Departments

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Chicago

  • SOURCE: The New Yorker
    5/15/2023

    Brandon Johnson's Unlikely Leap from Labor Activist to Mayor

    by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

    The victory of the former teachers' union member over Paul Vallas, a career school privatizer with backing from Republicans and the police union, shows a widening rift between the centrist and left wings of the Democratic Party that is as important as the national blue-red division. 

  • 5/14/2023

    Brandon Johnson Built a Coalition to Win in Chicago. Can He Keep it to Govern?

    by Gordon K. Mantler

    When Brandon Johnson takes office on Monday as Chicago's mayor, he will experience the same challenge that his political predecessor Harold Washington did in 1983: turning a winning electoral coalition into a durable governing coalition. It won't be easy, but progressive change in the city depends on it. 

  • 5/7/2023

    Buried Footage Helped Chicago Police Get Away with Killing 10 Labor Activists in 1937

    by Greg Mitchell

    Paramount's newsreel division shot footage of the murderous attack on a steelworkers' march in 1937. They sided with the bosses by burying the footage. Even after Senator Robert LaFollette pushed for the film's release, cities banned it from the screen as Chicago prosecutors ruled the killings justifiable. A new documentary tells the story of the film. 

  • SOURCE: Defector
    3/3/2023

    The Police Aren't Part of Change in Chicago

    by Dan Berger

    A historian critiquing a recent book on Black Lives Matter argues that the political, fiscal and cultural influence of police is so broad that it's impossible to think of meaningful social reform in a society that includes modern police departments. 

  • SOURCE: Sojourners
    5/1/2023

    When a Leading Evangelist Held a Revival to Thwart Labor

    by Matt Bernico

    The events surrounding the 1886 Haymarket Affair, when a Chicago general strike for the 8 hour day became violent, revealed tensions present in Christianity today: what happens when Christians side with the bosses? 

  • SOURCE: Zocalo
    4/10/2023

    Claiming a Latino Place in Chicago

    by Mike Amezcua

    Like their African American contemporaries, ethnic Mexicans in Chicago have a long history of organizing to overturn residential segregation. 

  • SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
    3/8/2023

    In Chicago, the Political Vibes Echo 1983, but the Politics are Different

    by Gordon Mantler

    Harold Washington's victory in 1983 to become the city's first Black mayor promised a new multicultural coalition politics. Forty years later, that coalition is discouraged and demobilized, and seems unlikely to challenge the entrenched interests that Washington tried to dislodge from power. 

  • SOURCE: Dissent
    1/11/2023

    50 Years at Cook County Hospital Prove Abortion is Healthcare

    by Amy Zanoni

    Abortion rights activists have focused on horror stories of the pre-Roe era as cautionary tales, but the history of public hospitals since Roe shows that real reproductive freedom requires expanded access to care and a robust social safety net. 

  • SOURCE: The Metropole
    3/23/2022

    Planning For The People Y Qué? From Advocacy Planners To Hardcore Punks

    by Mike Amezcua

    "Punk fliers are planning documents. Not the official kind produced by city planning departments, of course, nor the grassroots plans by neighborhood activists resisting investment capital and gentrification. But these fliers contain a planning schema all the same."

  • SOURCE: Bloomberg CityLab
    1/3/2021

    A Blueprint for Leadership from 1980s Chicago

    by Brentin Mock

    Harold Washington faced stiff resistance from his own party when he became Chicago's first Black mayor in 1983; his response stressing public infrastructure and voting rights foreshadowed the Biden administration's efforts to overcome intransigence and obstructionism.