Refuse Corporate Donations: A Plea To The Other Candidates in Illinois's 5th District

Something must be done to cleanse the American political system and instill some degree of integrity in the nation’s democratic institutions.
As fraudsters and hustlers from Bernard Madoff to Rod Blagojevich fall like dominoes, in the footsteps of Bernie Ebbers, Kenneth Lay and Dan Rostenkowski, one can say that confidence in the good old American way is beginning to wane. While apathy towards politics has been a mainstay of the American consciousness for decades, the overall sense of despair in the air is probably at record highs.
Those who believed in the American political system framed this a fall of hope, but unfortunately winter arrived early and relentlessly. In Chicago, multiple snow and ice storms coupled with vicious winds brought the mid-western metropolis its most unbearable December in recent memory. When winter officially began on Sunday, wind chills dipped as low as –30 F: that brand of cold that is determined to slice through all defenses you throw at it. Meanwhile, the Blago circus came to town: the over-charismatic executive, teetering through the worst approval rating in Illinois gubernatorial history, failed to heed warnings of when enough was enough.
Reports indicate that he thought $1.5 million was a just price for Obama’s senate seat: a relative bargain in these days of neo-liberal hegemony. One could hardly get elected to the U.S. House with that kind of cash. In fact, the seat that used to be Blago’s, currently occupied by incoming Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, could very well cost around $1.5 million for the Chicago machinist most intent on calling it theirs. Emanuel himself spent $1.88 million getting re-elected this last time around, despite the lack of any viable opposition in either round.
In the coming special election, still yet to be officially announced because Emanuel hasn’t resigned, the total number of announced candidates is 18 and climbing. Every interested state rep, senator and alderman in the Chicago area has begun flexing their muscle, organizing their political apparatus, and using corporate press clout to promote their candidacies. The talk around town is not where the candidates stand on the issues, or where they lie along the political spectrum, but rather who’s got the goods to win the race.
And last I checked it isn’t only in Chicago where political livelihood is entirely dependent on support from corporate crooks. Despite all of the euphoria of early November, Obama is a prime representation of the fact that one can never win the White House by challenging the reprehensible actions of the nation’s largest banks, investors and lenders. Instead you have to allow them to donate generously to your campaign and then to dictate your economic policies.
While Obama was giving his spiel about hope and change repeatedly for two years, he was concurrently amassing an unprecedented war chest, thrust along by at least $2 million from entities directly involved in the sub-prime swindle: Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, UBS and Lehman Brothers. Despite Obama framing his candidacy as the one closer to the interests of the people, his rake from all of the above was considerably greater than McCain’s.
Corporate America realized early that Obama was the likely victor and that they had to move to ensure that he was thoroughly corrupted, and wouldn’t use the economic malaise as an excuse to begin regulating the financial sector. In following Obama’s purse strings, it is clear that he will likely do nothing to protect Americans from crony Capitalism. Citibank, currently under investigation for its involvement in derivative fraud and managing to make $1.2 trillion disappear from its balance sheets, was one of Obama’s biggest donors: with nearly $400,000 being given from its employees to the Senator in the first half of 2008 alone.
At just the time when the country needs to forcibly remove these crooked corporations from the political arena, they are as deeply ingrained as ever. Just when the congress must absolutely restore monetary sanity by re-instituting the Glass-Steagall act and reversing decades of rampant deregulation and privatization, the president will be doing the bidding of the same investment banks that gave us the housing bubble. And just as the American public begins to digest the enormity of said bubble, “our president” will assuredly be another loyal servant of Wall Street.
The foundations will only tremble when Americans pledge to support no candidate who accepts donations of any kind from corporations. When we can be sure that our public servants are clean of the crud of monied interests, we can then begin to have a grand discourse about hope and change.
The place to begin is right in Blago’s backyard, where the governor’s godchildren are busily positioning themselves to be the chosen successor to the seat once held by the man himself. This post won’t be sold, surely enough, but it probably will be bought. Given the district’s history of electing illicit political criminals, there’s no reason to think that the hounds won’t be let loose on the candidates.
Will any of them pledge to refuse corporate donations this time around? Will they rise above the easy route of accepting large sums of money from those interests intent on preying on the poor, de-unionizing workers, and instituting a perpetual culture of indebtedness?
I hereby demand it of them. I demand that each of the candidates sign onto this pledge to refuse all corporate donations. I ask that they run on the issues, and win by talking to constituents about their concerns, desires and wishes. In so doing, I dream that the victor will be “our congressperson” and not another soul-less pawn of big business.
I have thrown my hat into the ring of candidates because I would like to see my dream of a clean political system become reality. I have grown frustrated over years of dwindling social movements and increased state coercion of civil society. The dictatorship of corporate America, which is currently in shambles, must be swept away and replaced by a respectful liberal democracy. The first step is getting the fraudsters and hustlers out of politics, and replacing them with public servants who pledge to represent the interest of the working majority.
Will any of the other candidates in this special election rise to the occasion and work with me towards creating a more just nation?
For the health of our democracy, it is what must be done.

