closure of the Northwest Detention Center and the immediate release of everyone who is being held and tortured for profit inside. We encourage you to call your representatives and demand they take action to get these facilities closed and our neighbors returned to our communities. 

This isn’t just a film review

On a Wednesday afternoon, I walked into the Music Box Theater, ready to watch Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey in 70mm. Nolan’s film is carried by an ensemble cast, beautiful cinematography, and of course, the use of IMAX cameras, a first for a blockbuster film. Yet after leaving the showing, Nolan’s interpretation of Homer’s iconic work wasn’t the first thing that came to my mind. Instead, I concluded that the film was a response to the United States’ war and invasion of Iraq.

Warning: the following contains spoilers ahead for Nolan’s The Odyssey

Baghdad is Troy, Troy is Baghdad

Nolan’s film opens on Odysseus’s flashback, like Homer’s epic, to the Trojan War. This opening scene depicts Greek soldiers hiding in the Trojan Horse, a ‘gift’ to the Trojans and their gods. Sinon, played by Elliot Page, sacrifices himself before the Trojans to ensure that the horse makes it through Troy’s walls. At night, after being dragged in, the Greek soldiers descend from the wooden horse and unleash chaos throughout the city of Troy.

This is the first direct comparison to the invasion of Iraq, specifically to the fall of Baghdad. The looting and arson besieging Troy is a direct link to how the United States and its allies (most notably the United Kingdom) besieged Baghdad in April of 2003. The Greek soldiers created chaos while panicked Trojan civilians tried to escape, with statues of the gods themselves beheaded or broken during the siege. One might recall how U.S. soldiers helped Iraqi civilians destroy statues of Saddam Hussein. It is clear Nolan is connecting the Greeks’ savagery to the United States and its actions in Iraq.

As with the fall of Troy, with the capture of Baghdad, all of Iraq fell under U.S. occupation. The Bush administration’s Trojan horse was the promise that they would bring about democracy for the Iraqi people after Saddam Hussein’s rule. However, after two decades (which is how long it takes for Odysseus to get home), the U.S. occupation decimated the Iraqi population and left puppet leaders throughout the region, not to mention human rights violations committed by the U.S. and its allies (see Abu Ghraib).

The final part of the film, similar to the original epic, reflects on the hero’s journey – specifically Odysseus’s regret for his actions against Troy and the fate of the men under his command. It mirrors that of veterans of the Iraq War who regret their actions in Iraq, how they were just ‘following orders’ (Agemmon and Odysseus play the roles of the Bush administration and the U.S. military). They bear the scars of war both for themselves and the people they have killed or hurt along the way. In the end, just like the fall of Baghdad, the fall of Troy reflects on how decades of bloodshed and the mad decline of human civilization have unfolded amid promises of so-called democracy.

“…To burn the walls of Troy was to burn the world entirely, including his home…”

— Odysseus, disguised as a beggar, talking to Penelope (The Odyssey, 2026)

Trump’s “Golden Age” of America

While this film is more or less a direct analog to the Iraq War, Nolan takes a slight jab at the current Trump regime near the end. Odysseus mentions the ending of the Bronze Age to his wife Penelope. Trump, in his second term, has boasted that he is bringing a “Golden Age” to America. But as we know, it has been the opposite, with blowback from Iraq and Afghanistan, the continuation of the genocide in Palestine, his Gestapo (ICE) running around and rounding up our immigrant neighbors, and a failing economy. Just like the Bronze Age, Trump’s “Golden Age” and the American Empire will fall.

The post Iraq: America’s Trojan War appeared first on Midwest Socialist.

On July 21, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair General Dan Caine appeared before the Senate Appropriations Committee to ask for $87.6 billion in emergency supplemental funding for the war in Iran. This amount would add to the current funding of $839 billion found in the most recent budget and the $150 billion added last year in the Republicans’ “Big Beautiful Bill,” for a total budget of over $1 trillion.

