Speaker 1: Welcome to it could happen here a podcast coming live,
Speaker 1: not live, really not I need to come up with
Speaker 1: a better bit than coming to you live, but coming
Speaker 1: coming to you from from from now fallen apparently on
Speaker 1: fire destroyed Chicago, so so so say the many oracles,
Speaker 1: soothsayers and cops who live in this city who are
Speaker 1: now absolutely convinced that the city is going to descend
Speaker 1: into crime and chaos, etcetera, etcetera, after the cop candidate
Speaker 1: got absolutely blown the fuck out in the last elections.
Speaker 1: And yeah, with me to talk about this election and
Speaker 1: a couple of other elections that happened on the same
Speaker 1: day that we're very funny and where the worst people
Speaker 1: in the world got absolutely destroyed. Is Ali who is
Speaker 1: one of my friends and is an election analyst. Yeah,
Speaker 1: welcome to the show. How are you doing. I'm doing well.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having Mimia. Nice to be nice to
Speaker 1: be here. Yeah, I'm very excited. Yeah, because this is
Speaker 1: just very funny. It's extremely funny. I personally was really
Speaker 1: enjoying getting to read the Twitter tea leaves. You could
Speaker 1: tell kind of which Alderman were having meltdowns on election night. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I guess I guess we could start with the
Speaker 1: stuff that happened in Chicago, which is that Paul Vallis
Speaker 1: the butcher of the public education system, running dog of
Speaker 1: the cops, the hero of J six people. I was
Speaker 1: just kind of thwacked in an election by Brandon Johnson,
Speaker 1: the sort of progressive candidate who I'm very excited I
Speaker 1: no longer have to pretend that I like particularly much.
Speaker 1: Yes now, as as Mia says, Paul Vallis, resident Dino
Speaker 1: from Palos Heights, a southwest suburb of Chicago, who conveniently
Speaker 1: bought an apartment in Chicago exactly a year before the election,
Speaker 1: which is how long you have to live in Chicago
Speaker 1: to be the mayor, lost the runoff to Brandon Johnson,
Speaker 1: a black progressive who was on the Cook County Board.
Speaker 1: About when all the results are done coming in in
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks, it will be about fifty two
Speaker 1: percent for Johnson and forty eight percent for Vallis. As
Speaker 1: Mia says, this lets a lot of people on the
Speaker 1: left no longer have to keep up the charade of oh,
Speaker 1: Johnson's the best thing that has happened to us, and
Speaker 1: sliced bread if you are like more of a like
Speaker 1: Democratic Party loyal progressive voter. This is a very very
Speaker 1: good thing in your eyes. Yeah, and I think, you know,
Speaker 1: I think it's something very interesting and kind of fitting
Speaker 1: about this, which is that Yeah. And one of these
Speaker 1: you've talked about is that. Yeah, like Brandon Johnson is
Speaker 1: the first like progressive TM mayor Trevor's had since like
Speaker 1: I mean blue to release its held Washington, who is
Speaker 1: first black mayor in the eighties. And it's very interesting
Speaker 1: also because a bunch of the reforms that Harold Washington
Speaker 1: did were specifically overturned by Paul Vallis. Yeah, Like he's
Speaker 1: the guy you did a bunch of educational reforms that
Speaker 1: fucking sucked, that destroyed I have Washington stuff. It's no,
Speaker 1: it's it's really wild. How like Chicago politics is analogous
Speaker 1: to to go really out there for a second is
Speaker 1: analogous the state of Hawaii in the sense that people
Speaker 1: never die. The same people are going to be on
Speaker 1: your ballot for fifty years and you just kind of
Speaker 1: have to suck it up and deal with it. But
Speaker 1: every so often someone good comes along, or at least
Speaker 1: someone better, and if you get them into office the
Speaker 1: first time, and if you get them to survive their
Speaker 1: first reelection campaign, then they get to be one of
Speaker 1: the people who's on the ballot forever and who never dies.
Speaker 1: And slowly but surely you can make Chicago politics less shitty.
Speaker 1: But yeah, as Mia said, this is going to be
Speaker 1: the first progressive Chicago mayoral administration since Harold Washington. And
Speaker 1: Johnson won the same way as Harold Washington did. On Yeah,
Speaker 1: the backbone of Johnson's coalition, just as with Harold Washington's,
Speaker 1: was black voters. Johnson got about eighty percent of the
Speaker 1: black vote, because in Chicago elections are usually more about
Speaker 1: race than anything else. But in addition to the black vote,
Speaker 1: Johnson one with progressives in white and non black communities
Speaker 1: of color, as well as LGBTQ voters and finally fulfilling
Speaker 1: the dreams of the here's how Bernie can still win
Speaker 1: people from twenty fifteen a actual turnout surge of millennial
Speaker 1: and Gen Z voters the Chicago Board of Election is
Speaker 1: I don't think that anyone would call them great, but
Speaker 1: they do produce some nice live statistics on election day
Speaker 1: as the votes are tallied, and voters under forty five
Speaker 1: had a turnout surge of I think it was about
Speaker 1: twenty percent, whereas voters older than sixty, the raw number
Speaker 1: of their votes actually went down. And this likely does
Speaker 1: almost entirely account for Johnson's margin of victory, that he
Speaker 1: was able to turn out young voters and that old
Speaker 1: people just like stayed home. Yeah, I think it's also
Speaker 1: you know, we talked about this in the episode we
Speaker 1: did about Paul Fallis, But one of the things about
Speaker 1: the initial election was that like the fact that Johnson
Speaker 1: made it out of the primaries at all with a
Speaker 1: genuinely night mirrorish like age like bracket of turnout in
Speaker 1: the first round is sort of a miracle, but you know,
Speaker 1: it got it got a lot better for him in
Speaker 1: this one, and that genuinely seems to have like I
Speaker 1: don't know, like I know a lot of people who
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time like canvassing their asses off,
Speaker 1: and it actually seems to have worked. And I don't know,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, it means to be seen the
Speaker 1: extent to which this was about, like the fact that
Speaker 1: Vallis is like probably would have been the worst mayor
Speaker 1: of Chicago in like we don't have to go, we
Speaker 1: don't have to go back that far Daily was mayor
Speaker 1: of Chicago as recently as twenty eleven. That's true, but
Speaker 1: I I don't know Da Daily. Yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 1: not like Chicago has good mayors. But I think he
Speaker 1: would have been Okay, here's I think he would have
Speaker 1: been the most politically far right mayor Chicago has had
Speaker 1: in a long time. Oh yeah, Like he's just a Republican,
Speaker 1: like like a pretty like yeah, and you know that
Speaker 1: fucking sucks, but he got Clawbard. There's also there's a
Speaker 1: really funny result I want to talk about, which is that. Okay,
Speaker 1: so the part of Chicago, the neighborhood of in Chicago
Speaker 1: where the Cubs Stadium is is right next to Boystown,
Speaker 1: which is the fucking gay district. And if if you
Speaker 1: if you go in and look at like, well I say,
Speaker 1: I say, it's the gat like a lot a lot
Speaker 1: of it's it's it's it's it's now the rich gay
Speaker 1: part of Chicago, because I know it's got priced out.
Speaker 1: Well it kind of is. No, it's not. Market Park
Speaker 1: is the rich gay part of Chicago. Brew Okay, it's
Speaker 1: more of a rich gay part of Chicago than it
Speaker 1: was like forty years ago years ago. Yeah, but like
Speaker 1: like literally exactly split. You can, like you can like
Speaker 1: see in the data exactly split down the line. The
Speaker 1: gays voted for Brandy Johnson and all the people on
Speaker 1: all the Cubs fans voted for Vallace. It's so funny,
Speaker 1: it is, it is extremely funny. And I will give
Speaker 1: a quick shout out here to the Chicago Urbanist Twitter
Speaker 1: account who made what I personally think is the funniest
Speaker 1: meme to have come out of the election um, which
Speaker 1: is a bunch of like uh stick figures and just
Speaker 1: like black and white labeled Vallis voters running from a
Speaker 1: like steam roller, a pink steamroller with a rainbow like
Speaker 1: wheel being driven by a bunch of gay people, and
Speaker 1: the steamroller is labeled boys down. It's really good, like
Speaker 1: they I don't know, like like there there there is
Speaker 1: this sort of a like this is sort of like
Speaker 1: this is the coalition that well, I mean again, we
Speaker 1: talked about it like this, this is the hairwashing coalition, Like,
Speaker 1: this is the coalition that if you, if you're an
Speaker 1: elect electoral list, like you need to produce something that
Speaker 1: looks like this if you want to have any serious
Speaker 1: chance of winning and yes, yeah, and the fact that
Speaker 1: it actually worked sort of, Oh, it's a goddamn miracle,
Speaker 1: and shit never works. People have been trying to do
Speaker 1: this for like forty fucking years and it never works.
Speaker 1: I mean, you have been trying to do this for
Speaker 1: forty plus years. But it's also like, this is really
Speaker 1: the first election that I can think of anywhere since
Speaker 1: Barack Obama's re election in twenty twelve, where like, this
Speaker 1: is the coalition that actually put someone in like an
Speaker 1: office that got a lot of national attention and that mattered.
Speaker 1: That's not to say that it like literally hasn't happened
Speaker 1: anywhere else. I'm just saying I can't think of any
Speaker 1: off the top of my head. But like, in twenty twelve,
Speaker 1: Barack Obama became the first person to be elected president
Speaker 1: of the United States with less than forty percent of
Speaker 1: the white vote, a feat that has never since been repeated.
Speaker 1: Clinton got less than that and lost. Trump obviously won,
Speaker 1: and Biden won because white voters left in twenty twenty. So, like,
Speaker 1: this is a turnout and coalitional puzzle that most people
Speaker 1: fail to put together and that Brandon Johnson miraculously pulled off. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think on the one hand, Okay, this is
Speaker 1: legitimately kind of because the result is not the thing
Speaker 1: that normally happens. It is legitimately an interesting question as
Speaker 1: to why this happened, and like a like a sort
Speaker 1: of like legitimately kind of difficult like political science question.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, most of the people attempting to
Speaker 1: answer it have just oh my fucking god, Like if
Speaker 1: I if I have to read another New York Times
Speaker 1: article writing about this that's like like just clearly cobbled
Speaker 1: together from three Wikipedia articles, like I'm gonna literally go insane.
