Is a New Rainbow Coalition of Voters Possible?

are exactly right. Your memory is correct. But we did get to meet Harold Washington, to meet Harry, I want to forget that. And boy I was beautiful. Boy did that turn out to be historic. I'm Khalil Gibra Muhammed. I'm Ben Austin. We are two best friends, one black, one white. I'm a historian and I'm a journalist. And this is some of my best friends are some of my best friends are dot dot dot. In this show, we wrestle with the challenges and the absurdities of a

deeply divided and unequal country. And today we are talking about one of the most legendary Chicago politicians, Mayor Harold Washington, who's the subject of a recent documentary Punch nine. For Harold Washington. We're gonna learn about his Rainbow Coalition, where it came from, and how it's working today. Yep, yep, that's right. We're also going to talk to someone who is carrying on that legacy in Chicago right now, an

older woman from Chicago, Rosanna Rodriguez Sanchez. Hey, man, I am really interested in what's happening in Chicago right now. We have a ton of black people and Latino people running for mayor. The current mayor, Laurie Lightfoot, has been on her heels for a long time. And I know, you know this doesn't make a lot of sense to everybody, but Chicago has been a bell weather for the nation

for a long time. I mean, the first black yeah Chicago is the first black politician since Reconstruction came out of Chicago. The obviously, the first black President of the United States came from Chicago. The first black woman to go to the US Senate came out of Chicago. So what happens in Chicago matters to the rest of the nation, right man, that's right, that's right. You know, this mayor

election is historic in so many ways. And one way which is surprising is there's only one white candidate in the race. Right, Oh wow, yes, that has to be the first time ever in the history of Chicago. I did not only one white candidate. Actually didn't realize that.

That's really fascinating because you and I watched this documentary Punch nine, and it is a history of the first black mayor of Chicago, Harold Washington, when the script was totally flipped away from you know, a gazillion white mayors and one of the most ruthless machine politicians, old Man Richard J. Daley mayor for life. He was mayor for twenty one years. But yeah, Harold Washington, his election in nineteen eighty three was such a big deal for us

as young people. Then we were early teenagers. Maybe we're eleven or twenty, maybe that's not teenagers even. And I do remember my dad working on the campaign. I remember people campaigning all around our neighborhood. Yeah, I remember this being really such a huge deal. Yeah, yeah, no, I mean I think you know a lot of times we take for granted, like you know, Jews working on this

campaign with black folks. For example, in that documentary, there's this moment where, you know, you can hear in the documentary all these slogans that are being crafted, like Hunky's for Harold, which of course is like ethnics, nerve for Hungarians or Eastern Europeans. And the one I love was

locks and bagels for Harold. So that's that's kind of like the energy that this this Rainbow Coalition was unleashan Carol Washington is asking for support from from this huge group of progressive allies, and everyone called him Harold like this sort of personal he he had this sort of avuncular, grandfatherly way like connected to him, but he also had this this forcefulness, you know, like he didn't take shit.

And he also his language. He used this you know, sort of um, you know, like phosaurus words all the time. You had to look up the words that he was saying. He was just so erudite. At the same time, it was sort of like captivating you as like Shakespearean. It's kind of like me, I love that, thank yes, yes, not at all, not at all, you know, So so looking back on this history for me, and you know, I studied this uh for many things, including the the

book about public housing. For me, Harold Washington, that moment in time is about participation in the democratic process. I mean, we often talk about how the civil rights were sort of disconnected from our childhood in the eighties, but this is the closest connection to me. One hundred and thirty thousand people were added to the voting roles at this time. That's so many people who were like, want to participate in the democratic process who weren't part of it before,

and a huge number of them were Black people. Yeah. Man, I'm so glad you talked about him increasing the voter roles and increasing the number of black voters because in many ways, I mean, he was inspired by earlier movements for participatory democracy. He was inspired by the Black Panther Party in Chicago that ultimately coined the phrase Rainbow Coalition, and those folks moved from civil disobedience and grassroots organizing the Young Lords, which was a Puerto Rican inspired organization

the Young Patriot to a working class white people. They all came together in this so called Rainbow Coalition to fight for equity, to fight for justice in Chicago, and in the end, that era of the nineteen sixties under Hall Washington translated into the power of the ballot, the power of the vote, the power to take charge of Chicago.

