February 15, 2023 • 52 mins
Legendary Chicago Mayor Harold Washington is the subject of a new documentary called “Punch 9 for Harold Washington.” In this week’s episode, Ben and Khalil discuss the legacy of the city’s first Black mayor. They are also joined by Rossana Rodriguez Sanchez, a Chicago alderwoman, who is working to revive a multi-racial alliance of progressive voters.
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Speaker 1 (00:14):
Pushing yo. Man. Remember when we ran high school and
we won the city champion public school city tennis championship.
We won ten years in a row, right, Oh man,
Well we didn't, but I think it was our tenth
grade year and we went to city hall and we
(00:36):
got to meet the mayor who was then Harold Washington.
I know, I mean we were all dressed up and
you looked ridiculous in like this old man blazer. I didn't.
I didn't. I didn't own a suit. I didn't own
a jacket. I had to borrow my dad's jacket. You
are exactly right. Your memory is correct. But we did
get to meet Harold Washington, to meet Harry, I want
(00:57):
to forget that. And boy I was beautiful. Boy did
that turn out to be historic. I'm Khalil Gibra Muhammed.
I'm Ben Austin. We are two best friends, one black,
one white. I'm a historian and I'm a journalist. And
this is some of my best friends are some of
my best friends are dot dot dot. In this show,
(01:20):
we wrestle with the challenges and the absurdities of a
deeply divided and unequal country. And today we are talking
about one of the most legendary Chicago politicians, Mayor Harold Washington,
who's the subject of a recent documentary Punch nine. For
Harold Washington. We're gonna learn about his Rainbow Coalition, where
it came from, and how it's working today. Yep, yep,
(01:43):
that's right. We're also going to talk to someone who
is carrying on that legacy in Chicago right now, an
older woman from Chicago, Rosanna Rodriguez Sanchez. Hey, man, I
(02:08):
am really interested in what's happening in Chicago right now.
We have a ton of black people and Latino people
running for mayor. The current mayor, Laurie Lightfoot, has been
on her heels for a long time. And I know,
you know this doesn't make a lot of sense to everybody,
but Chicago has been a bell weather for the nation
for a long time. I mean, the first black yeah
(02:29):
Chicago is the first black politician since Reconstruction came out
of Chicago. The obviously, the first black President of the
United States came from Chicago. The first black woman to
go to the US Senate came out of Chicago. So
what happens in Chicago matters to the rest of the nation,
right man, that's right, that's right. You know, this mayor
election is historic in so many ways. And one way
(02:50):
which is surprising is there's only one white candidate in
the race. Right, Oh wow, yes, that has to be
the first time ever in the history of Chicago. I
did not only one white candidate. Actually didn't realize that.
That's really fascinating because you and I watched this documentary
Punch nine, and it is a history of the first
(03:13):
black mayor of Chicago, Harold Washington, when the script was
totally flipped away from you know, a gazillion white mayors
and one of the most ruthless machine politicians, old Man
Richard J. Daley mayor for life. He was mayor for
twenty one years. But yeah, Harold Washington, his election in
nineteen eighty three was such a big deal for us
(03:33):
as young people. Then we were early teenagers. Maybe we're
eleven or twenty, maybe that's not teenagers even. And I
do remember my dad working on the campaign. I remember
people campaigning all around our neighborhood. Yeah, I remember this
being really such a huge deal. Yeah, yeah, no, I
mean I think you know a lot of times we
(03:54):
take for granted, like you know, Jews working on this
campaign with black folks. For example, in that documentary, there's
this moment where, you know, you can hear in the
documentary all these slogans that are being crafted, like Hunky's
for Harold, which of course is like ethnics, nerve for
Hungarians or Eastern Europeans. And the one I love was
locks and bagels for Harold. So that's that's kind of
(04:17):
like the energy that this this Rainbow Coalition was unleashan
Carol Washington is asking for support from from this huge
group of progressive allies, and everyone called him Harold like
this sort of personal he he had this sort of avuncular,
grandfatherly way like connected to him, but he also had
(04:37):
this this forcefulness, you know, like he didn't take shit.
And he also his language. He used this you know,
sort of um, you know, like phosaurus words all the time.
You had to look up the words that he was saying.
He was just so erudite. At the same time, it
was sort of like captivating you as like Shakespearean. It's
kind of like me, I love that, thank yes, yes,
(05:01):
not at all, not at all, you know, So so
looking back on this history for me, and you know,
I studied this uh for many things, including the the
book about public housing. For me, Harold Washington, that moment
in time is about participation in the democratic process. I mean,
we often talk about how the civil rights were sort
(05:21):
of disconnected from our childhood in the eighties, but this
is the closest connection to me. One hundred and thirty
thousand people were added to the voting roles at this time.
That's so many people who were like, want to participate
in the democratic process who weren't part of it before,
and a huge number of them were Black people. Yeah. Man,
I'm so glad you talked about him increasing the voter
(05:43):
roles and increasing the number of black voters because in
many ways, I mean, he was inspired by earlier movements
for participatory democracy. He was inspired by the Black Panther
Party in Chicago that ultimately coined the phrase Rainbow Coalition,
and those folks moved from civil disobedience and grassroots organizing
(06:05):
the Young Lords, which was a Puerto Rican inspired organization
the Young Patriot to a working class white people. They
all came together in this so called Rainbow Coalition to
fight for equity, to fight for justice in Chicago, and
in the end, that era of the nineteen sixties under
Hall Washington translated into the power of the ballot, the
(06:26):
power of the vote, the power to take charge of Chicago.
And that's what was so exciting about his candidacy. Yeah, yeah,
Harrod Washington actually begins his father is part of the
Democratic machine, and Harrow Washington gets elected into into first
state office and then he's a congressman. And you couldn't
(06:46):
do that without having sort of the approval of the
daily machine. But he breaks with them, and it's issues today,
you know, police brutality and standing up against it, you know,
issues of black disenfranchisement and not being part of the
process of not really sort of participating in the city.
And yeah, he makes this total break and becomes an
(07:06):
outsider candidate. And you know, how do you do that?
How do you sort of you know, fight the powers
that be and and you know, build this huge coalition
to try to overcome it. It was it was it
seemed like it was impossible in Chicago, and we lived
at a time when we saw it happen. That's right,
It seemed impossible, but it wasn't. And the threat of
his success as the leader of this rainbow coalition in
(07:29):
nineteen eighty three, Chicago produced a moment in time which
is still reverberating to this day. Of course, since Chicago
I was talking about, you're talking about now like the
white backlash against this movement or yeah, yeah, I'm talking
about when Harold Washington was finally nominated as a Democratic
candidate for mayor and instead of it being a shoe
(07:52):
in for the general election and becoming the next mayor,
the white working class haters who Harold Washington said were
racist from rib to rib, he said in this amazing
eclip from the documentary, ultimately be yan to rally Chicago's
blue hardcore Democrat daily voters start to rally around this
(08:17):
you know nothing candidate Bernie Epton as a way to
save white Chicago from Harold Washington. One of the things
that's crazy, as you were talking about, you know, Jewish
people like my family supporting Harold Washington and people on
the South Side. Bernie Epton lived like on the same
block as Harold Washington. He lives in Hyde Park. He's
(08:38):
a Hyde Park Jewish guy, a lawyer. Oh. I didn't
realize that he's a Republican. But being a Republican in
Chicago then meant absolutely nothing. It was just sort of
like a nominal thing. Right. But because of this threat
of the first black mayor and sort of taking power,
people felt something was being taken away from them, replacement theory.
They started rallying behind this guy that nobody even knew,
(09:00):
and Bernie Epton. He has this campaign slogan, Bernie Epton
before It's too late. Yeah, that's our hotel out. Yeah,
that's some hometown stuff right there. I mean, I don't
know if you you you had told me before that
you saw this documentary and you were struck by sort
of the somehow the overt racism, how how staunch it was,
(09:22):
how out there it was. Yeah. Well, I mean again,
we were children at this time, I mean, barely teenagers.
And so to think that white people in Chicago were
articulating views as racist as you know, white people in Birmingham, Um,
you know, I didn't. I didn't witness it directly, but
in this documentary it's there, It's in plain view. And
(09:42):
of course I'm a historian, I'm not surprised by it,
you know, in an intellectual sense, but it is very visceral. Yeah,
and then so Harrow Washington, he does eke out of
victory against against this guy Bernard Epton, but but barely,
which is crazy, Like it's incredibly close, and it's true,
like you know, the turnout is insane and um, once
(10:03):
he gets into office, there we have fifty aldermen in
the city council, as you know, twenty nine white aldermen
form a coalition and they're basically saying it's like some
tea party stuff. They're like, we are not going to
let any legislation pass. We are going to vote down
every measure. We're just basically going to shut down city council.
They're called the Verdoliac twenty nine for this guy, one
(10:25):
of the aldermen from the South Side, Eddie Verdoliac Fast
Eddie people Eddie as he was always sorry doing deals
and he does eventually go to prison himself. But but
they shut down everything and it is it is completely
along racial lines. You know, all of the twenty nine
or white, um, some of the there's some white people
(10:45):
on the on Harold Washington's twenty one the other aldermen,
but they're also black and Latino aldermen. Yeah, so when
you say, you know, this is some tea party stuff
it is. It's like it is a dress rehearsal for
the Republican obstructionism that we saw Mitch McConnell lead when
Obama was elected in two thousand and nine. And it's
(11:06):
a lot of what we continue to see in the
Republican parties down to, like, you know, every form of
denialism about the white supremacy in white nationalism that runs
through the party. But I want to talk now about
Harold Washington winning and governing and what his success as
a mayor for the time that he was mayor pressages
(11:26):
for the kind of battles that are taking place across
the nation right now. I mean, here's a man. You know,
he broke the machine. He ended patronage. Yeah, so he
does ain't patronage. He annacts these this legislation, the Shackman
decrees that makes it illegal to actually hand out city
contracts and city jobs to people. Yeah, and so you
(11:48):
can no longer do that. You have to find other
means to hook folks up. And he makes the city
ultimately way more responsive to many more Chicagoans, the kinds
of working class, black and brown voters that had been
traditionally ignored except on election day or had just been
given favors by the machine. And then finally he elects
more women to positions of lead ship in his administration
(12:11):
that had ever been there before and some say ever since. Yeah,
I mean seriously, one of the tragedies of Harold Washington
is he ends up winning re election and then winning
enough seats and city council of people who support him
that it breaks the virdolia twenty nine, so you can
start passing much more legislation, and very early in his
(12:33):
second term, and I remember exactly where I was when
I got this news. I had just picked up my
brother from the airport and we were driving back because
I was a junior in high school. We hear on
the radio that's he's died at his desk in office. Yea,
he has a massive heart attack, and so sort of
the possibility of what he could have done with with
(12:56):
with the city and with support we never got to
really see. Yeah. Yeah, In fact, you know, he had
he had bragged after he won election that he was
going to be mayor for twenty years. He was going
to match old Man daily in his tenure. And I
have to say the thing that his death meant to me, then,
(13:17):
is the closest that I imagine what it was like
when Kennedy was assassinated in nineteen sixty three. I don't
I didn't know him in the way that adults did,
but I knew him enough as a young person to
feel the loss. And I actually honestly thought he was
poisoned at the time. No one put that in my head.