Speaker 1: I think you, me and every other person in Chicago. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, no matter if you are a Johnson voter
Speaker 1: or a Vallis voter or someone who stayed home, we
Speaker 1: can all come together in our hatred of that thirty
Speaker 1: eight piece that was strong on the morning of election day. Um,
Speaker 1: if you don't know what I'm talking about, you're lucky,
Speaker 1: and I'm not going to tell you. If you really well,
Speaker 1: I'll give you a very brief summary of it, which
Speaker 1: is a five three. Now they don't know they did.
Speaker 1: They did. They did a racism That's what I'll leave
Speaker 1: it at. They they did a racism, and they were
Speaker 1: very wrong. They basically did the four races, white, Black, Latino,
Speaker 1: and leftist. Yeah, which is very funny. Um But hopefully, UM,
Speaker 1: I hopefully I'll take a stab at explaining what happened,
Speaker 1: and hopefully it's better than most people's explanation. But UM,
Speaker 1: I think part of it is that, um, as I
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, historically Chicago elections have been about race, and
Speaker 1: like this was no um exception. This was much more
Speaker 1: of an ideological uh great, Like the ideological lines were
Speaker 1: a lot clearer in this election than previous mayoral races. Um.
Speaker 1: But the foundation of Brandon Johnson's electoral victory was the
Speaker 1: eighty percent of the vote that he got in black
Speaker 1: majority neighborhoods. Black voters in Chicago selected the black candidate
Speaker 1: because they looked at the white guy and said, oh,
Speaker 1: we think you're going to be a massive dipshit. And
Speaker 1: beyond that, you have a couple of other things working
Speaker 1: in Johnson's favor. So like one, when it comes to
Speaker 1: the youth vote, I cannot really believe I'm saying this
Speaker 1: because I when this was announced. It's not that I
Speaker 1: thought it wouldn't help. It's just that I wasn't sure
Speaker 1: that it would help enough, but Johnson got a lot
Speaker 1: of national progressive figures to endorse him, including Bernie Sanders,
Speaker 1: and his campaign literally flew Bernie in for a rally
Speaker 1: on a college campus here in Chicago, And I think
Speaker 1: that genuinely did actually get a lot of young people
Speaker 1: to realize that there was an election that they should
Speaker 1: attention to, which is well, it was like like like
Speaker 1: this happened, Like people fly in Bertie a lot and
Speaker 1: it never matters, but it like it mattered here, which
Speaker 1: is really amazing. Absolutely, like just a lot of this
Speaker 1: election was wild. I think the other thing that really
Speaker 1: helped Johnson was that a like, Chicago is a lot
Speaker 1: less white than it used to be, which is not
Speaker 1: something that usually gets said in this day and age,
Speaker 1: because Chicago is becoming white er then it was like
Speaker 1: ten fifteen years ago. But Chicago was a lot less
Speaker 1: white than it was in the eighties when Harold Washington
Speaker 1: was elected, and so like there was more of a
Speaker 1: ceiling on Paul Vallie's vote than Harold Washington's opponents had,
Speaker 1: which meant that Valis had to be able to appeal
Speaker 1: to not just white voters who reflectively were against any
Speaker 1: black candidate, but he also had to make inroads in
Speaker 1: Hispanic Asian as well as Black communities and trying to
Speaker 1: get the black conservative vote, and he didn't. Valas didn't
Speaker 1: do a terrible job here, but he just didn't do
Speaker 1: a job that was good enough. He actually probably won
Speaker 1: the Latino vote, it would It wasn't like a huge win,
Speaker 1: but it was a win. But the problem is that
Speaker 1: turnout in on the Southwest Side of Chicago, which is
Speaker 1: where in the majority of Chicago's Mexican American residents live,
Speaker 1: was just super low, just like really really atrociously in
Speaker 1: the tank, like to the extent like this is the
Speaker 1: kind of turnout that inspires the online jokes about how
Speaker 1: no one ever bothers to vote level bad turnouts on
Speaker 1: the Southwest Side. So if Hispanic turnout had been on
Speaker 1: the same level as white and black turnout, the race
Speaker 1: probably would have been a lot closer. Valas also won Chinatown,
Speaker 1: which is something that got a fairer amount of tension
Speaker 1: on social media. But Johnson was able to win the
Speaker 1: two other Asian ethnic enclaves in Chicago, which are the
Speaker 1: Vietnamese neighborhood in Uptown called Asian and Argyle, as well
Speaker 1: as the Desi neighborhood on the far North Side. And
Speaker 1: I don't think we can really say how Asian voters
Speaker 1: overall voted definitively because Asian voters in Chicago are pretty
Speaker 1: well diffused through the city. But it's very clear that
Speaker 1: like Vallas did not get the runaway win with Asian
Speaker 1: voters that Eric Adams, for example did in New York City. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I specifically want to talk about Argyle for a
Speaker 1: bit because the fact that Johnson won Argyle is fucking insane.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, these are like like this is a community
Speaker 1: of Vietnam War refugees, Like these people are hard line
Speaker 1: anti communists. Like you go into these restaurants and they
Speaker 1: all have Fox News on. So like, yeah, Johnson winning
Speaker 1: these voters is incredible. Yeah. I mean like one of
Speaker 1: one of the most famous noodle shops, there was a
Speaker 1: guy who was at January sixth, like this is this
Speaker 1: is a like a stereotypically unbelievably dogshit place for Johnson.
Speaker 1: And yeah, and I say this about the China Chinatown
Speaker 1: and this is something like I mean you could just
Speaker 1: you can know this something like I've been tracking for
Speaker 1: a while. I mean just by like walking through it
Speaker 1: that Chinatown during the pandemic and kind of after it,
Speaker 1: I was having a bit before has gotten just notably
Speaker 1: more fascist, Like oh yeah, there's a lot of stuff there.
Speaker 1: I mean, the anti homelessness stuff is really really really intense.
Speaker 1: They're they've been going really hard in the end. That's
Speaker 1: the thing that kind of makes sense, right like this
Speaker 1: this is a thing that you would kind of expect
Speaker 1: out of, Like yeah, of course small business owners are
Speaker 1: going to like go right, like that's like that's what
Speaker 1: that's you know, that that's that you can you can
Speaker 1: you you can find Mark's writing about phenomena in like
Speaker 1: eighteen forty eight, right like this this has been a
Speaker 1: thing since the beginning of time. But I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's gotten. It's gotten legitimately kind of scary down there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and like a lot of it also I think was um,
Speaker 1: you know, there's been a divergence between how the North
Speaker 1: Side Asian enclaves like the Dessey neighborhood and the Vietnamese
Speaker 1: neighborhood have responded to this kind of stuff u versus Chinatown,
Speaker 1: especially on the other big social change that happened during
Speaker 1: the pandemic, which was the twenty twenty Black Lives Matter
Speaker 1: of protests. Yeah, I think from what I saw, like
Speaker 1: the reaction on the North Side among these Asian enclaves
Speaker 1: was pretty overall supportive of the protests, whereas down in
Speaker 1: Chinatown as well as in McKinley Park, which is a
Speaker 1: Hispanic majority neighborhood but has a pretty significant Asian population,
Speaker 1: those neighborhoods had this really really big like surge of
Speaker 1: anti black racism in response to the protests. Like there
Speaker 1: were quote unquote neighborhood watch groups that got formed, and
Speaker 1: it was just it was bad. And you know, the
Speaker 1: Vietnamese voters on argyle even though they're very like you know,
Speaker 1: they have Fox News on, like I said, and they're
Speaker 1: really anti socialist, anti communists. There was a state Rep.
Speaker 1: I am probably going to butcher his name, from which
Speaker 1: I apologize, but I'm pretty sure his name is pronounced Hanwen,
Speaker 1: who is Vietnamese himself, and he won the seat last
Speaker 1: year in twenty twenty two, and like he's very progressive.
Speaker 1: So there has been this very sharp divergence in how
Speaker 1: the like Asian neighborhoods in Chicago have responded to some
Speaker 1: of the social events of the last few years. Once
Speaker 1: again by people, they're the Great nation of China's foot
Speaker 1: social imperialism. I think the last thing that really should
Speaker 1: be talked about in the context of Johnson's electoral win,
Speaker 1: and when we come back we can talk about the
Speaker 1: city council because that's also pretty interesting. Is that something
Speaker 1: that if you want to watch elections, especially if you
Speaker 1: want to watch Chicago election, something you should understand is
Speaker 1: that the the Capital M machine in Chicago is pretty
Speaker 1: much gone now and Brandon Johnson's win pretty much seals this.
Speaker 1: It's not that the people are gone or that like
Speaker 1: the you know, logistical operations of the machine are completely dead,
Speaker 1: but the machine has now lost two elections in a row.
Speaker 1: Because as much as Lorie, as much as Lorie Lightfoot sucked,
Speaker 1: and she sucked so much, she also was an anti
Speaker 1: machine candidate, like she was like capital A anti when
Speaker 1: she ran. And Brandon Johnson is not anti machine in
Speaker 1: the way that Laurie was, but he definitely was not
Speaker 1: the candidate of like the machine. So like they lost
Speaker 1: to elections in a row. Mike Madigan has now been
Speaker 1: indicted and he's probably going to prison for a very
Speaker 1: long time. You should explain who Mike Madigan is, because Okay,
Speaker 1: if you live in Illinois, like you know who Mike
Speaker 1: Madigan is. If you don't live in Illinois, Mike Madigan,
Speaker 1: for my entire life, for like the lives of people
Speaker 1: who are much older than me, has been like the
Speaker 1: most the single most powerful political figure in all of Illinois.
Speaker 1: Like he runs everything. Yeah, like he has like an
Speaker 1: iron grip over everything that has happened in this state
Speaker 1: for like forty years. Yes, and he finally got indicted
Speaker 1: on some federal like charges of like I don't even
Speaker 1: remember what the charges war, but it was very like
Speaker 1: al Capona esque of like, yeah, we finally found something
Speaker 1: to nail you on, so we're going to And so
Speaker 1: he got indicted last year, and it is actually pretty impressive,
Speaker 1: Like how quickly his machine fell apart? Yeah, like he
Speaker 1: just he didn't have an air ready to take control. Um.
