The Labor Notes Conference will have record attendance this year, but it’s showing its limits by opening with a speech from Chicago’s pro-cop Democratic mayor, Brandon Johnson. Instead of facilitating the Democratic Party’s co-optation of our movement, Labor Notes should be a space for workers and socialists to gather and fight for a class-independent alternative.
He ran on progressive vibes but has done a bunch of bad stuff while in office: increased CPD budget, attempted to contract GardaWorld to put migrants in tents, etc. He got AFL-CIO and some other unions to pledge not to strike during the DNC. How has he helped labor?
The CPB budget thing was coming etiher way. We knew that he would still do bad things. That wasn’t the point though.
Has he done any good things? So far, the only positive thing I can say about him is he’s not Vallas.
In fact it’s quite possible he will hurt the labor movement. I’m not super familiar with CTU inner workings, but to an outsider it looks like the collaborationist “common good” bargaining process that CTU is signalling with him will probably conclude the cooptation and defanging of CORE. Workers shouldn’t pull their punches. Ask for what you need, and let them cut the damn police budget if the city “can’t afford” it.
Nobody is explaining to me how he’s “co-opting” the movement so I don’t really buy it.