Senators had reasonable questions and received clownish answers. Shouldn’t all of this be approved by Congress? (No.) What happened to the money we already gave you? (Those are for different, unrelated bombs.) How can Iran be killing soldiers when you said previously that we destroyed their missiles? (Iran has more, hidden missiles because “That’s what terror regimes would do.”) Why are we bombing Iran to stop their nuclear program if we already destroyed it? (“Iranians foolishly continued to attempt to pursue nuclear capabilities.”)

“We hear a different rationale for this war every few days,” said Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), vice chair of the committee. Pointing to the shifting objectives during this now five-month war, she said: 

“It was about preempting imminent threats which we now know did not exist. It was about regime change, then liberating the Iranian people. It was about destroying Iran’s nuclear program and its navy, and at one point it was about taking out its ballistic missiles […] Trump has even suggested the war is about taking Iran’s oil to ‘Make a fortune.’ And now the United States’ primary strategic objective seems to be to actually just reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which, of course, was fully open, toll-free, before this war began.”

Murray is also the only senator to note that the request includes unrelated items such as “Almost $1 billion for SOUTHCOM, nearly $1 billion to keep deploying the National Guard here in DC, and more than $1 billion for the southern border.”

These items being included make perfect sense under the current model of governance. Under a regime where funds appropriated by Congress can be withheld at-will by the executive, it doesn’t really matter what the mechanisms of funding are as long as it keeps flowing in the right directions. And subjugating brown people costs a lot of your money. Summed up a different way by Hegseth, “Every dollar appropriated to the Department of War will be focused on building the lethality of our joint forces and reinforcing peace through strength.”

Only one senator displayed the level of emotion I’d expect for a conversation about murder. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) spent her time haranguing the assembled warmongers and asking why we couldn’t be here mongering something else. “[New Yorkers] are seeing their healthcare bills rise because [of] massive cuts to medicaid. They’ve seen their grocery and gas bills rise, and this unpopular and unauthorized war abroad is a higher priority to this administration than their ability to feed their families and provide healthcare to their loved ones who are sick.”

Any amount of pushback given by this committee to the administration is tempered by the effusive praise multiple senators offered for the war and for alleged rapist Pete Hegseth.

“Secretary Hegseth,” Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS) said, “Thank you for being here and the amazing job that you’re doing. I have the utmost respect for you, your team, and what you’re accomplishing.”

Democratic socialists have little praise to offer anyone in this hearing. National DSA has passed resolutions calling for an end to all foreign wars, the closing of overseas bases, and ending sanctions on Iran. It is long past time for Americans to reject two parties equally supportive of overseas murder, even if one party (the Democrats) technically approves and funds that murder using proper procedure.

Will the Senate go on to support this package? One senator has no idea: Senator John Kennedy (R-LA). Because the emergency funding request also includes provisions for farm aid, sitting next to Hegseth throughout the hearing was Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins.

Kennedy mumbled his way through a series of stern but meaningless questions for Caine and Hegseth (occasionally pausing to stare intensely into open air), before turning to Rollins and engaging in a line of questioning involving “Other countries who grow oysters and shrimp in a ditch and shoot them full of antibiotics,” with the exact same seriousness as his questions about war.

Kennedy has no relation to the more famous Massachusetts Kennedys, but Senator Kennedy is the inheritor of a vast fortune built on slavery and sharecropping in Catahoula and Concordia parishes in his home state of Louisiana.  With this being the caliber of person in our legislature’s upper house, there is little reason for faith in a just outcome. Maybe we should just abolish the whole senate.

The post Craven Warmongers Beg the Senate for More of Your Money appeared first on Midwest Socialist.

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By: Jason M, Jake S

WORCESTER – Teachers and staff organized under the Massachusetts Community College Council (MCCC) have been engaged in contract negotiations with the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education for the last few months. Despite Massachusetts offering free community college through the MassEducate program, faculty at community colleges across the state face conditions that harm their wellbeing. Low pay, food insecurity, and ever-increasing class sizes hurt faculty and prevent them from being able to teach their students. While community college presidents across the state regularly make more than $200,000 annually, community college faculty make the lowest average salary nationwide, according to a study conducted by the Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA). 