Speaker 1: And so it's not that like machine politics has gone
Speaker 1: from Chicago. It's more that instead of a machine, there
Speaker 1: are now going to be a bunch of smaller machines um,
Speaker 1: which is going to make it easier for like normal
Speaker 1: everyday people to actually have some saying the political process,
Speaker 1: which is a good thing. Yeah, and like the Choco
Speaker 1: machine fucking sucks as I mean, like we talked about
Speaker 1: sort of val Like I mean Valist was a machine guy, right, yes, absolutely,
Speaker 1: and you know, and he is like the thing about
Speaker 1: the the machine has two values, and it's corruption and neoliberalism.
Speaker 1: And honestly, like not even neoliberalism so much anymore. It's
Speaker 1: mostly just corruption. Yeah, I mean they've kind of I
Speaker 1: would say, I think they've gotten less ideological over the
Speaker 1: last twenty years, like well, like I think the last
Speaker 1: like decade and a half. But they yeah, they really
Speaker 1: they really fuck it. Like Chicago was like the political machine,
Speaker 1: and you know, like I mean like they're in large
Speaker 1: part responsible for the creation of Obama's career, and they've
Speaker 1: parleyed that into losing to like the least popular beyor
Speaker 1: in like a generation, and then losing again to Brandon
Speaker 1: like to somehow to Brandon Johnson. And it's I don't
Speaker 1: know if they've they've they failed spectacularly and I fuck them.
Speaker 1: They're awful, and I yeah, yes, absolutely they yeah. Fuck
Speaker 1: these guys. They they've they've robbed, they've they've rubbed the
Speaker 1: working class for two fucking long. Yeah, no, fuck these guys,
Speaker 1: good riddens. Um, the world will be better when they're dead. Yeah,
Speaker 1: do you know what else the world would be better then?
Speaker 1: If you know? Okay, that that was that was That
Speaker 1: was not my That was not my best effort. I apologize.
Speaker 1: But the world's question mark. Maybe better place if you
Speaker 1: buy these products and services question mark. I don't know
Speaker 1: if I'm legally allowed to say that. We'll see anyways,
Speaker 1: here's so bad and we are back. Yeah, we should
Speaker 1: talk about what Johnson actually wants to do. You well,
Speaker 1: do you want to get into that or do you
Speaker 1: want to talk about the city council first? I think
Speaker 1: they actually overlap pretty well. Um, so like we can,
Speaker 1: let's let's run through what Johnson says he wants to do,
Speaker 1: and we can then talk about how much of that
Speaker 1: might happen. So Johnson, like we were talking about, is
Speaker 1: definitely going to be the most progressive mayor in Chicago's
Speaker 1: history in terms of what he can't paignt On. At least,
Speaker 1: this was a crime election, Like the dominant issue was crime,
Speaker 1: and Johnson did not say the words defund the police.
Speaker 1: In fact, he actually explicitly said that he would not
Speaker 1: cut the police budget. But aside from like those literal words,
Speaker 1: he very much is in line with the progressive priorities
Speaker 1: of de emphasizing like using people with guns who go
Speaker 1: through like six weeks of training or whatever. So he
Speaker 1: wants to pass a bill called Treatment Not Trauma, which
Speaker 1: is replacing cops with mental health responders for nine one
Speaker 1: one calls about mental health crises. He wants to pass
Speaker 1: another bill called the Piece Book Ordinance, which would expand
Speaker 1: restorative justice and violence intervention like projects and programs in
Speaker 1: the city. And he also wants to pass an ordinance
Speaker 1: to put significant restrictions on police department raids and like
Speaker 1: the police department's just actual ability to do raids altogether.
Speaker 1: There is a very infamous contract here in Chicago called
Speaker 1: the Shop Spotter Contract, which is this dumb software that
Speaker 1: is supposed to be able to like tell police when
Speaker 1: a gun goes off, and like, as far as I
Speaker 1: can tell, doesn't and it's just like straight up doesn't work.
Speaker 1: So Johnson wants to get rid of that. He also
Speaker 1: wants to eliminate the gang database, which if you are
Speaker 1: from Chicago you probably know what we're talking about. Is
Speaker 1: this very infamous list of about one hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: thousand people, ninety five percent of whom are either black
Speaker 1: or Latino. And they are on this list called the
Speaker 1: Gang Database, more or less because one day some random
Speaker 1: Chicago police officer decided to put them on the list.
Speaker 1: It's very dumb, it's very racist, it's very blatantly unconstitutional,
Speaker 1: and hopefully Brandon Johnson is able to get rid of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and these and these are all things, like you knows,
Speaker 1: as much as we can talk about the extent to
Speaker 1: which like is, you know, as much as we can
Speaker 1: we can talk about the sort of the complicity of
Speaker 1: like mental health responders and the police system wherever the fuck,
Speaker 1: Like these things would all like make a lot of
Speaker 1: people's lives better and making the police weaker. And you know,
Speaker 1: I mean one of the things about this election, right
Speaker 1: is that the people who are actually affected by crime
Speaker 1: vote for Johnson. The people who are not affected by
Speaker 1: crime at all all voted for Vallas, yep. And part
Speaker 1: of the reason for that is that, like, Okay, if
Speaker 1: you're in a place like in Chicago that has a
Speaker 1: bunch of crime, you were dealing with, like you're dealing
Speaker 1: with the crime you're dealing with a lot of people
Speaker 1: getting shot, which is fucking shit. And then you're also
Speaker 1: dealing with the CPD, who are like function most of
Speaker 1: the time are functionally a cartel about every like we're
Speaker 1: kind of due for another set of like prosecution from
Speaker 1: the like roughly every like seven or eight years, there's
Speaker 1: a massive series of arrests by the FBI or like
Speaker 1: defense come in and like discover that there's like a
Speaker 1: giant there's a giant cartel operating out of the CPD.
Speaker 1: We've talked about this discover and discovering air quotes because
Speaker 1: everyone knows, oh yeah, everyone knows. And then you know,
Speaker 1: the Chicago police in particular are very famous for the
Speaker 1: Code of Silence, which is that every single person, if
Speaker 1: a cop commits a crime, every single other cop will
Speaker 1: cover for them, going right up to the like the
Speaker 1: top of the ladder of the police chiefs and all
Speaker 1: the way down to like l dipshit like like beat cop. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, and so you know, like if you're
Speaker 1: a person who has to do with these people, oh,
Speaker 1: it sucks. It fucking sucks. And like Chicago is kind
Speaker 1: of um in many ways, not the ground zero, but
Speaker 1: like a ground zero for a phenomenon where you have
Speaker 1: these poor neighborhoods of color. Who you know, the people
Speaker 1: who live in these neighborhoods, they are simultaneously over policed
Speaker 1: and under police because the police don't bother to show
Speaker 1: up half the time when like they're theoretically needed, right
Speaker 1: like someone gets shot, you call nine one one, and
Speaker 1: the cops don't bother showing up for hours if they
Speaker 1: bother showing up at all. And at the same time,
Speaker 1: when they do show up that you often cause more
Speaker 1: problems than they solve. Like Chicago has really truly horrific
Speaker 1: clearance rates of violent crime. And this is mostly because
Speaker 1: CPD just insists on maintaining this really awful balance. You know,
Speaker 1: if you do believe in police, you want there to
Speaker 1: be a pretty healthy balance between beat cops and detectives. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: this Chicago Police Department, there almost are no detectives left,
Speaker 1: Like it's almost all beat cops, and so there's not
Speaker 1: many resources that go into actually investigating crimes that can't
Speaker 1: be solved by someone just walking around or driving around
Speaker 1: in a patrol car. So these neighborhoods, like you know,
Speaker 1: you go down to the South Side or the West Side.
Speaker 1: A lot of these A lot of the residents in
Speaker 1: these neighborhoods would tell you, because they're not leftists, right,
Speaker 1: so they would tell you that they want more police officers.
Speaker 1: But they don't want more beat cops necessarily, like they
Speaker 1: want more detectives, and they want officers who are actually
Speaker 1: going to be who care about them as people. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: the Chicago Police Department is made up of fascists, so like, um,
Speaker 1: you know, low chances on that front. But it's like
Speaker 1: that is the problem these neighborhoods are facing, is that
Speaker 1: like the police don't bother to care, and when they
Speaker 1: bother to show up, they often make things worse. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think, you know, but I think everything that's
Speaker 1: sort of important here right is like you get a
Speaker 1: lot of you know, like it's very easy for people
Speaker 1: to be like, oh hey, look, actually these people want
Speaker 1: more police. But it's like, you know what when you
Speaker 1: look at what there was a study taken right before
Speaker 1: the election that was talking about voters like what their
Speaker 1: preferences on like what their sort of opinions on crime are.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I know what, Yeah we were talking about.
Speaker 1: I think it was like only eighteen percent of the
Speaker 1: people who said that crime was important to them one
Speaker 1: in war cops and almost everyone we part part of
Speaker 1: it was like they like one of the big concerns
Speaker 1: was legal guns. And then the other big conservat was
Speaker 1: just like the fact that there's these places are really
Speaker 1: poor and there's no opportunities for people because it's like
Speaker 1: there's there there aren't economic opportunities. There are so many
Speaker 1: guns just on, you know, just lying around in these communities.
Speaker 1: And obviously that's a problem throughout the country, but it's
Speaker 1: especially bad in low income neighborhoods in Chicago. Um. And
Speaker 1: the other thing was mental health, like you know, and
Speaker 1: that's one of the other things that Johnson wants to
Speaker 1: do is he wants to reopen the mental health clinics
Speaker 1: that got closed down by Ram or Ram Emmanuel, who
Speaker 1: is a previous mayor of Chicago, who is currently being
Speaker 1: inflicted upon the people of Japan as the US ambassador.
