Bill Ayers

VOTE for BRANDON JOHNSON

We’re down to the wire in Chicago.

The election for city council and mayor is next Tuesday, the last day of February. It’s a large field, and to win a candidate must receive over 50% of the vote, so the most likely result will be a runoff in early April between the top two vote getters. Hold on to your hats!

If you missed Episode # 66 of Under the Tree (I Am Waiting for Democracy with “Girl, I Guess”) check it out. Stephanie Skora, the force behind theGirl, I Guess Progressive Voter Guide, isa self-described “Jewish, queer, trans, nerd” dedicated to helping members of the community navigate confusing ballot races and identify the most progressive candidates. She’s brilliant, relentlessly radical, and hilarious—an unbeatable combination.

Among the top candidates for mayor, two are genuine progressives: Chuy Garcia and Brandon Johnson. Chuy is a long-time organizer and community builder, and part of the Progressive Caucus in the US Congress. Love him, and hope he stays in Congress doing great work. Brandon is an educator, a labor and community organizer, a leader of the progressive caucus in the Chicago Teachers Union, and a member of the Cook County Board of Commissioners. Love Brandon. 

The nightmare scenario for us would be a runoff between the failed incumbent, Lori Lightfoot, and Paul Vallas, former failed CEO of Chicago schools, and the far-right beneficiary of the police union’s endorsement and big money. 

The political ads tell a story: Vallas never mentions the elephant in the room, the intimate police connection, emphasizing instead that he supports women’s reproductive freedom and LBGQ rights; Lightfoot worked hard to soften and humanize her public image as a difficult narcissist, but when her campaign continued to head downhill she turned negative. Lightfoot apparently saw Chuy as her main threat, and her early attacks were particularly egregious—she depicted him as a marionette, his strings being pulled by a corporation, a corrupt politician, and Sam Bankman-Fried, a Jew. Racist to the core, dishonest, and one of the oldest antisemitic tropes available. And as Brandon continues to surge, Lightfoot’s ads have turned on him, calling him a “radical,” and not as a complement. None of her ads are the least bit honest, and worse, she has dusted off a  despicable playbook—racist, antisemitic, and anti-communist to boot.

A sad sideshow is people who once knew better, posting and reposting the bullshit: “Brandon can’t be trusted to negotiate with teachers because he was a teacher;” “Brandon wants to fund schools and housing for the unhoused  and mental health clinics, so he will make Chicago less safe.”  Some folks seem to have lost their minds.

Brandon Johnson has the energy, the vision, the policies, the skills, and the broad support of young Chicagoans to become a transformative leader for our city. He is thoughtful, measured, and  caring.

Vote for Brandon Johnson.

My old comrade Jim Mellen passed away in Mexico a few days ago. He was a brilliant and committed revolutionary—one of the authors of the original Weatherman paper in 1969—whose impact on my thinking when I was a student in Ann Arbor was immeasurable. I hadn’t seen him in decades, but he remained vivid and alive in my head. Rest in Power, Jim.

Here is a note from his wife:

Dear friends of Michoacan Net.

My husband. James G. Mellen, died yesterday evening at home at the the age of 87.

He had an incredible life and you can view a 2 hour documentary about part of his life when he was a leader of the radical movement of the 60’s. It can be found on You Tube by doing a search for James Mellen Weatherman.

But he was more than an activist and cared deeply regarding justice for the disenfranchised all of his life. We only had about 15 years together, but it was a sweet relationship in the autumn of our lives. He was not traditionally religious, but typical of him, he told me to “do what you want. I’ll be dead!” Thus, last night we did a semi traditional “velorio” with his casket in our living room with his favorite music, classical and jazz, throughout the night. Abundant flowers, candles and the vegetable chilacayote surrounded his casket. Today at noon, there will be a mass outside our home in Zirahuén. Anyone is welcome. He will be cremated in Patzcuaro afterwards, but we will not bury his ashes in Zirahuén until a later date. He is wearing his red tee shirt that says “the communist party” with silly figures of Marx, Lenin and others wearing party hats and having a good time. He was a serious intellectual with a doctorate in political science and international relations.

