Portside

A proposed El Paso City Charter amendment—put forward by grassroots organizers—would create green economic growth, investments in conservation and infrastructure, and democratic control over special interests.

In the election of 1920, Eugene V. Debs, the Socialist Party presidential candidate, polled nearly a million votes without ever hitting the campaign trail. Debs was behind bars in the federal penitentiary in Atlanta, Georgia, serving a 10-year sentence for sedition. It was a not a bum rap. Debs had defiantly disobeyed a law he deemed unjust, the Sedition Act of 1918.

“Don’t assume that a blanket message on critical race theory or transgender issues is going to claim every district,” one GOP activist said.

Brandon Johnson’s mayoral victory is a first step toward transforming the deeply unequal city. If he’s going to undertake radical reform efforts in Chicago, Johnson needs protests and strikes to fend off the inevitable capitalist attacks.

Movement organizers claimed a hard-won collective victory with Brandon Johnson's election. Now the Windy City’s first movement mayor faces a formidable array of challenges, testing him and the coalition that brought him into office.

Professor Lance Williams traces the stories and conflicts of two powerful Chicago leaders, David Barksdale and Richard J. Daley, in a recent book.

European insights – Who votes for the left, and why?

Johnson, a progressive, has been calling for change by implementing a public health approach to safety. Vallas, who has often identified himself as a Republican and represents the most conservative edge of the Democratic Party, has—in contrast to Johnson—been calling for the expansion of existing police-centric safety paradigms.

Chicago mayoral candidate Paul Vallas helped create a financial disaster as head of Chicago Public Schools, making bond deals worth $666 million — whose exorbitant interest payments to Wall Street are now robbing the city’s school system.