And that's what was so exciting about his candidacy. Yeah, yeah, Harrod Washington actually begins his father is part of the Democratic machine, and Harrow Washington gets elected into into first state office and then he's a congressman. And you couldn't do that without having sort of the approval of the

daily machine. But he breaks with them, and it's issues today, you know, police brutality and standing up against it, you know, issues of black disenfranchisement and not being part of the process of not really sort of participating in the city. And yeah, he makes this total break and becomes an outsider candidate. And you know, how do you do that? How do you sort of you know, fight the powers that be and and you know, build this huge coalition

to try to overcome it. It was it was it seemed like it was impossible in Chicago, and we lived at a time when we saw it happen. That's right, It seemed impossible, but it wasn't. And the threat of his success as the leader of this rainbow coalition in nineteen eighty three, Chicago produced a moment in time which

is still reverberating to this day. Of course, since Chicago I was talking about, you're talking about now like the white backlash against this movement or yeah, yeah, I'm talking about when Harold Washington was finally nominated as a Democratic candidate for mayor and instead of it being a shoe in for the general election and becoming the next mayor, the white working class haters who Harold Washington said were racist from rib to rib, he said in this amazing

eclip from the documentary, ultimately be yan to rally Chicago's blue hardcore Democrat daily voters start to rally around this you know nothing candidate Bernie Epton as a way to save white Chicago from Harold Washington. One of the things that's crazy, as you were talking about, you know, Jewish people like my family supporting Harold Washington and people on the South Side. Bernie Epton lived like on the same block as Harold Washington. He lives in Hyde Park. He's

a Hyde Park Jewish guy, a lawyer. Oh. I didn't realize that he's a Republican. But being a Republican in Chicago then meant absolutely nothing. It was just sort of like a nominal thing. Right. But because of this threat of the first black mayor and sort of taking power, people felt something was being taken away from them, replacement theory. They started rallying behind this guy that nobody even knew, and Bernie Epton. He has this campaign slogan, Bernie Epton

before It's too late. Yeah, that's our hotel out. Yeah, that's some hometown stuff right there. I mean, I don't know if you you you had told me before that you saw this documentary and you were struck by sort of the somehow the overt racism, how how staunch it was, how out there it was. Yeah. Well, I mean again, we were children at this time, I mean, barely teenagers. And so to think that white people in Chicago were articulating views as racist as you know, white people in Birmingham, Um,

you know, I didn't. I didn't witness it directly, but in this documentary it's there, It's in plain view. And of course I'm a historian, I'm not surprised by it,

you know, in an intellectual sense, but it is very visceral. Yeah, and then so Harrow Washington, he does eke out of victory against against this guy Bernard Epton, but but barely, which is crazy, Like it's incredibly close, and it's true, like you know, the turnout is insane and um, once he gets into office, there we have fifty aldermen in the city council, as you know, twenty nine white aldermen form a coalition and they're basically saying it's like some

tea party stuff. They're like, we are not going to let any legislation pass. We are going to vote down every measure. We're just basically going to shut down city council. They're called the Verdoliac twenty nine for this guy, one of the aldermen from the South Side, Eddie Verdoliac Fast Eddie people Eddie as he was always sorry doing deals and he does eventually go to prison himself. But but they shut down everything and it is it is completely

along racial lines. You know, all of the twenty nine or white, um, some of the there's some white people on the on Harold Washington's twenty one the other aldermen, but they're also black and Latino aldermen. Yeah, so when you say, you know, this is some tea party stuff it is. It's like it is a dress rehearsal for the Republican obstructionism that we saw Mitch McConnell lead when

Obama was elected in two thousand and nine. And it's a lot of what we continue to see in the Republican parties down to, like, you know, every form of denialism about the white supremacy in white nationalism that runs through the party. But I want to talk now about Harold Washington winning and governing and what his success as a mayor for the time that he was mayor pressages for the kind of battles that are taking place across the nation right now. I mean, here's a man. You know,

he broke the machine. He ended patronage. Yeah, so he does ain't patronage. He annacts these this legislation, the Shackman decrees that makes it illegal to actually hand out city contracts and city jobs to people. Yeah, and so you can no longer do that. You have to find other

means to hook folks up. And he makes the city ultimately way more responsive to many more Chicagoans, the kinds of working class, black and brown voters that had been traditionally ignored except on election day or had just been given favors by the machine. And then finally he elects more women to positions of lead ship in his administration

that had ever been there before and some say ever since. Yeah, I mean seriously, one of the tragedies of Harold Washington is he ends up winning re election and then winning enough seats and city council of people who support him that it breaks the virdolia twenty nine, so you can start passing much more legislation, and very early in his second term, and I remember exactly where I was when I got this news. I had just picked up my brother from the airport and we were driving back because

