Historic, complicated, dramatic. These are some of the adjectives used about the lead-up to Karen Lewiss anticipated run for Chicago mayor against union-buster Rahm Emanuel. And the weeks just after Karens announced brain cancer and withdrawal from the race bumped all of these adjectives up to another exponential level. Labor Beat looks at the background, with new and exclusive footage, to the run Karen run movement and the sudden turn of events in the Fall of 2014. We show scenes from discussions with Karen in Uptown where she describes her relationship with the Democratic Party; the startling announcement at the L.E.A.D. union dinner on October 31 that Karen was passing the torch to Democrat Chuy Garcia (Cook County Commissioner); our own archival footage comparing how mayoral candidate endorsements were democratically done back in 2010; an interview with a delegate emerging from a contentious CTU House of Delegates meeting on Nov. 5 that debated whether to rubber-stamp Karens abrupt Garcia endorsement. We also look at certain aldermanic races for the Feb. 2015 city hall election, getting some interviews and speeches from a handful of labor-based independent candidates who have either in their campaigns or to Labor Beat declared that they are neither Democratic or Republican. At the time of the completion of this video, none of these candidates are yet officially on the ballot, as they work to gather specified numbers of validated petition signatures in a difficult process set up by the election commission. (Tammie Vinson, 28th Ward; Jorge Mujica, 25th Ward; Tim Meegan, 33rd Ward; Sue Sadlowski Garza, 10th Ward.) Includes remarks by CTU VP Jesse Sharkey; Ryne Poelker (46th Ward activist). A running commentary by labor activist Linda Loew (member of AFSCME 1989) places these developments in perspective: are we seeing in this the seeds of a new political party of labor and its allies, fundamentally breaking from the Democratic Party? The video is also narrated by the Chicago-area radio voice of Dale Lehman.
Posted on: Mon, 24 Nov 2014 02:06:23 +0000
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