Chicago, America’s third largest city, is a social tinderbox, the result of a four-decade-long class war overseen by the Democratic Party. Once thriving working-class neighborhoods have been reduced to poverty and destitution by the shutdown of factories and decades of budget cuts, which led to the closure of public schools, recreation centers, public housing buildings and health clinics.
Unemployment on the South Side is estimated to be double Chicago’s official unemployment rate of 15.6 percent for June. In working class and poor neighborhoods, the devastation is similar to that seen in wartime.
At the same time, Illinois is the home to at least 18 billionaires, including the state’s Democratic governor and Hyatt hotel magnate JB Pritzker. The relentless police violence is aimed at defending the wealth and power of the corporate and financial oligarchy against an increasingly radicalized working class.