I was a junior in high school. We hear on the radio that's he's died at his desk in office. Yea, he has a massive heart attack, and so sort of the possibility of what he could have done with with with the city and with support we never got to really see. Yeah. Yeah, In fact, you know, he had he had bragged after he won election that he was going to be mayor for twenty years. He was going

to match old Man daily in his tenure. And I have to say the thing that his death meant to me, then, is the closest that I imagine what it was like when Kennedy was assassinated in nineteen sixty three. I don't I didn't know him in the way that adults did, but I knew him enough as a young person to feel the loss. And I actually honestly thought he was poisoned at the time. No one put that in my head. I thought it on my own because I just thought

this disk just can't be true. Yeah, you said, Harold wanted to be mayor for for twenty years. Where we got instead with his death was Richard M. Daily being mayor for twenty two years, the second coming, you know, King Richard, the second somebody I heard someone call him just recently. And so much of the city changes with that. Yeah, I mean, you know, it's not the same kind of machine, but it's a different kind of consolidation of power, and

it represents a loss for for black Chicagoans. And over time, you know, from that time to the present, the city has gotten whider, it's gotten wealthier, there's been more economic stratification.

Black population has diminished and left the city. And yes, we finally had a second black mayor and mayor Laurie Lightfoot, who was elected four years ago, and there's been huge disappointment, and maybe that disappointment is a big reason why we haven't really come to terms with the legacy of Harold Washington's Rainbow Coalition, that that potential seems to me to still be unrealized. Yeah, And I just want to add that, building on what you just said, is the city has

gotten whider. We've lost about two hundred, two hundred and fifty thousand black citizens since then. They've moved away from Chicago, but the city has also gotten browner. There are many more Latino people, and so the possibilities of coalition building. And this is in Chicago and really in any city and most democratic cities in the United States. This is the demographic mix up that you know, the mix are you saying, are you telling me some some good news?

This is the possibility we have come full circle, that the Rainbow Coalition can be reassembled. This is why this is the reason why I think we need to look at this documentary. We need to think about Harold Washington's mayoralty and his past. Even though it's forty forty damn years ago, it's so much a part of this president, what's potential. That's also why I asked someone to be on the show today for the second half. Rosanna Rodriguez Sanchez is an older person, an alder woman here in Chicago.

So she's one of now the city council members. She's on the northwest side, the thirty third ward. I heard her talk about Harold Washington documentary and you know it's been airing here, Yes, the Punch nine document it's been airing here. And there was a public screening and and I heard her talk about here. You know, she's a young Latina politician in Chicago currently today in twenty twenty three, and she was talking about how this history was completely

relevant to her right now. This was about her politics and the work that she's doing today to try to bring the city together. Yeah. I'm so excited to learn from her because I think her work, as I've come to learn from you, really suggests that she's doing some of the same work that Harold Washington did to build

a rainbow coalition forty years ago. And she's knocking on doors, she's organizing black and brown and white people to really focus on policies and the values that matter rather than just the color of the skin or the representational politics that have so often passed as substantive change over the last forty years. Yeah, yeah, I think that's exactly right. And we're going to talk to her. She's campaigning right now.

She's been out all day, but she took some time and she's running for Alderman on the thirty third Ward to come and speak with us, to come in from the cold. And so after the break we will be back with Rosanna Rodriguez Sanchez, Rosanna Rodrique Sanchez and older women from the thirty third Ward in Chicago. Thank you for being on. Some of my best friends are Thank

you for having me. Yeah, yeah, we Khalil and I have been talking about Harold Washington and this documentary Punch nine, and we've been thinking so much about Harold Washington's legacy and particularly in the way that he brought together what he called the Rainbow coalition of white people, black people, and Latinos that also included Asian people. It'll include it included lgbtq I people, and it was a true diverse coalition of people that were really trying to change the

way politics we're done in Chicago. To me, it was a really beautiful thing to witness because from what Harold Washington did, we know that it is possible, that it is not out of reach. That is something that we can do, and here in Chicago, we have been working really hard to be able to get to that point, and I think that we have had a lot of successes and I am very proud of what we have been building here in Chicago. Yeah, I mean so that,

you know, that's a question. I saw you give a talk, You're a part of a panel discussion talking about the documentary, and it really struck me seeing you up there. You're a young Latina politician in Chicago, and these events from Haward Washington's election and then his mayoralty are like forty years ago. It's like so long ago, and it's interesting to hear you talk about how it still resonates with you, like like seeing this story feels part of your political

life and your life in Chicago. Yeah. You know, when I think about myself in this context, um, sometimes I think about these hiccups in history where something all of a sudden happens and it can change the course of things. Um. And when Harold Washington won and that then you know, ended up in the Council Wars because nobody wanted you know, the people that were already there and were entrenching power,

