Defund Fascism, Blue and Orange, by Paul Street

Racism Is A Virus-Zabou graffiti, Shoreditch

Image by duncan c via Flickr

by Paul Street
Writer, Dandelion Salad
The Official Website of Paul Street
August 23, 2020

The American ruling class says it is opposed to “big government.” It isn’t. The wealthy Few are only against what the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu called “the left hand of the state” – those parts of government that reflect the victories of past and ongoing social movements by serving the common good, regulating Big Business, and offering support, protection, inclusion and empowerment to the lower and working classes. That is the “big government” the rich and powerful don’t like. That is the big bad State they want to “starve” and “drown.”

Continue reading

Shelter In Places Apart And Unequal: Topple All The Monuments You Want, But The Real Racism’s Going Unaddressed, by Paul Street

COVID Racism

Image by Becker1999 via Flickr

by Paul Street
Writer, Dandelion Salad
The Official Website of Paul Street
July 14, 2020

America pulls down monuments to racist oppressors, renames streets and paints Black Lives Matter all over them. But the real inequalities of cities like Chicago – rooted in class as well as race – are left to fester.

Continue reading

The Openly Plutocratic Domination of U.S. Politics by Paul Street

holiday liberty sign democracy not plutocracy

Image by Pamela Drew via Flickr

by Paul Street
Writer, Dandelion Salad
The Official Website of Paul Street
November 14, 2018

So often, underlying structures and institutions of oppression escape serious scrutiny amid our country’s most high-profile political dramas. Take the recent conviction of Jason Van Dyke, the white Chicago police officer caught on tape four years ago firing 16 shots into 17-year-old Laquan McDonald.

Continue reading

The Same Old Know-it-all Neoliberal Obama by Paul Street

Barack Obama - Second Term Flare-Ups

Image by DonkeyHotey via Flickr

by Paul Street
Writer, Dandelion Salad
The Official Website of Paul Street
August 4, 2018

Until he was tapped as a shiny new national and global asset by the white American ruling-class and catapulted to rock star status in the summer of 2004, then Illinois state senator Barack Obama was not particularly popular in the Black Chicago South Side that he deceptively called “home.” Besides being an outsider from Honolulu and Harvard Law, he was an aloof and arrogant part-time law professor over at the conservative and heavily white University of Chicago, an institution long known for displacing and lording over Black South Side communities.

Continue reading

Pentagon Recruiting Playbook Revealed, by Pat Elder

Occupy Military Recruiters!

Image by Debra Sweet via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

Republished with permission from David Swanson at World Beyond War

by Pat Elder
World Beyond War, July 16, 2017
July 18, 2017

Ominous developments in three states this summer – Oregon, Texas, New Jersey, and one city – Chicago, provide a glimpse into the Pentagon’s new playbook to recruit soldiers from high schools across the country. In brief, the military has been engaged in a robust lobbying campaign to lower academic standards to make it easier to recruit youth.

Continue reading

Chicago Factory Workers Take Business Over From Bosses

Untitled

Image by peoplesworld via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

NewsMediaOnline on Sep 21, 2013

Amid the precarious jobs market in the US, a group of workers in one Chicago factory have taken matters into their own hands. When faced with losing their jobs they decided to take the business over from the bosses.Al Jazeera’s John Hendren reports from the factory in Chicago.  Continue reading

Chris Hedges: The teacher strike in Chicago is arguably one of the most important labor actions in probably decades

with Chris Hedges
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
September 11, 2012

CTU Strike: 'Democratic Party, Where Are You?'

Image by firedoglakedotcom via Flickr

Sep 11, 2012 by democracynow

DemocracyNow.org As the Chicago public school teachers’ strike enters its second day, we’re joined by the journalist and author Chris Hedges. “The teacher strike in Chicago is arguably one of the most important labor actions in probably decades,” Hedges says. “If it does not prevail, you can be certain that the template for the attack on the union will be carried out across the country against other teachers unions and against the last redoubt of union activity, which is in the public sector of course, fireman and police.” Hedges continues, “It is always the ruling class that determines the parameters of rebellion and resistance. Continue reading

Sara Flounders: Protests Against NATO in Chicago

Dandelion Salad

NATO Protest

Image by Jeremy M Farmer via Flickr

May 31, 2012 by

Sara Flounders, Secretariat member of Workers World Party, speaks about the protests against NATO in Chicago. Her remarks were made in May of 2012, at a Workers World Party forum in New York City.