I thought it on my own because I just thought
this disk just can't be true. Yeah, you said, Harold
(13:40):
wanted to be mayor for for twenty years. Where we
got instead with his death was Richard M. Daily being
mayor for twenty two years, the second coming, you know,
King Richard, the second somebody I heard someone call him
just recently. And so much of the city changes with that. Yeah,
(14:00):
I mean, you know, it's not the same kind of machine,
but it's a different kind of consolidation of power, and
it represents a loss for for black Chicagoans. And over time,
you know, from that time to the present, the city
has gotten whider, it's gotten wealthier, there's been more economic stratification.
Black population has diminished and left the city. And yes,
(14:22):
we finally had a second black mayor and mayor Laurie Lightfoot,
who was elected four years ago, and there's been huge disappointment,
and maybe that disappointment is a big reason why we
haven't really come to terms with the legacy of Harold
Washington's Rainbow Coalition, that that potential seems to me to
(14:42):
still be unrealized. Yeah, And I just want to add that,
building on what you just said, is the city has
gotten whider. We've lost about two hundred, two hundred and
fifty thousand black citizens since then. They've moved away from Chicago,
but the city has also gotten browner. There are many
more Latino people, and so the possibilities of coalition building.
(15:05):
And this is in Chicago and really in any city
and most democratic cities in the United States. This is
the demographic mix up that you know, the mix are
you saying, are you telling me some some good news?
This is the possibility we have come full circle, that
the Rainbow Coalition can be reassembled. This is why this
is the reason why I think we need to look
at this documentary. We need to think about Harold Washington's
(15:27):
mayoralty and his past. Even though it's forty forty damn
years ago, it's so much a part of this president,
what's potential. That's also why I asked someone to be
on the show today for the second half. Rosanna Rodriguez
Sanchez is an older person, an alder woman here in Chicago.
So she's one of now the city council members. She's
on the northwest side, the thirty third ward. I heard
(15:50):
her talk about Harold Washington documentary and you know it's
been airing here, Yes, the Punch nine document it's been
airing here. And there was a public screening and and
I heard her talk about here. You know, she's a
young Latina politician in Chicago currently today in twenty twenty three,
and she was talking about how this history was completely
(16:11):
relevant to her right now. This was about her politics
and the work that she's doing today to try to
bring the city together. Yeah. I'm so excited to learn
from her because I think her work, as I've come
to learn from you, really suggests that she's doing some
of the same work that Harold Washington did to build
a rainbow coalition forty years ago. And she's knocking on doors,
(16:35):
she's organizing black and brown and white people to really
focus on policies and the values that matter rather than
just the color of the skin or the representational politics
that have so often passed as substantive change over the
last forty years. Yeah, yeah, I think that's exactly right.
And we're going to talk to her. She's campaigning right now.
(16:56):
She's been out all day, but she took some time
and she's running for Alderman on the thirty third Ward
to come and speak with us, to come in from
the cold. And so after the break we will be
back with Rosanna Rodriguez Sanchez, Rosanna Rodrique Sanchez and older
(17:25):
women from the thirty third Ward in Chicago. Thank you
for being on. Some of my best friends are Thank
you for having me. Yeah, yeah, we Khalil and I
have been talking about Harold Washington and this documentary Punch nine,
and we've been thinking so much about Harold Washington's legacy
and particularly in the way that he brought together what
(17:48):
he called the Rainbow coalition of white people, black people,
and Latinos that also included Asian people. It'll include it
included lgbtq I people, and it was a true diverse
coalition of people that were really trying to change the
(18:08):
way politics we're done in Chicago. To me, it was
a really beautiful thing to witness because from what Harold
Washington did, we know that it is possible, that it
is not out of reach. That is something that we
can do, and here in Chicago, we have been working
(18:29):
really hard to be able to get to that point,
and I think that we have had a lot of
successes and I am very proud of what we have
been building here in Chicago. Yeah, I mean so that,
you know, that's a question. I saw you give a talk,
You're a part of a panel discussion talking about the documentary,
and it really struck me seeing you up there. You're
a young Latina politician in Chicago, and these events from
(18:53):
Haward Washington's election and then his mayoralty are like forty
years ago. It's like so long ago, and it's interesting
to hear you talk about how it still resonates with you,
like like seeing this story feels part of your political
life and your life in Chicago. Yeah. You know, when
I think about myself in this context, um, sometimes I
(19:16):
think about these hiccups in history where something all of
a sudden happens and it can change the course of things. Um.
And when Harold Washington won and that then you know,
ended up in the Council Wars because nobody wanted you know,
the people that were already there and were entrenching power,
they didn't want things to change. Um. And for a
(19:39):
little bit of time, you know, for those four years
that Harold Washington fought back against Everdolia twenty nine, a
group of twenty nine white aldermen that oppose everything that
Harold Washington did. We can we stop on that for
a moment, Bresana, Like, how did you actually either experience
or learn about this? Like what was your what was
your pathway into the Harold Washington years? Was it like
(20:01):
political education? Just want to sit you down and say, hey,
this this is what happened. These are the lessons we learned. Well,
I'm a social and in order to be a socialist,
you get a dig into history, right, Like you have
to be able to understand what are the things that
historically have have and materially what the current reality is
(20:24):
built on. Right. Um. So I have always been very
curious about history, and I have studied, you know, black
power movements. I have studied, um how the Puerto Ricans,
for example, and colonized people have fought back in order
to be able to get power and build power, real power, right,
(20:47):
real people power, not the power that entrenched politicians get
from the like the original Rainbow Coalition kind of power, right,
the young lords and Chicago, the young patriots, the poor
whites on the on the North side Chicago. That's the
kind of history and socialism and grassroots organizing you're talking about.
So that inevitably leads you to Harold Washington. So a
(21:08):
lot of us have continued to build in Chicago with
the hope that we could create something like what Harold
Washington was able to create. And let's unpack that story,
your story of entering that a little bit, because even
in the documentary, there's this politician, as you said, part
of the Verdoliac twenty nine, these white politicians who are basically,
(21:32):
like you know, stopping all activity from happening in the
city council. One of them is this guy Dick mel
He's unapologetic. He chooses essentially race over his Democratic Party
and you know, white race. And he was the older
men in the ward where you now hold the office.
(21:53):
And what is your story with his family and how
did you come into office? Like can you tell us
that story? Yes? Absolutely, So in twenty fifteen, a teacher
from a community decided to run for the seat. We
supported him because he was running on platform for the
nine and he was also trying to interrupt the corruption
(22:14):
inside of city council. And when you think, like, what
is corruption, like people give them one another contracts or so.
So the biggest, the biggest power that aldermen have is sowning.
And if you have the power of soning, you can
get a lot of contributions from developers who want soning
changes to increase the worth of the property or to
(22:35):
create big developments. Right. So Dick mel was in office
for thirty eight years, and this is so Chicago. What
he does. This is so when he decided to retire,
he passed the seat on to his daughter. And you
might ask, oh, my god, how do people do that.
The way of people do that is that you have
(22:56):
a really good relationship with the mayor. You go to
the mayor and you say, I want you to open
my daughter, and the mayor is going to say, okay,
we gotta do like this little song. And then here
we're gonna say that we're going to interview candidates, and
then we're going to say that the most qualified candidate
is you're so, wait, I have a clarifying question because
I'm not in Chicago. So are you saying that this
(23:16):
is a retirement before an election, So it creates a
need to fill a seat. That's how it works. Then
it falls to the mayor to appoint somebody, Okay, and
then the person becomes an incumbent, and then more or
less everyone's like, oh, this person's great, let's vote for them.
It's a way to cement your power. So, Rosanna, you
actually run against Dick Mel's daughter, then yes, So he
(23:37):
retired halfway through his term. She of course carried his
last name, and then she served for two years and
then she had to run for reelection. That's when Timmy
and run. We run him in twenty fifteen. We were
seventeen votes away from a runoff with them, and we
had no idea of how to run an electoral campaign,
(23:57):
and we had no money. We were like, we're just
gonna do this and see what happens. And one thing
about socialism, and one thing about organizers, is that we
know how to organize. Like we might not know a
lot about electoral politics, we don't know how to organize okay,
and we were really motivated to change things right, and
what we decided to do was to start an IPO
(24:19):
and independent political organization, which were very popular during the
time of Harold Washington because of how entrenched the Chicago
machine was in the electoral the official electoral Democratic Party.
So you're actually using you're actually using a mechanism from
that path. That's actually the history is alive for you
in this present. That's really interesting. For three and a
(24:42):
half years, we spend all of our time organizing around housing,
around immigrant rights, and around education. We knocked on people
doors to talk about items that we put on ballots
like rent control or mortoriament charter schools, and we were
having conversations with people all the time. Right. Organized, organized, organized,
We organized with tenant unions, We organized to protect immigrants
(25:06):
and go to court with them, fund raisers for families
of immigrants that were being deported. We were doing all
of that work. Rosanna, I want to try to finish
that one question here, because like a true organizer and socialist,
you you talked about the collective and not about yourself.
And even when we asked you the question about how
you got into politics, you talked about the person you
(25:27):
ran before you why you? Then then you ran like
why did just like in a real you know, you
could say quickly like why did you want to become
older woman? And like why did you? So? So the
first answer I would say is that I didn't want to.