they didn't want things to change. Um. And for a little bit of time, you know, for those four years that Harold Washington fought back against Everdolia twenty nine, a group of twenty nine white aldermen that oppose everything that Harold Washington did. We can we stop on that for a moment, Bresana, Like, how did you actually either experience or learn about this? Like what was your what was your pathway into the Harold Washington years? Was it like

political education? Just want to sit you down and say, hey, this this is what happened. These are the lessons we learned. Well, I'm a social and in order to be a socialist, you get a dig into history, right, Like you have to be able to understand what are the things that historically have have and materially what the current reality is built on. Right. Um. So I have always been very curious about history, and I have studied, you know, black

power movements. I have studied, um how the Puerto Ricans, for example, and colonized people have fought back in order to be able to get power and build power, real power, right, real people power, not the power that entrenched politicians get from the like the original Rainbow Coalition kind of power, right, the young lords and Chicago, the young patriots, the poor whites on the on the North side Chicago. That's the kind of history and socialism and grassroots organizing you're talking about.

So that inevitably leads you to Harold Washington. So a lot of us have continued to build in Chicago with the hope that we could create something like what Harold Washington was able to create. And let's unpack that story, your story of entering that a little bit, because even in the documentary, there's this politician, as you said, part of the Verdoliac twenty nine, these white politicians who are basically, like you know, stopping all activity from happening in the

city council. One of them is this guy Dick mel He's unapologetic. He chooses essentially race over his Democratic Party and you know, white race. And he was the older men in the ward where you now hold the office. And what is your story with his family and how did you come into office? Like can you tell us that story? Yes? Absolutely, So in twenty fifteen, a teacher

from a community decided to run for the seat. We supported him because he was running on platform for the nine and he was also trying to interrupt the corruption inside of city council. And when you think, like, what is corruption, like people give them one another contracts or so. So the biggest, the biggest power that aldermen have is sowning.

And if you have the power of soning, you can get a lot of contributions from developers who want soning changes to increase the worth of the property or to create big developments. Right. So Dick mel was in office for thirty eight years, and this is so Chicago. What he does. This is so when he decided to retire, he passed the seat on to his daughter. And you might ask, oh, my god, how do people do that. The way of people do that is that you have

a really good relationship with the mayor. You go to the mayor and you say, I want you to open my daughter, and the mayor is going to say, okay, we gotta do like this little song. And then here we're gonna say that we're going to interview candidates, and then we're going to say that the most qualified candidate is you're so, wait, I have a clarifying question because I'm not in Chicago. So are you saying that this is a retirement before an election, So it creates a

need to fill a seat. That's how it works. Then it falls to the mayor to appoint somebody, Okay, and then the person becomes an incumbent, and then more or less everyone's like, oh, this person's great, let's vote for them. It's a way to cement your power. So, Rosanna, you actually run against Dick Mel's daughter, then yes, So he retired halfway through his term. She of course carried his last name, and then she served for two years and then she had to run for reelection. That's when Timmy

and run. We run him in twenty fifteen. We were seventeen votes away from a runoff with them, and we had no idea of how to run an electoral campaign, and we had no money. We were like, we're just gonna do this and see what happens. And one thing about socialism, and one thing about organizers, is that we

know how to organize. Like we might not know a lot about electoral politics, we don't know how to organize okay, and we were really motivated to change things right, and what we decided to do was to start an IPO and independent political organization, which were very popular during the time of Harold Washington because of how entrenched the Chicago machine was in the electoral the official electoral Democratic Party. So you're actually using you're actually using a mechanism from

that path. That's actually the history is alive for you in this present. That's really interesting. For three and a half years, we spend all of our time organizing around housing, around immigrant rights, and around education. We knocked on people doors to talk about items that we put on ballots like rent control or mortoriament charter schools, and we were

having conversations with people all the time. Right. Organized, organized, organized, We organized with tenant unions, We organized to protect immigrants and go to court with them, fund raisers for families of immigrants that were being deported. We were doing all of that work. Rosanna, I want to try to finish that one question here, because like a true organizer and socialist, you you talked about the collective and not about yourself.

And even when we asked you the question about how you got into politics, you talked about the person you ran before you why you? Then then you ran like why did just like in a real you know, you could say quickly like why did you want to become older woman? And like why did you? So? So the first answer I would say is that I didn't want to.