Nearly half of MCCC members struggle with food insecurity and most need a second job to pay their bills. Increases in the size of online classes by as much as 56% undermines existing protections in the Local QCC Distance Education agreement and severely hampers the ability of faculty and staff to offer students a quality education. 

The Massachusetts Board of Higher Education has not entertained a proposal from MCCC. Only three bargaining sessions have been held over a four-month period, during which the Board has tried to implement restrictions over rank-and-file MCCC members’ ability to attend, and changes to how union representatives are compensated for their time spent negotiating. The union has filed an Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) over the latter.

Working Mass sat down with Caitlin B, an academic advisor and enrollment counselor, as well as secretary for the union’s QCC chapter (the Quinsigamond Community College Professional Association, or QCCPA), to talk about union members’ concerns.

Quotations used in this article have been edited for clarity and brevity.

Distraction, Delay, and Hostility

Salary, workload, and schedule flexibility are top concerns amongst QCCPA members. The Mass Board of Higher Ed, instead of entertaining proposals from the union, has forced negotiations to fixate around rules of engagement. Caitlin explained:

We haven’t proposed anything regarding these issues yet. So far, we’ve been working with management on establishing ground rules for bargaining. This has already been difficult to negotiate.

The Mass Board of Higher Education has also earned an Unfair Labor Practice charge from QCCPA early on by undermining compensation of the union’s bargaining team.

They don’t want us to be compensated, so we’ve been doing all of our bargaining outside of working hours. I’ve never done this before, but other people are like: ‘This is absurd.’

The school argues that rank-and-file union members should not be physically visible to the boss when they attend virtual bargaining sessions.

I’ve heard horror stories about bargaining, and so far I haven’t experienced anything that bad, but this year, there were some issues with silent representatives. Dues-paying members can silently attend bargaining sessions, and there’s this complaint about, should they be visible during the Zoom session, should they not be visible, it clogs things up, blah blah blah.

The Board of Higher Education hasn’t offered much detail to explain why seeing union members’ faces make them so uncomfortable during negotiations. Caitlin can only assume their intent.

The silent representatives are really important for us, because when we caucus in between bargaining sessions, they actually have information they can give to us that we wouldn’t necessarily know off the cuff. Management doesn’t want them there, they don’t want to look at people when they’re telling them: ‘No, you can’t get this, you can’t get that’, so that’s been the biggest issue for them right now.” 

A Real Sense of Ownership

When asked about what being in a union meant to her, Caitlin paused thoughtfully.

Without the union, we’d be at the mercy of whatever our employee decides what is best for us. When you work in a system with so many different components and types of employees, having proper representation is essential. 

Caitlin continued:

My coworkers have an unwavering dedication to their students. We work together on a mission to help our students get what they need, and at the community college level, our students may not be “traditional.” We are their advocates and support systems, and that is something worth preserving.

Caitlin reflected positively on rank-and-file engagement at QCC.

We’ve increased our membership a bit. We’ve got the MTA [Massachusetts Teachers Association, of which MCCC is an affiliate] noticing that and coming to our meetings every week, they’re really paying attention to how we’re doing things, which is really nice. So I think watching the change, watching people being more engaged in it, makes you want to be more engaged in it.

Caitlin in large part credited James L, president of the QCC chapter of MCCC and an active member of Worcester DSA who previously served on its Steering Committee, with this growth. “He quickly formed an organizing committee on campus, which exists at the statewide level, but usually locals don’t have one,” she explained.

I think once people started realizing, oh, we can actually do something with this, it’s not just a contract, it’s also action, you know? I think that’s really important.

Workers united can, in fact, demand a say in the place where their labor is bought and sold is why a strong, conscious labor movement is a central component to building working class power. Ownership unites the collective. When workers organize amongst themselves to confront a class enemy, they become the protagonists of the struggle they live through every day. They learn to think and act collectively, laying down the paving stones along the road to a better future. One where the working class is in full control of society, not the bosses and the capitalists.

