Lori Lightfoot’s record: The corporate insider as reformer

Comments (0) Activism, Politics

Lori Lightfoot relegated to background by activists in PATF public forum, demanding the board fire Officer Dante Servin for his murder of Rekia Boyd. February 15, 2016. Photo by Smart Chicago Collaborative (CC BY 2.0) via Wikimedia

Just like you, I went to sleep in Chicago on February 26, but the next morning I woke up someplace else … very else. In Chicago, Bill Daley, of course, won the mayoral election, but I woke up in alternate universe Chicago, where we had a runoff between two black women … and one a lesbian. We all woke up in that Chicago, but no one knows quite what to make of it. Except the Chamber of Commerce and the Fraternal Order of Police are completely off their nut, and progressives, after a delirious minute, are all mad at each other for backing the wrong black woman.

And we still need a name for this new different city. Alt-Chicago? Un
Chicago? My vote is for WTF Chicago.

I know I shouldn’t be laughing over this. There’s nothing funny about the Chamber of Commerce and the FOP. But the left not being able to unite, that’s the eternal return, the first time was tragedy but the nth time is farce. People you like and respect are demonizing each other’s candidate, even though Lori and Toni have such similar platforms, similar promises, and both have a mix of progressive and establishment biography.

Yes, establishment, both of them — two brilliant and talented black women, both making quite similar progressive promises, both of whom became successful by rising up against odds through the ruling elites. Preckwinkle, obviously, in the Democratic machine. But let’s get real about Lightfoot too — federal prosecutor, multimillionaire equity partner in a monster multinational law firm, and department head and troubleshooter for Mayors Daley and Emanuel — that’s not establishment insider too? Whether or not either of them is “progressive,” they inhabit different segments of our ruling elites — and if you think those elite groups are on our side, I have a condo to sell you in Lincoln Yards.

The split among the progressives, in one sense, is strategic — different ideas about how to transform Chicago. On one side, Lightfoot’s good government, anti-corruption supporters think defeating the machine and cleansing a corrupt political system is the way to bring about the big changes. On the other, Preckwinkle’s labor-oriented reformers and activists see change coming from her proven progressive record supporting a living wage, opposition to Daley’s budgets and privatizations like his two parking meter deals, expanding Medicaid in the county, as well as her votes on movement-inspired resolutions against the Patriot Act and the Iraq War. And then there’s the third idea about how to change Chicago — build a mass movement and hammer Chicago from the outside. Neither candidate is part of that movement, but it matters how they respond to it.

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Chicago: Do you know your alderman? Vote smart on Tuesday.

Comments (1) Politics

Shining a light on corruption with the ballot. A woman draped in a “Votes for Women” sash and wielding “The Ballot” shines light into a dark room where two men conduct “honest graft” in a 1914 Puck magazine illustration. (Library of Congress)

There hasn’t been much reporting on the city council races in Chicago’s two dailies. But voters may stand more of a chance of changing Chicago by voting for a progressive city council than by voting for mayor. (Here are my comments on why the city council races matter.) But how do you learn who the progressives are? 

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Decoding Daley and his billionaire backers

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A look at what the details of Daley’s career in banking and the White House tell us about how he would run Chicago.

Along with other election posters, this warning to Chicago voters, found in my alley. If you don’t vote for them, they can’t breed. Photo: considered sources.com.

[For comments on the City Council candidates, see here.]

Why are Chicago’s most notorious billionaires shoveling money into Bill Daley’s mayoral campaign? His campaign literature gives us no clues, but let’s see if we can figure it out. Let’s decode his signature campaign promise to freeze property taxes, and then let’s look at his White House and banking career in a little more detail than we get from Chicago’s dailies.

But first, a note about why this election matters … and why, despite the lack of a charismatic candidate, it is not boring. Thanks largely to Chicago’s rising progressive movements, enough Chicagoans woke up to Rahm Emanuel to force him to withdraw from the race. The machine is in disarray, for the first time since they were, for too short a while, crushed by Harold Washington and his progressive coalition in 1983. This unhoped for moment leaves us with slates of progressive city council candidates, but without an authentic standard-bearer in the mayoral race. Progressives are focusing on city council candidates or divided between Toni Preckwinkle and Lori Lightfoot (more on them later). But to me Chicago’s more consequential decision is, Bill Daley or anyone but. Daley is the billionaire’s choice, and with his banking and political networks, he will be Rahm on steroids. Under Daley, a revived, neoliberal machine could now become entrenched for decades more.

