Little enthusiasm for major rivals in Chicago elections

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An estimated 35,000 people scrape out an existence on Chicago's streets. Thousands more low-income families face a severe shortage of affordable housing.

SOCIALIST ACTION MARCH 1989

ADAM SHILS

The following article was written just prior to the Feb. 28 Democratic Party primary election in Chicago. The general election will take place in April.

CHICAGO-Six years ago, Harold Washington won election as this city's first Black mayor. Washington's 1983 campaign, which confronted the barely concealed racism of his opponents, became much more than just another election for the Black community.

Black pride, social justice, and political reform were the battle cries, as the Washington movement rallied tens of thousands of Blacks and others to its banner. As the racist Democratic Party machine floundered, many people believed that a new era had begun in Chicago politics.

Washington died several months after winning reelection in 1987. As the current race for mayor unfolds, it is clear that the Washington movement has not survived its leader's death.

There is no great outpouring of anti-racist sentiment such as accompanied the last two Chicago elections. On the eve of the primary election, there is, in fact, little enthusiasm for any of the major contenders still in the race: Mayor Eugene Sawyer, Cook County State's Attorney Richard Daley, and Alderman Tim Evans.

No real issues dominate this campaign. Even the non-issues that defined the 1988 presidential election (such as who loved the Pledge of Allegiance the most) appear as hard-hitting issues of substance compared to the nitpicking blather that passes for "addressing the issues" in this election.

"There's just no electricity out there," admits 36th Ward Alderman William Banks, a Daley man. Small wonder.

Avoiding the code-words

The current frontrunner is Richard Daley, son of the infamous "Boss" Daley. Daley has been running a sophisticated campaign, which by Chicago standards means that he has chosen not to stress the traditional code-words for race.

Daley has campaigned frequently in the Black community, and has appointed a Black woman, Avis Lavelle, as his press secretary. Some observers have made the point that Daley's orientation toward the Black community is designed more to impress liberal voters living along the city's lakefront than it is to actually secure Black support.

Mayor Sawyer is running a distant second to Daley in the primary. He is burdened by the widespread-and accurate-perception that he was hand-picked for office by the white racist forces who opposed Harold Washington. Despite his endorsement by Jesse Jackson, Sawyer is perceived by many as a machine hack who doesn't want to rock the boat.

Sawyer is further burdened by his trancelike speaking style, which has inspired media references to him as "Mayor Mumbles" or 'The Human Valium." Not that Sawyer has much to shout about; his record since taking office is indeed slim.

For example, Sawyer claims credit for reorganizing the Chicago Housing Authority and installing a new board and executive director who has imposed Draconian restrictions on tenants' civil rights.

Since September, Black housing projects have been terrorized by a series of brutal "drug raids" by police and security agents. As in South Africa, residents and guests are required to produce passes in order to enter their homes.

Evans' "independent" campaign Alderman Tim Evans, who is running as an "independent" in the general election on what he calls the Harold Washington Party ticket, is attempting to portray himself as the mantle-bearer of Washington's "progressive coalition."

A latecomer to reform politics, Evans was a key Washington lieutenant. He is seen as the main leader of the Black forces that have opposed Mayor Sawyer as a sellout to the old machine. He is supported by many social activists and has received favorable coverage in The Guardian and the People's Daily World.

The Evans campaign has in no way, however, sought to promote the kind of independent mass action necessary to champion the demands of working people and the Black community. There is actually little in his program that would separate him from the other main candidates.

Evans responds to the education crisis, for example, with the usual liberal lectures on why taxes must be raised. His only progressive credentials consist in his frequent invocation of Washington's name.

Evans is a longtime Democratic Party supporter. His withdrawal from the February Democratic primary was purely a tactical electoral maneuver, not a step toward independent electoral action—which would mean breaking from the Democratic Party.

Evans calculated that if both he and Sawyer ran in the primary, the Black vote would be divided between the two of them and Daley would win. Evans therefore believes he has a better chance of defeating Daley, the probable primary winner, in a one-on-one contest in the general election in which he will be the only Black candidate.

A top-down affair The fracturing of the forces that swept Washington into office has disappointed and surprised many of his supporters. But it was not inconsistent with the nature of Washington's movement, which was a top-down affair. Washington never saw his enormous popular appeal as a means to Tina Beacock/Socialist Action organize and mobilize poor people, Blacks, and the labor movement-except on election day.

This was the fundamental limitation in Washington's politics of reform: his unwillingness to raise any substantial challenge to the big business movers and shakers who run the city—or more accurately have run the city into the ground in pursuit of private profit.