Chicago Will be Ours: The Voice of the Other Chicago

In these days of Chicago being the center of the universe, the Chicagoan takes away a certain pride in knowing that we created the most powerful man on Earth.

The million or so who hung out in the cold to watch Obama’s historic acceptance speech were a manifestation of that certain euphoria that takes hold of a city that has attracted the limelight. For the first time since the reign of Michael Jordan, Chicagoans had a reason to party together in the streets.

Now that the world understands what Chicago is capable of, I would like to add a little color to people’s understanding of the Second City: the capital of the heartland, the glue of the country, and the birth place of the freshwater people.

In order to understand what Chicago is and what its place is in the world, one must understand the “Other Chicago”: the Chicago that the political and business elite of the city would rather ignore than cherish.

The Other Chicago is the majority Chicago: the artists and writers, the revolutionaries and anarchists, the laborers and immigrants, the actors and musicians, the citizens of substance and the people of principle.

These are the people who are disparaged by the corporate press, and who are ignored by the politicians that the press coronate. In his oratory at the scaffold, October 1886, Chicagoan Albert Parsons denounced the same corporate press that plagues our democracy today. He said:

I hold that you cannot dispute the charge which I make, that this trial has been submerged, immersed in passion from its inception to its close, and even to this hour, standing here upon the scaffold as I do, with the hangman awaiting me with his halter, there are those who claim to represent public sentiment in this city, and I now speak of the capitalistic press-that vile and infamous organ of monopoly of hired liars, the people's oppressor-even to this day these papers, standing where I do, with my seven condemned colleagues, are clamoring for our blood in the heat and violence of passion.[1]

Albert Parsons was murdered by the state: convicted on trumped up charges of

disturbing the peace and inciting riot. This is despite the fact that the historical records demonstrate clearly that the riot was initiated by police, who fired into the crowd of workers so as to provoke a bloody response. Parsons was chosen as a scapegoat because he was a leader: actively organizing for the 40-hour workweek that would ultimately decelerate the flow of wealth from the poor to the rich.

Ultimately, his grand cause prevailed, as the United States became the first country on earth to institute the 40-hour workweek. This legislation became an international norm, and is now considered inherent to the international body of human rights. It is an indispensable part of any democratic society, and yet this man was murdered for his fight to make it happen. We, the people, owe this Chicagoan a debt of gratitude, for he gave his life to make the lives of all humanity more just and equitable.

And yet today, the crooked ruling elite of the country has figured out every way imaginable to circumvent the 40-hour workweek. The number one way is paying a wage that does not produce minimum living standards. Even the government’s own poverty line, which is far below the just standard of a living wage, shows more than one in ten Americans living in poverty.[2] Many of these people must work multiple jobs to make ends meet and to obtain minimal benefits for themselves and their family.

The level of precariousness in this country is unsustainable. The people are un- and under-employed, un- and under-insured, and indebted to banks who paid for their college in exchange for a life of debt servitude. It is especially bad amongst my fellow young adults: those who have been given a country where we dogfight to get ahead instead of march in solidarity for a better and more just Republic.

