local politics

undo wrote:JB will sink us all if he gets in.

^ I'm loving the taste of this post, sogood.gif

 

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/31/illinois-governor-jb-pritzker-pardons-11000-marijuana-convictions

There are no dispensaries near me. I don’t feel like driving 45 minutes to wait in line for over an hour. Maybe in the coming months suburbanites will become less uptight and allow for one to open.

Eventually one in Brookfield is supposed to open but that suburbs village always is overly strict with code implementation

Gonna just stick with my guy for now until it gets local and the idiots stop lining up around the block

Illinois Boomers:

https://www.illinoispolicy.org/dupage-county-voters-will-decide-ballot-question-on-defunding-police/

“Shall DuPage County continue to fund and support training methods that decrease the risk of injury to officers and suspects for local law enforcement agencies?”

I cannot find any further information on what this actually means. It's a referendum so the outcome might not actually change anything at all.

Sometimes people put up junk non-binding referendums to keep out other issues. Can't say that's what this is but maybe.

Yeah, I don't understand what is going on with this ballot initiative. I do know how I will be voting though!

John Boy Walton wrote:Everyone needs to stand up collectively and create new political parties. Its really that simple. Until that happens, nothing will change.

Start with Illinois. This is the only way to change the entrenched blue power structure.

I just want to highlight this post from the Trump thread because I think it is really important. JBW is absolutely right. I don't regret the left's foray into national electoral politics through the Sanders primary campaign. They were generative failures for us. We have developed a sense of where our political message is most resonant. Now we have a collective responsibility to organize that base, leverage its political power, and expand our horizons of political possibility. As a part of this, we have to start developing a theory of transformational change that is capable of actually recognizing and naming our classes enemies as well.

I know a lot of boarders here are long-time Illinois residents. If you want to be a part of this kind of transformational project, you should join DSA. If you are living outside of the city (Undo, Nick, etc.), you can join the Chicago chapter since so much of their organizing and campaign work has shifted online, which makes it easy to participate through Zoom. They have monthly informational sessions to introduce you to the organization and the various campaigns they are involved with. Right now, they have an ongoing campaign to municipalize and democratize ComED, lift the state-wide ban on rent control (my organizing efforts are focused here), and defund the CPD. They also do a lot of really important political education work. They also have communications teams, as well as a desire to have more illustrators and creative work (Duff). They are also starting to develop an ambitious electoral strategy to consolidate and expand our power in the Chicago City Council in '23 and start shaking up the state legislature in '22.

Basically, it is a big tent socialist organization where I think a lot of you guys could find a really cool niche for your unique talents. If any of you are interested, feel free to PM me. Please consider it!

There should be a floor vote later this month in the State Assembly to lift the statewide ban on rent control, which has been on the books since 1997. This would enable municipal governments to establish their own boards to control and stabilize rent increases and peg them to consumer and wage inflation indexes, which would help to protect renters from usurious landowners and take back the city from the financial speculators who have transformed our built environments into investment vehicles.

It would be great if you could call your State Rep and tell them you support House Bill 116 to repeal the rent control preemption act. Especially if your representative is a centrist Democrat who could actually be swayed on this issue (Nick, call Rep. Janet Yang Rohr).

Hello again. A comrade of mine made this video. We are currently trying to mobilize as many people statewide to call their state representatives in the assembly to co-sponsor HB116 to Lift the Rent Control Preemption Act of 1997. Even if you don't feel like calling your reps, it would be really swell if you could just smack the like button on these videos or send them around to your friends, colleagues, family.

https://twitter.com/ChicagoCityDSA/status/1382363234406174720
https://www.instagram.com/p/CNpvT_ih4YO/
https://fb.watch/4SXwzhp4Jj/

Reading some of the excerpts in this article is like watching the Bob and David “”Better Roots” sketch where David discusses the institution of “helperism”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/02/01/racist-virginia-textbooks-history-youngkin/

Youngkin is such a piece of shit and I hate that I live in stupid ass Virginia.

Who is going to win the Republican nomination for IL governor? Who is more dangerous and has a better chance to actually win in November? Or does JB have this one in the bag?

I think JB has this in the bag and it doesn’t matter who he runs against.