But when the time came to run for office, to
(25:48):
run somebody, it became evident that I was that it
was if it was not me, If I didn't say yes,
nobody was going to do it that had our values right.
So at that point I really wanted somebody to be
able to be on the seat and I and I
decided to say yeah, even though I was incredibly scared,
(26:11):
Like I ran, I was scared every day. I didn't
think that I was the right person to do it.
But now I know that I am the right person
to be to be on the seat. I absolutely am.
I want to unpack that a little bit because one
of the things that we're that I'm interested in, and
I know Ben and I are both curious about this,
So I'm interested. I don't even know what you're gonna say,
(26:32):
but I'm I'm interested that don't don't leave me out
of this. I'm part of it, well, you can speak.
You can speak for both of us, because I mean, listen,
you and I and Ben, the three of us are
a version of a rainbow coalition, and Ben and I
identify as progressives. But it seems like right now in
the country, in twenty twenty three, when I pick up
the newspaper, like, I'm reading that in California, significant number
(26:55):
of Latino voters struck down an affirmative action referendum. They said,
you know, we want to keep things as they are,
to ban affirmative action in California admissions. When I look
at Florida, it is obvious that a significant Hispanic and
Latino population supports Donald Trump. When I look at Nevada
and Arizona, I see a you know, a blue ripple
(27:18):
fighting against you know, a red wave, and it's winning
sometimes and it's a it's a toss up. So help
me understand. In Chicago on the ground, what is the
difference between like Latino voters who are moderate and centrist
it might even be Republican leaning in some of their
national politics, versus progressives who are committed to these issues.
(27:42):
I mean, you've just talked about rent control. A tenant
strikes I mean, I'm not hearing a lot of national
polling about those Latino voters. So tell us, help us
understand the difference between how you think of progressive politics
and how I'm hearing about Latino voters who are way
more moderate and centrist and kind of on the bubble
in terms of national politics. I think, I mean it's
a matter of context. Chicago is a place where we
(28:06):
organize a lot. It is never ending, and I think
we have gotten to a point here of organizing, very
successful organizing. I'm going to give you the best example
that I have. We at this point here in the
northwest side of Chicago, specifically the Northwest side of Chicago,
which is very heavily Latino, we have been able to
(28:30):
elect a block of around nine very progressive elected at
all levels of government. We have state reps, we have
state senators, all of us. I mean, we are Latinos
and we are very progressive, and we are making sure
that we are getting this message across. But it just
takes organizing. It takes knocking on doors, It takes organizing
(28:53):
people and ensuring that just like the Black Panthers and
the Young Lords organized with mutual aid and making sure
that people could see each other as allies. Right, we
are doing that here and it is showing results like
you can see it. Right when in the last election,
(29:13):
there was a very interesting dynamic here in the Northwest
Side because Delia Ramirez was running in a very progressive
platform and there was another Latino, Guilvijas, who is part
of City Council, that was also running for that seat.
He was running on tough on crimes though he was
running on a moderate platform, and they started calling Delia
defone Delia, and they sent so many mailers making her
(29:35):
look like she was like anti police and she just
wanted crime. She won in a landslide. A landslide, Yeah,
because we talked too much about Eric Adams and like
the consolidation of working class black voters around a tough
on crime agenda and a lot of you know, very
conservative ideas about how to run the city. And you're saying,
(29:56):
just the opposite is happening in at least this ward
of Chicago, in the Northwest Side as a whole, not
just my ward. Delia won. Delia won the suburbs. Delia
won the whole West Suburbs in her platform, which received
a lot of attacks as a defaunt platform right. So
(30:16):
we actually believe that we are making a lot of
way to progressive to progressive ideas in our communities, and
I think that people it is easy for people to
go right and to adopt right wing ideas when they
can't imagine anything else and you are presenting problems like crime,
but you don't have any other alternative, and you are
(30:38):
not engaging with people either at a level where people
feel like they're being hurt and that there's something for them.
We're going to take a break, but when we come
back from that break, we're going to talk about how
Chicago is or isn't a version of the future as
it has often been in the past, and the degree
to which we can teach a national audience what to
(30:59):
learn from what's happening in your ward and on the
Northwest side of Chicago about the future of a Rainbow Coalition.
We'll be right back, So, Rizanna, we've learned so much
about the effectiveness of organizing around key progressive issues and
(31:20):
really pushing back against the kind of representational politics that
so often cloud the actual needs of people rather than
there's a black or brown or an Asian in office,
and so I'm really curious, you know, do you think
right now what you're seeing on the ground in Chicago,
mix the Rainbow coalition that we've been talking about still viable.
(31:42):
Do you think this is something? And then I don't know,
I don't even know if you what you think about this?
Do you think this is something that we ought to
be talking a lot more about? Yeah, Khalil, I mean,
I'm thinking about this a lot. We have a mayoral
election going on, but I'm also thinking about the demographics
in Chicago. So we were talking about Harold Washington. When
he was mayor, the Latino population was not that big.
(32:04):
It was like around fourteen percent or something, and we
had this huge flux, especially people from Mexico, over the
next you know, twenty thirty years. And now, at least
in theory, we have this beautifully diverse city of like
thirty percent Latino, forty five percent White, thirty percent Black,
and another sort of seven percent Asian. Now we're madly segregated,
(32:27):
so it doesn't feel crazy diverse, but but the total
makeup is this amazing thing. And that's probably true of cities,
you know, democratic cities all across the country. Chicago is
representative in that way of a rising Latino population and
sort of thinking about the jumble of these politics and
and like partly what we were talking about with Harold
(32:48):
Washington is sort of this white backlash to this progressive
movement and to this this you know, in interracial connections.
But I'm really interested in sort of like the the
also the black Latino divides that happened, and like to
think about how that's also taking shape in Chicago because certainly,
(33:09):
like you know, I think the black community in some
ways feels like they're losing out of power, you know,
but maybe Rosanna feels differently of seeing this on the ground, um,
and even seeing it in the city council which has
this you know, fifty aldermen, older people, alders, older women
and alder men, all of them. But but you know,
so so yeah, I think it's it is this. It
(33:31):
is this example of what's happening nationally here. I think
there's a lot of work to do to be able
to build, um, the same structures in black communities, and
it is very challenging right now. Um, we are in
the middle of this mayoral election and United Working Families,
which is our effort to create a workers Party um
(33:52):
in Chicago and the top of the ticket is Brandon
Johnson for for mayor, which I believe that he is
trying to build that rainbow coalition and Brandon's black just
even I know that from from national reporting. Again, yes,
so so here so the so what I am saying
is here in these Latino neighborhoods, right, the different organizations
(34:12):
that have been built around all of these other candidates
at different levels of office, this is something that we
haven't been able to build yet in black communities, and
because of segregation, right, it has been a very different reality.
Are you saying that when you say we, you mean
the party has not been effective on some of the
black wards and districts on the south and west sides
(34:35):
of Chicago. That's what you mean by the week? No,
what I mean is that what it means that those
efforts haven't gotten on their way. So can you give
an example of an organizing effort to get a program
in place or a policy that hasn't yet worked among
Black Chicagoans. One example of this is Treatment not Trauma
is a bill that I introduced in twenty twenty to
create a mental health response holistic mental health response in Chicago.
(34:58):
We put it on the ballot in the last election
in November. We were here in my ward thirty three,
and in two wards that are predominantly black, which are
the sixth Ward and the twentieth. People knocked on doors,
people have conversations. This is how we do it, right, Like,
we go to people, we talked about what are the
problems that we're having, Well, this is a possible solution.
(35:18):
How do we do this? But we haven't been doing
that necessarily in a lot of black communities here in
the north northwest Side. We started doing it, but we
haven't been able to go through that process there. And
I say we because this is everybody's responsibility, right, I
say we. I am in my community doing what I can,
but we haven't been able to have that level of
(35:41):
organization in this particular context. But we are on our
way to do that. Rosanna, I'm interested in this idea.
So you're endorsing a black progressive candidate in the mayoral election.
There's a very prominent Latino candidate as well, who actually
emerges from Harold Washington's coalition. We know Twee. Garcia, Yeah,
(36:03):
who I met a few years ago. It seemed like
a really lovely guy I got. I'm thinking about two
things here. One is is it controversial that you are
siding with a black progressive and not a Latino And
maybe you can explain sort of how your progressive politics
kind of supersedes racial politics. And then two like, say
(36:26):
you're knocking on doors and you go to an older
family in your ward and you know a Latino family
and their two week Garcia supporters, how do you convince them?
You're like, no, no, no, this this this black guy
who who actually has your interests? Brandon Johns Better Yeah, yeah,
Well those conversations, um usually start with an issue, right,
(36:50):
like what is the issue that you care about? And
it is not easy, And I would like to start
saying I have a lot of respect for Congressman Garcia. Um,
I know him personally. I did meet with him alongside
all of the Northwest side elected progressive Latino electeds. He
was not ready to commit to running when we met
with her, and Brandon was. And Brandon sat down with
(37:13):
us and we talked about all of the different things
that we needed, and he committed to fighting alongside us
for those things. So I am going to support the
person that is going to go too bad for the
progressive agenda that we have right so we couldn't commit
to it. At that point. He didn't even know if
he was running. I'm sorry, we have to run somebody
(37:33):
against my her life foot So this is what we're doing.
And I am very proud to be supporting Brandon just
so because I know what his history is a movement.
I know that he's a union person. I know that
I know where he has been and what he has
been doing, and I do think that it is important
for Latino communities to understand who is fighting in their
(37:57):
best interests, and I think Brandon is going to be
doing that. When I go into a household and we
talked about the issues at hand, I am very comfortable
saying Brandon has committed to treat me not trauma. Brandon
already committed to that, and I know that I'm going
to be able to count on him to deliver that.
I want to just sort of round this out with
an issue that I think is a third rail around
(38:21):
this question of coalition politics, and it certainly is in
New York City, it is in a lot of places.