But when the time came to run for office, to run somebody, it became evident that I was that it was if it was not me, If I didn't say yes, nobody was going to do it that had our values right. So at that point I really wanted somebody to be able to be on the seat and I and I decided to say yeah, even though I was incredibly scared, Like I ran, I was scared every day. I didn't think that I was the right person to do it. But now I know that I am the right person

to be to be on the seat. I absolutely am. I want to unpack that a little bit because one of the things that we're that I'm interested in, and I know Ben and I are both curious about this, So I'm interested. I don't even know what you're gonna say, but I'm I'm interested that don't don't leave me out of this. I'm part of it, well, you can speak. You can speak for both of us, because I mean, listen, you and I and Ben, the three of us are a version of a rainbow coalition, and Ben and I

identify as progressives. But it seems like right now in the country, in twenty twenty three, when I pick up the newspaper, like, I'm reading that in California, significant number of Latino voters struck down an affirmative action referendum. They said, you know, we want to keep things as they are, to ban affirmative action in California admissions. When I look at Florida, it is obvious that a significant Hispanic and

Latino population supports Donald Trump. When I look at Nevada and Arizona, I see a you know, a blue ripple fighting against you know, a red wave, and it's winning sometimes and it's a it's a toss up. So help me understand. In Chicago on the ground, what is the difference between like Latino voters who are moderate and centrist it might even be Republican leaning in some of their national politics, versus progressives who are committed to these issues.

I mean, you've just talked about rent control. A tenant strikes I mean, I'm not hearing a lot of national polling about those Latino voters. So tell us, help us understand the difference between how you think of progressive politics and how I'm hearing about Latino voters who are way more moderate and centrist and kind of on the bubble in terms of national politics. I think, I mean it's a matter of context. Chicago is a place where we

organize a lot. It is never ending, and I think we have gotten to a point here of organizing, very successful organizing. I'm going to give you the best example that I have. We at this point here in the northwest side of Chicago, specifically the Northwest side of Chicago, which is very heavily Latino, we have been able to elect a block of around nine very progressive elected at all levels of government. We have state reps, we have

state senators, all of us. I mean, we are Latinos and we are very progressive, and we are making sure that we are getting this message across. But it just takes organizing. It takes knocking on doors, It takes organizing people and ensuring that just like the Black Panthers and the Young Lords organized with mutual aid and making sure that people could see each other as allies. Right, we are doing that here and it is showing results like

you can see it. Right when in the last election, there was a very interesting dynamic here in the Northwest Side because Delia Ramirez was running in a very progressive platform and there was another Latino, Guilvijas, who is part of City Council, that was also running for that seat. He was running on tough on crimes though he was running on a moderate platform, and they started calling Delia defone Delia, and they sent so many mailers making her look like she was like anti police and she just

wanted crime. She won in a landslide. A landslide, Yeah, because we talked too much about Eric Adams and like the consolidation of working class black voters around a tough on crime agenda and a lot of you know, very conservative ideas about how to run the city. And you're saying, just the opposite is happening in at least this ward of Chicago, in the Northwest Side as a whole, not just my ward. Delia won. Delia won the suburbs. Delia won the whole West Suburbs in her platform, which received

a lot of attacks as a defaunt platform right. So we actually believe that we are making a lot of way to progressive to progressive ideas in our communities, and I think that people it is easy for people to go right and to adopt right wing ideas when they can't imagine anything else and you are presenting problems like crime, but you don't have any other alternative, and you are not engaging with people either at a level where people

feel like they're being hurt and that there's something for them. We're going to take a break, but when we come back from that break, we're going to talk about how Chicago is or isn't a version of the future as it has often been in the past, and the degree to which we can teach a national audience what to learn from what's happening in your ward and on the Northwest side of Chicago about the future of a Rainbow Coalition.

We'll be right back, So, Rizanna, we've learned so much about the effectiveness of organizing around key progressive issues and really pushing back against the kind of representational politics that so often cloud the actual needs of people rather than there's a black or brown or an Asian in office, and so I'm really curious, you know, do you think right now what you're seeing on the ground in Chicago, mix the Rainbow coalition that we've been talking about still viable.

Do you think this is something? And then I don't know, I don't even know if you what you think about this? Do you think this is something that we ought to be talking a lot more about? Yeah, Khalil, I mean, I'm thinking about this a lot. We have a mayoral election going on, but I'm also thinking about the demographics in Chicago. So we were talking about Harold Washington. When he was mayor, the Latino population was not that big.

It was like around fourteen percent or something, and we had this huge flux, especially people from Mexico, over the next you know, twenty thirty years. And now, at least in theory, we have this beautifully diverse city of like thirty percent Latino, forty five percent White, thirty percent Black, and another sort of seven percent Asian. Now we're madly segregated, so it doesn't feel crazy diverse, but but the total makeup is this amazing thing. And that's probably true of cities,

you know, democratic cities all across the country. Chicago is representative in that way of a rising Latino population and sort of thinking about the jumble of these politics and and like partly what we were talking about with Harold Washington is sort of this white backlash to this progressive movement and to this this you know, in interracial connections.