Speaker 1: And you know, um, they deserve it. This this, this
Speaker 1: is what you get for siding with the CIA, You
Speaker 1: fucking fucking dipshits. Man. Like if the label Democratic Party
Speaker 1: didn't want to have to get have to deal with
Speaker 1: Rob Emanuel they shouldn't have taken all that CIA money. Um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, like Johnson wants to you know, reopen these
Speaker 1: health clinics. He wants to increase funding for public schools,
Speaker 1: which have very much not gotten the funding that they
Speaker 1: need in Chicago for the past several decades at this point,
Speaker 1: he also want to expand public transportation in Chicago. Like
Speaker 1: there are a lot of proposals flying around for expanding
Speaker 1: the train lines and bus lines and bike rid There
Speaker 1: are also, as me and I were talking about before
Speaker 1: we started recording, there are a lot of lead pipes,
Speaker 1: like water pipes in Chicago. Yes, and and like Chicago
Speaker 1: is like supposed to be replacing them, it's proceeding very slowly.
Speaker 1: Johnson wants to speed that up. There's like just very
Speaker 1: genuinely a lot of research on the books directly linking
Speaker 1: lead poisoning to a lot of social problems. And so
Speaker 1: it's very much one of these things where it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, if you replaced the lead pipes, crime will
Speaker 1: go down. And I want to talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about the infrastructure stuff for second, because like I okay,
Speaker 1: in the in the last three years, Chicago's public transit
Speaker 1: system has just been fucking imploding. Oh, there are it's
Speaker 1: so bad. There are. There are reasons for this, some
Speaker 1: of which I can talk about, some of which I can't.
Speaker 1: Like partially was depend partially letters the pandemic, and they
Speaker 1: like a bunch of the people who supposed to be
Speaker 1: running the system fucking died because you know, they got
Speaker 1: forced to work through the pandemic. But like you know,
Speaker 1: you'll like trains just won't show up. There are buses
Speaker 1: that are basically unusable because it's it's like you're basically
Speaker 1: sitting there trying to roll double ones as to whether
Speaker 1: the bus will fucking show up at all. Um, the
Speaker 1: wait times you're enormous, Like it's a real shit show,
Speaker 1: and like it's it's substantively way worse than it was
Speaker 1: when I was in the city and like fifteen nineteen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really really bad, and it's it's it's atrocious. Yes.
Speaker 1: The other factor that's we talked about there is that like,
Speaker 1: so the Chicago public transit system is not free like
Speaker 1: most system, Like it is funded by rider fares. Like
Speaker 1: it's very Yeah, it costs a lot to get on. Comparatively,
Speaker 1: it costs a lot to get on the trainer ground
Speaker 1: on a bus and one of the kind of like
Speaker 1: self reinforcing cycles that has been playing out the last
Speaker 1: few years that Chicago also has a really bad homelessness problem,
Speaker 1: and this is directly linked to the fact that the
Speaker 1: city just does not want to give people housing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so what ends up happening is that a lot
Speaker 1: of Chicago's homeless residents, especially in the colder winter months,
Speaker 1: they end up on the trains, especially the two lines
Speaker 1: that run twenty four hours a day. And you know,
Speaker 1: these are people who are really you know, they're living
Speaker 1: in really really terrible conditions, like they don't have regular
Speaker 1: access to clean food and water, let alone like clean
Speaker 1: access to like like regular access to like hygienic facilities.
Speaker 1: And so ridership really plummeted on the lines where homeless
Speaker 1: people started to like just go on in order to
Speaker 1: stay warm. And so you get the hit because rider
Speaker 1: fares are now down because people don't want to deal
Speaker 1: with being on the same train line as homeless people
Speaker 1: who you know, frankly just don't smell that good or
Speaker 1: have mental health problems. And the city doesn't want to
Speaker 1: give these homeless people housing, let alone, like even like
Speaker 1: smaller things like like access to bathing facilities or healthcare
Speaker 1: or anything like that, and so it becomes a self
Speaker 1: reinforcement cycle of now fares are down, so there's less investment,
Speaker 1: so more people abandon the system. And it is this
Speaker 1: thing where like this will this would get solved if
Speaker 1: Chicago committed to giving homeless people housing, but that's just
Speaker 1: not where the city has unfortunately been. Yeah, and I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, and what what's happening instead is like, you know,
Speaker 1: increasing anti homeless architecture. Like Chicago train stations fucking suck
Speaker 1: ass because they're all designs so that's impossible to sit
Speaker 1: on anything. There only two benches in each station. It
Speaker 1: sucks some of these stations, like it's so bad, like
Speaker 1: it's just awful. Like one of the things that Chicago
Speaker 1: has they have these like you know, it gets really
Speaker 1: really cultural in the winter, so they have these like
Speaker 1: warming stations so that when it's like fucking negative twenty out,
Speaker 1: you can be in the warming things. But there's no
Speaker 1: they intentionally make it so there's no benches in them,
Speaker 1: so you can't sit in them. Yeah, it sucks it
Speaker 1: like it's it's you know, it's they have this really
Speaker 1: just like the hatred of homeless people is turned basically
Speaker 1: into a war against all society waged by the city,
Speaker 1: and yeah, it's atrocious. The good news is that Brendan
Speaker 1: Johnson wants to pass an ordinance called Bring Chicago Home,
Speaker 1: which would um put a tax on property transfers for
Speaker 1: like I think it's like homes that are worth over
Speaker 1: a million dollars that and the money from that tax
Speaker 1: would go entirely to funding programs for the city's homeless
Speaker 1: residents all the way up to an including permanent shelter
Speaker 1: or like permanent housing solutions. So you know, you know,
Speaker 1: fingers crossed on that one because that, I think, along
Speaker 1: with the public safety measures, is really the thing that
Speaker 1: the city needs the most. And Johnson also on the
Speaker 1: housing front, he wants to liberalize zoning laws, which I
Speaker 1: know is a very big debate on the left at
Speaker 1: the moment about you know, how we go about approaching
Speaker 1: building more housing. Johnson very much is on like the
Speaker 1: probe development end of things. He wants to liberalize zoning
Speaker 1: laws and make it so that it's easier to build
Speaker 1: multifamily housing and previously like single family housing zoned areas.
Speaker 1: He does also want to pass just cause for eviction,
Speaker 1: so like your landlord would not be able to throw
Speaker 1: you out just because, which is a good thing. Chicago's
Speaker 1: lands are really shit. They're terrible, I see across the board. Terrible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like I God, like I have seen shit doing Canada
Speaker 1: organizing that is like like like I think things that
Speaker 1: make me like have to control my reflex to vomit
Speaker 1: just remembering them. Truly atrocious. Um. But yeah. The other thing,
Speaker 1: and that that something that will matter to you if
Speaker 1: you are living in Chicago very much, is that Johnson
Speaker 1: wants to cap property taxes. So um. One of the
Speaker 1: things that's been driving a lot of reactionary politics in
Speaker 1: Chicago is that property taxes here are linked to inflation, um,
Speaker 1: which means that if you are a property owner in Chicago,
Speaker 1: in the last couple of years, your property taxes went
Speaker 1: up by like fifteen plus percent, which understandably made a
Speaker 1: lot of people mad because you know, if you if
Speaker 1: your taxes go up by that much that fast, you
Speaker 1: at least wanted to be going to do do because something
Speaker 1: good and under our previous well soon to be previous
Speaker 1: Mayor Lorie Lightfoot, that absolutely was not happening, yeah, over
Speaker 1: time or some shit like yes. So Johnson is he
Speaker 1: campaigned on decoupling property taxes from inflation so they would
Speaker 1: no longer just automatically go up, which would bring a
Speaker 1: lot of financial relief to a lot of Chicago families.
Speaker 1: And also he would basically like wants to pass a
Speaker 1: lot of taxes focused on wealthier residents as well as
Speaker 1: big businesses to help fund some of the programs, which
Speaker 1: brings us to the City Council and how much of
Speaker 1: a chance he has a guned has passed, which is
Speaker 1: better than you might think if you are familiar with
Speaker 1: Chicago politics. Something that surprises people who don't live in
Speaker 1: the city is that Chicago is not run by progressives.
Speaker 1: There has actually pretty much never been a progressive majority
Speaker 1: on the City Council and there isn't There will not
Speaker 1: be a progressive majority on the new one that comes
Speaker 1: in with Johnson. He is going to be presiding over
Speaker 1: a minority government. In parliamentary terms, which I think we
Speaker 1: should use more often because I'm a nerd and I
Speaker 1: find it fun. But basically, there are fifty members of
Speaker 1: the Chicago City Council. They're called aldermen because we insist
Speaker 1: on having a city council that is the size of
Speaker 1: a state legislature here, and about twenty two of them
Speaker 1: are going to be aligned with Johnson more or less,
Speaker 1: so he's going to be three votes short on a
Speaker 1: lot of things. At least from the beginning. He is
Speaker 1: going to be negotiating with the black political establishment here
Speaker 1: in Chicago, which is one of the smaller machines that
Speaker 1: is left in the aftermath of Madigans and ointment. And
Speaker 1: we are going to see how this goes. Some of
Speaker 1: those black alderman are friendlier to Johnson from the get go,
Speaker 1: partially because of ideology and partially because a lot of
Speaker 1: them just like personally know him and like him. Some
Speaker 1: of them are very against him for similar reasons, like
Speaker 1: they either ideologically don't line up or they just dislike
Speaker 1: him on a personal basis. Like we should talk, we
Speaker 1: should say a little bit about Johnson's not like some
Speaker 1: kind of like political political outsider. No, He's been around.
Speaker 1: He's kind of kind He has like interesting relations with
Speaker 1: the old sort of like prep Winkle, like labor machine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's definitely like Johnson is definitely part of a machine.
Speaker 1: His relationship with like the old machine was very bad.
Speaker 1: But he is definitely part of a machine that is
Speaker 1: tied up in like the institutional labor unions that have
Speaker 1: a lot of sway and democratic politics here, including the
Speaker 1: Chicago Teachers Union, which, like you know, Vallas's whole stick
Speaker 1: during the runoff was that Johnson would be a stooge
Speaker 1: for the teachers Union, and the teachers Union really just
Speaker 1: like the teacher This is actually kind of funny because
Speaker 1: like the Teachers Union really just swept the board here,
Speaker 1: not just with Johnson, but with like a lot of
Speaker 1: the city council races where they weighed in. So if
Speaker 1: you are a member of the Chicago Teachers Union who
Speaker 1: does not approve of their leadership, buckle up, because the
Speaker 1: next several years they are going they are almost certainly
Speaker 1: going balls to the wall of like, well, if we
Speaker 1: can get a may or, we can get a lot
Speaker 1: of other people too. Yeah, and we should mention here Vitch.