“Property tax freeze”? Maybe on a cold day in hell.

Maybe you know enough to distrust candidates’ promises, but sometimes they can’t help but show their true nature even when they’re sweet-talking you. Take Bill Daley’s promise to freeze property taxes. You get that in his mailers and in his TV ad.  “Property Tax Freeze!” reads the display type. “Bill will put a moratorium on tax hikes to keep families in their homes.” But when you look closer, you see he has two messages, for his two audiences. If you’re in the elite audience of the City Club, or catch the right article in the dailies, you’ll know that he’s only promising to freeze property taxes for the first year. And he doesn’t mention that he’s only talking about freezing the portion of your property taxes that go to city government operations —only about 25% of last year’s property taxes, while the rest go to the schools and other agency budgets.

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Chicago mayoral primary: Where are the progressives?

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The beginning of today’s organized resistance to the machine was the Chicago Teachers Union strike in 2012. F Newsmagazine photo by Chris Johnson. (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

Is the local news media more interested in Chicago’s primary than Chicagoans? The mayoral candidates are certainly uninspiring — there is no Karen Lewis, or even Chuy Garcia. Yet local elections have a much greater direct impact on the lives of many Chicagoans, especially the poor, than national elections. The mayor and city council hit you with property taxes and regressive sales taxes and fines, high rents and lack of affordable housing, struggling schools, a racist criminal justice system, the war against immigrants … and the myriad daily offenses of inequality and racism that keep the poor poor and the middle class struggling. They may pretend it’s some previous administration or the market doing it to us, but their fingerprints are everywhere.

Where are the progressives? At long last they should be in a strong position to challenge the Chicago machine. Haven’t progressive movements have been on the rise since Rahm Emanuel became mayor? Isn’t the machine weaker and more divided than at any time since Mayor Harold Washington declared, “The machine is dead, dead, dead”?

Add it up: 1) Rahm has been forced out of the mayoral race. 2) Cook County party boss and County Assessor Joe Berrios was defeated by a reform candidate in 2018. And now, 3) the FBI probe and indictment of that other top party boss, Ed Burke, and the exposure of powerful Ald. Danny Solis’ quest for Viagra, sex and campaign booty has tainted two leading mayoral candidates, Toni Preckwinkle and Susana Mendoza. 4)  And there’s no telling who will follow, as the scandals became more farcical. Mike Royko is laughing in his grave.

And the progressives? Certainly there are enough progressive voters in Chicago to bring about transformational change … but they can’t manage that without candidates and organization. After years of gains in the street and the polls, progressive voters and activists are divided when not disengaged from the elections. (more…)

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Why the Blue Wave isn’t enough

Comments (0) Activism, Politics

Women’s March, Philadelphia, 2018. Photo by Rob Call, via Flickr, (CC BY 2.0).

We need a different kind of wave

Yes, the “Blue Wave” was spectacular — but consider this: About 75 House seats were won by only a few points.* Close elections are normal. Three key contests, in Florida and Georgia, were so close their outcome was in doubt days after the election. For that matter, presidential elections have been decided by a similarly thin margin — the 2000 election, for example, required partisan Supreme Court intervention. So blue waves even in 2020 and after will predictably deliver a precarious hold on government.

A Blue Wave isn’t enough. No doubt much of the political class is happy enough with any majority that delivers control of the levers of government, but people want more. Progressives, liberals, conservatives, whether in the middle or the extremes of the spectrum, want fundamental change. We can’t have that even with a wave twice as high.

