Rampant Magazine
Brandon Johnson’s meteoric rise to the mayor’s office inaugurates a new political period for Chicago. Winning necessary reforms going forward will require independent organizing and confrontation with the rich.
Like others before him, aldermanic hopeful Mueze Bawany has come under attack by those seeking to discredit the Palestine solidarity movement. As Israel escalates its violent occupation, our side has to reject the false frameworks of the liberal establishment, even in Chicago’s municipal elections.
Revolution, or the need to smash the capitalist state, has been dismissed and avoided by many who claim to want a liberated world. But any responsible approach to overcoming capitalism must grapple with the need to dismantle the capitalist state and replace it with our own democratic institutions from below.
Cops in Uvalde, like cops everywhere, were never meant to protect us. It’s time we start protecting our communities by getting rid of police altogether.
Today marks twenty years since the extralegal torture facility Guantánamo Bay was opened. It is time to close the base and begin repairing the harm to its victims and their families.
Retailers have entered a full-fledged panic about organized looting during the holidays. But how much of that looting is real? And more importantly, who cares?
A new book by Geo Maher makes a forceful case for the necessity of building strong communities that can abolish the police.
Chicago’s new city budget has achieved some limited gains, but at the steep costs of massive police funding and the risk of bolstering Lightfoot’s grip on power. The socialist left needs a new strategic approach to set its own terms in the future.
Several socialist elected officials refused to oppose Israel’s brutal settler colonialism when it counted. It's time we talk seriously about the implications for socialist strategy on the ground.
Three months after Israel’s bombardment of Gaza and forced displacement of Palestinian families evoked massive worldwide protests, Reps Jamaal Bowman and Ilhan Omar cast deciding votes to fund more Israeli bombs and apartheid. Why?
The heroic Palestinian struggle is the beating heart of the international revolution. Grasping the imperialist dynamics of Zionism and the region is essential for solidarity struggles.
Ma’Khia Bryant deserved a long, thriving life, period. While some have pointed to the circumstances of her murder in order to cast doubt on her right to live, none of these equivocations even have a basis in crisis intervention experience.
In an era of permanent war, rebuilding a movement against US imperialism will require rethinking our long-held strategies.
The Arab Spring was an anti-police movement brought to revolutionary levels. Its lessons will be crucial to a renewed abolitionist movement in the United States and around the world.
The inauguration of Joe Biden arrives with the liberal establishment proclaiming the need for unity. But unity is not what we want.
In the most contentious Chicago budget vote in a generation, four “progressive” alderpeople buckled to Lightfoot’s pressure and allowed an antiworker austerity city budget to pass for 2021.
The Crime Lab research center operated by the University of Chicago uses the illusion of scientific objectivity to support the racist violence of the Chicago Police Department.
Vicky Osterweil’s new book, In Defense of Looting, provides a robust defense of uncivil disobedience and its potential for both radicalizing and exacting change. By dodging the essential issue of organization, however, it leaves many questions unanswered.
Five weeks of open rebellion in the streets have yielded swift, unprecedented results. This is the definitive, updated list of the movement’s victories so far.
Lori Lightfoot recently appointed a new head of police in Chicago. His record indicates a disturbing continuity of racist police violence.
Centrist corporate politics has demonstrated a strange ability to outlast multiple crises and now the insurgent campaign of Bernie Sanders. The key to their power is the Obama mythos, which will have to be taken on if they are ever to fall.
Cops are not part of the working class and perform no socially beneficial function. Only good things can result from abolishing the police.
Police don't solve, stop or prevent crime because they were never designed to. Cops are the tools of the bosses, from the day they were invented to today.
