Stephanie Farmer is a professor of sociology at Roosevelt University.
Chicago Public Schools has constantly found itself in fiscal crises in recent years, crises that then justify brutal austerity. But those crises didn’t come from nowhere: they were the logical outcome of turning to Wall Street for funding on credit instead of taxing the rich.
Bentonville, Arkansas, is home to Walmart’s headquarters. It’s also a town in which the Walton Family Foundation works like a parallel state, creating a kind of twenty-first-century company town.
With a resurgent left-labor movement and a new crop of progressive and socialist city council members, nervous Chicago real estate developers are hinting they’ll pull their investments in the city. To stop capitalists from undercutting left agendas around the country, we need to recognize when they’re bluffing — and how to stop them when they’re serious.