What history tells us about waves

For those changes, we need not just 5 or 10 percent margins, but overwhelming election victories. To see what it takes, look at the two elections marking the great transformative changes of the last century, 1936 and 1964. The first saw the creation of our social safety net, with Social Security, unemployment insurance, disability supports, minimum wage, and union rights. The second saw a rush of democratization with the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, and the 24th Amendment, as well as Medicare, and the anti-poverty program. The election victories necessary for these changes took more than “waves.” In 1936 Franklin D. Roosevelt became president with 61% of the popular vote, 98% of the electoral vote, the Democrats receiving over 3/4 of the House and 80% of the Senate seats. Lyndon Johnson in 1964 became president with 61% of the popular vote, 90% of the electoral vote, 68% of the House seats and 68% of the Senate seats.

Progressives needed not waves, but electoral landslides. Yet the vote counts are a misleading focus: In both the 1930s and 1960s, those landslide votes were the expression of massive social movement mobilizations, with millions of people taking direct action and creating leadership and organization in the streets and workplaces. And in both periods these mobilizations came with transformative cultural change, each a further realization of democracy “for the people.” In each period, militant mass movements won political change but also shaped a new cultural consensus — in the 1930s,  that it was government’s job to guarantee economic security (one of Roosevelt’s “four freedoms”); in the 1960s, that it was government’s job to guarantee equality. (more…)

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Thinking about the “Protect Mueller” protests

Comments (1) Activism, Politics

The “protect Mueller” rally the day after Trump fired Attorney General Sessions was not a typical Chicago protest. It looked different at the start, and at the end this earnest protest became farcical. (Shameless teaser: You’ll have to read to the end of this post to see why!)

Here is what it looked like.

Over 2,000 people rallied at Chicago’s Federal Plaza and marched to Trump Tower on November 8, protesting Trump’s latest threat against Mueller and the Russia probe. The Chicago march was one of over 900, with tens of thousands marching nationwide in large and small cities and suburbs in a “rapid response network” triggered by Trump’s firing Attorney General Jeff Sessions, whose recusal from the Russia probe protected it by placing it under Ass’t Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Trump’s firing of Sessions and appointment of loyalist Matthew Whitaker is expected to end or limit it.

The march was as serious and anti-Trump as all the other recent, much bigger protests — the Women’s March, the March for Science, Families Belong Together, March for Our Lives. But this march was not only much smaller, it also looked and sounded different. (more…)

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Midterm votes that matter in Chicago: Governor, Attorney General, Judges, Water Reclamation District

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Significantly increased interest in rooting out abusive judges is one outcome of the campaigns led by Black Lives Matter activists against police violence and for criminal justice reform. Voters can now monitor judges through the online bar association ratings and campaigns by progressive organizations. 

Voting may seem less urgent if you’re in a blue city and blue state. But there are some choices that matter a lot, even in Chicago, where voters can feel perilously relaxed about the prospects for Democrats. Let’s look at four — governor,  attorney general, judges, and Metropolitan Water Reclamation District. Read further to see why the stakes are high, an explanation of the importance of the attorney general, how to identify and vote against some of  the most abusive judges, and why the obscure Metropolitan Water Reclamation District needs our close attention.  For endorsements by progressive organizations, consult Reclaim Chicago, United Working Families, Our Revolution Illinois • Chicago, Chicago Teachers Union,  SEIU Illinois State Council, National Nurses United, Planned ParenthoodNaral Pro-Choice America.

My earlier guide, “Illinois Primary: How do you know who the progressives are?” may still interest you for its overview, its background on Chicago political issues, and its descriptions of individual candidates, many of whom won the primaries.

Some voting tools.

Find your polling place and fill out a sample ballot here  (Chicago only); or here (Illinois, doesn’t include county, municipal, or party races)

Sample ballots:  Chicago;  Cook County; Illinois (or Ballotpedia). Chicago includes Illinois Democratic State Central Committee, but some of the others don’t).

Find your election district here for every office, from Congress to Illinois Democratic State Central Committee. You can also do a web search and find other tools like this one, most useful for Chicago residents — Chicago’s Board of Election site gives you your polling/registration place, verifies your voter registration, gives you a sample ballot, contact info for public officials, and allows you to check status of a vote-by-mail application.

Voting for Governor

Ballotpedia

You don’t want to vote for a billionaire, so you’ll sit this Illinois election out? Here’s the scariest argument I’ve seen for voting for Pritzker: If Rauner wins, we could be faced with a Republican-gerrymandered Illinois after the 2021 redistricting. Read how in Ben Joravsky’s Reader column: “Warning, Democrats: A Rauner victory over Pritzker could turn Illinois into a red state.” If you think the chances are slim, read it — and weigh those odds against the huge stakes.

