Trump's war on the cities

Why does Trump hate the cities? It's because that's his enemy's stronghold. Just listen to him, still pissing and moaning about his 3-million vote loss of the popular vote. He's a man obsessed.

He blames "millions of illegals" who supposedly voted illegally for Hillary. But deep down, he knows the truth. There wasn't one major city with a large black or Latino population that went for Trump in November.

This is the first time since 1920 that the Census has recorded that more people living in urban than in non-urban areas. And urban has become synonymous with black and Latino.

As Ronald Brownstein observed in The Atlantic:

Of all the overlapping generational, racial, and educational divides that explained Trump’s stunning upset over Hillary Clinton last week, none proved more powerful than the distance between the Democrats’ continued dominance of the largest metropolitan areas, and the stampede toward the GOP almost everywhere else.

Trump and the Republicans know they can only govern the cities with an iron fist. Four days in and Trump is already threatening to invade Chicago with federal troops to supposedly end the "carnage" of violence there. But threats of outside military and other interventions only build on Mayor Emanuel's failed policing and mass-incarceration strategies.

But the real "carnage" in Chicago took place during Trump's own election campaign. His being run out of town by 25,000 protesters at UIC back in March still gnaws at him. His experience in New York City was similar.

Then on Saturday, the largest protests in this nation's history kicked his inauguration off the front pages. Not counting the national Women's March in D.C., 250,000 turned out in Chicago. 600,000 in New York. 750,000 in rainy L.A.

Trump and the Repubs want to take revenge on the cities by 1) strangling them into submission economically, leveraging federal dollars and cutting even further their corporate tax base, 2) limiting their voting power with stricter voting measures, 3) shrinking the size of the cities through mass deportations of immigrants, and 4) challenging their sovereignty with federal intervention.

Trump signed directives Wednesday to build his $15B wall on the southern border and to begin his round-up immigrants. He's threatening to withhold federal funds from sanctuary cities that act to protect their immigrant citizens from deportation round-ups, forced registration, and internment camps. While the threat probably won't be taken seriously in the biggest cities, especially in those where Trump has, or plans to have, his own personal investments (hotels and casinos), it will weigh heavy on smaller ones like New Haven, CT.

I must interject here... I think he learned this tactic from former Ed Secretary Arne Duncan who established a precedent when he used Race To The Top to threaten to withhold federal education dollars from states like WA that opposed privately-run charter schools or Common Core related standardized tests.

Several Democratic mayors and other pols, are still playing footsie with Trump, hoping against hope that his threat to invade and impose some form of martial law will somehow turn into a money invasion to pay for more cops and infrastructure repair, and relieve city debt,  rather than a militarization. So far, there's no evidence for this.

Resistance... In a press release yesterday, Chicago City Council Black Caucus Chair Rod Sawyer called for resistance to Trump's threats to militarize urban communities.

“The threat to militarize our communities will be met with the same spirit of fierce resistance as efforts to increase ‘stop-and-frisk,’ register and ban Muslims, and deport millions of immigrants.

“We remain committed to working with all levels of government to fight for resources for our communities--but not at the cost of our civil liberties or our very democracy .

Tour de Fork shows signs of political realignment in Chicago

The Progressive Caucus Tour de Fork fundraiser last night at the kitschy Catalyst Ranch in the West Loop was an impressive event, catered by restaurants from some of the 11 wards represented by Caucus members. But the large, spirited gathering was much more than a gastronomic success. It also signified the sea change taking place in city, state and national political alignments, thanks mainly to the emergence of Gov. Rauner as our own local version of Donald Trump.

There are now 11 caucus members, instead of 8 a year ago. This growth is testimony not only to the progressive movement's recent election victories out in the wards, but to the rapid and near-total collapse of Rahm Emanuel's political machinery and personal credibility.

In the wake of the school closings and the Laquan McDonald scandal, the mayor's approval ratings are somewhere down in the 20s, and in the single digits in the black community where voters were largely responsible for Emanuel's previous two election victories over the progressive opposition.

Rahm has lost so much juice that both Democratic Party presidential candidates avoid him like the plague when they campaign in Chicago. Liberal icon Bill Moyers is now calling on Hillary Clinton to press for the resignations of both Rahm Emanuel and DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz in order to "do their party and country a service."

Moyers and Michael Winship write:

And now he’s mayor of Chicago, reelected last April for a second term, but, as historian Rick Pearlstein wrote in The New Yorker a couple of months ago, “Chicagoans — and Democrats nationally — are suffering buyer’s remorse.”

 To millions, they are enablers of the one percent, perpetuators of the Washington mentality that the rest of the country has grown to hate. What a message such servants of plutocracy send: Democrats — a bridge to the past.

Alds. Munoz, Foulkes, and Sposato at Tour de Fork

Just as the Bernie Sanders campaign, combined with the existential threat of Trump presidency, has pushed the Democratic Party's campaign rhetoric leftward, the Rauner-inspired realignment in Illinois has brought some strange bedfellows together here in Chicago around an emerging progressive and pro-labor policy agenda.

Last night, veteran Caucus leaders like Alds. Scott Waguespack, Leslie Hairston, Rod Sawyer and Rick Munoz shared tacos and chicken wings with newly-elected Democratic-backed State's Atty. Kim Foxx, State Senator Omar Aquino, Rep.  Jaime Andrade,  City Treasurer Kurt Summers, City Clerk Susana Mendoza, Committeeman Aaron Goldstein, reps from the CTU, SEIU, AFSCME, and more.

Tactical alliances and overlap of interests between the progressives and the council's Black and Hispanic Caucuses could well decide the next mayor's race. Note that yesterday's Black Caucus press conference demanding greater input into the selection of the next police superintendent drew progressive support. Ald. Sawyer plays a leadership role in both caucuses.

New State's Atty. Kim Foxx speaks to Caucus supporters

I joked with some, standing in the taco line, that I half expected Rauner nemesis Mike Madigan himself to come walking through the door singing "we shall overcome".

The new political alignment in the city and the shifting boundaries around the word "progressive" may cost some Caucus desertions and precipitate new internal struggles within the ranks of union leadership. But it is more likely to liberate some pols held captive on the machine's plantation in the same way the Harold Washington movement liberated them back in the day.

It's the season of the progressives. And that's a good thing. Right?

See Ben Joravsky's latest Reader piece for another view of the realignment.