So you keep talking about treatment not trauma, and I
want to understand like, how does that intersect with larger
debate about Chicago crime. Just like many other cities and
in a lot of other places, it's most certainly derailed
progressive ideas. It has derailed the attractiveness of progressive politicians
(38:46):
who have been saddled with the stigma of hating police
officers through the quote unquote defund movement. And it seems
like this isn't this doesn't animate any of the people
that you're talking to. Do I have that right? And
if so, how is that possible? Well, that's what I
was just talking about. With the election of the Lea
Ramirez and Anthony Gasawa and all of the slate that
(39:08):
just swan like they were attacked. Literally everybody was saying
everybody against them was saying, these people are defaunt the
opposition got money from the FOP, like, yeah, seventeen thousand
dollars from the FOP, And what happened was that it's
backfired because those values do not belong in our communities.
(39:30):
And we called it out. I was in, you are
taking money from people who are you know, like the
president of the FOP in Chicago is a terrible human being.
His racist He has made so many islamophobic remarks. He
was okay with the riots in the in the capital
(39:51):
and January six he said he said the only the
only law he saw broken was trespassing. That was his
quote at the January six So so I'm sorry, we
are not going to stand by those values, right, and
I think that we need to speak clearly about those things,
but also speak very clearly as well about what is
that we imagine, right, because people need to be able
(40:11):
to imagine how is it that you're talking about safety
and what are the concrete things that you're going to
do and treatmental trauma, for example, is trying to reduce
the amount of calls that are going through nine on
one by developing other approaches that are well, like way
better and an evidence base to handle things that are
public health based, to handle things that are human service
(40:33):
social service based. So expanding the care pilot that we
fought for so that you don't have to send police
to deal with mental health emergencies, creating walking crisis centers
that are open twenty four hours so that you have
a place to transport right, you don't have to go
to the police station or to the ear making sure
that you have I like to call them clinicians instead
(40:56):
of talking about cops all the time. You actually need
social workers that are going to go and are going
to monitor the people and places that are most likely
to go into crisis because you already know what's happened
and there are where those people are, build trust, monitor them,
figure out how you can prevent crisis. Right. It is
actually not like rocket science, and this is working in
(41:18):
other cities as well. So when I hear that somebody
is behind the treatmental trauma approach, wish let me tell you.
In the last several minnear old debates, treatment no trauma
has been in everybody's mouth. Everybody's talking about treatment trauma.
When I first introduced that, nobody wants to hear anything
about it. But now we do need to be thinking
(41:39):
about safety in a different way and use the right
and proper tools to address each social issue. And what
we're doing of throwing police that everything is just not working.
I think this is really really helpful to me as
an outsider, and I'm curious to Ben, so Ben, I
haven't hearing all these policies. Yeah yeah, but I haven't
heard you mentioned this, So I mean, how if you're
(42:01):
hearing much of this for the first time, then, like,
does Lloyd Lightfoot have a chance in hell? Like how
the square her as current mayor with a gigantic city
of millions of black people as well as whites, we
have you know, we've been talked about the white population
that much, and so like, Rosanna is making a whole
(42:22):
hell of a lot of sense here. But yeah, you're
saying that her policies and politics are your politics and policies,
but not just my politics. They're they're working on the
ground in local politics. And yet I have there's no
news reporting on this. They mean, So I'm just trying
to figure out, like is Lightfoot consolidating support in the
same way that an Eric Items or Joe Biden has
(42:44):
that it kind of just turns what she's talking about
into something unrealistic. Is she hiding the fact that these
programs are working? Is she taking credit for them? Like
what's going on? The programs don't exist yet, there's a bill.
There is a little pilot that we have to push
her to create, but it is only one team and
now it will probably expand to two, but not enough
(43:05):
to be able to even have enough data to make
decisions so the problem has been that she has resisted
this approaches the whole time because she has stood by
the tough on crime narrative. So what we are trying
to do now is and it's one of the reasons
why treatment of trauma is now being used by every
other my rural candidate because they understand that she has
(43:26):
resisted this, that she has blocked this, and that they
need to signal right that they are open to other approaches,
that they are open to doing things in a different way.
So I feel really good about it because I didn't
really think that we would be in this place at
(43:48):
the end of the term. And I have fought so
hard and we have done everything that we can to
make sure that the public knows about this, Like putting
it in the ballot was great. We were able to
have so many conversations with people and let them know
this is what we're trying to do, you know. Yeahs
And I mean one of the things that so great
(44:09):
about hearing this and we wanted to learn from you.
It's when I when I saw you speak at that forum,
I was like, this is somebody I want to talk
to more and learn from because you were talking about
these progressive politics on the ground and organizing and and
I actually personally believe in these policies that you're talking about.
And this is partly an answer to what you said, Khalil, Like,
this is a big ass city. So you know, Rosanna
(44:32):
is talking about finding many like minded people, and there
are a lot of, you know, areas of the city
where people feel very differently and their politics don't align
with this, but the margins are pretty slim, even around
things like crime and so on. But yeah, you're talking
about how many of these issues cross racial lines, and
in this city where it's so often zero, some politics
(44:55):
around race that's really powerful and encouraging. I'm gonna ask
you maybe a way to close this conversation out a
more playful question, which is, like we watches Harold Washington
documentary Punch nine, and we saw again these council wars
where the essentially twenty nine white older men were fighting
with the other older men who were more progressive and
(45:17):
didn't want to let any legislation pass, and it just
seemed like madness in there, screaming and yelling. Tell us
a story about being in city council where it felt,
if not a war at least like, you know, a skirmish.
We have had several of those over the time that
I have been there. Not long ago, there was a
(45:41):
there was a discussion that we had our own curfews
because there was a shooting in Millennium Park and a
kid got killed. And it's always, um, you know, like reactive,
like we never stopped to think, what is a sustainable
way that addresses the root cause of things. So me
and Carlos Ramirez Rosa, we went on God a bunch
(46:02):
of studies about curfews, right, um, Carlos, me and Matt Martin,
and we printed them out and we put them on
everybody's desk, trying to get them to at least for once,
do some evidence based legislation because it was ane yar
reaction to to the you would not believe like how
crazy the conversation got. We were talking about you know,
(46:25):
studies and and and evidence, and people started yelling at
us that we didn't know how to raise children, that
they always knew where their children were when they were
growing up. Somebody said, like the end of the conversation
was one of my colleagues saying, um, my grandma used
to say that after ten PM, the only thing opened
(46:47):
our liqueur stores and legs, and I'm there with my
my abstract. I just gave you all of this evidence
based information and this is what you have to add
to the conversation. Um, it gets crazy in there, it
gets really crazy. Well, listen, I think that the jury
(47:11):
is probably still out as to whether the rainbow coalition
has legs nationally. I know that, you know, Obama sort
of represented a kind of rainbow coalition nationally demographic that
was really just purely representational and symbolic, meaning that people
of color voted for him and they made the difference.
And it seems to me the Democratic Party nationally is
stuck on this issue. But listening to you as a
(47:33):
you know, I think that there's a lot of hope
to be embraced around how local organizing still matters. It
certainly mattered in the sixties, it mattered during Harold Washington's day,
and as you've just shared with us today, it matters now.
So folks listening, we got to get out there, We
got to knock on doors, We got to talk about
issues not about the color of people's skin. Although a
(47:54):
lot of people of color suffer the most from these issues,
so they certainly should be at the table in terms
of decision making and power. So I want to thank
you so much for being on our show today. Thank
you so much for having me so much fun talking
to you. I hope to be back. Yeah, And also, listeners,
you've got to answer the door when somebody comes knocking.
It's not just that you got to knock at it.
You got you gotta listen to folks like Rosanna and
hear what they have to say, especially because it's called outside.
(48:17):
Let us in and give us super cool. Yeah. Thanks
so yeah, and good luck with your own re election.
With good luck with your own re election. May thank
you the mayor race. Take care. Oh man, that was
(48:39):
a really great conversation. And I have to say, like
something that really jumped out at me when she was
talking was like when she just so forthrightly said I'm
a socialist, Like you don't hear that every day? Of that?
You know, you don't hear that every day? Don't hear that? eACT.
Probably if we in another conversation with her, that's all
we would talk about. Unpack that. Please tell us everything
that you mean by that. How did you come up
(49:00):
with that? Is what's your response when people say that. Yeah.
And one of the things that I think about is
when she said that socialist study history, and she's like, yeah,
because that's how we learned about the Black Power movement.
And man, I could not help but think like, oh
my god, Ron de Santis, the governor of Florida, is
exactly right to be afraid of black studies because if people,
(49:21):
young people like Rossana learned this history, it's hied to
run for office, organize people door to door, run on
a platform that is about values, about equity, a word
that's nearly been banned in the state of Florida right now.
Then you actually get a different country, you get a
different city, you get a different politics. And even her
(49:44):
studying Harold Washington, she's actually learning strategies directly from Harold
Washington how outsiders outside the political power structure developed their
own independent political organizations to then get power. This is
the lesson that she has studied and learned and that
she's trying to like to make come to life again
(50:06):
in the present. Yeah. Yeah, so we learned a and
black studies. Yes. Man, See see here we wear a
rainbow called coalition, and now it's the glue that advids
it all together. You know, it's the glue. It's it
makes it all work. The rainbow comes together. All right, man,
(50:28):
all right, love you, Love you too. Some of My
Best Friends Are is a production of Pushkin Industries. The
show is written and hosted by me Khalil, Gibron Mohammed
and my best friend Ben Austin. It's produced by Jonasanti
and Lucy Sullivan. Our editor is Sarah Knicks, our engineer
(50:52):
is Amanda ka Wang, and our managing producer is Constanza Gallardo.
At Pushkin thanks to Leitao Mulad, Julia Barton, Heather Faine,
Carly Migliori, John Schnars, Greta Khne, and Jacob Weissberg. Theme
song Little Lily is by fellow chicagoan the Brilliant Avery R. Young,
(51:14):
from his album Tubman. You definitely want to check out
his music at his website Avery R. Young dot com.
You can find Pushkin on all social platforms at pushkin pods,
and you can sign up for our newsletter at pushkin
dot fm. To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen
(51:35):
and if you like our show, please give us a
five star rating and a review and listen. Even if
you don't like it, give it a five star rating
and a review, and please tell all of your best
friends about it. Thank you. You and I have this
(52:01):
funny like literary joke right that we love Ralph Ellison
right and rebel passage in Ralph Ellison when and the
protagonist is working at liberty white white, right, the whitest white,
The whitest white is made up by black dope, meaning
this chemical substance of black that is dropped into the
paint to make it as white as white. So it's
(52:23):
it's a it's a brilliant chapter. It's a brilliant part
of that brilliant book. I'm with you,
Pushing yo. Man. Remember when we ran high school and
we won the city champion public school city tennis championship.