Jason M and Jake S are members of Central Mass and Worcester DSA. They are contributing authors for Working Mass..

The post Community College Faculty and Staff, Suffering Low Pay and Board Hostility, Fight for a Contract appeared first on Working Mass.

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“Election day he shouted ‘a socialist for mayor’

The comrade got elected, he happy was for fair

But after the election he got an awful shock

A great big socialistic bull did rap him on the block.

And Comrade Block did sob,

‘I helped him to his job.’”

(”Mr. Block” by Joe Hill)

Truck of Thrones

One evening in late March 2023, a church leader and I were standing out in the cold dark, waiting for Brandon Johnson. Suddenly an amazing vehicle appeared: A crusty old delivery truck that had been transformed with color, lights, a magnificent video screen, and a killer sound system. Inside were two magnificently gaudy thrones. Across the front was a website address that began “HOUSEMUSICTRUCKING.

The chariot of Chicago house music legend DJ Farley had become a fixture of the Brandon Johnson campaign. It was part of the advance team that preceded him to events. It was also one of the most Chicago things ever. 

The truck was so fitting, because house music is an essential ingredient of what Brandon Johnson regularly describes as “the soul of Chicago.” For those that don’t know,  house music is an intensely strange and wonderful genre of electronic dance music that was brewed out of Chicago’s empty industrial real estate, marginalized identities, crates of old soul records, innovation, and intense spiritual dedication to fun.

Since Johnson was elected, I have reflected on that vehicle as the symbol of all our hopes and dreams. It seemed like this crusty old delivery truck was transformed into a beacon of joy and hope was a personification of Chicago. It felt like we were putting Brandon in the driver’s seat to carry us into a glorious new future. Brandon said frequently on the campaign trail that he was going to bring the people to “the 5th floor,” and we wanted to get on that party bus with him.

“This Ain’t No Party, This Ain’t No Disco, This Ain’t No Foolin’ Around”

Unfortunately, Chicago is not a party bus. It’s more like an aircraft carrier which has a large crew and is very hard to turn around. And there are a number of different factions among that crew.

One was the long-time staff left over from the patronage systems run by both the elder and junior Mayor Daleys, but the folks left over from that era guard the knowledge of where the light switches are. So you can either work with them or sit in the dark. 

There were a lot of out-of-touch fake progressives left over from the the Lightfoot administration who refused to get on board with being accountable to the people of Chicago.

On top of all of this, Johnson had to onboard the multitudes he brought with him, sometimes having to make grim decisions about who gets off the dock or even out of the water.

An old machine faction of the Chicago city council attempted to put together the votes to override Johnson’s ability to pick committee chairs before he even took command. And that incident may have forced him to cut a deal with and offer political concessions and other goodies to some of the more transactional alderpersons.

I’m not here to make excuses, but the Brandon Johnson and Zohran Mamdani administrations have little to do with the private individuals Brandon Johnson or Zohran Mamdani. Brandon and I both came out of the radical end of the labor movement, and if you’ve been in that scene more than five minutes, you’ve heard the phrase “don’t third-party the union.” That means the members are the union, and the members are solely responsible for the health and performance of the union. To use another metaphor, when I worked as a union rep, I described myself, the elected leaders, other union staff, and the office as a lawnmower. If I leave my lawnmower out in the rain and it gets rusty so my grass gets high, it’s not the lawnmower’s fault. Even if I can sharpen up my blades, fix my engine, and start mowing, it’s going to be rough to mow tall grass. But if I can get the grass down to a reasonable level, it’s going to be a lot easier to maintain.

Another way to say this is that the Johnson administration is the product of a movement that further broke the Chicago Machine. And as the old saying goes, “you break it, you buy it.” So where do we go from here? Do we try to fix the Machine? Do we break it more and attempt to dismantle it altogether? Do we drive it around with the bumper hanging off until we get somewhere? Do we trade up for a newer one? 

