July 1, 2019

Quiet Revolution, Take One

By now, millions are aware of Lori Lightfoot, became the first African- American woman Mayor of Chicago. Lightfoot became the first openly gay person to be mayor of  Chicago, now the largest U.S. city to have an LGBTQ mayor.

The 2019 municipal election also was a game-changer for the Chicago City Council. More than a dozen 20+ year incumbents were ousted by young candidates who (who, like Lightfoot) had never served in public office. Six are declared Democratic Socialists (a la Bernie.) Nearly all have joined the Progressive Reform Caucus which now has about one-third of the Council members (17). Before this election, fewer than ten were not rubber stamps for the mayor and “machine.” There were never more than two or three in the loyal opposition in the 50 years the two Richard Daleys were mayor.

New alderpersons include:

• An AT&T store manager and a member of a hip-hop collective
• A 28 year old Puerto Rican-born teacher and community organizer
• A woman who led a 34-day hunger strike that kept City Hall from shutting down a neighborhood school
• A Latino and Latina who both campaigned for fair housing
• The first queer woman of color ever to serve in the City Council.

Politics as usual has ended, but Chicago still has to deal with $28 billion in pension debt, street and police violence, and underachieving segregated schools. The election means that a new set of government officials will be in place to tackle the challenges for at least the next four years.

About 40 years ago, I produced a documentary about the 84-year old longest-serving City Council, Alderman Vito Marzullo.  Professor and author Milt Rakove said, “The Council is not a legislative body in the traditional sense. It’s a cross between the Supreme Soviet in Russia and the House of Commons in Great Britain. It fits somewhere in between.”  Hear Rakove’s full comments starting at 22:00, and watch the whole video here: https://mediaburn.org/video/vito-marzullo/

Studs Terkel called the aldermen “A bunch of trained seals, all applauding Mayor [Richard J.] Daley” in 1975. Hear Terkel’s full comments starting at 17:39, and watch the whole video here: https://mediaburn.org/video/its-a-living-2/

Whatever happens now, it’s a new game in Chicago.  The majority of voters has rejected the corruption and the old order of public officials. Maybe we’ll see a similar outcome all over the country on many levels of government in 2020.  Hope so.

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Historical Perspectives from PY-O-MY Letters

I’ve been digitally thumbing through July 1 Weinberg House Organs from years past. Here are a few examples of stuff I wrote:

From July 1, 2015: 

[re income disparity]:  DEALBOOK published in May showed that the top 25 hedge fund managers reaped $11.62 billion in compensation in 2014, equal to the starting pay of about 290,000 teachers.

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From July 1, 2016: 

[re 2016 election]: … oftentimes the [Presidential] nominations have gone to Washington outsiders who weren’t even “in the running” in the early stages: 

Jimmy Carter (1976) polled less than 1% a few months before the first primary; 

Michael Dukakis (1988) also had about 1% early in the year and before any primaries;

Bill Clinton (1992) was commonly labeled by the press as a “big underdog” prior to the first primary.

I guess we’ll have to wait a few months to see if the same applies in 2020, But as Grampa Louie used to say “You just can’t always sometimes tell.”  [oops, Hello Donald]

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From July 1, 2017:

July 5 is a significant date in the history for the Weinberg House Organ.  It was on this date in 1907 that Louis Weinberg Jr. was born (at home on Chicago’s South Side) and on the same date in 1967, he died at Highland Park Hospital. Every July 5 was an event—in part because his liver and kidney disease diagnosis in 1952 had given him two to three years to live and he kept defying the odds. My mother and our family never failed to have what seemed like a big-deal party every July 5.

While he was in the hospital a few weeks before his 60^th, he told me (and everyone who visited) that this next party was going to be the biggest ever.   

He was right.

In the July 1962 House Organ, he wrote:

Almost every man

Who is now alive

Once thought it was old

To be 55.