Later in life he received a doctorate in jurisprudence in California and practiced law in the San Francisco Bay Area. But despite his seriousness, he also had a devilish sense of humor so I thought it fitting that he went out of this physical world with some levity as well. Anyone is welcome to join us at noon.

Teresa (Terry) E. Baumgart

From Mike Klonsky

To: Air Force Gen. Glen VanHerck, commander of U.S. Northern Command and North American Aerospace Command.
With all due respect, General, are you f…king nuts?

At the Pentagon presser yesterday, You were asked by a reporter if extraterrestrials might be involved in the airforce’s downing of the four “objects” this week. You responded that he would leave that to intelligence agencies to address but that “I haven’t ruled anything out.”

Haven’t ruled it out? Really? May I point out a few things to you, sir?

If indeed the “cylinder”, and the “octagon thingy with “strings hanging off it” did belong to ETs visiting us from another galaxy, far far away, why in the world would you want to shoot them down when we have so much to learn from them?

Given their technological skills required to get to Planet Earth light years away, did you really believe your F-15s would be a match for them in a dogfight? Even if Tom (“Top Gun”) Cruise himself was behind the joy stick?

Are you really a top general in the Air Force? (Scary)

As for the Pentagons, octagons and cylinders…is there actually some kind of geometric symbolism (code language) going on here? What’s next, a shootdown of a rhombus?

Given all the Pentagon, State Department, and White House buffoonery over balloon-gate in the past week, not to mention the possibility of an ET/China/Russia united front against the US, it may be time to reconsider the next war. Don’t you think, sir?

I await your reply.

MK

https://nyulawpaltrek2023.causevox.com/real-delegation

Episode # 65: Chasing Justice: A Homecoming with Marshan Allen

Description:

We travel to the Illinois Parole Board to stand in solidarity with a couple of my students seeking clemency or commutation or a pardon from Governor Pritzger, and to support our friend and colleague Marshan Allen as he asks to have his conviction erased so that he can practice law when he finishes law school. Since coming home after 24-years in prison, Marshan Allen earned his Bachelor’s Degree from Northeastern Illinois University, got married, and launched a career as a national leader for criminal/legal reform. He’s currently the Vice President of Advocacy and External Partnerships at Represent Justice, a national advocacy organization, serves on the boards of Boards of Restore Justice and the Center for the Fair Sentencing of Youth, and is an active member of the Incarcerated Children’s Advocacy Network (ICAN). He’s a first year student at Chicago-Kent College of Law.

I’m teaching Oral History—great students, mostly 19-years-old, and from all over the world—and recently we read All God’s Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw by Theodore Rosengarten. It’s a great book. Rosengarten was a doc student at Harvard decades ago, travelling around the South interviewing folks who’d been involved in the communist-led, short-lived and violently-suppressed Sharecropper’s Union. Shaw had been an organizer for the union, was arrested and did over a decade on a chain-gang. Lots of amazing stories from an old peasant/farmer/organizer with almost total recall.
Lots to say about the book, and the class too.
For several pages Shaw explains how to judge the value of a mule, and for several more he talks about the terrors of boll weevils. And more than you ever thought you’d know about land and economics and marketing and religion and…fascinating stuff, all new and strange to me.
At one point Shaw says, “So you see, all God’s dangers ain’t a white man. The boll weevil is also a danger.”
Rosengarten gets what Shaw means, and so he doesn’t say, Whoa, wait one minute. That’s a pretty broad brush. You don’t mean me, do you? I’m not a danger!
He just lets it go, and in a broad sense, he actually agrees with Shaw.

We all do.

We had a good gathering for Vicko today, and if you couldn’t make it, please help us support her campaign. THXXX

https://secure.actblue.com/donate/vicko-for-15