Brandon Johnson himself has very little input into this decision. Actually, no individual makes these decisions. The power in a coalition comes from the participation of its constituent groups. The leaders are the leaders exclusively because they have followers. It’s up to movement to inspire its participants to make good use of the progress we have forged. 

My central message is that we are not done after we have played our role in an election. There is more to do. Chicago activists have thrown around the word “co-governance” as a utopian idea of how much we can collaborate with an office that is not set up for our values, no matter who occupies it. One movement leader, shortly before going to work for the Johnson administration, said it best. “We have not achieved co-governance,” they said; “we have changed the conditions under which we are organizing.”

The Wealth of Swamps

“Chicago” is an indigenous word that roughly translates as “stinky onion” – the garlic weed swamp. I’ve always imagined French explorers arriving on the banks of the Des Plaines River in Joliet (a block from my old apartment) and indigenous people selling them on the idea of leaving them alone for now to continue onto “the chicago,” just like a realtor today might try to rebrand a troubled neighborhood they’re attempting to gentrify. 

However, Chicago was not just a swamp, but a swampy portage path. At the dawn of history, in the early days of boating, if you wanted to travel the continent by water, an important step was to get from Lake Michigan to the Des Plaines River. The Chicago wetlands provided you the chance to do that, depending on the water levels, by paddling part of the way rather than carrying your boat. Archer Avenue in particular, but also Route 66, Ogden Avenue, and the I-55, are the legacy of the swamp path. It’s one of the world’s great primal roads. This pathway led to the canal and a port. That caused the original train lines to link here. The trains and waterways brought the roads and freeways. The cowboys brought the livestock from the Great Plains so it could be processed in Sandburg’s “hog butcher for the world.” 

And so all the real wealth comes through Chicago. While New York and Boston have a lot of money, you can’t eat money, except by owning a lot of land, debt, and commerce elsewhere. Why should we let these pieces of paper control our lives? California and Florida have produce, but that rots if you can’t move it in time. 

So how do we access the wealth that flows through Chicago? Who has it now and how do we get hold of it for the people’s needs?

The Room with Some People  

A mayoral election is one small battle in the much longer conflict between those who live in the region and those who own the region. I was at one of many Brandon Johnson victory parties that the Mayor-elect did not attend. The director of the community-based 501(c4) organization hosting the party was nervously texting Brandon’s entourage. “He’s in a room with some people,” the director said. 

I perked up my ears. I’ve heard Chicago community leaders lay out the myth of a ‘smoke-filled room’ like this. The people who own Chicago, it’s theorized, take the mayor in the room and say ‘We don’t work for you. You work for us.’ These capitalists then say what they want from the mayor and the city, and what they can do to the mayor and the city if they don’t get it. Debt can be made due immediately. Industries can be shut down. This is what we call a capital strike: capitalists deliberately shutting down vital infrastructure or tanking the economy to sabotage a left-wing leader or thwart reform.

Several South Side Walmarts were closed down between the election and the swearing-in ceremony. The struggle over government actions and subsidies that helped build these stores had been one of the great struggles (and defeats) of the Chicago social justice movement during the Richard M. Daley administration. Walmart claimed the stores were losing money even though the stores were always full, and the company refused demands to show us the numbers. Many of us saw this as nothing short of a capital strike against the mayor-elect.

First We Get the Money

The people in the back room intentionally obscure themselves from us, but we must track them down and reclaim our wealth. Almost all of our demands cost money.  The budget address is way too late to think about how we’re going to pay for the changes we want. The day after the city budget is done, we need to start a campaign for revenue in the next one. 

Ready or Not, Here We Come

“We should not be on the fifth floor, and I’m speaking my whole heart…we were not ready, because we haven’t been in government long enough to know how government really runs.” 

(Alderwoman Jeanette Taylor, December 2023)

When one is union staff or leadership,  it is tricky to encounter a worksite leader who has bad feelings about the union. Often these feelings are a mix of legitimate grievances and unrealistic expectations. When I was union staff, I would always volunteer to go to sites that were accused of being mad at the union. I can work with any type of anger, but it’s hard to move workers who have fully checked out. 

