Rank-and-File Amazon Workers Can Organize Themselves
No simple trick will organize Amazon. A Chicago Amazon worker speaks on how long-term relationships and trust have allowed rank-and-file workers to flex their power on the warehouse floor.
Chicago
Out of the Lobbies, into the Streets
Over the past couple weeks, multiple attacks on Chicago abortion clinics show that it’s do-or-die time for abortion access in America. Defending and expanding reproductive rights depends on grassroots mobilizing.
How Wall Street Trapped American Cities
City budgets are key targets of local organizing and Defund campaigns, but cities themselves are bound by much larger financial forces. A recent book by Destin Jenkins details how cities became trapped by banks and credit rating agencies intent on austerity and racism.
Introducing the Sprout Slate
As DSA members prepare for their bi-annual convention this summer, the Sprout Slate in Chicago has emerged as a prominent contender. Rampant sat down with “the slate the uprisings produced” to discuss their thoughts on abolition, mutual aid, multiracial organizing and the future of the movement.
It’s Been Nothing but Fight
Dorothy Holmes describes her fight for a special prosecutor and carrying forward the citywide struggle for an end to police violence.
Notoriously Immoral: Eugenics, Incarceration, and the White City
Bones discovered in 1989 revealed the gruesome history of eugenics, experimentation, and murder at the Dunning facility in Chicago. Far from an aberration, the brutality of white supremacy was integral to Chicago’s past, showcased at the famous World's Fair that put Chicago on the map.
Adam’s Innocence Isn’t Even the Point
A Chicago cop put a bullet in a thirteen-year-old child, and many are spinning narratives laced with typical racist dehumanization in an attempt to obscure this fact. It’s the cops who should be under the spotlight, disbanded, and abolished.
Survival and Revolution: Mutual Aid in Chicago during the February 2021 Polar Vortex
Mutual aid efforts during Chicago’s brutal winter saved the lives of many residents who were willfully neglected by City Hall and attacked by the police. The polar vortex mutual aid effort shows the importance of mutual aid as a site of class struggle.
Chicago’s Rohingya and the Myanmar Revolt
The genocide of the Rohingya in Myanmar led many refugees to settle in Chicago. Now, as mass protests roil their home country, Rohingya human rights advocate Imran Mohammad Fazal Hoque speaks to his community’s harrowing experience and the current revolt.
Justice for Gerald Reed
This week Chicagoans have a chance to show up for a police torture survivor who is still suffering unjust incarceration.
Better than Daley: Hired Truck Kingpin Thrives under Lightfoot
Corporate polluters continue to make millions from Chicago city government contracts.
Did Chicago Stop Enforcing Environmental Regulations?
The City of Chicago has failed to keep people safe from toxic polluters during the pandemic.
Primed for Struggle: Organizing Inside Amazon
"We're not sitting around waiting for anyone to recognize us as a union in order to be or act as a union." An Amazon worker in Chicago talks to Rampant about what it will take to unionize the behemoth.
Reopen Tank Noodle under Workers’ Control
Workers at Uptown’s beloved Vietnamese restaurant Tank Noodle shouldn’t be left holding the bag for their Trump-loving bosses’ malfeasance.
Hunger Strikers Fight for All Chicagoans
Seven days ago a group of activists started a hunger strike to fight to stop the city from allowing a toxic General Iron metal shredder from being built on Chicago’s Southeast Side.
Why I’m Voting No on the CPS Plan
A teacher and CTU member makes the case for rejecting the unsafe reopening plan put forward by CPS and building on the brave actions that teachers have taken to reach this point.
Scandals, Tantrums, and Lies
In the two years since Lightfoot was elected, the mayor has deflected responsibility, brutally repressed protests, and delivered working Chicagoans a big bag of nothing. Here’s the timeline of her uninspiring tenure so far.
School Reopenings, Late Night Pressers, and a Hostile Mayor
In last Friday’s press conference, where Mayor Lori Lightfoot attacked the Chicago Teachers Union, she undermined the efforts of those negotiating on behalf of CPS. Just what is she trying to accomplish?
Dill Pickle Workers Deserve Hazard Pay
Behind the friendly face of the Dill Pickle Food Co-op, workers laboring in dangerous pandemic conditions are being refused hazard pay by a vindictive management. The union is fighting back.
Abolish the Landlords
The pandemic has triggered a housing crisis, a looming cataclysmic wave of evictions, and the seeds of a new housing movement fighting to defend and fight against this current situation and against the return to so-called normal.
Close for Teaching, Open for Recovery
Public schools cannot be reopened safely during the current wave of the pandemic, but imagine what they could provide if they were repurposed to save lives, not endanger them.
Safe Return or No Return
A Chicago teacher describes the background to the current struggle against the mayor’s attempts to reopen schools as the pandemic rages.
Uptown’s Hillbilly Santa Claus
A real life St Nick, hounded by the Klan, distributed not just toys but solidarity and antiracist militancy
Movement Alders Flip to Pass Austerity Budget
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.