We won ten years in a row, right, Oh man,
Well we didn't, but I think it was our tenth
grade year and we went to city hall and we
(00:36):
got to meet the mayor who was then Harold Washington.
I know, I mean we were all dressed up and
you looked ridiculous in like this old man blazer. I didn't.
I didn't. I didn't own a suit. I didn't own
a jacket. I had to borrow my dad's jacket. You
are exactly right. Your memory is correct. But we did
get to meet Harold Washington, to meet Harry, I want
(00:57):
to forget that. And boy I was beautiful. Boy did
that turn out to be historic. I'm Khalil Gibra Muhammed.
I'm Ben Austin. We are two best friends, one black,
one white. I'm a historian and I'm a journalist. And
this is some of my best friends are some of
my best friends are dot dot dot. In this show,
(01:20):
we wrestle with the challenges and the absurdities of a
deeply divided and unequal country. And today we are talking
about one of the most legendary Chicago politicians, Mayor Harold Washington,
who's the subject of a recent documentary Punch nine. For
Harold Washington. We're gonna learn about his Rainbow Coalition, where
it came from, and how it's working today. Yep, yep,
(01:43):
that's right. We're also going to talk to someone who
is carrying on that legacy in Chicago right now, an
older woman from Chicago, Rosanna Rodriguez Sanchez. Hey, man, I
(02:08):
am really interested in what's happening in Chicago right now.
We have a ton of black people and Latino people
running for mayor. The current mayor, Laurie Lightfoot, has been
on her heels for a long time. And I know,
you know this doesn't make a lot of sense to everybody,
but Chicago has been a bell weather for the nation
for a long time. I mean, the first black yeah
(02:29):
Chicago is the first black politician since Reconstruction came out
of Chicago. The obviously, the first black President of the
United States came from Chicago. The first black woman to
go to the US Senate came out of Chicago. So
what happens in Chicago matters to the rest of the nation,
right man, that's right, that's right. You know, this mayor
election is historic in so many ways. And one way
(02:50):
which is surprising is there's only one white candidate in
the race. Right, Oh wow, yes, that has to be
the first time ever in the history of Chicago. I
did not only one white candidate. Actually didn't realize that.
That's really fascinating because you and I watched this documentary
Punch nine, and it is a history of the first
(03:13):
black mayor of Chicago, Harold Washington, when the script was
totally flipped away from you know, a gazillion white mayors
and one of the most ruthless machine politicians, old Man
Richard J. Daley mayor for life. He was mayor for
twenty one years. But yeah, Harold Washington, his election in
nineteen eighty three was such a big deal for us
(03:33):
as young people. Then we were early teenagers. Maybe we're
eleven or twenty, maybe that's not teenagers even. And I
do remember my dad working on the campaign. I remember
people campaigning all around our neighborhood. Yeah, I remember this
being really such a huge deal. Yeah, yeah, no, I
mean I think you know a lot of times we
(03:54):
take for granted, like you know, Jews working on this
campaign with black folks. For example, in that documentary, there's
this moment where, you know, you can hear in the
documentary all these slogans that are being crafted, like Hunky's
for Harold, which of course is like ethnics, nerve for
Hungarians or Eastern Europeans. And the one I love was
locks and bagels for Harold. So that's that's kind of
(04:17):
like the energy that this this Rainbow Coalition was unleashan
Carol Washington is asking for support from from this huge
group of progressive allies, and everyone called him Harold like
this sort of personal he he had this sort of avuncular,
grandfatherly way like connected to him, but he also had
(04:37):
this this forcefulness, you know, like he didn't take shit.
And he also his language. He used this you know,
sort of um, you know, like phosaurus words all the time.
You had to look up the words that he was saying.
He was just so erudite. At the same time, it
was sort of like captivating you as like Shakespearean. It's
kind of like me, I love that, thank yes, yes,
(05:01):
not at all, not at all, you know, So so
looking back on this history for me, and you know,
I studied this uh for many things, including the the
book about public housing. For me, Harold Washington, that moment
in time is about participation in the democratic process. I mean,
we often talk about how the civil rights were sort
(05:21):
of disconnected from our childhood in the eighties, but this
is the closest connection to me. One hundred and thirty
thousand people were added to the voting roles at this time.
That's so many people who were like, want to participate
in the democratic process who weren't part of it before,
and a huge number of them were Black people. Yeah. Man,
I'm so glad you talked about him increasing the voter
(05:43):
roles and increasing the number of black voters because in
many ways, I mean, he was inspired by earlier movements
for participatory democracy. He was inspired by the Black Panther
Party in Chicago that ultimately coined the phrase Rainbow Coalition,
and those folks moved from civil disobedience and grassroots organizing
(06:05):
the Young Lords, which was a Puerto Rican inspired organization
the Young Patriot to a working class white people. They
all came together in this so called Rainbow Coalition to
fight for equity, to fight for justice in Chicago, and
in the end, that era of the nineteen sixties under
Hall Washington translated into the power of the ballot, the
(06:26):
power of the vote, the power to take charge of Chicago.
And that's what was so exciting about his candidacy. Yeah, yeah,
Harrod Washington actually begins his father is part of the
Democratic machine, and Harrow Washington gets elected into into first
state office and then he's a congressman. And you couldn't
(06:46):
do that without having sort of the approval of the
daily machine. But he breaks with them, and it's issues today,
you know, police brutality and standing up against it, you know,
issues of black disenfranchisement and not being part of the
process of not really sort of participating in the city.
And yeah, he makes this total break and becomes an
(07:06):
outsider candidate. And you know, how do you do that?
How do you sort of you know, fight the powers
that be and and you know, build this huge coalition
to try to overcome it. It was it was it
seemed like it was impossible in Chicago, and we lived
at a time when we saw it happen. That's right,
It seemed impossible, but it wasn't. And the threat of
his success as the leader of this rainbow coalition in
(07:29):
nineteen eighty three, Chicago produced a moment in time which
is still reverberating to this day. Of course, since Chicago
I was talking about, you're talking about now like the
white backlash against this movement or yeah, yeah, I'm talking
about when Harold Washington was finally nominated as a Democratic
candidate for mayor and instead of it being a shoe
(07:52):
in for the general election and becoming the next mayor,
the white working class haters who Harold Washington said were
racist from rib to rib, he said in this amazing
eclip from the documentary, ultimately be yan to rally Chicago's
blue hardcore Democrat daily voters start to rally around this
(08:17):
you know nothing candidate Bernie Epton as a way to
save white Chicago from Harold Washington. One of the things
that's crazy, as you were talking about, you know, Jewish
people like my family supporting Harold Washington and people on
the South Side. Bernie Epton lived like on the same
block as Harold Washington. He lives in Hyde Park. He's
(08:38):
a Hyde Park Jewish guy, a lawyer. Oh. I didn't
realize that he's a Republican. But being a Republican in
Chicago then meant absolutely nothing. It was just sort of
like a nominal thing. Right. But because of this threat
of the first black mayor and sort of taking power,
people felt something was being taken away from them, replacement theory.
They started rallying behind this guy that nobody even knew,
(09:00):
and Bernie Epton. He has this campaign slogan, Bernie Epton
before It's too late. Yeah, that's our hotel out. Yeah,
that's some hometown stuff right there. I mean, I don't
know if you you you had told me before that
you saw this documentary and you were struck by sort
of the somehow the overt racism, how how staunch it was,
(09:22):
how out there it was. Yeah. Well, I mean again,
we were children at this time, I mean, barely teenagers.
And so to think that white people in Chicago were
articulating views as racist as you know, white people in Birmingham, Um,
you know, I didn't. I didn't witness it directly, but
in this documentary it's there, It's in plain view. And
(09:42):
of course I'm a historian, I'm not surprised by it,
you know, in an intellectual sense, but it is very visceral. Yeah,
and then so Harrow Washington, he does eke out of
victory against against this guy Bernard Epton, but but barely,
which is crazy, Like it's incredibly close, and it's true,
like you know, the turnout is insane and um, once
(10:03):
he gets into office, there we have fifty aldermen in
the city council, as you know, twenty nine white aldermen
form a coalition and they're basically saying it's like some
tea party stuff. They're like, we are not going to
let any legislation pass. We are going to vote down
every measure. We're just basically going to shut down city council.
They're called the Verdoliac twenty nine for this guy, one
(10:25):
of the aldermen from the South Side, Eddie Verdoliac Fast
Eddie people Eddie as he was always sorry doing deals
and he does eventually go to prison himself. But but
they shut down everything and it is it is completely
along racial lines. You know, all of the twenty nine
or white, um, some of the there's some white people
(10:45):
on the on Harold Washington's twenty one the other aldermen,
but they're also black and Latino aldermen. Yeah, so when
you say, you know, this is some tea party stuff
it is. It's like it is a dress rehearsal for
the Republican obstructionism that we saw Mitch McConnell lead when
Obama was elected in two thousand and nine. And it's
(11:06):
a lot of what we continue to see in the
Republican parties down to, like, you know, every form of
denialism about the white supremacy in white nationalism that runs
through the party. But I want to talk now about
Harold Washington winning and governing and what his success as
a mayor for the time that he was mayor pressages
(11:26):
for the kind of battles that are taking place across
the nation right now. I mean, here's a man. You know,
he broke the machine. He ended patronage. Yeah, so he
does ain't patronage. He annacts these this legislation, the Shackman
decrees that makes it illegal to actually hand out city
contracts and city jobs to people. Yeah, and so you
(11:48):
can no longer do that. You have to find other
means to hook folks up. And he makes the city
ultimately way more responsive to many more Chicagoans, the kinds
of working class, black and brown voters that had been
traditionally ignored except on election day or had just been
given favors by the machine. And then finally he elects
more women to positions of lead ship in his administration
(12:11):
that had ever been there before and some say ever since. Yeah,
I mean seriously, one of the tragedies of Harold Washington
is he ends up winning re election and then winning
enough seats and city council of people who support him
that it breaks the virdolia twenty nine, so you can
start passing much more legislation, and very early in his
(12:33):
second term, and I remember exactly where I was when
I got this news. I had just picked up my
brother from the airport and we were driving back because
I was a junior in high school. We hear on
the radio that's he's died at his desk in office. Yea,
he has a massive heart attack, and so sort of
the possibility of what he could have done with with
(12:56):
with the city and with support we never got to
really see. Yeah. Yeah, In fact, you know, he had
he had bragged after he won election that he was
going to be mayor for twenty years. He was going
to match old Man daily in his tenure. And I
have to say the thing that his death meant to me, then,
(13:17):
is the closest that I imagine what it was like
when Kennedy was assassinated in nineteen sixty three. I don't
I didn't know him in the way that adults did,
but I knew him enough as a young person to
feel the loss. And I actually honestly thought he was
poisoned at the time. No one put that in my head.