But also refresh your memory on how Rauner tried to put the Scott Walker-Wisconsin, Mike Pence-Indiana agenda over on the legislature by refusing to pass a budget for three years unless the legislature caved. Eliminating environmental protections, crushing unions, starving schools and health care —the agneda has long been Republican orthodoxy, only the tactics are new. Rauner’s tactic was to refuse to submit or approve a budget, which would stop spending on healthcare, education, social supports, to blackmail Democrats into agreeing to his union busting and pro-business agenda. You can see the devastation he was willing to bring us in the accompanying illustration. If we have a budget now, it is because enough Republicans crossed over to vote with Democrats, overriding Rauner’s veto to save themselves in the upcoming election.

From “An Illustrated Guide to the Illinois State Budget Crisis.” Sophie Lucido Johnson in F Newsmagazine, April 10, 2016.

This is one of those eyes-wide-open votes. Both Pritzker and Rauner have offshored millions, and Pritzker is an establishment Democrat who has moved to the left to follow the voting base. His platform is quite progressive, most notably his plans to allow Illinois residents to buy into Medicaid, legalize marijuana, implement other major criminal justice reforms, expand early childhood education, and work toward a progressive income tax to reduce growing income inequality.

Note: The progressive income tax, to replace the flat tax that has the wealthy pay the same rate as the middle class, would require an amendment to the Illinois Constitution. That might be possible with Democratic control of both houses of the legislature and the governor’s office, but it would also require considerable pressure from the Democratic base. In the meantime, some workarounds would be possible, such as a popular millionaire’s tax surcharge.

Attorney General

Ballotpedia

Democratic state senator Kwame Raoul has lost some of his lead to right-wing Republican Erika Harold. What do the polls say? I haven’t seen recent polling, and there hasn’t been much polling for attorney general; an October poll shows Raoul ahead, but with 39% of voters undecided.

Harold is a social conservative. She opposed to abortion even in the case of rape and incest, supported repeal of the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”), opposed marriage equality and advocated for Social Security “reform” (code word for privatization, increasing the retirement age, ending cost of living increases — and telling your kids to start saving their pennies).

Raoul has what has become a standard progressive platform for blue state Democrats. His record as state senator, votes and sponsorship of bills, shows consistent support for gender equality, affordable healthcare including Medicaid expansion, voting rights, criminal justice reform, access to abortion and contraception, sexual assault and domestic violence survivors, labor rights, environmental protections.

The candidates’ policies and values matter because state attorneys general prosecute violations of law, set the priorities for law enforcement, and can mobilize the state’s resources against corporate or government abuses. So for example, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan joined multi-state law suits to block Trump’s attacks on the Affordable Care Act and attempt to defund “sanctuary states” and separate immigrant families. Madigan also intervened to force Mayor Rahm Emanuel to agree to a court-supervised consent decree to reform the Chicago Police Department. Which attorney general candidate would you trust to monitor the payout of the Master Tobacco Settlement, which brings Illinois a $9.1 billion through 2025 — someone who believes in using government to punish corporate fraud, or a Republican who is pro-business and anti-regulation?

How to vote for judges

Will the judges you vote for respect the women who come before them? Honoré Daumier, Woman Pleading for Justice, date unknown. Metropolitan Museum of Art, public domain.

Some of the judges seeking retention are known abusers in the courtroom, some have shown prejudice against minorities, some are known for their pro-police bias or for their excessive sentences. Seven judges in Cook County received negative reviews from the bar associations. Matthew Coghlan was even opposed for retention by the Cook County Democratic Party, with County Board President Tony Preckwinkle making robocalls asking us to vote “No.”

You can download a pdf with a summary of the results at voteforjudges.org.

