Unions score key victories in council
To my blood brother, Steve Wilson -- union forever!!
Tillman, Coleman fall to labor allies
An unprecedented wave of union support propelled at least four challengers to victory Tuesday over incumbent aldermen backed by Mayor Richard Daley, ...
"The people of the 3rd ward, this victory is really yours," Dowell said.
Another Daley-backed incumbent, Madeline Haithcock (2nd), fell to lawyer Bob Fioretti, and union activist Toni Foulkes took the open seat in the 15th Ward.
"The unions had a lot to do with it," Haithcock said.
In the 49th Ward, the union's biggest council booster, Ald. Joe Moore, claimed victory over Don Gordon late Tuesday with a 138-vote lead and one precinct that could not be counted because of computer problems.
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Daley won a landslide victory in February and will maintain the loyalty of most council members. But the union onslaught marked the first serious challenge to his dominance of city politics.
The results of the 12 runoff races could translate into the biggest change in the City Council since nine incumbents lost in 1987. Three incumbents already had lost their seats in the Feb. 27 primary.
Unions sought to claim credit for the sudden volatility in a council that largely has been unquestioningly loyal to Daley for much of his 18-year tenure.
Relations between labor and Daley historically were excellent, but soured in recent years. The feud reached its low point last year, when Daley used his first-ever veto to reject a union-backed ordinance that would have raised wages and benefits at "big-box" retail stores such as Wal-Mart and Target. Daley's veto was sustained after a contentious council vote.
(MG) No community wants to be infected with Wal Mart. Wal Mart comes in, charges cheap, drives out local businesses, pays its employees badly, then raises prices after the competition has all closed shop. This takes local business people out of sustaining themselves in their own communities, and leaves local communities the poorer.
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Hoping to fill the power vacuum left by the decline of the pro-Daley patronage armies, unions flooded wards with campaign workers and spent massive amounts for their endorsed candidates.
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Jerry Morrison, executive director of SEIU's State Council, said that Tuesday was "a huge night for working families in Chicago."
"We've created a debate in Chicago for the first time," Morrison said. "It was definitely worth the money."
Dennis Gannon, who heads the Chicago Federation of Labor, said it appeared that his group's candidates would win in at least five of eight contests.
"That's a pretty damn good night," Gannon said. "Working men and women want a strong independent voice in the City Council. The people we opposed lacked those attributes."
Mike Noonan, a Democratic political operative who helped several of the mayor's allies in the runoff campaign, said the outcome of the runoff races were determined largely by local concerns, not the big-box issue.
"The difference in this election is that unions were there with huge amounts of money to exploit very vulnerable incumbents," Noonan said. "The aldermen who weren't successful in the runoffs were aldermen who had problems in their wards with constituent services."
Noting the victories of Brookins and Stone, Noonan said, "All the money in the world could not help the unions take down aldermen who were doing their jobs."
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The biggest-money campaign between a Daley loyalist and a union-bankrolled challenger was in the 16th Ward, which includes the impoverished Englewood neighborhood on the South Side.
Coleman, the incumbent there, had promised a Wal-Mart store in Englewood if she was re-elected and urged her constituents to reject labor's "economic racism."
Coleman had voted for the big-box ordinance originally, but she switched sides to help Daley preserve his veto, and the mayor campaigned for her in the weeks before the runoff.
(MG) Looks like Coleman's constituency didn't like her decision to vote for "the big-box ordinance. Let's hear it for supporting local business!
But she conceded to Thompson, who received about $500,000 from unions. With 45 of 46 precincts counted in the 16th Ward, Thompson had 57 percent to Coleman's 43 percent.
In the race for the open seat in the 15th Ward, on the Southwest Side, Jewel bakery worker Foulkes defeated Felicia Simmons-Stovall, a lawyer backed by Secretary of State Jesse White. Foulkes, who lobbied for the "living wage" ordinance, won 60 percent of the vote.
"It's a victory for every working family in the ward," said Foulkes, who replaces Ald. Theodore Thomas. "There are enough lawyers and big-business people on the council."
Simmons-Stovall said labor's support for her opponent played a "huge part" in her defeat.
In the 2nd Ward, Fioretti beat Haithcock in a landslide, garnering 66 percent.
"We've got to clean up politics here in the city," said Fioretti, who also was supported by the unions.
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Other winners Tuesday included Daley appointee Lona Lane in the 18th Ward and union-backed Ald. Rey Colon (35th).
Labor leaders nervously watched the 49th Ward contest between Moore and Gordon seesaw.