I get it. No matter how old you are, this feeling is always applicable. Just like my dad, I continue to realize that the only choice is to keep going as long and as productively and as joyfully as you can.

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From July 1, 2018:

Many financial and economic experts fear that “the sky is falling” and are predicting the crash of the dollar as the primary world currency. “They say that a new global currency, ‘Distributed Ledgers’ or International Money Fund SDR’s, will someday soon become the world’s reserve currency and the dollar will become localized like most others already are. Their argument is that every country is now forced to hold reserves in dollars, but there are unmistakable signs that the realities are changing drastically.

IMF chief Christine LaGarde recently said, “It’s a brave new world in the financial sector.” The idea is that foreign governments will no longer be required to buy U.S. Treasury bonds, the largest holders of which are China and Japan. If this theory is correct, the dollar will be devalued significantly and an untraceable encrypted system will dominate.

I studied this stuff about 50 years ago in graduate school. I don’t think about it every day… I’m a TV producer, writer, teacher grampa and archivist.  But, my gut tells me that we’re in for a literal economic/financial earthquake sometime pretty soon.

Don’t get me wrong, the disintegration of values and ethics caused by the current administration are shocking and unprecedented, but Trump and his henchmen can’t take the blame for the inevitable dollar dumping. The argument goes that this tectonic shift has been created and controlled by the only people whose interests will benefit…the elite global financial institutions, corporations and individuals. That’s the worldwide one percent [and the economic monster in the room, China].

Yikes! How did I get carried away leading with this boring stuff? I apologize, but it’s what I’m thinking about…and I write what’s on my mind, even if it’s off the charts one way or another.

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The Amazon Octopus

Last week I read an eye-opening (and scary) story in the July issue of In These Times, a small progressive investigative journalism monthly. Written by David Dayen, it was titled “Prime New World: How Amazon infiltrated every aspect of our lives—and what we can do about it.” 

 The scale of Amazon is shocking:

• 45% of online shopping;  eBay is second with 6.8% and the next five (Walmart, Apple, Home Depot, Best Buy and Macy’s) total 19%.
• 42% of book sales; nobody else is close.
• 32% of global cloud computing, more than Microsoft, Google, and IBM combined.

The article concludes: “If Amazon has caused this much upheaval today, when online shopping is still 16% of retail sales, the future is limitless and grim. We have time to reverse this transfer of power and make it our world instead of Amazon’s. It’s an opportunity we can’t afford to squander.”

I highly recommend reading this. It tells it like it is. Here’s the link: http://inthesetimes.com/features/amazon_ftc_antitrust_monopoly_bezos_competition.html

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Good Old Days…ah the Ironies

Every day, here in Chicago (and in every city I’ve been to in last 3 years) it seems like there are wealthy people walking the street and shopping at expensive stores. Sitting on those same sidewalks are an ever-increasing group who are asking the rest of us for a little help. At the risk of political incorrectness, here’s one woman who came up to me last week as I was eating a hot dog at a sidewalk table on Rush Street and asked nicely for some money for food. 

I gave her two dollars. The next minute, she pulled out her cell phone and answered it. She would never have asked if she didn’t need some money, but it brought me face-to-face with my own biases and assumptions.

It reminded me of a quote form somewhere or other (“I got it from the Internet,” as my college students used to identify their sources):

“When I was a boy, my Momma would send me down to the corner store with a dollar, and I’d come back with five pounds of potatoes, two loaves of bread, three pints of milk, a pound of cheese, a box of tea and a half a dozen eggs.

You can’t do that now. 

Too many fuckin’ security cameras.”

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The Grandkids

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Sara Chapman from Media Burn had an enormously successful trip to St. Petersburg, Russia for a video artist exchange in June. The same group will be doing some public video events in Chicago in August. Details to follow in August 1 House Organ.

Meanwhile, enjoy the overfull lakes, ponds and pools.  We’re headed for Kentucky to do exactly that this Fourth of July weekend.

As ever,