Speaker 1: So a lot of the other unions in Chicago, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: they arrange a to shit. The Chicago Teachers Union got
Speaker 1: taken over by this group called Corps, who are like
Speaker 1: a sort of rank and file like left e Like
Speaker 1: I think, I think a good way to understand core
Speaker 1: is that like with the caveat that, like teachers in
Speaker 1: Chicago really don't make that much money in the grand
Speaker 1: scheme of things, so like income wise, this is not
Speaker 1: line up. But these people are very much like kind
Speaker 1: of resistance liberals on steroids. Um, Like they're not going
Speaker 1: to be like frontliners in a socialist revolution anytime soon,
Speaker 1: but like they are definitely on the far left of
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party coalition. Yeah, well and we should like
Speaker 1: they're not like like they are they are like I
Speaker 1: don't know, I have complicated feelings on them from that
Speaker 1: sort of anarchist respective. They're like they're they're as good
Speaker 1: of a thing of like union people as like you
Speaker 1: currently have. Again we've talked about this could change with
Speaker 1: and you very quickly. But yeah, they've they've been responsible
Speaker 1: for pushing a lot of things that are very good. Yes,
Speaker 1: and they've they've they've turned a union into like I mean,
Speaker 1: well it's okay, so like I want thing to talk about.
Speaker 1: Like they actually do go on strike, which is the
Speaker 1: thing that a lot of unions don't. Like, they go
Speaker 1: on strike. They do they do political things that are
Speaker 1: usually pretty good. Um, and they are an actual sort
Speaker 1: of like they're an actual class space for things getting better. Yes,
Speaker 1: they are. The Chicago Teachers Union is definitely like a
Speaker 1: net good force in city politics. UM and something that
Speaker 1: also like CTU gets a lot of negative attention even
Speaker 1: on a national level. And so something that surprises people
Speaker 1: who don't live in Chicago, if they know about the
Speaker 1: Teachers Union at all, is that the CTU is actually
Speaker 1: very popular among the city's residents. Most like, people love
Speaker 1: the Chicago Teachers Union. Like when the teachers last went
Speaker 1: on strike, the public was over overwhelmingly on their side,
Speaker 1: which is why they won. UM and CTU also like
Speaker 1: they're twenty nineteen strike against Glory Life foot was very
Speaker 1: much like the inspiration that touched off a lot of
Speaker 1: the teacher strikes that happened in red states over the
Speaker 1: next several months. UM like they very much kind of
Speaker 1: led the way in some in some areas. Like so
Speaker 1: they are like like Mia, I have complicated feelings about
Speaker 1: the CTU, but overall they're a good thing for city politics,
Speaker 1: and like they make Chicago a more progressive place. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is the true for like a while to
Speaker 1: like like to the extent that when like I think
Speaker 1: like a back in twenty twelve, and Core was like
Speaker 1: like back back when Core sort of first taken over
Speaker 1: and was first doing their strikes, Like even the CTU
Speaker 1: people were surprised about the extent to which like when
Speaker 1: they went out, like the streets turned into a party,
Speaker 1: Like people actually really do like them, Like I mean
Speaker 1: the cops don't, but like fuck them like people, so
Speaker 1: the cops don't like them. And to see to use credit,
Speaker 1: most Chicago teachers dislike the cops. Yeah, they've they've been
Speaker 1: they've been trying to get cops out of schools, which
Speaker 1: is good because yes, cops in schools are especially in Chicago,
Speaker 1: it's really bad. The last thing I think we should
Speaker 1: mention about the City Council before we move on to
Speaker 1: some of the other elections we need to talk about
Speaker 1: is one of the things that gets criticized about the
Speaker 1: left as an electoral force in places like New York
Speaker 1: or Los Angeles, especially those two places, is that's very
Speaker 1: dominated by white people. And I do want to provide
Speaker 1: the context for those of you who are not from
Speaker 1: the Chicago area, like that's not true in Chicago. The
Speaker 1: progressive movement and the left, like the leftist movement on
Speaker 1: the electoral level in Chicago is very much driven by
Speaker 1: people of color. And you saw this in the City
Speaker 1: Council election results. Almost every single seat that progressives flipped
Speaker 1: on the City Council was in a black or brown ward,
Speaker 1: and even the two wards, like the two white majority
Speaker 1: wards where they flip seats, the new aldermen or Alder
Speaker 1: women in both cases are people of color. So like,
Speaker 1: this is just like context for those of you who
Speaker 1: are not from Chicago. This is not a case of
Speaker 1: like white leftists gone wild. Like this very much is
Speaker 1: a rainbow coalition, not just in the sense that Brandon
Speaker 1: Johnson won the election off of rainbow coalition, but in
Speaker 1: the sense of the electoral left in Chicago is very
Speaker 1: very much a rainbow coalition and has been very effective
Speaker 1: because of that. Yeah, and it's very funny too, because
Speaker 1: you see people like those sort of right wingers in
Speaker 1: Chicago like constantly screaming about like Lake Front liberals, and
Speaker 1: you look at like the actual base of like the
Speaker 1: policy shit, it's like, okay, this is this is same
Speaker 1: dot was actually happening here? Yes, the honest like the
Speaker 1: thing about like race in its relationship with progressive politics
Speaker 1: of Chicago is that the most progressive neighborhoods Chicago, based
Speaker 1: on their voting patterns, are almost always the most racially integrated.
Speaker 1: And that's not to say that like all of the
Speaker 1: racially integrated neighborhoods are progressive, because that's not true. There
Speaker 1: are some pretty integrated neighborhoods on the Southwest Side that
Speaker 1: are like very conservative because a bunch of cops live there.
Speaker 1: But most of the racially integrated neighborhoods of Chicago are
Speaker 1: also the most progressive neighborhoods. And that like really just
Speaker 1: flies in the face of the whole like white Lakefront
Speaker 1: liberal narrative and is something to pay more attention to. Okay, again,
Speaker 1: you cannot be emphasized enough. Brandon john in the progressive
Speaker 1: candidate is black. He's running against a white guy. There
Speaker 1: was a very large attempt to paint like Brandon Johnson
Speaker 1: is like an out of touch like white liberal. It's like,
Speaker 1: which is very yeah, I think like they just have
Speaker 1: I don't know, I mean, it was just the sort
Speaker 1: of like ideological bankruptcy of like like the sort of
Speaker 1: like capitalist establishment is like they have nothing right, like
Speaker 1: they're there, like the only thing they have left is
Speaker 1: like calling a black guy white, and it's just like,
Speaker 1: shut the funk up, like we believes the shit anymore.
Speaker 1: Like and on that note, it might be time for
Speaker 1: some ads. Yeah we are, we are back from our ads.
Speaker 1: I hope you have enjoyed the destruction of the entire world. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so they were. We have talked about Chicago for a
Speaker 1: long time because you're both from Chicago. It's very funny
Speaker 1: and it's very interesting. But oh, actually, okay, I'm realizing this.
Speaker 1: There's one more thing I do. The two more things
Speaker 1: I do specifically want to mention about Brandon Johnson that
Speaker 1: I forgot earlier. One is that he you know, it's
Speaker 1: genuinely unclear to me whether this is a real ideological
Speaker 1: belief he has or whether this is the thing that
Speaker 1: you said to not get called ninety semi because it
Speaker 1: was electorally expedient. But he released a really really shitty
Speaker 1: statement on like what got divestment and sanctions of Israel. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like her personally, Yeah, it was terrible. It was really terrible.
Speaker 1: Like but like, based on what I saw from the
Speaker 1: aftermath of that, I'm inclined to believe that this was
Speaker 1: more something he was told to say. And the reason
Speaker 1: for that is because the reaction that got with the
Speaker 1: crowd he was in front of it was like he
Speaker 1: was speaking with a Jewish organization. Like the the action
Speaker 1: was very like okay, dude, but that's not what we
Speaker 1: asked you about. Um. Like it was a response to
Speaker 1: a question about like, oh, you know, how do you
Speaker 1: handle anti semitism? Um. And I think there are just
Speaker 1: unfortunately a lot of really dipshit consultants in the Democratic
Speaker 1: Party who hear the words anti Semitism and think you
Speaker 1: have to talk about Israel, which is really truly and
Speaker 1: ironically anti semitic of them to think um, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think he was probably told to say that, I'm
Speaker 1: not going to go out on a limit. I guess
Speaker 1: what his actual beliefs on Israel and House Dine are,
Speaker 1: But I'm pretty confident that that was his consultants being dumb. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But like I like the but the actual consequences, like
Speaker 1: he was equitting, like he was equitting by Nti Semitism.
Speaker 1: He like, go, you should try to go find the
Speaker 1: clip somewhere because it's genuinely bizarre and shit. And this
Speaker 1: is this is the part of the episode or what
Speaker 1: to remind people that, like when when when these kinds
Speaker 1: of people get into power, idiots not as good as
Speaker 1: people think, it's going to be like another thing. He
Speaker 1: very like he almost immediately like right after he got elected,
Speaker 1: started trying to convince Biden to have the Democratic National
Speaker 1: Convention in Chicago, which would be a fucking shit show. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is me from the future here. Two days after
Speaker 1: we recorded this, the Democratic Party announced that the twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four Democratic National Convention will indeed be held in Chicago.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's gonna suck. That effort predates him, like
Speaker 1: that's already been in the worst we like, he definitely
Speaker 1: immediately came out and said like, yes, I'm in support
Speaker 1: of this, yeah, which is like some people who don't
Speaker 1: understand why. Okay, So, like the thing that happens when
Speaker 1: when when national convention comes to your city is that
Speaker 1: your city is occupied by the cops and then like
Speaker 1: wherever the convention is happening basically turned into a war
Speaker 1: zone because anyone who comes out and trying to protest
Speaker 1: them just gets like the ship beaten out of them. Yes,
Speaker 1: and there's also usually a lot of anti homeless policies
Speaker 1: they get rolled in advance. We actually we would this
Speaker 1: is it's it's it's not as bad as the stuff
Speaker 1: we talked about with Lula in terms of the World Cup.