A Moore loss would have severely offset the union gains in other wards. Moore sponsored the big-box ordinance and the foie gras ban, another measure that irked the mayor.
Matlak, the 32nd Ward alderman, declined to concede, even as Waguespack declared a narrow victory.
"It's still very close," Matlak said as the final returns came in. "We all expected that."
Ald. Michael Chandler's seat also appeared to be in danger in the 24th Ward on the West Side. With 56 of 59 precincts reporting, challenger Sharon Denise Dixon had almost 52 percent.
lyrical postscript: Joe Hill
Joe Hill was memorialized in a tribute poem written about him c. 1930 by Alfred Hayes titled "I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night", sometimes referred to simply as "Joe Hill".[7] Hayes's lyrics were turned into a song in 1936 by Earl Robinson. The usual lyrics to the song go:
- I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night,
- Alive as you and me.
- Says I "But Joe, you're ten years dead"
- "I never died" said he,
- "I never died" said he.
- "In Salt Lake, Joe," says I to him,
- him standing by my bed,
- "They framed you on a murder charge,"
- Says Joe, "But I ain't dead,"
- Says Joe, "But I ain't dead."
- "The Copper Bosses killed you Joe,
- they shot you Joe" says I.
- "Takes more than guns to kill a man"
- Says Joe "I didn't die"
- Says Joe "I didn't die"
- And standing there as big as life
- and smiling with his eyes.
- Says Joe "What they can never kill
- went on to organize,
- went on to organize"
- From San Diego up to Maine,
- in every mine and mill,
- where working-men defend their rights,
- it's there you find Joe Hill,
- it's there you find Joe Hill!
- I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night,
- alive as you and me.
- Says I "But Joe, you're ten years dead"
- "I never died" said he,
- "I never died" said he.
- Paul Robeson and Pete Seeger often performed this song and are associated with it, along with renowned Irish folk group The Dubliners. Their version, scored by Phil Coulter and sung by Luke Kelly, offers a stirring mix of Coulter's simple piano accompaniment and Kelly's gravelly voice. Joan Baez's Woodstock performance of "Joe Hill" in 1969 is the most well-known recording.
- Phil Ochs wrote and recorded a different, original song called "Joe Hill"[1], using a traditional melody found in the song "John Hardy," which tells a much more detailed story of Joe Hill's life and death, and includes the lines that have since been associated with Ochs' own life and death, "It's the life of a rebel that he chose to live; It's the death of a rebel that he died". Ochs' song concludes with Hill's words, "This is my last and final will; Good luck to all of you, Joe Hill, Good luck to all of you."
- After Phil Ochs' death, Billy Bragg reworked the Hayes-Robinson song as "I Dreamed I Saw Phil Ochs Last Night".
- Frank Tovey sings about Joe Hill in his song 'Joe Hill' from the 1989 album 'Tyranny and the Hired Hand'. In this song he uses some of the words from the Alfred Hayes poem.
- Bob Dylan claims that Hill's story was one of his inspirations to begin writing his own songs. His song "I dreamed I Saw St. Augustine" is loosely based around the story and Robinson's version.
- The Swedish hardcore band Refused named their LP from 1996 Songs to Fan the Flames of Discontent after his song and textbook, published 1909 by the IWW
- Chumbawamba's song about Joe Hill, "By and By", appears on the 2005 album A Singsong and a Scrap.
- In 1990, Smithsonian Folkways released Don't Mourn - Organize!: Songs of Labor Songwriter Joe Hill. This compilation featured the likes of "Haywire Mac" McClintock and Cisco Houston performing his songs as well as narrative interludes from Utah Phillips, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, and others.
- The Swedish socialist leader Ture Nerman (1886 – 1969) wrote a biography of Joe Hill. For the project, Nerman did the first serious research about Hill's life story, including finding and interviewing Hill's family members in Sweden. Nerman, who was a poet himself, also translated most of Hill's songs into Swedish.
- Wallace Stegner published a fictional biography called Joe Hill in 1950.
- Gibbs M. Smith wrote a biography "Joe Hill", which was later turned into the 1971 movie Joe Hill, directed by Bo Widerberg. [2]
- A chapter of John Dos Passos's novel 1919 is a stylized biography of Joe Hill.
- Robert Hunter wrote the opening verse about Joe Hill for the song "Down The Road" which he wrote for Mickey Hart's Mystery Box.
- The Nightwatchman (a.k.a. Tom Morello, former guitarist of Rage Against The Machine and Audioslave) makes a reference to Joe Hill in his song "The Union Song".