You might also look at Injustice Watch, which gives you a downloadable PDF listing of judges and their ratings, flagging the judges with negative ratings, past “controversies,” notable reversals, lenient or harsh sentencers, and which ones are former prosecutors and former public defenders. There are 11 organizations of lawyers with ratings in the Injustice Watch chart. You can see which judges are flagged by the Women’s Bar Association of Illinois, the Black Women’s Lawyer Association of Greater Chicago, the Cook County Bar Association (black lawyers and judges), the Puerto Rican Bar Association of Illinois, the Lesbian and Gay Bar Association of Chicago. The Chicago Council of Lawyers was formed as a “counter bar association,” an alternative to the Chicago Bar Association formed by young activist lawyers when the 1968 social movements and state repression divided the legal profession.

Injustice Watch notes these particular cases:

One, Matthew Coghlan, is being sued by two exonerees who contend that, as a prosecutor, he worked with a now-disgraced detective to frame them for murder. A second judge, Maura Slattery Boyle, has been reversed by the appellate courts far more often the past six years than any other judge. Michael Clancy, in bond court, has repeatedly held suspects on bail higher than they could afford, contrary to a new local court rule enacted by Chief Judge Evans last year. A fourth judge, Michael McHale, was accused by defense attorneys of holding improper private conversations with prosecutors about a pending case.  [My bold.]

A group of progressive lawyers and activists formed a  Coalition to Dump Matt Coghlan.  Injustice Watch has more on Coghlan here.

[I’m adding a late note at the end of this article about why I’m discounting the Tribune’s recommendation of a “no” vote against Lisa Ann Marino, praised in the report by the Chicago Council of Lawyers.]

The Metropolitan Water Reclamation District

“Vote for me! I’ll take care of Lake Michigan for you!” George Cruikshank, “Salus populi, suprema lex,” 1832. Neptune sits on the London version of the MWRD, with a chamber pot on his head, dead animals on his trident and polluted drinking water in his goblet. British Museum, (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).

This body isn’t well-known but needs to be. It is responsible for treating the city’s sewage and keeping our streets and houses from flooding during heavy rainfalls. This means, also, keeping raw sewage out of Lake Michigan and the Chicago River … which they are unable to do.    It has a budget of $1.2 billion and has 2000 full-time employees, so naturally it is scandal-ridden for corruption and mismanagement, just the center for environmental vision the Democratic establishment can provide. The board members get sometimes huge donations from companies doing business with the board and there is a history of scandal. There’s some background in the website of the Better Government Association, which has proposed an independent inspector general for the MWRD. And here also is an excellent article by an independent journalist, Emeline Posner.

Note that two Democratic candidates are incumbents: Debra Shore (12 years) and Kari K Steele. Incumbents bear responsibility for the mismanagement and scandals: the MWRD paid $95,000 to executive director David St. Pierre, when he was forced out after an investigation board members are keeping secret; the Better Government Association in 2015 reported that the MWRD had been leasing land along the Stevenson for bargain prices to tenants who had been sued for environmental violations, including one who didn’t report a 50,000 gallon antifreeze spill; pay-to-play politics  was exposed by a Green Party investigation, with $400,000 in campaign donations to commissioners; a board president owned a consulting firm whose job it is to “make life as easy as possible for his dozens of corporate clients, some of them heavy polluters.”

My vote here is not going to be an educated one, because I haven’t found enough information on the candidates. So I will be motivated by my default bias, against establishment politicians. The Tribune and Sun-Times endorse all the Democratic candidates; I am paying attention to the Green Party candidates, whose environmental credentials seem on the whole no worse than the Democratic incumbents’ and whose election would upturn business-as-usual. One of them, Geoffrey Cubbage, was quite impressive in a long interview on the Midwest Socialist podcast, “Sewer Socialism.” Unfortunately for the Greens, his opponent is an unusually qualified Democratic candidate, Cameron Davis. Davis is former president of the Alliance for the Great Lakes; he represented, as a lawyer, the National Wildlife Federation, and he was a senior adviser for the Great Lakes in the US EPA during the Obama administration.

Some of the other Democratic candidates have no background in environmental science, but the editorial boards prefer them for the “government experience” (translation: They’ve been socialized into the system and they’ll behave). So their qualifications are that they are “visionary leaders” and “exemplary managers” and “innovators.” I can vote for lawyers, managers, politicians, or I can vote for socialist environmental activists.