But I'm really interested in sort of like the the also the black Latino divides that happened, and like to think about how that's also taking shape in Chicago because certainly, like you know, I think the black community in some ways feels like they're losing out of power, you know, but maybe Rosanna feels differently of seeing this on the ground, um, and even seeing it in the city council which has this you know, fifty aldermen, older people, alders, older women

and alder men, all of them. But but you know, so so yeah, I think it's it is this. It is this example of what's happening nationally here. I think there's a lot of work to do to be able to build, um, the same structures in black communities, and

it is very challenging right now. Um, we are in the middle of this mayoral election and United Working Families, which is our effort to create a workers Party um in Chicago and the top of the ticket is Brandon Johnson for for mayor, which I believe that he is trying to build that rainbow coalition and Brandon's black just

even I know that from from national reporting. Again, yes, so so here so the so what I am saying is here in these Latino neighborhoods, right, the different organizations that have been built around all of these other candidates at different levels of office, this is something that we haven't been able to build yet in black communities, and because of segregation, right, it has been a very different reality.

Are you saying that when you say we, you mean the party has not been effective on some of the black wards and districts on the south and west sides of Chicago. That's what you mean by the week? No, what I mean is that what it means that those efforts haven't gotten on their way. So can you give an example of an organizing effort to get a program in place or a policy that hasn't yet worked among

Black Chicagoans. One example of this is Treatment not Trauma is a bill that I introduced in twenty twenty to create a mental health response holistic mental health response in Chicago. We put it on the ballot in the last election in November. We were here in my ward thirty three, and in two wards that are predominantly black, which are the sixth Ward and the twentieth. People knocked on doors,

people have conversations. This is how we do it, right, Like, we go to people, we talked about what are the problems that we're having, Well, this is a possible solution. How do we do this? But we haven't been doing that necessarily in a lot of black communities here in the north northwest Side. We started doing it, but we haven't been able to go through that process there. And I say we because this is everybody's responsibility, right, I

say we. I am in my community doing what I can, but we haven't been able to have that level of organization in this particular context. But we are on our way to do that. Rosanna, I'm interested in this idea. So you're endorsing a black progressive candidate in the mayoral election. There's a very prominent Latino candidate as well, who actually emerges from Harold Washington's coalition. We know Twee. Garcia, Yeah, who I met a few years ago. It seemed like

a really lovely guy I got. I'm thinking about two things here. One is is it controversial that you are siding with a black progressive and not a Latino And maybe you can explain sort of how your progressive politics kind of supersedes racial politics. And then two like, say you're knocking on doors and you go to an older family in your ward and you know a Latino family and their two week Garcia supporters, how do you convince them? You're like, no, no, no, this this this black guy

who who actually has your interests? Brandon Johns Better Yeah, yeah, Well those conversations, um usually start with an issue, right, like what is the issue that you care about? And it is not easy, And I would like to start saying I have a lot of respect for Congressman Garcia. Um, I know him personally. I did meet with him alongside all of the Northwest side elected progressive Latino electeds. He was not ready to commit to running when we met

with her, and Brandon was. And Brandon sat down with us and we talked about all of the different things that we needed, and he committed to fighting alongside us for those things. So I am going to support the person that is going to go too bad for the progressive agenda that we have right so we couldn't commit to it. At that point. He didn't even know if he was running. I'm sorry, we have to run somebody against my her life foot So this is what we're doing.

And I am very proud to be supporting Brandon just so because I know what his history is a movement. I know that he's a union person. I know that I know where he has been and what he has been doing, and I do think that it is important for Latino communities to understand who is fighting in their best interests, and I think Brandon is going to be doing that. When I go into a household and we talked about the issues at hand, I am very comfortable

saying Brandon has committed to treat me not trauma. Brandon already committed to that, and I know that I'm going to be able to count on him to deliver that. I want to just sort of round this out with an issue that I think is a third rail around this question of coalition politics, and it certainly is in New York City, it is in a lot of places. So you keep talking about treatment not trauma, and I want to understand like, how does that intersect with larger

debate about Chicago crime. Just like many other cities and in a lot of other places, it's most certainly derailed progressive ideas. It has derailed the attractiveness of progressive politicians who have been saddled with the stigma of hating police officers through the quote unquote defund movement. And it seems like this isn't this doesn't animate any of the people that you're talking to. Do I have that right? And if so, how is that possible? Well, that's what I

was just talking about. With the election of the Lea Ramirez and Anthony Gasawa and all of the slate that just swan like they were attacked. Literally everybody was saying everybody against them was saying, these people are defaunt the opposition got money from the FOP, like, yeah, seventeen thousand dollars from the FOP, And what happened was that it's backfired because those values do not belong in our communities.