Unless one of the Republican candidates manage to get traction equating JB to Biden, I don’t get the sense there is much of a threat here.

I say this as someone living in a very Red portion of the state. No one gives a shit about the governor and I bet the turnout to vote is very low.

I've been nothing but shocked by how much people love to talk shit about JB because he took proactive measures against COVID. Coworker's husband hates him because he had to wear a mask on Metra during his commute, etc. Maybe I'm giving these anecdotes too much importance. I've seen enough "Pritzger sucks" yard signs and bumper stickers to leave me shook though.

The anti-Darren Bailey ad that keeps getting run by the "Democratic Governors Association" is so confusing. It's an anti-Bailey ad but it plays up his anit-abortion, pro-Trump, pro-murder weapon bonafides, it plays equally as well as a pro-Bailey ad would if they'd actually made it for themselves. It does not seem to be on YouTube but TNT was playing during every other commercial break during the NBA playoffs.

(Too huge to embed and I'm not able to resize at the moment)

https://i.servimg.com/u/f21/14/51/92/04/img_2021.jpg

I don't get who this is supposed to be for during the primaries.

The pro-Bailey, anti-Irwin ads are hilarious because they keep showing Irwin wearing a facemask so he looks like the evil face of big government and/or a huge pussy or something.

Yea his COVID measures were met with waves of anger but those people were going to get angry no matter what safety precautions he put in place. I wouldn’t be surprised if lots of those people have moved South by now, lol.

I think what he has going in his favor is that - at least from my perspective - people in this moment don’t care about JB or the governor role in general. Maybe that changes in the coming months?

Being the uninformed voter I am, I only just realized that my congressional district has been completely redrawn and I will be casting a vote in a death match between Sean Casten and Marie Newman. I am solidly leaning towards one of them but if you want to twist my arm, now's the time to do it.

At least I no longer have to try to be excited to vote for Bill Foster, but he did personally call me on the phone like 12 years ago to thank me for writing him a letter, you got to hand it to him for that. Of course I was at work at the time and it went to my voicemail.

I've not followed Marie Newman's actual voting record since being elected but I can't imagine her being worse than Casten. I'd vote for her. That's an interesting redrawing though.

Curious, what’s so bad about Casten?

He really speaks to the petit-bourgeois interests of Downers Grove and Naperville homeowners, imo. I think he is representative of the kind of candidate that the Democratic Party wants to promote going forward. The problem, of course, is that the constituency is not at all representative of the national electorate. The majority of the United States is not upper-middle class white professionals. There are other districts in the country like that (suburban Houston, metropolitan DC/northern Virginia, etc.), which is where the Democratic Party mainstream currently sees its future electoral path.

I just think that is a mistake. If the party is serious about not just winning elections but actually governing, they are going to have to appeal beyond the conservative interests of ex-Reaganite Republicans who are disgusted by the GOP's Trumpian turn towards white nationalism. As a campaigner, Marie Newman made overtures to a working class constituency and even used the language of class conflict. Again, I don't know what her voting record in Congress has been but I'd assume it was better than Casten and that she is open to a more confrontational style of politics that would attract a much broader socio-economic base of support.

Obviously, Casten was/is much better than Peter Roskam or any other Republican, which is why I not only voted for him but even knocked doors in 2018 on his behalf. But yeah, the dude is such a wet t-shirt.

I was hoping Marie would win… bummer.

Looks like the results reflect a pretty obvious class distinction. They were basically even in Cook County whereas Casten got 84% of the vote in DuPage County, which would include some of the wealthier suburbs. Oh well.

Yeah, Illinois/west subs has always had that tendency so I guess it was wishful thinking.

I didn’t vote. Kinda of feeling WP’s post from another thread where I’m too disillusioned, jaded, overcome with hopelessness, etc to feel any kind of want to engage with the political process at this point.

I hate it all! No one is serious about change or making a difference. No one cares about the working class, minorities, women, the environment. It’s all about furthering Capital and gaining power.

I thought this was gonna be Newman's moment (if not now, when?) but I honestly knew nothing at all about the demographics of this new district and what it includes.

RIP

Casten did not appear after Newman conceded and his campaign held no election night party. His 17-year-old daughter, Gwen, was found dead two weeks ago, the congressman saying she died peacefully in her sleep.