Prospects for peace in Ukraine
Coming up tomorrow on Hitting Left, my guests will be Medea Benjamin, anti-war activist and founder of Code Pink, and Rudy Lozano, longtime Chicago community activist.
Medea and I will be taking a look at the current prospects for negotiations and an end, or at least a ceasefire) to the war in Ukraine. Why are the cold warriors so animated in their opposition to a ceasefire initiative being proposed by China?
The second half of the show will have Rudy and me discussing the Chicago mayoral race and the 2001 hunger strike which led to the founding of a new high school in Little Village/Lawndale and the firing of then schools CEO Paul Vallas.
Don't miss.
Tune in Friday 11-noon on WLPN 105.5 FM in Chicago and streaming live on lumpenradio.com.
FRENCH WORKERS…respond to so-called “pension reform.”
Paris (CNN) — France’s powerful unions are coming out in force for a nationwide strike today in a rejection of a controversial retirement age reform that the government pushed through parliament last week without a vote.
The government’s plan to raise the retirement age for most workers by two years has been criticized by huge numbers of people. But despite protests that drew more than a million people onto streets across the country, President Emmanuel Macron’s government…rammed the legislation through the French National Assembly last week using a constitutional clause that allows the government to bypass a vote.
SLATE— ‘Daleys’ ghosts’ are hovering over the Chicago election.
Vallas’ right-leaning campaign has employed racist dog whistles to stoke voters’ fears through his conservative tough-on-crime rhetoric. In addition, he was criticized by Mayor Lori Lightfoot about his messaging on the campaign trail, telling voters that his campaign is “about taking back our city,” which Lightfoot compared to 1983 mayoral candidate Bernie Epton’s racist slogan, “Before It’s Too Late.”
Nearly half of Chicago voters chose neither Vallas nor Johnson in the first round of the election on Feb. 28. On election night, Vallas secured 179,740 votes, or 33 percent of the vote, to Johnson’s 114,262 votes, or 21 percent of the vote. So both campaigns have many voters to persuade over the next 10 days.
Black voters are a significant bloc that each candidate will need to win over on the road to the runoff. Incumbent Mayor Lori Lightfoot performed better than the seven other Black mayoral candidates in majority Black wards, but it wasn’t enough to secure her spot in the runoff.
So far, neither campaign has reached out to Lightfoot and her voters for support. That could be a critical mistake, especially for the Johnson campaign.
Brandon Johnson in last night’s debate on Fox32…