We are told that our vital functions are production and competition, we are made to meddle in menial tasks in our schooling years and then brought into empty office jobs in our adult life: never encouraged to be an individual or a creative member of society. You are to never question your teacher, never demand answers of your elected representatives, and are made to be subservient numskulls by the prison-police state.

If you question the status quo, you are treated as foolish and weak, even though we know that it takes great courage and strength to stand up to tyranny.

We know that Albert Parsons had to take his life to question the crippling working conditions of the late 19^th century. We know that the Other Chicago has been sidelined and beaten down by the media and political machine of this city.

We remember when Daley I sent the goons after peaceful anti-war demonstrators outside of the Democratic Convention of 1968. We remember justice being served by a show trial, which made a mockery of democracy and illustrated to the world what a bunch of crooks run this city.

The Other Chicago has had to endure the goon state, the heavy handed weight of our dictatorial law enforcement community, the criminally corrupt nature of Chicago’s mob political elite, and the cold and windy winters to boot.

The crooks-in-charge originally decided to memorialize the Haymarket riot by constructing a statue at the site for the policemen who died that day. They perpetuated the re-writing of history by treating the goons as heroes and the heroes as provocateurs. And what happened? The Weather Underground blew the statue up. Then the city re-constructed it, and the Weather Underground blew it up again.

Today at the Haymarket site stands a statue that gives mention to the movement, and at least tries to be somewhat balanced in the commemoration of those sacred events in Chicago’s history. It’s a sign that we have taken baby steps. Much like with the election of Obama, we have taken baby steps.

Nonetheless, the majority of this country lives in a state of precariousness. Median income is currently at $32,140[3], a figure that fails to keep up with the disastrous increase in the cost of basic necessities such as food produce, heat and electricity. Meanwhile, Americans are shackled by student debt through much of their professional life, preyed on by credit cards, real estate companies and other lenders, provided poor alternatives for cheap and efficient public transportation on the average, and offered little if any job security.

In order to get a job, the average American is increasingly employed through an intermediary for the first several months or years, in order that the workers’ subservience is evidenced before the company or organization risks giving them real employment. People in situations like these, where they lack health care, where they lack humane sick and leave time, where they lack just job security, are not rightfully employed. They are enslaved by a society that has been run by crooks within the Capitalist class for far too long.

I sense this feeling coming from the Other Chicago, especially from my fellow young adults: that we cannot sit idly by any longer and allow the thieves on Wall Street together with the criminal political class to decide the direction of our city and our country. While Obama may amount to some amount of change, he is not the whole-hearted manifestation of the Other Chicago. He is an attractive and intelligent man amongst thieves and the morally backward. He is a well-spoken gentleman in a political class that generally produces imbeciles and charlatans. He is change, but not the change we can all believe in.

               Americans voted for peace in 2006 and 2008; they voted to stop having their substance eaten out by the military industrial complex. Dwight Eisenhower once commented: “I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.”[4] We have arrived at that hour: the hour where the government stops starving its citizenry in order to pay for perpetual war, and the perpetual construction of armaments that we don’t need. Even the Pentagon is asking for its own budget to be cut: when will a sense of reason return to Washington’s ruling elite!?

I have decided to launch a campaign to steal Rahm Emanuel’s soon-to-be vacated seat away from the crooks that have called it home for time immemorial. This is a district that covers the heart of Chicago’s north and northwest side: a district that is nearly half immigrant, that is a majority working and middle class, and that has been pummeled by years of war and decreasing social protection. They are a manifestation of the Other Chicago, of Upton Sinclair’s Chicago of enduring workers and immigrants made to navigate a treacherous political and environmental landscape.

In the words of Upton Sinclair, let us give voice to the Other Chicago: “we shall organize them for the victory! We shall bear down the opposition, we shall sweep it before us-and Chicago will be ours! Chicago will be ours! CHICAGO WILL BE OURS!”

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[1] http://www.chicagohistory.org/hadc/books/b01/B01S008.htm

[2] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/feb/19/usa.paulharris

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_in_the_United_States

[4] http://home.att.net/~midnightflyer/ike.html