I thought it on my own because I just thought
this disk just can't be true. Yeah, you said, Harold
(13:40):
wanted to be mayor for for twenty years. Where we
got instead with his death was Richard M. Daily being
mayor for twenty two years, the second coming, you know,
King Richard, the second somebody I heard someone call him
just recently. And so much of the city changes with that. Yeah,
(14:00):
I mean, you know, it's not the same kind of machine,
but it's a different kind of consolidation of power, and
it represents a loss for for black Chicagoans. And over time,
you know, from that time to the present, the city
has gotten whider, it's gotten wealthier, there's been more economic stratification.
Black population has diminished and left the city. And yes,
(14:22):
we finally had a second black mayor and mayor Laurie Lightfoot,
who was elected four years ago, and there's been huge disappointment,
and maybe that disappointment is a big reason why we
haven't really come to terms with the legacy of Harold
Washington's Rainbow Coalition, that that potential seems to me to
(14:42):
still be unrealized. Yeah, And I just want to add that,
building on what you just said, is the city has
gotten whider. We've lost about two hundred, two hundred and
fifty thousand black citizens since then. They've moved away from Chicago,
but the city has also gotten browner. There are many
more Latino people, and so the possibilities of coalition building.
(15:05):
And this is in Chicago and really in any city
and most democratic cities in the United States. This is
the demographic mix up that you know, the mix are
you saying, are you telling me some some good news?
This is the possibility we have come full circle, that
the Rainbow Coalition can be reassembled. This is why this
is the reason why I think we need to look
at this documentary. We need to think about Harold Washington's
(15:27):
mayoralty and his past. Even though it's forty forty damn
years ago, it's so much a part of this president,
what's potential. That's also why I asked someone to be
on the show today for the second half. Rosanna Rodriguez
Sanchez is an older person, an alder woman here in Chicago.
So she's one of now the city council members. She's
on the northwest side, the thirty third ward. I heard
(15:50):
her talk about Harold Washington documentary and you know it's
been airing here, Yes, the Punch nine document it's been
airing here. And there was a public screening and and
I heard her talk about here. You know, she's a
young Latina politician in Chicago currently today in twenty twenty three,
and she was talking about how this history was completely
(16:11):
relevant to her right now. This was about her politics
and the work that she's doing today to try to
bring the city together. Yeah. I'm so excited to learn
from her because I think her work, as I've come
to learn from you, really suggests that she's doing some
of the same work that Harold Washington did to build
a rainbow coalition forty years ago. And she's knocking on doors,
(16:35):
she's organizing black and brown and white people to really
focus on policies and the values that matter rather than
just the color of the skin or the representational politics
that have so often passed as substantive change over the
last forty years. Yeah, yeah, I think that's exactly right.
And we're going to talk to her. She's campaigning right now.
(16:56):
She's been out all day, but she took some time
and she's running for Alderman on the thirty third Ward
to come and speak with us, to come in from
the cold. And so after the break we will be
back with Rosanna Rodriguez Sanchez, Rosanna Rodrique Sanchez and older
(17:25):
women from the thirty third Ward in Chicago. Thank you
for being on. Some of my best friends are Thank
you for having me. Yeah, yeah, we Khalil and I
have been talking about Harold Washington and this documentary Punch nine,
and we've been thinking so much about Harold Washington's legacy
and particularly in the way that he brought together what
(17:48):
he called the Rainbow coalition of white people, black people,
and Latinos that also included Asian people. It'll include it
included lgbtq I people, and it was a true diverse
coalition of people that were really trying to change the
(18:08):
way politics we're done in Chicago. To me, it was
a really beautiful thing to witness because from what Harold
Washington did, we know that it is possible, that it
is not out of reach. That is something that we
can do, and here in Chicago, we have been working
(18:29):
really hard to be able to get to that point,
and I think that we have had a lot of
successes and I am very proud of what we have
been building here in Chicago. Yeah, I mean so that,
you know, that's a question. I saw you give a talk,
You're a part of a panel discussion talking about the documentary,
and it really struck me seeing you up there. You're
a young Latina politician in Chicago, and these events from
(18:53):
Haward Washington's election and then his mayoralty are like forty
years ago. It's like so long ago, and it's interesting
to hear you talk about how it still resonates with you,
like like seeing this story feels part of your political
life and your life in Chicago. Yeah. You know, when
I think about myself in this context, um, sometimes I
(19:16):
think about these hiccups in history where something all of
a sudden happens and it can change the course of things. Um.
And when Harold Washington won and that then you know,
ended up in the Council Wars because nobody wanted you know,
the people that were already there and were entrenching power,
they didn't want things to change. Um. And for a
(19:39):
little bit of time, you know, for those four years
that Harold Washington fought back against Everdolia twenty nine, a
group of twenty nine white aldermen that oppose everything that
Harold Washington did. We can we stop on that for
a moment, Bresana, Like, how did you actually either experience
or learn about this? Like what was your what was
your pathway into the Harold Washington years? Was it like
(20:01):
political education? Just want to sit you down and say, hey,
this this is what happened. These are the lessons we learned. Well,
I'm a social and in order to be a socialist,
you get a dig into history, right, Like you have
to be able to understand what are the things that
historically have have and materially what the current reality is
(20:24):
built on. Right. Um. So I have always been very
curious about history, and I have studied, you know, black
power movements. I have studied, um how the Puerto Ricans,
for example, and colonized people have fought back in order
to be able to get power and build power, real power, right,
(20:47):
real people power, not the power that entrenched politicians get
from the like the original Rainbow Coalition kind of power, right,
the young lords and Chicago, the young patriots, the poor
whites on the on the North side Chicago. That's the
kind of history and socialism and grassroots organizing you're talking about.
So that inevitably leads you to Harold Washington. So a
(21:08):
lot of us have continued to build in Chicago with
the hope that we could create something like what Harold
Washington was able to create. And let's unpack that story,
your story of entering that a little bit, because even
in the documentary, there's this politician, as you said, part
of the Verdoliac twenty nine, these white politicians who are basically,
(21:32):
like you know, stopping all activity from happening in the
city council. One of them is this guy Dick mel
He's unapologetic. He chooses essentially race over his Democratic Party
and you know, white race. And he was the older
men in the ward where you now hold the office.
(21:53):
And what is your story with his family and how
did you come into office? Like can you tell us
that story? Yes? Absolutely, So in twenty fifteen, a teacher
from a community decided to run for the seat. We
supported him because he was running on platform for the
nine and he was also trying to interrupt the corruption
(22:14):
inside of city council. And when you think, like, what
is corruption, like people give them one another contracts or so.
So the biggest, the biggest power that aldermen have is sowning.
And if you have the power of soning, you can
get a lot of contributions from developers who want soning
changes to increase the worth of the property or to
(22:35):
create big developments. Right. So Dick mel was in office
for thirty eight years, and this is so Chicago. What
he does. This is so when he decided to retire,
he passed the seat on to his daughter. And you
might ask, oh, my god, how do people do that.
The way of people do that is that you have
(22:56):
a really good relationship with the mayor. You go to
the mayor and you say, I want you to open
my daughter, and the mayor is going to say, okay,
we gotta do like this little song. And then here
we're gonna say that we're going to interview candidates, and
then we're going to say that the most qualified candidate
is you're so, wait, I have a clarifying question because
I'm not in Chicago. So are you saying that this
(23:16):
is a retirement before an election, So it creates a
need to fill a seat. That's how it works. Then
it falls to the mayor to appoint somebody, Okay, and
then the person becomes an incumbent, and then more or
less everyone's like, oh, this person's great, let's vote for them.
It's a way to cement your power. So, Rosanna, you
actually run against Dick Mel's daughter, then yes, So he
(23:37):
retired halfway through his term. She of course carried his
last name, and then she served for two years and
then she had to run for reelection. That's when Timmy
and run. We run him in twenty fifteen. We were
seventeen votes away from a runoff with them, and we
had no idea of how to run an electoral campaign,
(23:57):
and we had no money. We were like, we're just
gonna do this and see what happens. And one thing
about socialism, and one thing about organizers, is that we
know how to organize. Like we might not know a
lot about electoral politics, we don't know how to organize okay,
and we were really motivated to change things right, and
what we decided to do was to start an IPO
(24:19):
and independent political organization, which were very popular during the
time of Harold Washington because of how entrenched the Chicago
machine was in the electoral the official electoral Democratic Party.
So you're actually using you're actually using a mechanism from
that path. That's actually the history is alive for you
in this present. That's really interesting. For three and a
(24:42):
half years, we spend all of our time organizing around housing,
around immigrant rights, and around education. We knocked on people
doors to talk about items that we put on ballots
like rent control or mortoriament charter schools, and we were
having conversations with people all the time. Right. Organized, organized, organized,
We organized with tenant unions, We organized to protect immigrants
(25:06):
and go to court with them, fund raisers for families
of immigrants that were being deported. We were doing all
of that work. Rosanna, I want to try to finish
that one question here, because like a true organizer and socialist,
you you talked about the collective and not about yourself.
And even when we asked you the question about how
you got into politics, you talked about the person you
(25:27):
ran before you why you? Then then you ran like
why did just like in a real you know, you
could say quickly like why did you want to become
older woman? And like why did you? So? So the
first answer I would say is that I didn't want to.
But when the time came to run for office, to
(25:48):
run somebody, it became evident that I was that it
was if it was not me, If I didn't say yes,
nobody was going to do it that had our values right.