You can find a list of ballot measures for Cook County here.

Good luck to all of us.

—Paul Elitzik

[This note added in response to the Tribune Editorial Board’s recommendation of a “no” vote on Lisa Ann Marino for the Cook County Circuit Court.]

The Chicago Tribune editorial board in today’s endorsement list asks us to vote “no” on Lisa Ann Marino, in addition to Boyle and Coghlin. They explain here. They rely on the Chicago Bar Association (CBA) ratings. Here is the Chicago Council of Lawyers’ (CCL) rating comment:

The CCL found her qualified. The CBA rated her “not recommended,” saying there are “significant concerns about Judge Marino’s work ethic, punctuality, diligence, and knowledge of the law.” In a response to the CBA’s negative rating, Marino mentioned that she was found “qualified” by many other bar associations including the CCL which noted that they believe she is “knowledgeable,” “thorough,” “well prepared,” and has “good county management skills”. The ISBA recommended her for retention.
Past: She was rated as qualified by the CCL, CBA, and ISBA when she ran in 2012.

The CCL in its own report said:

Judge Marino is reported to have good court management skills. She runs an efficient court call and is reported to be respectful and fair to all parties. She is especially praised for her dealings with litigants unrepresented by counsel. She is knowledgeable about her area of law and is described often as being thorough and well prepared. The Council finds her Qualified for retention to the Circuit Court. [My italics]

Odd that the Tribune editorial board singles her out, when there are other judges rated unqualified by CBA that it recommends. In the CC:I like the “praise for her dealings with litigants” and wonder if maybe she is too fair to all parties. My uneducated, inexpert bias is to remember the class bias of the Tribune editorial board, which endorses Rauner and Harold, and to remember their devious support of Trump over Clinton in 2016 (by endorsing Gary Johnson). I’d rather be influenced by the CCL report and lean towards judges who receive praise for “fairness” and for “dealings with litigants unrepresented by counsel” (translation: poor people).

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Lyric Opera strike: Media bias, and the crisis of the elite arts institution

Comments (7) Culture, labor, Media

Lyric Opera strikers play for passersby. Click to hear the music.    Video by consideredsources.com (CC BY-SA 2.0)

“Chicago Lyric Opera Musicians Walk Out as Season Opens”  (NY Times). The headline can be simple, but it’s a story with many layers, and when you pry them apart, they tell you a lot about America.

It’s in one part a typical labor struggle. Management claims they have no choice but to cut salary and the number of performances — more middle class professionals straddling regular employment and the gig economy. Art student friends take note: This story is also about the place of the arts and artists in America, with the peculiarities of labor-management conflict in the non-profit world. And, as always, there is the way the story in each of its parts is told to the rest of us by the news media, which are also struggling with deep cuts to staffing and quality, also with more journalists pushed down into the precariat.

It is as well a story about how power gets to write its own story. Let’s look at the Tribune’s reporting, since, among the papers that covered the strike, it is the most detailed.

Bias in reporting can be subtle We are taught to value the objective reporting style of the big dailies, which model fairness and impartiality. We’re in an age where sophisticated critiques of that style and its assumptions are becoming familiar, but it still has its power to distract us from questioning the “facts” we see so carefully and densely reported. But the most difficult to see distortions are not the “alternative facts” and “fake news” of right-wing discourse,  but the facts that are left out, the voices that are not heard. I value the traditional newswriting style and teach it, but I also teach questioning it.

Lyric musicians picketing in front of the opera house. Photo courtesy of Jack Zimmerman.

Headline framing First let’s look at those innocent headlines. News headlines may seem to boil the story down to its main point. But headlines frame the story, and in framing it they give the story an interpretation. Sometimes, you can see bias in the interpretation when you compare headlines in different newspapers for the same story. Look at the headlines for the Lyric Opera strike:

Chicago Lyric Opera Musicians Walk Out as Season Opens (NY Times)

Lyric Opera musicians go on strike, threatening opera season (Washington Post and Washington Times, both using AP)

Musicians strike silences opening notes of Lyric Opera season (Chicago Sun-Times)

“Declining audiences, subscription revenues lead to Lyric Opera strike” (Chicago Tribune)

Whose point of view do you see in the Tribune headline?