Speaker 1: But it's a similar kind of thing that you get
Speaker 1: with these kinds of candidates where they do these sort
Speaker 1: of like giants, they do these sort of like mega
Speaker 1: project developmentalism shit because they want the status that comes
Speaker 1: from it, and the result is stuff that sucks and
Speaker 1: that you know, nominally like like at least in theory,
Speaker 1: like contradicts the rest of his platform, right like this
Speaker 1: this is going to be a thing that brings a
Speaker 1: lot of cops into the fucking city. He's in theory
Speaker 1: supposed to be trying to have policing done by like
Speaker 1: people who are cops. Um, that's gonna suck if it works. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So and that is that is your reminder for if
Speaker 1: you do live in Chicago like me and I, that
Speaker 1: just because Brandon Johnson got elected does not mean that
Speaker 1: you could to sit home. Um, Like if you are
Speaker 1: involved or invested in Chicago progressive politics, Um, just because
Speaker 1: you have a progressive mayor doesn't mean you get to
Speaker 1: sit back and relax. You have to do a lot
Speaker 1: of work to hold these people's feet to the fire. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like you're like, you're you're gonna end up fighting these
Speaker 1: people and it's gonna suck, and you're gonna have to
Speaker 1: do it. Like if if if you if you believe
Speaker 1: in the things that you think that you claim to
Speaker 1: believe to you when are not sort of just acting
Speaker 1: out of like you know, either you're not just purely
Speaker 1: acting out a sort of candidate loyalty. You were you
Speaker 1: were going to have to fight people that you helped
Speaker 1: get elected, and you're gonna have to prepare for that.
Speaker 1: Start the five stages of grief. Now, okay, moving moving
Speaker 1: moving on from that ship, moving on, we need to
Speaker 1: talk about Wisconsin. Um. The other big election that happened
Speaker 1: on Tuesday night was an election that flipped the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court of the State of Wisconsin from a conservative majority
Speaker 1: and not just like lowercase C conservative, but like batch
Speaker 1: and saying Christian nationalists conservative, from a majority of those
Speaker 1: people to a liberal majority that is hopefully going to
Speaker 1: make life better for the people of Wisconsin. So, for
Speaker 1: those of you who are not paying attention to this,
Speaker 1: which is likely even more than the people who are
Speaker 1: not paying attention to Chicago because state Supreme Court races.
Speaker 1: Most people if you tell them about those, react with
Speaker 1: that's a thing. Yeah, and I mean to be fair.
Speaker 1: To be fair, this is probably the most nationally prominent
Speaker 1: like states board election of my lifetime. That means that
Speaker 1: maybe four people knew about it instead of one. Yes.
Speaker 1: So on Tuesday night, Janet Protoswitz, who was the Democratic
Speaker 1: aligned candidate, beat the Republican aligned candidate Daniel Kelly, who
Speaker 1: was himself a former member of the Wisconsin Supreme Court
Speaker 1: by eleven points, which is a really big deal because
Speaker 1: Wisconsin voted for Joe Biden buy zero point six points.
Speaker 1: So this is very much like landslide level territory for
Speaker 1: wiscon for Wisconsin Democrats, it was very much a perfect storm.
Speaker 1: Like the areas of the state that have been trending
Speaker 1: towards Republicans experienced massive reversion back towards proto saywits and
Speaker 1: the areas of the state that have historically been a
Speaker 1: Republican also really shifted left. And the reason this happened,
Speaker 1: the single reason it happened, is because of the Dobs
Speaker 1: ruling that overturned Rov. Wade and brought American gender dynamics.
Speaker 1: Backed by a solid seventy five years, Protz successfully turned
Speaker 1: the campaign into a referendum on abortion rights, which is
Speaker 1: why she won by the margin she did. There was
Speaker 1: huge turnout in Madison, Milwaukee and college campuses. There were
Speaker 1: multiple college campuses, I think where there were more votes
Speaker 1: cast in this state Supreme Court election then there were
Speaker 1: in the mid terms last November. So this really was
Speaker 1: like every single thing that possibly could have gone right
Speaker 1: electorally for the Democrats in Wisconsin did obviously with very
Speaker 1: very like grim background context of the overturning of Row,
Speaker 1: but a good sign for the future of the abortion
Speaker 1: rights movement that you know, people voters did not forget
Speaker 1: about dabs after the midterms, like this is still an
Speaker 1: active force in national politics that is pushing people to
Speaker 1: the left. M yeah, And I want to specifically talk
Speaker 1: about this for a little bit too, because like I
Speaker 1: think the media has kind of has really I think
Speaker 1: fallen down on the fucking job here, which is that
Speaker 1: like these poms like because there's like all all people
Speaker 1: in the fucking media class are either like themselves, are
Speaker 1: like hardline anti abortion gools, or the people who this
Speaker 1: doesn't affect and you know, so they just stopped giving
Speaker 1: a shit after like a couple of months because it's
Speaker 1: like whatever, who cares. But like, this is a if
Speaker 1: you are living under this, like this is this is
Speaker 1: like you can't fucking ignore this, no, like it is
Speaker 1: it is a it is an immense engine of death
Speaker 1: and human suffering that you know, it's it's it's this
Speaker 1: is the US, right, we live under enormal Like we
Speaker 1: live under a lot of immense sort of engines of
Speaker 1: death and human suffering. But this is this is a
Speaker 1: kind of engine that just sweeps through I mean, it
Speaker 1: sweeps across the sort of what you think of as
Speaker 1: like the quote unquote like like traditional sort of uh
Speaker 1: like I don't know, you know, like classizes in the
Speaker 1: right thing, but like you know, it's this is the
Speaker 1: thing that kind of sweeps across the the urban world
Speaker 1: divide in a lot of ways, Like it sweeps a
Speaker 1: quite a lot of quite across a lot of the
Speaker 1: certain normal political divisions. Because the Republicans have been like
Speaker 1: their their their line on abortion has been hijacked by
Speaker 1: I want to say, hijack right. This is what this
Speaker 1: is what, this is what these people always wanted. But
Speaker 1: it's it's been it's being set by a bunch of
Speaker 1: just deranged Christian nationalists whose opinion reflect maybe towards like
Speaker 1: thirty percent of the country backs not even that, Like
Speaker 1: the like the ruling of the judge down in Texas
Speaker 1: on I'm going to mess up how to pronounce this,
Speaker 1: and I apologize, but um, if a pristone which is
Speaker 1: an abortion like a pill that, among other things, can
Speaker 1: induce abortions. Uh, there was like a Republican judge down
Speaker 1: in northern Texas who attempted, who like attempted to overturn
Speaker 1: the FDA's approval of the drug. The FDA proved this
Speaker 1: drug in the nineties. Um, and and his ruling very
Speaker 1: much was insane, like on top of just like the
Speaker 1: superficial insanity of trying to do this. His reasoning was that,
Speaker 1: you know, this man wrote a ruling saying that the
Speaker 1: Constitution guarantees fetal personhood, which is a which you know
Speaker 1: would a result in a complete and total ban on
Speaker 1: abortion nationwide under all circumstances. And that's a viewpoint that
Speaker 1: is shared by less than ten percent of Americans. So
Speaker 1: like it's just you know, the Republican Party has gone
Speaker 1: off the cliff after they went off the cliff here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And you know, I don't know, I think this whole
Speaker 1: I think there's a lot of ways in which this
Speaker 1: entire sort of election, the election dynamics if this, are
Speaker 1: really grim because the Democrats, to the people who let
Speaker 1: the shit fucking happen, right like, for years and years
Speaker 1: and years and years, they just you know, they used
Speaker 1: abortion as an electoral thing and then did fucking thing
Speaker 1: to actually make sure that abortion would be that you know,
Speaker 1: would be saving and they finally lost it. And now
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, it's the thing that's like like,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's the electoral issue that's coming to
Speaker 1: bail them out of their like electoral woes, and that
Speaker 1: fucking sucks in a lot of ways. But it also means,
Speaker 1: I don't know, like it's it's it's it's beating some
Speaker 1: of the worst people in the fucking world. If we
Speaker 1: want to actually make sure that people have the ability
Speaker 1: to have safe abortions on demand, we are going to
Speaker 1: have to do a lot of fighting that is not
Speaker 1: just showing up to these elections. Yes, absolutely, um, but
Speaker 1: it is yeah, like like Amia said, it is really
Speaker 1: just like heinous that so many of the Democratic Party
Speaker 1: big wigs who presided over the fifty years of Republicans
Speaker 1: saying they were going to be going to do this
Speaker 1: and not taking Republicans seriously, are never going to be
Speaker 1: sold accountable for this. Yeah, and I don't think I
Speaker 1: need to be you needs to be put it out
Speaker 1: with this too. Was like the Republicans the entire time,
Speaker 1: We're in every single way they possibly could like outlawing
Speaker 1: abortion without literally outlawing it, and people just stood there
Speaker 1: like the party which is just just like we don't give
Speaker 1: a shit, Like we're not We're not going to like
Speaker 1: actually like fight this except for occasionally to run a
Speaker 1: losing candidate, right, Like I don't know, Yeah, no, it's
Speaker 1: it's insane, And like there are there are people in
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party who were trying to raise the alarm.
Speaker 1: Those people were generally ignored. Um. But the you know,
Speaker 1: now that abortion rights are gone on a national level, um,
Speaker 1: we are seeing this electoral backlash and it is having
Speaker 1: the impact of like, you know, Republicans have been unable
Speaker 1: to effectively make the national conversation about inflation, or about crime,
Speaker 1: or about trans athletes, which is also a losing shoe
Speaker 1: for them, but God knows they keep trying. They have
Speaker 1: been unable to make the national conversation about those topics
Speaker 1: because voters are now looking at them like, but you're
Speaker 1: the freaks that took our abortion rights away? What's wrong
Speaker 1: with you? And in terms of Wisconsin, pro to say,
Speaker 1: which being on the Wisconsin Supreme Court is almost certainly
Speaker 1: she doesn't take office until August, which is a really
Speaker 1: weird amount of time for her to have to wait, Like,
Speaker 1: I don't know why Wisconsin is like that, but it is.