And we called it out. I was in, you are taking money from people who are you know, like the president of the FOP in Chicago is a terrible human being. His racist He has made so many islamophobic remarks. He was okay with the riots in the in the capital and January six he said he said the only the

only law he saw broken was trespassing. That was his quote at the January six So so I'm sorry, we are not going to stand by those values, right, and I think that we need to speak clearly about those things, but also speak very clearly as well about what is that we imagine, right, because people need to be able to imagine how is it that you're talking about safety and what are the concrete things that you're going to do and treatmental trauma, for example, is trying to reduce

the amount of calls that are going through nine on one by developing other approaches that are well, like way better and an evidence base to handle things that are public health based, to handle things that are human service

social service based. So expanding the care pilot that we fought for so that you don't have to send police to deal with mental health emergencies, creating walking crisis centers that are open twenty four hours so that you have a place to transport right, you don't have to go to the police station or to the ear making sure that you have I like to call them clinicians instead

of talking about cops all the time. You actually need social workers that are going to go and are going to monitor the people and places that are most likely to go into crisis because you already know what's happened and there are where those people are, build trust, monitor them, figure out how you can prevent crisis. Right. It is actually not like rocket science, and this is working in

other cities as well. So when I hear that somebody is behind the treatmental trauma approach, wish let me tell you. In the last several minnear old debates, treatment no trauma has been in everybody's mouth. Everybody's talking about treatment trauma. When I first introduced that, nobody wants to hear anything about it. But now we do need to be thinking about safety in a different way and use the right

and proper tools to address each social issue. And what we're doing of throwing police that everything is just not working. I think this is really really helpful to me as an outsider, and I'm curious to Ben, so Ben, I haven't hearing all these policies. Yeah yeah, but I haven't heard you mentioned this, So I mean, how if you're hearing much of this for the first time, then, like,

does Lloyd Lightfoot have a chance in hell? Like how the square her as current mayor with a gigantic city of millions of black people as well as whites, we have you know, we've been talked about the white population that much, and so like, Rosanna is making a whole hell of a lot of sense here. But yeah, you're saying that her policies and politics are your politics and policies, but not just my politics. They're they're working on the ground in local politics. And yet I have there's no

news reporting on this. They mean, So I'm just trying to figure out, like is Lightfoot consolidating support in the same way that an Eric Items or Joe Biden has that it kind of just turns what she's talking about into something unrealistic. Is she hiding the fact that these programs are working? Is she taking credit for them? Like what's going on? The programs don't exist yet, there's a bill.

There is a little pilot that we have to push her to create, but it is only one team and now it will probably expand to two, but not enough to be able to even have enough data to make decisions so the problem has been that she has resisted this approaches the whole time because she has stood by

the tough on crime narrative. So what we are trying to do now is and it's one of the reasons why treatment of trauma is now being used by every other my rural candidate because they understand that she has resisted this, that she has blocked this, and that they need to signal right that they are open to other approaches, that they are open to doing things in a different way. So I feel really good about it because I didn't really think that we would be in this place at

the end of the term. And I have fought so hard and we have done everything that we can to make sure that the public knows about this, Like putting it in the ballot was great. We were able to have so many conversations with people and let them know this is what we're trying to do, you know. Yeahs And I mean one of the things that so great about hearing this and we wanted to learn from you.

It's when I when I saw you speak at that forum, I was like, this is somebody I want to talk to more and learn from because you were talking about these progressive politics on the ground and organizing and and I actually personally believe in these policies that you're talking about. And this is partly an answer to what you said, Khalil, Like,

this is a big ass city. So you know, Rosanna is talking about finding many like minded people, and there are a lot of, you know, areas of the city where people feel very differently and their politics don't align with this, but the margins are pretty slim, even around things like crime and so on. But yeah, you're talking about how many of these issues cross racial lines, and in this city where it's so often zero, some politics

around race that's really powerful and encouraging. I'm gonna ask you maybe a way to close this conversation out a more playful question, which is, like we watches Harold Washington documentary Punch nine, and we saw again these council wars where the essentially twenty nine white older men were fighting with the other older men who were more progressive and didn't want to let any legislation pass, and it just

seemed like madness in there, screaming and yelling. Tell us a story about being in city council where it felt, if not a war at least like, you know, a skirmish. We have had several of those over the time that I have been there. Not long ago, there was a there was a discussion that we had our own curfews because there was a shooting in Millennium Park and a kid got killed. And it's always, um, you know, like reactive, like we never stopped to think, what is a sustainable