The headlines in the other papers are saying, our reporter’s story is that the musicians are striking. But the Tribune’s headline tells a different story, echoing the Lyric management’s framing.  For Lyric management and the Tribune, as we see when we read further, the real story is that declining revenue has forced cuts that the musicians have no choice but to accept. It’s societal, it’s structural. The money just isn’t there. There is no alternative. (One reader pointed out that the Post headline blames the musicians for possible management cancellation of the season.)

The Tribune story may be written in the objective and impartial style we expect from the best newspapers. But one of the most important sources of bias in reporting is privileging one source over others, and the Tribune article is a good example of how sourcing can spread bias through a wealth of factual details “objectively” presented. (I have to say here I respect the two Tribune writers, whose work I follow, learn from, recommend to students. But still, the Tribune coverage of the strike, in other articles also, is biased.) (more…)

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Two women against the power; Kavanaugh and legitimacy of the Court

Comments (1) Activism, Art, Media, Politics

Some of the news reports buried the lead. Their stories began with Trump or the Senate deciding to delay confirmation of Kavanaugh to allow the FBI to “investigate” further. But Trump and Republican leaders didn’t suddenly decide they wanted better optics than a mean drunk telling whoppers and raging about Clinton and Democratic conspiracies. And Senator Jeff Flake, who insisted on the FBI investigation, didn’t suddenly remember he has a wife and daughter (the sort of things guys mention to show they really don’t have sympathy for rapists).

Here is the real story, the rightful lead: Flake was confronted by activists as he left the Senate chamber. They shamed him for promoting a rapist into the Supreme Court, and CNN caught it on video. But if you only scan headlines and lead sentences in the story on Flake’s change of “heart,” you may have missed this. The Intercept, almost alone, centered the drama in their headline: “Protest Matters: Senate Asks FBI to Investigate Brett Kavanaugh After Sen. Jeff Flake Is Confronted by Sexual Assault Survivors.”

For almost five minutes, two brave women, Ana María Archila and Maria Gallagher, held the elevator doors open and faced down Jeff Flake. He could not bring himself to answer, or even look at them, when they demanded he say whether he believed Kavanaugh was telling the truth.

Flake too is now a trauma survivor — these may have been the five longest minutes of his life, “indelible in the hippocampus.”

Compare the Intercept’s framing with  The Washington Post story, which barely mentioned the heroic women six paragraphs into the article, in a parenthetical note:

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John McCain: De mortuis nil nisi b.s.

Comments (3) Politics

Mourning the death of a warrior.  The Greek warriors destroyed Troy and its people. Sound familiar? Homer’s heroes were Western poetry’s first dearly beloved war criminals. Note the shield with the Gorgon head. “Thetis and the Nereids’ lamentation for Achilles.” Hydria decorated by the Damon painter, Corinth, c. 560 BCE, Louvre.  

De mortuis, nil nisi b. s. How many admiring journalists wrote poignant memorials to John McCain? How many newspapers published heartfelt editorials? Many mentioned his 23 missions flying an A-4 Skyhawk over North Vietnam during the Vietnam War and his  two and half years as a prisoner of war, tortured, courageously resisting. But did you read any which asked, who was he bombing? All of them identified with McCain’s suffering and courageous resistance as a prisoner, but did you read any which mentioned that he was dropping bombs in Operation Rolling Thunder, in which American pilots killed an estimated 52,000 civilians?  While we remember his suffering with compassion or his resistance with admiration, let’s remember also the Vietnamese who died; not counting combatants, over 2 million died in the war.

Remembering these Vietnamese had no place among the pieties. In the mainstream media, the U.S. must be a force for good in the world. Officially we don’t  remember feelings widely held at the time, expressed by Martin Luther King Jr when he said, “The United States is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”

Such blasphemous thoughts seem even more out of place now that liberals mourn the passing of a Republican senator who openly defied Trump. After all, didn’t he save the Affordable Care Act? Didn’t he oppose Gina Haskel’s nomination as CIA director for her role in waterboarding prisoners? The liberal commentariat seemed to celebrate him even more for planning insults to Trump and family at his funeral. (more…)

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