So at that point I really wanted somebody to be
able to be on the seat and I and I
decided to say yeah, even though I was incredibly scared,
(26:11):
Like I ran, I was scared every day. I didn't
think that I was the right person to do it.
But now I know that I am the right person
to be to be on the seat. I absolutely am.
I want to unpack that a little bit because one
of the things that we're that I'm interested in, and
I know Ben and I are both curious about this,
So I'm interested. I don't even know what you're gonna say,
(26:32):
but I'm I'm interested that don't don't leave me out
of this. I'm part of it, well, you can speak.
You can speak for both of us, because I mean, listen,
you and I and Ben, the three of us are
a version of a rainbow coalition, and Ben and I
identify as progressives. But it seems like right now in
the country, in twenty twenty three, when I pick up
the newspaper, like, I'm reading that in California, significant number
(26:55):
of Latino voters struck down an affirmative action referendum. They said,
you know, we want to keep things as they are,
to ban affirmative action in California admissions. When I look
at Florida, it is obvious that a significant Hispanic and
Latino population supports Donald Trump. When I look at Nevada
and Arizona, I see a you know, a blue ripple
(27:18):
fighting against you know, a red wave, and it's winning
sometimes and it's a it's a toss up. So help
me understand. In Chicago on the ground, what is the
difference between like Latino voters who are moderate and centrist
it might even be Republican leaning in some of their
national politics, versus progressives who are committed to these issues.
(27:42):
I mean, you've just talked about rent control. A tenant
strikes I mean, I'm not hearing a lot of national
polling about those Latino voters. So tell us, help us
understand the difference between how you think of progressive politics
and how I'm hearing about Latino voters who are way
more moderate and centrist and kind of on the bubble
in terms of national politics. I think, I mean it's
a matter of context. Chicago is a place where we
(28:06):
organize a lot. It is never ending, and I think
we have gotten to a point here of organizing, very
successful organizing. I'm going to give you the best example
that I have. We at this point here in the
northwest side of Chicago, specifically the Northwest side of Chicago,
which is very heavily Latino, we have been able to
(28:30):
elect a block of around nine very progressive elected at
all levels of government. We have state reps, we have
state senators, all of us. I mean, we are Latinos
and we are very progressive, and we are making sure
that we are getting this message across. But it just
takes organizing. It takes knocking on doors, It takes organizing
(28:53):
people and ensuring that just like the Black Panthers and
the Young Lords organized with mutual aid and making sure
that people could see each other as allies. Right, we
are doing that here and it is showing results like
you can see it. Right when in the last election,
(29:13):
there was a very interesting dynamic here in the Northwest
Side because Delia Ramirez was running in a very progressive
platform and there was another Latino, Guilvijas, who is part
of City Council, that was also running for that seat.
He was running on tough on crimes though he was
running on a moderate platform, and they started calling Delia
defone Delia, and they sent so many mailers making her
(29:35):
look like she was like anti police and she just
wanted crime. She won in a landslide. A landslide, Yeah,
because we talked too much about Eric Adams and like
the consolidation of working class black voters around a tough
on crime agenda and a lot of you know, very
conservative ideas about how to run the city. And you're saying,
(29:56):
just the opposite is happening in at least this ward
of Chicago, in the Northwest Side as a whole, not
just my ward. Delia won. Delia won the suburbs. Delia
won the whole West Suburbs in her platform, which received
a lot of attacks as a defaunt platform right. So
(30:16):
we actually believe that we are making a lot of
way to progressive to progressive ideas in our communities, and
I think that people it is easy for people to
go right and to adopt right wing ideas when they
can't imagine anything else and you are presenting problems like crime,
but you don't have any other alternative, and you are
(30:38):
not engaging with people either at a level where people
feel like they're being hurt and that there's something for them.
We're going to take a break, but when we come
back from that break, we're going to talk about how
Chicago is or isn't a version of the future as
it has often been in the past, and the degree
to which we can teach a national audience what to
(30:59):
learn from what's happening in your ward and on the
Northwest side of Chicago about the future of a Rainbow Coalition.
We'll be right back, So, Rizanna, we've learned so much
about the effectiveness of organizing around key progressive issues and
(31:20):
really pushing back against the kind of representational politics that
so often cloud the actual needs of people rather than
there's a black or brown or an Asian in office,
and so I'm really curious, you know, do you think
right now what you're seeing on the ground in Chicago,
mix the Rainbow coalition that we've been talking about still viable.
(31:42):
Do you think this is something? And then I don't know,
I don't even know if you what you think about this?
Do you think this is something that we ought to
be talking a lot more about? Yeah, Khalil, I mean,
I'm thinking about this a lot. We have a mayoral
election going on, but I'm also thinking about the demographics
in Chicago. So we were talking about Harold Washington. When
he was mayor, the Latino population was not that big.
(32:04):
It was like around fourteen percent or something, and we
had this huge flux, especially people from Mexico, over the
next you know, twenty thirty years. And now, at least
in theory, we have this beautifully diverse city of like
thirty percent Latino, forty five percent White, thirty percent Black,
and another sort of seven percent Asian. Now we're madly segregated,
(32:27):
so it doesn't feel crazy diverse, but but the total
makeup is this amazing thing. And that's probably true of cities,
you know, democratic cities all across the country. Chicago is
representative in that way of a rising Latino population and
sort of thinking about the jumble of these politics and
and like partly what we were talking about with Harold
(32:48):
Washington is sort of this white backlash to this progressive
movement and to this this you know, in interracial connections.
But I'm really interested in sort of like the the
also the black Latino divides that happened, and like to
think about how that's also taking shape in Chicago because certainly,
(33:09):
like you know, I think the black community in some
ways feels like they're losing out of power, you know,
but maybe Rosanna feels differently of seeing this on the ground, um,
and even seeing it in the city council which has
this you know, fifty aldermen, older people, alders, older women
and alder men, all of them. But but you know,
so so yeah, I think it's it is this. It
(33:31):
is this example of what's happening nationally here. I think
there's a lot of work to do to be able
to build, um, the same structures in black communities, and
it is very challenging right now. Um, we are in
the middle of this mayoral election and United Working Families,
which is our effort to create a workers Party um
(33:52):
in Chicago and the top of the ticket is Brandon
Johnson for for mayor, which I believe that he is
trying to build that rainbow coalition and Brandon's black just
even I know that from from national reporting. Again, yes,
so so here so the so what I am saying
is here in these Latino neighborhoods, right, the different organizations
(34:12):
that have been built around all of these other candidates
at different levels of office, this is something that we
haven't been able to build yet in black communities, and
because of segregation, right, it has been a very different reality.
Are you saying that when you say we, you mean
the party has not been effective on some of the
black wards and districts on the south and west sides
(34:35):
of Chicago. That's what you mean by the week? No,
what I mean is that what it means that those
efforts haven't gotten on their way. So can you give
an example of an organizing effort to get a program
in place or a policy that hasn't yet worked among
Black Chicagoans. One example of this is Treatment not Trauma
is a bill that I introduced in twenty twenty to
create a mental health response holistic mental health response in Chicago.
(34:58):
We put it on the ballot in the last election
in November. We were here in my ward thirty three,
and in two wards that are predominantly black, which are
the sixth Ward and the twentieth. People knocked on doors,
people have conversations. This is how we do it, right, Like,
we go to people, we talked about what are the
problems that we're having, Well, this is a possible solution.
(35:18):
How do we do this? But we haven't been doing
that necessarily in a lot of black communities here in
the north northwest Side. We started doing it, but we
haven't been able to go through that process there. And
I say we because this is everybody's responsibility, right, I
say we. I am in my community doing what I can,
but we haven't been able to have that level of
(35:41):
organization in this particular context. But we are on our
way to do that. Rosanna, I'm interested in this idea.
So you're endorsing a black progressive candidate in the mayoral election.
There's a very prominent Latino candidate as well, who actually
emerges from Harold Washington's coalition. We know Twee. Garcia, Yeah,
(36:03):
who I met a few years ago. It seemed like
a really lovely guy I got. I'm thinking about two
things here. One is is it controversial that you are
siding with a black progressive and not a Latino And
maybe you can explain sort of how your progressive politics
kind of supersedes racial politics. And then two like, say
(36:26):
you're knocking on doors and you go to an older
family in your ward and you know a Latino family
and their two week Garcia supporters, how do you convince them?
You're like, no, no, no, this this this black guy
who who actually has your interests? Brandon Johns Better Yeah, yeah,
Well those conversations, um usually start with an issue, right,
(36:50):
like what is the issue that you care about? And
it is not easy, And I would like to start
saying I have a lot of respect for Congressman Garcia. Um,
I know him personally. I did meet with him alongside
all of the Northwest side elected progressive Latino electeds. He
was not ready to commit to running when we met
with her, and Brandon was. And Brandon sat down with
(37:13):
us and we talked about all of the different things
that we needed, and he committed to fighting alongside us
for those things. So I am going to support the
person that is going to go too bad for the
progressive agenda that we have right so we couldn't commit
to it. At that point. He didn't even know if
he was running. I'm sorry, we have to run somebody
(37:33):
against my her life foot So this is what we're doing.
And I am very proud to be supporting Brandon just
so because I know what his history is a movement.
I know that he's a union person. I know that
I know where he has been and what he has
been doing, and I do think that it is important
for Latino communities to understand who is fighting in their
(37:57):
best interests, and I think Brandon is going to be
doing that. When I go into a household and we
talked about the issues at hand, I am very comfortable
saying Brandon has committed to treat me not trauma. Brandon
already committed to that, and I know that I'm going
to be able to count on him to deliver that.
I want to just sort of round this out with
an issue that I think is a third rail around
(38:21):
this question of coalition politics, and it certainly is in
New York City, it is in a lot of places.
So you keep talking about treatment not trauma, and I
want to understand like, how does that intersect with larger
debate about Chicago crime. Just like many other cities and
in a lot of other places, it's most certainly derailed
progressive ideas. It has derailed the attractiveness of progressive politicians
(38:46):
who have been saddled with the stigma of hating police
officers through the quote unquote defund movement. And it seems
like this isn't this doesn't animate any of the people
that you're talking to. Do I have that right? And
if so, how is that possible? Well, that's what I
was just talking about. With the election of the Lea
Ramirez and Anthony Gasawa and all of the slate that
(39:08):
just swan like they were attacked. Literally everybody was saying
everybody against them was saying, these people are defaunt the
opposition got money from the FOP, like, yeah, seventeen thousand
dollars from the FOP, And what happened was that it's
backfired because those values do not belong in our communities.