I tell such leaders the story of the Caucus of Rank & File Educators (CORE), which is a political faction inside Chicago Teachers Union Local 1 (CTU). When I first met Brandon Johnson in 2013, he was chair of the black caucus of CORE. 

The sad truth is that most union members in the U.S. do not vote in union elections and likely struggle to remember the name of their union, let alone have any understanding of its structure. Many members, I tell the frustrated stewards, get mad about this issue or another, find some untapped votes and, boom, they’re in office. You could do that, I tell them. But the problem is that the failings of union officers are not always personal failings. The pressures of the office can crack even the most dedicated organizers. Many elected union leaders are not prepared for the pressures of what they’re going to face, and they become much like the leaders they ran against.

CORE, however, did not seek control of the union until they had power and knew how to wield it. They spent years connecting to their profession and what the school means – not just to teachers, but to the entire community and the public good. They recruited the late Karen Lewis, one of the most authentic and effective leaders in Chicago history, even if she didn’t come from exactly the same political background or traditions as some of the caucus’s founders. CTU won the 2013 strike because Rahm Emmanuel could not split asunder what years of careful thought, exploration, and intense relationship building with the community had wrought. 

But Alderwoman Taylor, one of the Chicago city council’s most prophetic voices, was right. We were not prepared for a progressive mayor. We did not have the luxury of time and preparation. We took a shot from the other side of the court and were amazed by the swish, and we thought that finally, after lifetimes of heartbreak, we might manifest all our wishes. 

Perhaps Alderwoman Taylor is right about one other thing too: Perhaps this was not the type of power we needed to build. In the 1980s, the late Harold Washington was Chicago’s most progressive and first black mayor. Washington’s first term was frustrated at every turn by a racist white voting bloc called the “Vrodolyak 29” during a period referred to as “the Council Wars.” During this period, a 29 members of the city council voted down everything Washington proposed.  Perhaps we should have built the “Taylor 29” before we looked for another potential Harold Washington. 

I’ve spent a lot of time with folks I’ve met on the South Side. They don’t talk much about whether Epstein was murdered, but they will talk your ear off about all the ways they know Harold was.

But what do we do with this revelation from Alderwoman Taylor? Yes, it’s better to build a plane on the ground before you’re in the air. We didn’t have the luxury of years of preparation, so here we are. We need to find the energy to build multiple vehicles of power at the same time.

Chicago Reader columnist Ben Joravsky, the dean of Chicago movement journalism, regularly points out that Chicago doesn’t like nice mayors. He lays out how often we’ve rewarded the bad behavior of our past mayors with defense and support.

We also complain about our mayors being too controlling, but we don’t seem to know how to act when someone shares control and responsibility with others. During the 2024 process to pass the city budget, both supporters and detractors would comment that Johnson had weakened the office of the mayor by “losing control” of the budget process. My response to this commentary was always, “Isn’t that what folks elected him for?” My sense was that he laid the worst-case-scenario budget on the table, and then he made the city council own their own efforts at improving it. I thought that was a genius move. If we’re all invited to the 5th floor, doesn’t that indicate shared responsibility?

“Johnson has fiercely defended his handling of the negotiations over the city’s 2025 spending plan, repeatedly referring to himself as the ‘collaborator in chief’ and disputing suggestions that City Hall has been engulfed in chaos, even as he called on members of the city council to ‘grow up’ and stop throwing tantrums…not only did Johnson’s original budget proposal ask alderpeople to put their political futures at risk by voting for the largest property tax hike since 2016 and the second-largest in Chicago history, but it offered nearly nothing in return for city council members to point to when speaking to angry Chicagoans.”

