Why I can't vote for Pritzker

Gassing the water protectors

“JB personally and through his businesses and trusts has both active and passive investments in many different economic sectors,” Pritzker spokeswoman Galia Slayen said. “If elected, JB is committed to putting in place best practices to ensure that no conflicts ever exist.”

It's not just that he's another white male billionaire. No, I've more or less made peace with that, given the record high cost of running for governor and that there are no women or people of color in the race with a realistic chance of defeating Public Enemy #1,Gov. Bruce Rauner.

And it's not just that J.B. Pritzker, a partner in the union-busting Hyatt Hotel chain, is another mainstream Democrat who is bound to sell out the very unions that have rallied behind him. After the pension-theft debacle with Gov. Quinn, I've almost gotten used to that.

Company thugs set dogs on DAPL protesters.

I guess the killer for me was when I read the Sun-Times this morning and learned that Pritzker, like Donald Trump, is a big investor in Energy Transfer Partners LP, the pipeline operator that constructed and is a part owner of the Dakota Access Pipeline. That's the notorious pipeline which carries oil underground, through Native American sacred burial grounds, from North Dakota all the way to an oil tank farm near Patoka, Illinois.Yes, the very same company that turned hired thugs and vicious dogs on the water protectors at Standing Rock.

Yes, I know that candidate Chris Kennedy, who has tried to rebrand himself as a leftist, is also a global capitalist with major investments in oil and defense companies. He even stands to profit from his holdings in Amazon, the corporation that Rauner and Rahm Emanuel are trying to lure, with huge tax breaks, to Chicago.

At Standing Rock with Chicago students.

I have disliked Kennedy ever since he used his position as head of the Univ. of IL Board of Trustees to tarnish or destroy the careers of educators like Bill Ayers and Steven Salaita because of their political views.

But Standing Rock is where I draw the line. I went to Standing Rock twice last year, once with a dozen Chicago neighborhood high school students, to join the protests. The time spent there left an indelible mark on me and on those students. For over a year an international movement has called on cities, universities and other investors to divest--to get rid of their holdings connected to the Energy Transfer Partners and to the Dakota Access Pipeline.  So the fact that J.B. Pritzker fattens up his investment portfolio with pipeline blood money makes it impossible for me to vote for him, much less support him.

I'm hoping against hope that Dan Biss can pull an upset in the primary and go on to defeat Rauner.