Speaker 1: But once she is in office, Wisconsin should have restored
Speaker 1: abortion access, I would say almost immediately, basically, like as
Speaker 1: soon as someone can file a lawsuit over it, because
Speaker 1: right now, abortion is currently illegal in Wisconsin under a
Speaker 1: law from eighteen forty nine that the only exception to
Speaker 1: the law is to save the life of the mother, which, like,
Speaker 1: I think people who are not personally impacted by the
Speaker 1: possibility of pregnancy or the possibility of childbirth, I think
Speaker 1: really don't emotionally internalize what the language around some of
Speaker 1: these exceptions means. And it's like, if you are hearing
Speaker 1: the words like the only exception is life of the mother,
Speaker 1: that's really terrifying because it means like, if you're going
Speaker 1: to be permanently injured as someone who's pregnant, but you're
Speaker 1: not literally going to die, abortion is not an option
Speaker 1: for you. If the fetus that you are carrying, you know,
Speaker 1: whether you wanted an abortion or not, if that fetus
Speaker 1: has some kind of fatal defect, that is going to
Speaker 1: mean that your baby dies within hours or days after
Speaker 1: being born, and it is going to be in pain
Speaker 1: the whole time. Abortion is not an option for you.
Speaker 1: If you are pregnant because of sexual violence or because
Speaker 1: of incest, abortion is not an option for you. And
Speaker 1: it's it's like, you know, I am a cisgender man,
Speaker 1: so like I can't personally understand, but like I can
Speaker 1: only guess how terrifying of a reality that is. And
Speaker 1: the you know, the only good news out of this
Speaker 1: is that once pret to say Witz is in office,
Speaker 1: that law is probably going to go away as quickly
Speaker 1: as possible, which is a much needed victory for the
Speaker 1: people of Wisconsin, and hopefully is you know, carries the
Speaker 1: momentum forward for like post twenty twenty four, hopefully we
Speaker 1: have democratic trifecta again that can legislate abortion rights nationally
Speaker 1: and take it out of the ability, take away the
Speaker 1: ability for courts to strike it down. There are some
Speaker 1: other ramifications for the state of Wisconsin that should also
Speaker 1: be mentioned. For those of you who live in Wisconsin.
Speaker 1: If I say the words public sector union law, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm talking about, the very infamous law that
Speaker 1: was passed by Scott Walker back in twenty ten, twenty eleven.
Speaker 1: I think that really restricted the collective bargaining rights of
Speaker 1: public sector unions and like this sparked a recall campaign
Speaker 1: against Walker, which failed and proto Sait has said on
Speaker 1: record she said it in a campaign appearance, because this
Speaker 1: race really just discarded all pretensions of like judicial impartiality.
Speaker 1: But she said in a campaign appearance that she wanted
Speaker 1: to get rid of that law. So that law is
Speaker 1: probably going away, or hopefully we'll be going away. Wisconsin
Speaker 1: also has very cherrymandard state legislative maps that are almost
Speaker 1: certainly going to be struck down. The same thing with
Speaker 1: its congressional maps, which means that Democrats can probably count
Speaker 1: on two more seats in the House post twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: and also on a basic like do we live in
Speaker 1: a democracy or not? Level in twenty twenty, when the
Speaker 1: Trump campaign was filing all of its really idiotic lawsuits
Speaker 1: alleging voter fraud, the Supreme Court of Wisconsin was the
Speaker 1: court that came the closest to taking those allegations seriously.
Speaker 1: They voted by one vote to dismiss the case because
Speaker 1: one of the conservatives broke ranks and he has been
Speaker 1: hounded by the far right in Wisconsin ever since. Wisconsin
Speaker 1: was one vote away from just throwing out the popular
Speaker 1: election results. Like the popular vote results, so they're proto
Speaker 1: state which winning is literally an insurance policy for continuing
Speaker 1: to have the state of Wisconsin be a democracy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is good, Like I don't know that having a
Speaker 1: state that is effectively ruled by dictatorship that was about
Speaker 1: to attempt to install like a dictators president, um is good,
Speaker 1: Like I don't know. This is my my my lib
Speaker 1: take on this is in fact not good when I
Speaker 1: think a bunch of people are ruled by just an
Speaker 1: open dictatorship. So, which is essentially what Wisconsin you know,
Speaker 1: has been barring Tony Evers's wins as a governor in
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen and twenty twenty two, like until he was
Speaker 1: in office, like Scott Walker presided over a single party
Speaker 1: dictatorship in Wisconsin. Um, and so like you know, but
Speaker 1: just part of also why proto state which was able
Speaker 1: to invite the margins that she did, because you know,
Speaker 1: Wisconsin is a swing state. It is reliably going to
Speaker 1: be close to fifty fifty, but especially on social issues,
Speaker 1: it has a liberal majority, and a lot of people
Speaker 1: paid attention to this race and they saw correctly the
Speaker 1: opportunity to dismantle the dictatorship that effectively has had control
Speaker 1: of Wisconsin for the last decade plus. Yeah, and I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, the other thing, like part of what we're
Speaker 1: what's happening here is that if conservatives are actually allowed
Speaker 1: to do uncontested rule in a place that's even like
Speaker 1: kind of not just like a one like conservative district,
Speaker 1: the results that they, like, the actual policies they put
Speaker 1: in place are fucking horrifying. Yeah, it's bad, obviously bad,
Speaker 1: but like you get, I mean, you get you get
Speaker 1: stuff like what happened in to see in the last week,
Speaker 1: where they know, the state legislature expelled Democratic lawmakers for
Speaker 1: like engaging in the mildest of protests against like an
Speaker 1: open kerry bill and you know, just in a real
Speaker 1: cherry on top moment. The Tennessee State legislature only expelled
Speaker 1: the black legislators who protested, and the white legislator who
Speaker 1: joined them survived her expulsion vote because you know, we
Speaker 1: don't want to be you know, like the days of
Speaker 1: the Republican Party not wanting to be two on the
Speaker 1: nose about the racism are long gone. Um. But yes, so,
Speaker 1: But overall, good things happened in Wisconsin on Tuesday, and
Speaker 1: some of the really terrible things that were put into
Speaker 1: law in that state in the last decade are hopefully
Speaker 1: about to go away. Yeah, there were some other places,
Speaker 1: mostly in the Midwest because once again the coastal regions
Speaker 1: of the country led us down. But there were some
Speaker 1: other places where liberals or progressives did well on Tuesday.
Speaker 1: Saint Louis, Missouri, has had a progressive city council, and
Speaker 1: there was a very strong kind of law and order
Speaker 1: challenge to that progressive majority based in the city's white majority.
Speaker 1: Wards and after Tuesday night, it's pretty clear that progressives
Speaker 1: will continue to have a majority on the city council.
Speaker 1: In Kansas City, on the other end of the state
Speaker 1: of Missouri, we are probably going to get the most
Speaker 1: progressive city council that the city has ever had. There
Speaker 1: the main left wing group got all of its candidates
Speaker 1: through to the general election which is on June twentieth,
Speaker 1: and the main like right wing tough on crime group
Speaker 1: seems like it's going to be capped at winning two seats.
Speaker 1: So you know, once again, the Midwest is the engine
Speaker 1: of American progressivism and the West coast can suck it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there is one more piece of good news, which is
Speaker 1: that in Illinois there was a set of far right
Speaker 1: groups that ran a bunch of school board candidates on
Speaker 1: the like anti critical race theory, anti queer, anti trans platforms,
Speaker 1: and actually I'll just say the names of the groups
Speaker 1: because people should know. These groups are Awake Illinois, Moms
Speaker 1: for Liberty, and the seventeen seventy six Project. Basically, these
Speaker 1: groups are you know, if you went to the South
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies, you had the Clan and then
Speaker 1: you had the White Citizens Council, which was the supposedly
Speaker 1: more respectable face of white nationalism in the South in
Speaker 1: the sixties and seventies, and groups like Moms for Liberty
Speaker 1: and Awake Illinois are kind of the equivalent to groups
Speaker 1: like the Proud Boys and very you know, fittingly with
Speaker 1: the analogy here, these groups are primarily run and staffed
Speaker 1: by conservative women, just like white citizens councils were down
Speaker 1: south about fifty years ago, and thankfully these candidates almost
Speaker 1: all went down in Flames. I think there is a
Speaker 1: school board election in me and ice hometown, which is
Speaker 1: very notoriously conservative for people in the area, and even
Speaker 1: in that in our hometown, they've lost. And like these
Speaker 1: losses extended into Downstay, Illinois too, And like there's a
Speaker 1: small city called Quincy in western Illinois where it's like,
Speaker 1: this is a a place that votes Republican routinely by
Speaker 1: like thirty points, like a sixty five percent majority, and
Speaker 1: the far right school board candidates lost in Quincy, Illinois. Um,
Speaker 1: so thankfully people saw through the bullshit and we're like, actually,
Speaker 1: you people are weirdos and we're not going to hand
Speaker 1: you power. Yeah. Another thing it was very funny is Carbondale,
Speaker 1: which is like a very y like this is like
Speaker 1: like this is this is this is a Carbondale as
Speaker 1: a southern Illinois ass town is like not quite as
Speaker 1: far south technically speaking, because you can go in Illinois,
Speaker 1: but like it's close. Yeah, unliked their first transperson to
Speaker 1: serve in a city council anywhere in Illinois. So like
Speaker 1: they're they're getting cloverted fucking Carbondale like they had a
Speaker 1: really just destroyed. And I'm very happy about this because
Speaker 1: I you know, a lot of kids are going to
Speaker 1: grow up in schools that are way less shitty than
Speaker 1: they were. Like even when I was there were like,
Speaker 1: God help the generation before us. It was just like
Speaker 1: survived that like would have killed like me and most
Speaker 1: of the people like I know, like yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: the schools that me and I grew up in were
Speaker 1: not a great place to be queerer trans on any variety.
