Progress Illinois

Flaunting Chicago's purported "post-partisanship" on the national stage would likely subject Barack Obama to some ridicule, but that doesn't mean other Chicago-based political programs aren't worth emulating on the national stage. Check out this Chicago Reader interview with Tom Balanoff, president of the SEIU Illinois State Council (which sponsors this site). Balanoff discusses the union's political success in the city's 2007 aldermanic elections (including the establishment of the Independent Caucus) and their plans to ensure Democratic accountability in 2008 and beyond. It's an approach with considerable merit:

MICK DUMKE: So you essentially want to take the 2007 Chicago model and apply it to Congress?

BALANOFF: We absolutely do. The alderman’s races were really an effort on SEIU and labor’s part to say "How do we establish an independent political base?" I think a lot of good things have already started happening in terms of creating an independent bloc there in the City Council, and I think a lot of good things came out of that for labor.

But it is really a question of specific issues—we want to establish some political power to get real results for working families on things like health care, the war, and the labor movement. [...]

I think there’s an understanding starting to evolve with labor that we need to build political power for ourselves and not for candidates, and the way we do that is to make sure we’re working on particular issues. The only permanent friends we have are those politicians who stick with our issues.