(39:30):
And we called it out. I was in, you are
taking money from people who are you know, like the
president of the FOP in Chicago is a terrible human being.
His racist He has made so many islamophobic remarks. He
was okay with the riots in the in the capital
(39:51):
and January six he said he said the only the
only law he saw broken was trespassing. That was his
quote at the January six So so I'm sorry, we
are not going to stand by those values, right, and
I think that we need to speak clearly about those things,
but also speak very clearly as well about what is
that we imagine, right, because people need to be able
(40:11):
to imagine how is it that you're talking about safety
and what are the concrete things that you're going to
do and treatmental trauma, for example, is trying to reduce
the amount of calls that are going through nine on
one by developing other approaches that are well, like way
better and an evidence base to handle things that are
public health based, to handle things that are human service
(40:33):
social service based. So expanding the care pilot that we
fought for so that you don't have to send police
to deal with mental health emergencies, creating walking crisis centers
that are open twenty four hours so that you have
a place to transport right, you don't have to go
to the police station or to the ear making sure
that you have I like to call them clinicians instead
(40:56):
of talking about cops all the time. You actually need
social workers that are going to go and are going
to monitor the people and places that are most likely
to go into crisis because you already know what's happened
and there are where those people are, build trust, monitor them,
figure out how you can prevent crisis. Right. It is
actually not like rocket science, and this is working in
(41:18):
other cities as well. So when I hear that somebody
is behind the treatmental trauma approach, wish let me tell you.
In the last several minnear old debates, treatment no trauma
has been in everybody's mouth. Everybody's talking about treatment trauma.
When I first introduced that, nobody wants to hear anything
about it. But now we do need to be thinking
(41:39):
about safety in a different way and use the right
and proper tools to address each social issue. And what
we're doing of throwing police that everything is just not working.
I think this is really really helpful to me as
an outsider, and I'm curious to Ben, so Ben, I
haven't hearing all these policies. Yeah yeah, but I haven't
heard you mentioned this, So I mean, how if you're
(42:01):
hearing much of this for the first time, then, like,
does Lloyd Lightfoot have a chance in hell? Like how
the square her as current mayor with a gigantic city
of millions of black people as well as whites, we
have you know, we've been talked about the white population
that much, and so like, Rosanna is making a whole
(42:22):
hell of a lot of sense here. But yeah, you're
saying that her policies and politics are your politics and policies,
but not just my politics. They're they're working on the
ground in local politics. And yet I have there's no
news reporting on this. They mean, So I'm just trying
to figure out, like is Lightfoot consolidating support in the
same way that an Eric Items or Joe Biden has
(42:44):
that it kind of just turns what she's talking about
into something unrealistic. Is she hiding the fact that these
programs are working? Is she taking credit for them? Like
what's going on? The programs don't exist yet, there's a bill.
There is a little pilot that we have to push
her to create, but it is only one team and
now it will probably expand to two, but not enough
(43:05):
to be able to even have enough data to make
decisions so the problem has been that she has resisted
this approaches the whole time because she has stood by
the tough on crime narrative. So what we are trying
to do now is and it's one of the reasons
why treatment of trauma is now being used by every
other my rural candidate because they understand that she has
(43:26):
resisted this, that she has blocked this, and that they
need to signal right that they are open to other approaches,
that they are open to doing things in a different way.
So I feel really good about it because I didn't
really think that we would be in this place at
(43:48):
the end of the term. And I have fought so
hard and we have done everything that we can to
make sure that the public knows about this, Like putting
it in the ballot was great. We were able to
have so many conversations with people and let them know
this is what we're trying to do, you know. Yeahs
And I mean one of the things that so great
(44:09):
about hearing this and we wanted to learn from you.
It's when I when I saw you speak at that forum,
I was like, this is somebody I want to talk
to more and learn from because you were talking about
these progressive politics on the ground and organizing and and
I actually personally believe in these policies that you're talking about.
And this is partly an answer to what you said, Khalil, Like,
this is a big ass city. So you know, Rosanna
(44:32):
is talking about finding many like minded people, and there
are a lot of, you know, areas of the city
where people feel very differently and their politics don't align
with this, but the margins are pretty slim, even around
things like crime and so on. But yeah, you're talking
about how many of these issues cross racial lines, and
in this city where it's so often zero, some politics
(44:55):
around race that's really powerful and encouraging. I'm gonna ask
you maybe a way to close this conversation out a
more playful question, which is, like we watches Harold Washington
documentary Punch nine, and we saw again these council wars
where the essentially twenty nine white older men were fighting
with the other older men who were more progressive and
(45:17):
didn't want to let any legislation pass, and it just
seemed like madness in there, screaming and yelling. Tell us
a story about being in city council where it felt,
if not a war at least like, you know, a skirmish.
We have had several of those over the time that
I have been there. Not long ago, there was a
(45:41):
there was a discussion that we had our own curfews
because there was a shooting in Millennium Park and a
kid got killed. And it's always, um, you know, like reactive,
like we never stopped to think, what is a sustainable
way that addresses the root cause of things. So me
and Carlos Ramirez Rosa, we went on God a bunch
(46:02):
of studies about curfews, right, um, Carlos, me and Matt Martin,
and we printed them out and we put them on
everybody's desk, trying to get them to at least for once,
do some evidence based legislation because it was ane yar
reaction to to the you would not believe like how
crazy the conversation got. We were talking about you know,
(46:25):
studies and and and evidence, and people started yelling at
us that we didn't know how to raise children, that
they always knew where their children were when they were
growing up. Somebody said, like the end of the conversation
was one of my colleagues saying, um, my grandma used
to say that after ten PM, the only thing opened
(46:47):
our liqueur stores and legs, and I'm there with my
my abstract. I just gave you all of this evidence
based information and this is what you have to add
to the conversation. Um, it gets crazy in there, it
gets really crazy. Well, listen, I think that the jury
(47:11):
is probably still out as to whether the rainbow coalition
has legs nationally. I know that, you know, Obama sort
of represented a kind of rainbow coalition nationally demographic that
was really just purely representational and symbolic, meaning that people
of color voted for him and they made the difference.
And it seems to me the Democratic Party nationally is
stuck on this issue. But listening to you as a
(47:33):
you know, I think that there's a lot of hope
to be embraced around how local organizing still matters. It
certainly mattered in the sixties, it mattered during Harold Washington's day,
and as you've just shared with us today, it matters now.
So folks listening, we got to get out there, We
got to knock on doors, We got to talk about
issues not about the color of people's skin. Although a
(47:54):
lot of people of color suffer the most from these issues,
so they certainly should be at the table in terms
of decision making and power. So I want to thank
you so much for being on our show today. Thank
you so much for having me so much fun talking
to you. I hope to be back. Yeah, And also, listeners,
you've got to answer the door when somebody comes knocking.
It's not just that you got to knock at it.
You got you gotta listen to folks like Rosanna and
hear what they have to say, especially because it's called outside.
(48:17):
Let us in and give us super cool. Yeah. Thanks
so yeah, and good luck with your own re election.
With good luck with your own re election. May thank
you the mayor race. Take care. Oh man, that was
(48:39):
a really great conversation. And I have to say, like
something that really jumped out at me when she was
talking was like when she just so forthrightly said I'm
a socialist, Like you don't hear that every day? Of that?
You know, you don't hear that every day? Don't hear that? eACT.
Probably if we in another conversation with her, that's all
we would talk about. Unpack that. Please tell us everything
that you mean by that. How did you come up
(49:00):
with that? Is what's your response when people say that. Yeah.
And one of the things that I think about is
when she said that socialist study history, and she's like, yeah,
because that's how we learned about the Black Power movement.
And man, I could not help but think like, oh
my god, Ron de Santis, the governor of Florida, is
exactly right to be afraid of black studies because if people,
(49:21):
young people like Rossana learned this history, it's hied to
run for office, organize people door to door, run on
a platform that is about values, about equity, a word
that's nearly been banned in the state of Florida right now.
Then you actually get a different country, you get a
different city, you get a different politics. And even her
(49:44):
studying Harold Washington, she's actually learning strategies directly from Harold
Washington how outsiders outside the political power structure developed their
own independent political organizations to then get power. This is
the lesson that she has studied and learned and that
she's trying to like to make come to life again
(50:06):
in the present. Yeah. Yeah, so we learned a and
black studies. Yes. Man, See see here we wear a
rainbow called coalition, and now it's the glue that advids
it all together. You know, it's the glue. It's it
makes it all work. The rainbow comes together. All right, man,
(50:28):
all right, love you, Love you too. Some of My
Best Friends Are is a production of Pushkin Industries. The
show is written and hosted by me Khalil, Gibron Mohammed
and my best friend Ben Austin. It's produced by Jonasanti
and Lucy Sullivan. Our editor is Sarah Knicks, our engineer
(50:52):
is Amanda ka Wang, and our managing producer is Constanza Gallardo.
At Pushkin thanks to Leitao Mulad, Julia Barton, Heather Faine,
Carly Migliori, John Schnars, Greta Khne, and Jacob Weissberg. Theme
song Little Lily is by fellow chicagoan the Brilliant Avery R. Young,
(51:14):
from his album Tubman. You definitely want to check out
his music at his website Avery R. Young dot com.
You can find Pushkin on all social platforms at pushkin pods,
and you can sign up for our newsletter at pushkin
dot fm. To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen
(51:35):
and if you like our show, please give us a
five star rating and a review and listen. Even if
you don't like it, give it a five star rating
and a review, and please tell all of your best
friends about it. Thank you. You and I have this
(52:01):
funny like literary joke right that we love Ralph Ellison
right and rebel passage in Ralph Ellison when and the
protagonist is working at liberty white white, right, the whitest white,
The whitest white is made up by black dope, meaning
this chemical substance of black that is dropped into the
paint to make it as white as white. So it's
(52:23):
it's a it's a brilliant chapter. It's a brilliant part
of that brilliant book. I'm with you,
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