Revolutionaries using the electoral arena to advance the battle for basic needs have entered a new era in Chicago. On April 4, 2023 voters elected Brandon Johnson as mayor. They rejected Paul Vallas and his version of guaranteeing “public safety.” Vallas, endorsed by the Fraternal Order of Police, vowed to keep Chicago safe by hiring more police. Johnson, redefining public safety, argued that increased police budgets had never made the city safer. Decades-long disinvestment working class communities had condemned residents to a precarious existence. A majority of voters agreed with Johnson.
Along with Johnson, the voters elected new Chicago City Council members to join the caucus that champions progressive causes. Lakefront wards north of downtown – among the most diverse in Chicago – returned incumbent progressives to the City Council, elected progressives to replace machine democrats, and voted solidly for Johnson. A movement fighting gentrification and for affordable housing spearheaded these battles. The question facing the movement in Chicago is: Will the ground apparatus, which won the electoral victory, continue now that the voting is done?
A movement, not a moment
Chicago has a history of movements for transformation. The movement for the eight-hour day, centered in Chicago in 1886, gave us May Day. A century later, a deindustrialization crisis hit the rust belt and devastated Chicago. The growth of labor replacing technology transformed what was once the center of manufacturing in the world into an economy based on speculation, and cast Chicago’s workers into a dispossessed class unable to survive. In this environment, a long history of political movement among Black workers in Chicago culminated in the election of Mayor Harold Washington in 1983.
In the following three decades, Chicago fully entered into the era of financial and real estate speculation. Schools were closed, mental health clinics shuttered, tent cities proliferated, and affordable housing (including public housing) shriveled up. Living wage jobs became a dream, not a reality. While police accountability and public safety were the key talking points in this election, ending poverty was the backdrop and the foundation for Brandon Johnson’s platform during the campaign.
Police repression runs throughout this advancing economic destruction. The 1969 assassination of Black Panthers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark galvanized the hatred of the Chicago Police Department (CPD). The Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression toiled for decades for community control of police, as year after year police disregard for the community became more palpable.
Organizing among young people especially took on an abolitionist character, inspired by the work of Mariame Kaba and others. In May, 2014 the police killed Dominique “Damo” Franklin. That catalyzed the formation of “We Charge Genocide,” and led to a petition to the United Nations Commission on Torture. Only five months after Damo was murdered, in October 2014 another police assassin, officer Jason VanDyke fired 16 shots into the body of Laquan McDonald. Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Álvarez covered the shooting up by delaying the release of the video of the shooting for a year, well after the 2015 city election. “Sixteen shots and a cover-up” expressed the rage that convulsed Chicago.
Forces working for a police review apparatus and “We Charge Genocide,” now with much broader reach, began a campaign to dump Alvarez. The “Bye Anita” campaign seized on supporting Kim Foxx as a progressive alternative, although the core of the “Bye Anita” campaign was convinced that the State’s Attorney’s office itself was as much a problem.
In 2015, two candidates won City Council seats in races that were carefully watched. In one, Carlos Ramirez-Rosa espoused a Democratic Socialist agenda openly. In the other, Susan Sadlowski Garza leaned on her work as a union teacher and her family’s historic legacy in the steelworkers union. When this was capped in 2016 by the wildly successful “Bye Anita” campaign, new forces had announced their arrival in Chicago. In 2019, the grassroots organizations tripled the number of council members committed to a fight for basic needs. In 2023 the number increased again. In the mayoral race, the majority in Chicago showed they distrusted the police to preserve public safety, since calling the police too often resulted in murder of unarmed young people.
Election successes are neither strictly nor solely the result of an electoral movement. In 1983 Harold Washington declared about his own victory: “It’s not the man, it’s the plan.” The plan in 2023: a gathering movement for survival in all its elements. At the beginning of the campaign, few voters recognized Johnson’s name. Even after the February 28 election, it seemed Johnson had an insurmountable deficit to make up in the runoff. Some leading Democrats rushed to endorse his opponent. They underestimated the strength of the movement and its commitment to the “plan.” Many of the same forces that had mobilized around “Bye Anita” and the police review process came forward to mobilize for Johnson. The youth vote (under 35) had the greatest percentage increase. Older voters (over 55) actually declined in percentage. Echoing the voices from the Harold Washington era, a citywide network of Artists for Brandon published a manifesto supporting the cultural program of the Johnson campaign and distributed art work widely through social media.
Progressive City Council members fought the remnants of the Democratic Party machine, running against nearly all incumbent progressives. The progressives rode the wave of the movement for survival. The machine lost because they lacked any credibility of meeting the people’s demands.
Next steps
The vultures counterattacked against the mayor-elect even before he took office on May 15. They assailed the composition of his transition team as not representing business as well as his refusal to respond to street violence by demonizing youth. This hostility reflects the objective crisis in Chicago. All the issues for which our class is fighting are connected and must be liberated from the yoke of corporate domination.
As the Brandon Johnson administration takes shape, progressives will play a larger role in organizing the governance of the city. This will test the limitations of their power. Nothing will move forward in the city, indeed the entire country, until a broad motion supports the fight for making private property public. The “Bring Chicago Home” transfer tax on high-end real estate sales is a start to curb private property in housing.
Some ward organizations created in the process of the 2019 election were strengthened during the early months of the pandemic in 2020. New forces rose to the new threats of the public health emergency. Mutual aid efforts undercut the capitalist-imposed economic insecurity. A new form of political organization is needed that is outside the control of the Democratic Party and that carries out the practical fight for the survival of the residents – moving the houseless into apartments, preventing evictions, carrying out public health checks – all activities alien to the traditional electoral political apparatus. Elements of this are falling into place.
This election need not herald a momentary victory. Let’s make this a movement for transformation.
Published on May 24, 2023
This article originated in Rally, Comrades
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