Speaker 1: But I mean this is also going to help because
Speaker 1: of I have. I still don't know what the Biden
Speaker 1: administration was thinking about this, but like the new like
Speaker 1: rule that they're rolling out around trans participation in K
Speaker 1: through twelve sports through the Department of Education. Um, this
Speaker 1: got a lot of attention on Twitter in the last
Speaker 1: couple of days because I'm going to be as charitable
Speaker 1: as I can here to all of the people involved.
Speaker 1: But there was a panic on in progressive s goals
Speaker 1: on social media and especially queer and trans circles, because
Speaker 1: the Washington Post decided to frame this rule in like
Speaker 1: the most like hyperbolic way possible. And this is not
Speaker 1: me saying that the rule is good, because the rule
Speaker 1: could definitely still be bad. But the Biden administration is essentially,
Speaker 1: from what I can tell, trying to include trans kids
Speaker 1: in Title nine protections. The proposed wording of their rule
Speaker 1: is not great and definitely needs to be improved, But
Speaker 1: the outcome here can be good in the sense that
Speaker 1: it would ban blanket prohibitions on trans kids in K
Speaker 1: through twelve sports, and it would require exceptions to like
Speaker 1: it would require like any exceptions to pretty much be like,
Speaker 1: you know, you have to prove that there is a
Speaker 1: danger to like fair competition here, which is the standard
Speaker 1: that Title nine uses for sports for cisgender men and
Speaker 1: cisgender boys and cisgender girls. So like can be good.
Speaker 1: Will you know, if you are invested in this, the
Speaker 1: public comment period on that rule is about to open,
Speaker 1: It's definitely a place where you should speak up and say, like, hey,
Speaker 1: the wording of this is a little shit, Like, let's
Speaker 1: be clearer here that the presumption should be that trans
Speaker 1: kids should be allowed to participate in on teams that
Speaker 1: align with the gender they identify as. Um and thankfully,
Speaker 1: because a lot of these dipshit school board candidates lost,
Speaker 1: hopefully some of these school boards will be taking the
Speaker 1: right side of history here. Yeah, go go go. Yeah. Okay,
Speaker 1: So I'm slightly more angry about this than than you are,
Speaker 1: because I I don't know. I think I think there's
Speaker 1: a pretty glaring hole in this that let's transphobs just
Speaker 1: be like well, obviously like yeah, and I guess yeah.
Speaker 1: I think the fourteine is vague and it should be
Speaker 1: made a lot less vague. I think it's bad. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I I think I think the backlash to
Speaker 1: the backlash about that went too far off. Now there's
Speaker 1: a bunch of people insisting that this is in fact
Speaker 1: a really good rule, and like no, like if if,
Speaker 1: if it's if it's If it's executed as is, it
Speaker 1: is going to let a lot of people do a
Speaker 1: lot of friend phobic shit. Yes, um, as is it
Speaker 1: is bad. If they change the wording of it, it
Speaker 1: can be better. Yeah, So I'd go yell at Biden
Speaker 1: until he makes it less shit. Absolutely, Yet you have
Speaker 1: to do this. Yeah, if you see him, if you
Speaker 1: see him walking down the street, yell at him. If
Speaker 1: you see him in a restaurant, yell at him. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: very very genuinely like a It's always a good idea
Speaker 1: to yell at the Biden administration about anything, um, but
Speaker 1: be especially go yell at him about this. This can
Speaker 1: be done multiple ways. You can reach out to your
Speaker 1: congressional representatives and tell them that you want the rule
Speaker 1: are already made better. You can go there should be
Speaker 1: soon a direct like form you can fill out on
Speaker 1: the Department of Education website where you can provide your
Speaker 1: own personal opinion on the rule. But basically go yell
Speaker 1: at the fine administration and tell them to insert language
Speaker 1: into the rule that makes very clear that the legal
Speaker 1: presumption that must be overcome should be that trans kids
Speaker 1: get to compete on the teams of the gender they
Speaker 1: identify with. Yeah. So yeah, having now yelled about that
Speaker 1: for a bit, Yeah, we should, I think start wrapping
Speaker 1: up the last sort of bits of electoral news. Yes, okay,
Speaker 1: so the last thing I think we should talk about
Speaker 1: is probably Denver, Denver for those of you who do
Speaker 1: not know me and I, which is probably almost I
Speaker 1: would hope almost everyone who listens to I will die
Speaker 1: on the hill that Denver is a West Coast city.
Speaker 1: It is not physically on the ocean, but the vibes rancid,
Speaker 1: and like the rest of the West Coast, Denver let
Speaker 1: us down. On Tuesday night, the mayor's election is going
Speaker 1: to runoff between two candidates who both have pretty awful
Speaker 1: platforms on homelessness, and there is one that is worse.
Speaker 1: So if you are looking for the candidates to hold
Speaker 1: your nose and vote for, right now you know see
Speaker 1: how it goes. But right now I would say that
Speaker 1: is Mike Johnson, not because he has anything good to
Speaker 1: say he's he doesn't, but because his opponent, Kelly bro
Speaker 1: says that she would have homeless people arrested if they
Speaker 1: refuse to leave camps in public parks. So she just
Speaker 1: fucking blows and she should be, you know, never be
Speaker 1: allowed anywhere in your power. The other bit of Denver
Speaker 1: news I think we should talk about is there was
Speaker 1: a housing referendum where the proposal was to turn an
Speaker 1: old golf course is not currently being used into a
Speaker 1: housing development that would have I think twenty five percent
Speaker 1: affordable units, and it would part of it would also
Speaker 1: be turned into a park. And truly, what I thought
Speaker 1: was the dumbest thing that happened on Tuesday night, the
Speaker 1: proposal lost, and the Denver branch of DSA was campaigning
Speaker 1: against this housing development on the premise that building more
Speaker 1: housing is bad if someone profits off of it. And
Speaker 1: I definitely understand that profit. Listen, like, profiting off of
Speaker 1: housing is bad. We also need more housing, and Denver
Speaker 1: especially desperately needs more housing. And somehow we got this
Speaker 1: incredibly stupid coalition of nimbies and like green space environmentalists
Speaker 1: and the Denver DSA that all came together to stop
Speaker 1: at the housing development. And Mia, I'm I'm sure you
Speaker 1: probably think a little differently about this than I do.
Speaker 1: But I saw this and I was like, what the hell, man?
Speaker 1: I mean? Okay, so here's what I know very little
Speaker 1: about this. My take is, if you have the opportunity
Speaker 1: to destroy a golf course and you vote no, you
Speaker 1: are like, as long as you're not literally building a
Speaker 1: prison camp like reactionary dougs the bourgeoisie, destroy every golf
Speaker 1: course always a good you know, That's actually that's pretty good.
Speaker 1: That's that's a pretty good line. I should start saying
Speaker 1: it to more people. Destroy every golf course you can.
Speaker 1: But yeah, now this it was I think the most
Speaker 1: frustrating thing that I saw happen on Tuesday night, and
Speaker 1: I think it is one of those questions that the
Speaker 1: left is going to have to deal with in the
Speaker 1: next couple of years. Is like, all right, we have
Speaker 1: a lot of cities that desperately need a lot more housing.
Speaker 1: So how do we get it done, if you, you know,
Speaker 1: without just turning it over to the real estate lobby,
Speaker 1: because obviously that would also be really shitty. Um, but
Speaker 1: the answer cannot be don't build more housing. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: the thing I will say about this also is that
Speaker 1: another answer is, like, you know, we've covered this on
Speaker 1: the show to like the other part of this, if
Speaker 1: if you don't want a city that's just like absolutely horrific,
Speaker 1: you need to have a strong tennis movement, and you
Speaker 1: need to need to have a tennis movement that's willing
Speaker 1: to move beyond things like rank control and move towards
Speaker 1: like actively like fighting disease buildings from like from developers.
Speaker 1: And that's a that's the thing that's happening that there
Speaker 1: are places where people are doing this. It can be done. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah, like that, I don't know, Like I feel like,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm not going to go into my
Speaker 1: entire thing on the sort of NEWBIB debate other than
Speaker 1: saying that, like, increasing the power of tenants will give
Speaker 1: you a bet, will we'll give you the best options? Yes,
Speaker 1: very very much. Tenant unions are good. Um, yelling at
Speaker 1: the Biden administration is good. Destroying golf courses is good,
Speaker 1: and abortion rights are good. Yeah, and go fight for
Speaker 1: these things and things that aren't elections, because every once
Speaker 1: in a while, an election will give you a result
Speaker 1: which is the worst person on earth has been replaced
Speaker 1: by a slightly better person. And you know, I do
Speaker 1: like to not be ruled by the worst person on earth.
Speaker 1: But the the the ideal political situation is the one
Speaker 1: we're not. We're like people cease to rule over us. So, yes,
Speaker 1: you got you gotta do the non electoral work alongside
Speaker 1: the electoral work. You can't just be relying on elections
Speaker 1: to make things better. You've got to be pushing for
Speaker 1: it all the time. Yeah, well, I say, yeah, I
Speaker 1: am much softer on electoral work. Oh yeah, Mia would
Speaker 1: rather Mia would rather than everyone doing electoral work start
Speaker 1: doing better things with their time and her eyes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but if if you are going to be a person
Speaker 1: who does electoral stuff like it doesn't it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: what electoral victories you win if you are just not
Speaker 1: doing anything that isn't electoral, because the actual sort of plow,
Speaker 1: the actual composition of political power in the city, and
Speaker 1: the sort of the city's class composition, the balance of
Speaker 1: forces between sort of like yeah, I mean things like
Speaker 1: between unions and employers, right like directly between workers and
Speaker 1: between the employers. There are lots and lots and lots
Speaker 1: of things that are very very important even if you
Speaker 1: are an electoral list, that are mostly decided outside of
Speaker 1: almost almost entirely decided outside the ballot box. And if
Speaker 1: you don't take that into account and you try to
Speaker 1: just run like the most well engineered political campaign, you're
Speaker 1: gonna end up like two you're going to get sixteen Democrats. Democrats. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Now everything that Mida just said, and yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: hope you've enjoyed the longest amount of time I will
Speaker 1: ever be caught talking about an election that doesn't involve
Speaker 1: a coupe. Yeah, this make it happen to here. Yeah, thanks,
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