http://www.workers.org

Continue reading

NATO Summit Kicked Off with Massive Demonstrations + “We want NATO ended”

NATO protests, May 20, 2012

Image by Isadora Ruyter-Harcourt via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

May 20, 2012 by

Thousands of police flood downtown Chicago

Continue reading

Rick Rozoff: The NATO Summit + US will use heavy-handed tactics to curb NATO protesters

IMG_0087

Image by poeloq via Flickr

with Rick Rozoff
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Stop NATO
May 8, 2012

by James Corbett
The Corbett Report
May 8, 2012

Tonight we are joined once again by Rick Rozoff of Stop NATO to discuss the upcoming NATO summit, which will be held in Chicago on May 20th and 21st. We talk about NATO as an extension of the Pentagon, its role as a global expeditionary force, the Chicago no-fly zone, the NATO missile shield and Why We March.

Continue reading

White House Touts War-Tested Global NATO Force by Rick Rozoff

by Rick Rozoff
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Stop NATO
May 11, 2012

anti-NATO protest, Krakow, 19.02.2009

Image by bildungsr0man via Flickr

President Barack Obama and North Atlantic Treaty Organization Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen met at the White House on May 9 to discuss the military bloc’s summit in Obama’s political home base of Chicago on May 20 and 21.

Earlier Rasmussen had paid visits to Germany, Britain, Italy and Spain for the same purpose. Presumably France wasn’t included because of the uncertainty of who the head of state would be after last month’s presidential election.

Continue reading

Rick Rozoff: NATO vs The 1st Amendment + Qur’an burning by US led troops in Afghanistan monstrous blasphemy

by Rick Rozoff
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Stop NATO
Stop NATO-Opposition to global militarism
February 22, 2012

President Obama: Stop the Wars!

Image by Dandelion Salad via Flickr

on Feb 18, 2012 Continue reading

Police State Chicago: Emanuel gets his clampdown by Brit Schulte and Caitlin Sheehan

Dandelion Salad

by Brit Schulte and Caitlin Sheehan
SocialistWorker.org
January 23, 2012

IMG_0453

Image by G20 Protest Photos via Flickr

The City of Chicago has enacted new measures to restrict free speech and protest–but not without a fight, as Brit Schulte and Caitlin Sheehan report.

ON JANUARY 18, the Chicago City Council overwhelmingly approved Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s ordinances to give police new powers to crack down on protests ahead of the NATO/G8 joint summit coming to the city in May.

Continue reading

“Kosher” Schakowsky: Still AIPAC’s Number One Darling by Sibel Edmonds

by Sibel Edmonds
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
originally published by Boiling Frogs Post
20 October, 2010

Fierce Competition Between Two Jewish Candidates in Chicago

According to the latest reports the degree of allegiance to Israel and its lobby has taken center stage in two Chicago election campaigns for a congressional seat. As far as the two candidates, the incumbent Jan Schakowsky and the Republican Joel Pollak, are concerned, this race and the issues are not about the tanking economy, over a trillion of dollars in deficit or unemployment, neither it is about our disastrous state of civil liberties, quagmire state of our wars, or speedily declining foreign standing and dignity. No.  The number one issue for both candidates is the level of allegiance to the State of Israel, the approval rating from Israel’s number one US lobby AIPAC, and the degree of religiosity in Judaism. The main question and top competition arena in Schakowsky v. Pollak is ‘Who does and will do more and better to represent and protect the Jewish interest?’ And so far our current representative, Ms. Jan Schakowsky seems to be way ahead (the emphasis are all mine;-):
Continue reading

Newly Released FBI Documents Support Explosive Claims by Former FBI Translator Sibel Edmonds by Luke Ryland

by Luke Ryland
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Crossposted at Boiling Frogs Post
March 17, 2010

Official Documents Confirm Major Criminal Investigations of Turkish Operatives in Chicago

Recently released FBI documents prove the existence of highly sensitive National Security and criminal investigations of “Turkish Activities” in Chicago prior to September 11, 2001. These documents add further support to many of the allegations that former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds has claimed, in public and in Congress, since 2002. The documents were released under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request into an organization called the Turkish American Cultural Alliance (TACA), an organization repeatedly named by Ms. Edmonds as being complicit in the crimes that she became aware of when she was a translator at the FBI.

Continue reading