way that addresses the root cause of things. So me and Carlos Ramirez Rosa, we went on God a bunch of studies about curfews, right, um, Carlos, me and Matt Martin, and we printed them out and we put them on everybody's desk, trying to get them to at least for once, do some evidence based legislation because it was ane yar reaction to to the you would not believe like how

crazy the conversation got. We were talking about you know, studies and and and evidence, and people started yelling at us that we didn't know how to raise children, that they always knew where their children were when they were growing up. Somebody said, like the end of the conversation was one of my colleagues saying, um, my grandma used to say that after ten PM, the only thing opened our liqueur stores and legs, and I'm there with my

my abstract. I just gave you all of this evidence based information and this is what you have to add to the conversation. Um, it gets crazy in there, it gets really crazy. Well, listen, I think that the jury is probably still out as to whether the rainbow coalition

has legs nationally. I know that, you know, Obama sort of represented a kind of rainbow coalition nationally demographic that was really just purely representational and symbolic, meaning that people of color voted for him and they made the difference. And it seems to me the Democratic Party nationally is stuck on this issue. But listening to you as a you know, I think that there's a lot of hope

to be embraced around how local organizing still matters. It certainly mattered in the sixties, it mattered during Harold Washington's day, and as you've just shared with us today, it matters now. So folks listening, we got to get out there, We got to knock on doors, We got to talk about issues not about the color of people's skin. Although a lot of people of color suffer the most from these issues, so they certainly should be at the table in terms

of decision making and power. So I want to thank you so much for being on our show today. Thank you so much for having me so much fun talking to you. I hope to be back. Yeah, And also, listeners, you've got to answer the door when somebody comes knocking. It's not just that you got to knock at it. You got you gotta listen to folks like Rosanna and hear what they have to say, especially because it's called outside.

Let us in and give us super cool. Yeah. Thanks so yeah, and good luck with your own re election. With good luck with your own re election. May thank you the mayor race. Take care. Oh man, that was a really great conversation. And I have to say, like something that really jumped out at me when she was talking was like when she just so forthrightly said I'm a socialist, Like you don't hear that every day? Of that? You know, you don't hear that every day? Don't hear that? eACT.

Probably if we in another conversation with her, that's all we would talk about. Unpack that. Please tell us everything that you mean by that. How did you come up with that? Is what's your response when people say that. Yeah. And one of the things that I think about is when she said that socialist study history, and she's like, yeah, because that's how we learned about the Black Power movement.

And man, I could not help but think like, oh my god, Ron de Santis, the governor of Florida, is exactly right to be afraid of black studies because if people, young people like Rossana learned this history, it's hied to run for office, organize people door to door, run on a platform that is about values, about equity, a word that's nearly been banned in the state of Florida right now. Then you actually get a different country, you get a

different city, you get a different politics. And even her studying Harold Washington, she's actually learning strategies directly from Harold Washington how outsiders outside the political power structure developed their own independent political organizations to then get power. This is the lesson that she has studied and learned and that she's trying to like to make come to life again in the present. Yeah. Yeah, so we learned a and

black studies. Yes. Man, See see here we wear a rainbow called coalition, and now it's the glue that advids it all together. You know, it's the glue. It's it makes it all work. The rainbow comes together. All right, man, all right, love you, Love you too. Some of My Best Friends Are is a production of Pushkin Industries. The show is written and hosted by me Khalil, Gibron Mohammed and my best friend Ben Austin. It's produced by Jonasanti

and Lucy Sullivan. Our editor is Sarah Knicks, our engineer is Amanda ka Wang, and our managing producer is Constanza Gallardo. At Pushkin thanks to Leitao Mulad, Julia Barton, Heather Faine, Carly Migliori, John Schnars, Greta Khne, and Jacob Weissberg. Theme song Little Lily is by fellow chicagoan the Brilliant Avery R. Young, from his album Tubman. You definitely want to check out his music at his website Avery R. Young dot com.

You can find Pushkin on all social platforms at pushkin pods, and you can sign up for our newsletter at pushkin dot fm. To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen and if you like our show, please give us a five star rating and a review and listen. Even if you don't like it, give it a five star rating and a review, and please tell all of your best

friends about it. Thank you. You and I have this funny like literary joke right that we love Ralph Ellison right and rebel passage in Ralph Ellison when and the protagonist is working at liberty white white, right, the whitest white, The whitest white is made up by black dope, meaning this chemical substance of black that is dropped into the paint to make it as white as white. So it's it's a it's a brilliant chapter. It's a brilliant part of that brilliant book. I'm with you,