Such a challenge would, of course, require mobilizing tens of thousands of Blacks and working people in a new mass social-protest movement that could generate the kind of "street heat" necessary to fight for the interests of the hungry, jobless, homeless people who inhabit this city.

But the movement for Black pride and political empowerment that Washington symbolized was channeled into little more than a factional battle inside the Democratic Party.

The field of action was restricted to City Hall, as Washington contended with the machine hacks ensconced in the city council. The Black community that had mobilized to put Washington in office remained on the outside looking in.

Decline in living standards Washington worked hard to cement a solid working relationship with big business, which precluded a mass-action orientation to fight for social justice. The result? Despite some reforms in city government, social conditions continued their steady decline during Washington's term. documents a "significant deterioration" in the quality of life in Chicago over the last 20 years. A few facts hit hard:

• Thirty-three percent of the city's Black population live in poverty. Half of all minority teenagers can't find jobs, and almost as many drop out of the public schools.

• One of every four residents of Chicago is on public assistance. Yet a welfare check in the city is worth less than half its 1970 value.

• An estimated 35,000 homeless people scrape out an existence on Chicago's streets. Thousands more low-income families face a severe shortage of affordable housing.

• Chicago's infant-mortality rate is one of the highest in the nation, with the non-white rate double that of whites. Some West Side communities face a rate higher than any country in the Western Hemisphere except Haiti.

• Some 5000 children-almost all poorsuffer lead poisoning every year in Chicago. A congressional report ranks Chicago toward the bottom of major urban areas in its program to screen housing for lead.

• About 200,000 jobs, many of them higher-paying manufacturing jobs, have vanished over the last 15 years, replaced—if they are replaced-by low-paying service jobs.

Yet local business leaders see a different problem: Chicago is in trouble because wages are too high! Such was the conclusion of the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club, a local business group, in a report issued last year.

A social time bomb Business groups remain optimistic, however. A columnist for Crain's Chicago Business explains, for example, that the city's high unemployment rate, with its increased labor-pool size, is an encouraging development for Chicago's "business climate."

Over the last 10 years, in fact, a boom in downtown development has added more than a million square feet of office skyscrapers, luxury hotels, shops, and restaurants at an annual investment rate of at least a halfbillion dollars. Tax breaks, low-interest loans, and other forms of welfare for the rich have encouraged such activity.

"This side-by-side spectacle of poverty and plenty, of despair and dynamism," concludes John McCarron in the Chicago Tribune (Feb. 7, 1989) "is both a civic embarrassment and a social time bomb."

Has any of this unrestrained profiteering trickled down to Chicago's working-class and minority neighborhoods? No. These neighborhoods are hurting. And it is getting worse.

The major candidates offer no solutions to the city'ś crisis. How could it be otherwise? The Democratic and Republican parties are parties of big business, which is responsible for the social crisis facing working people.

Working people need their own independent political party, one that can mobilize both at the ballot box and in the streets. And that is an idea whose relevancy will come into sharper focus as the "social time bomb" of "poverty and plenty" continues to tick away.

Chicago Socialist Action is calling for a vote for Omari Musa, the Socialist Workers Party's write-in candidate for mayor. As a socialist, Musa stands clearly against the Democratic Party and for independent working-class political action.

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... El Salvador elections (continued from page 1: “Growing debate surrounds El Salvador nat'l elections”) make the road to peace irreversible." The FMLN expanded their cease-fire proposal to 60 days if the elections were postponed. They said they were prepared to lay down their weapons "definitively," "incorporate themselves into the nation's political life," and "recognize the existence of a single army" if the government agreed to changes in the current organization of the Armed Forces.

The guerrillas call for a reduction in the Armed Forces from the current 60,000 to the 1978 level of 12,000. They call for dissolving existing security forces (currently under army command) and reorganizing them under the Interior Ministry. And they demand the "judgment and the application of penalties to those [in the army] responsible for massacres and political crimes," specifically mentioning the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero in 1980 and the killing of four American churchwomen that same year. These changes are very difficult for Duarte and the Armed Forces to agree to. The Armed Forces continue to characterize the proposal as a tactical ploy. On Feb. 13, Defense Minister General Eugenio Vides Casanova warned that the military might stage a coup if the government accepts the proposal and postpones the elections. "If the president stays one day over his term in the presidency outside of the constitutional order, the Armed Forces would have the obligation to remove him."

Important sectors of the U.S. ruling class, however, reacted favorably to the FMLN proposal, hoping it could lead to the restoration of capitalist stability in this wartorn country. The New York Times, for instance, stated in an editorial dated Feb. 26: "El Salvador's guerrillas' offer [to] postpone elections now set for March, stop fighting, and lay down arms on both sides represents a sharp shift from the previous insistence that a power-sharing arrangement come first, then a vote.... "Only those blinded by hate fail to realize that military solutions in El Salvador can bring only further devastation. The leaders of the region have been trying to tell Washington for over a year now that they recognize these realities, and are prepared to take their hances on political settlements...