(WTTW: “Chicago City Council Narrowly OKs Johnson’s $17.1B Budget That Hikes Taxes by $165M”, Heather Cherone, December 16, 2024)

Experience Newark at O’Hare

We are electing nice guys who want to be accessible to everyone, but that’s the same thing as being accessible to no one. There is too much noise and not enough signal in this approach. It causes a lack of transparency – or, at least, there’s no transparency about who is getting the access that matters. It’s nice to get attention, but it’s more vital to know early on about what logistics facility, quantum computing campus, stadium, etc., might get built on top of your neighborhood. A picture with the mayor is nowhere near as exciting as having a point person that you know will bring your issues to the mayor. There needs to be an organized way to get ideas, concerns, and information to not just the mayor but the administration. 

In the documentary Punch 9 for Harold Washington, there’s a scene where folks tell the story of how many ‘no-show’ city jobs they found after Harold was sworn in – corrupt arrangements in which city officials gave jobs to supporters and friends that didn’t require them to do meaningful work. So there’s a real reason to make sure people are at City Hall performing their jobs. But we also need to make sure that the real jobs are sustainable. My friends who work at City Hall look so dead inside. We need to get them fresh air, but we also need to maintain a consistent presence in all neighborhoods throughout the city. If too much governing is happening in one building and not in the neighborhoods, it will never be satisfying.

There are so many coalitions pursuing so many separate campaigns, and they’re all trying to get through the city council as quickly as possible. Progressive alders take meeting after meeting with different groups wanting them to champion similar but different causes, with no clear mandate about what to tackle first. The movement needs to pick what will have the biggest impact and has the most organized people behind it.

But the administration also needs to communicate on their end. If a community leader has spent their lives developing civic infrastructure in their neighborhood, I should not be the one telling them substantial news about their neighborhood; neither should they first hear about it from the media. In fact, they should know about what’s coming, because they should be involved in shaping it. There needs to be a legion of staff who are constantly listening to and engaging the ‘grasstops,’ who, through the moral authority of their hard work, run the civic life of the city. By ‘grasstops’ I mean the block captains, civic associations, campaign volunteers, church deacons, etc. – everyone that is putting in the effort to make the community life of Chicago happen. We can’t knock on every door, but every neighborhood has people that almost every household engages with. 

Not Here for Friendship

Some social justice activists want to elect mayors and support them by never criticizing them publicly and waiting on them for direction. Some on the left want to constantly form a black-and-white assessment of a leader and either blindly follow or viciously attack them. The situation is much more complex than that. 

For any of these officials to have successful administrations, the coalitions that elected them need to temper these tendencies. Movements need to independently continue to make their demands. But also, we need to have a reasonable understanding of and strategy around the real limits of the office and the tough decisions that need to be made. We should not be afraid to be far ahead of the mayor but we should not consume our own tail by having unrealistic expectations of the office. 

We do not live in a world of what is right and just. We live in a world of what is possible with the power we have built. We also do not need to burden the mayor with making decisions that we should be making, and we should not hesitate to be aggressively useful to the administration. We should not hesitate to make moves that perhaps the mayor cannot make as easily.

I know one organizer who jumped into being aggressively useful as soon as the election was over. If they knew something, they said something. If someone was angry at the Mayor, they helped his office know about and understand it. Pretty soon, calling them was on the to-do list of new staff. The administration has a lot to pay attention to, and both the organizer and the administration would have both been weakened if they had waited to be asked.

Everybody Everybody Sent

“Is a tractor bad? Is the power that turns the long furrows wrong? If this tractor were ours it would be good – not mine, but ours.” 

(John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath)

After the election, a number of voices disparagingly and increasingly referred to the CTU and  IFT/AFT Local 1 as “the New Machine.”  The old Chicago political machine was the transactional and tightly controlled system in which a small number of people exchanged their political support for city jobs and other perks. Our trauma from living under the old machine can easily make us cynical about any machine or system of organization.

Ultimately, whatever your politics, that type of machine is stronger than people who do the minimum amount for the maximum benefit and who are too afraid of the boss to act independently. Hopefully, we will put more into building an open, transformational machine that delivers for the region’s people by making deep structural changes, and less into critiquing individual candidates.

The post This Ain’t No Party Bus: Movement Lessons From the Brandon Johnson Administration appeared first on Midwest Socialist.