Mr. Bush and Mr. Baker... need to stan up to the hard-liners who insist that nego. tiations with leftists and Communists can never be acceptable. Of course, Washington should insist that the bargaining be hard."

The collapse of the center All indications are that a March election will be won by ARENA, despite growth in measures. FMLN actions have consistently disrupted the economy. Duarte's ineffectiveImpact Visuals right, has been overcome by its own incompetence, corruption, and inability to Duarte (center)

leans on the generals as he confronts FMLN fighters and an ngry population.

military. The Armed Forces have supported the "democratic" experiment—mostly by not Government reports confirm the FMLN's strong military position. The guerrillas have une key racior ine rMl cites in making this proposal is the "international environment in which most regional conflicts are being resolved by means of negotiations.' International "winds of change" This is currently being touted in the world capitalist press. We read about Afghanistan, Angola, Nicaragua, the Iran/Iraq war, openings with the P.L.O., and talks between Vietnam and China over Cambodia. Even the Soviet Union and China are talking again. These "resolutions" have rarely represented real gains for the working people of these regious. in rall, lity ve murviveu majur cun- raninno In fant thature invinlad maine cancessions to the interests of U.S. imperialism. [See Nat Weinstein's article, "Hidden terms of the Reagan-Gorbachev pact," Socialist Action, January 1988] But the factors pressuring the FMLN into making this proposal are numerous. The first is the Soviet Union's retreat from its support to national-liberation movements.

perestroika. As the Soviet leadership seeks eseilas/M The FMLN has been set back by Gorbachev's solutions to the country's economic crisis through the introduction of some aspects of Z market capitalism, they are turning their back on movements for national liberation throughout the world.

The difficulties of El Salvador's Sandinista neighbors are another strong influence. The Nicaraguan leadership, isolated by the Soviet Union and under the U.S. gun, has been forced to implement unpopular austerity measures and make substantial concessions to the capitalists. The FMLN has understood the Sandinistas' predicament and can see Nicaragua as a harbinger of their own future. The third source of pressure is Fidel Castro's suggestion that the Cuban road to revolution may not be the one for the rest of Latin America.

The Cuban Revolution, and Castro himself, have played a tremendously important role in the FMLN's development. Castro's opinion has always carried considerable weight within the Salvadoran revolutionary movement. But Castro of late has spoken increasingly of the need for moderation in Central America and elsewhere.

The recent peace proposal, moreover, takes place within the framework of the FMLN's overall political program, which calls for the formation of a "Government of Broad Participation" with sectors of the national bourgeoisie.

This has led the FMLN to seek a multi-class alliance with those sectors of the ruling class who seem least likely to seek their Mother receives the coffin of her dead son.

extermination. Their international isolation, and the little space left them by Gorbachev and Castro, makes them anxious for allies at home; and more willing to accede to the U.S. definition of "democracy."

Fundamental change

The FMILN proposal calls for fair elections in six months. But without a revolutionary upsurge nothing fundamental will change in the character of the current government to make them fair. To suggest otherwise misleads the Salvadoran masses and disarms their struggle.

It is legitimate to call for a democratic regime, but not to propose it independent of a change in the fundamental character or class nature of the current repressive state apparatus. And what guarantee does the FMLN suppose it has that a "revamped" army will not still defend the interests of the oligarchy, which are fundamentally counterposed to those of the workers and peasants? The various points in the FMLN proposal are structural: changing the elections; "reforming" the army; reorganizing the security forces. But their proposal is framed by a commitment-flowing from their proposal for a "Government of Broad Participation"— to continue and foster the capitalist economy in El Salvador.

This was made explicit by Comandante Balta, who stated: "We have to change the image that we are the radical communists we are painted to be. We are for genuine, popular democracy."

After explaining that the new government sought by the FMLN would have a capitalist mixed economy and would still need U.S. aid, Balta continued: "Our future is not in joining with the Soviet bloc, but disconnecting from them. We have a hard-working, creative labor force." (San Francisco Examiner, Ibid.) The FMLN has also indicated they will support the candidates of the CD, an alliance that includes representatives of the ruling class. An alliance with the ruling class is a further pledge to safeguard capitalist property relations and exploitation.

The FMLN believes they can win democratic rights through a coalition with a self-selected group from the oppressing class. But this supposes that there is a national bourgeoisie more loyal to democracy than to their own class interests, which are tied to the repressive state and ultimately to U.S. imperialism.