I Want You to Understand Chicago Politics Chicago 2025-11-08 I want you to understand what it is like to live in Chicago during this time. Every day my phone buzzes. It is a neighborhood group: four people were kidnapped at the corner drugstore. A friend a mile away sends a Slack message: she was at the scene when masked men assaulted and abducted two people on the street. A plumber working on my pipes is distraught, and I find out that two of his employees were kidnapped that morning. A week later it happens again. An email arrives. Agents with guns have chased a teacher into the school where she works. They did not have a warrant. They dragged her away, ignoring her and her colleagues’ pleas to show proof of her documentation. That evening I stand a few feet from the parents of Rayito de Sol and listen to them describe, with anguish, how good Ms. Diana was to their children. What it is like to have strangers with guns traumatize your kids. For a teacher to hide a three-year-old child for fear they might be killed. How their relatives will no longer leave the house. I hear the pain and fury in their voices, and I wonder who will be next. Understand what it is to pray in Chicago. On September 19th, Reverend David Black, lead pastor at First Presbyterian Church of Chicago, was praying outside the ICE detention center in Broadview when a DHS agent shot him in the head with pepper balls. Pepper balls are never supposed to be fired at the head because they can seriously injure, or even kill. “We could hear them laughing as they were shooting us from the roof,” Black recalled. He is not the only member of the clergy ICE has assaulted. Methodist pastor Hannah Kardon was violently arrested on October 17th, and Baptist pastor Michael Woolf was shot with pepper balls on November 1st. Understand what it is to sleep in Chicago. On the night of September 30th, federal agents rappelled from a Black Hawk helicopter to execute a raid on an apartment building on the South Sho…

Kyle Kingsbury is not a journalist. He is not an op-ed writer.

He is a computer safety researcher.

And he has written one of the most compelling, comprehensive accounts of the ongoing hell in Chicago that you could possibly imagine.

In under 1600 words.

aphyr.com/posts/397-i-...

NYU-MCC is hiring! Asst. Prof in the area of “Media and Global Cities.” Please help us get the word out.
apply.interfolio.com/174886

Fuck yeah Letterman

New York City Mayoral Poll: Mamdani Catches Cuomo In Rank Choice Voting - Emerson Polling The final Emerson College Polling/PIX11/The Hill survey of the New York City Democratic mayoral primary…Full Release & Results

Mamdani surges past Cuomo in final Emerson poll, pulling nearly even in the first round and winning final round 52/48.

Crucially, the poll shows Mamdani with a 41/31 lead among those who have already cast their ballots.

This is incredibly beautiful storytelling.

Illinois has enshrined protections to meet this very moment.

In a time of increasing overreach and hateful rhetoric, it's more important than ever to reaffirm our commitment to the rights and dignity of the LGBTQ+ community.

You have a home here always.

NYC: if you can get to Federal Plaza near the Brooklyn Bridge/City Hall subway stops, come support Brad Lander, the latest Dem politician to be manhandled/detained by ICE for no legal reason. Zohran Mamdani is there in support of his fellow mayoral candidate. NYT's darling Cuomo nowhere in sight.

My kids have measles, I lost my job, and I've been stranded at Newark for three days. But at least I know that Harvard is going to have start hiring more conservative professors.

After adding today's new polls, Trump's approval rating has hit a new low of 43.6%, down from 49.4% on day one of his term. His new record-low net rating of -9.4 is now lower than his rating at this point in his first term. Worst-ever approval for a POTUS 100 days in.

www.gelliottmorris.com/p/data

This is why the student loan bubble is about to burst. I feel bad for this woman—but she freaking nails it. 🔥

The University President Willing to Fight Trump Christopher L. Eisgruber of Princeton University talks about the administration’s move to freeze billions of dollars in funding to higher education institutions.

Highly recommend this interview with Christopher Eisgruber, President of Princeton University, on why academic freedom at our higher ed institutions should concern all Americans.

#AcademicSky
#MomSky

For the #HandsOff , there were a group of seniors that couldn't make it to the Capitol.

So they held their very own! 57 of them came out!

Aged 67-104!

They all walked down to the main street! So proud of them!

They had s sign making day before the event!

They sent this video to me to share.🥰

I asked the one high ranking policeman I saw on 5th Ave why there were so few police. He said “We did not expect anything like this. Don’t tell anyone but I’ve only got 44 officers out here — and it’s a great crowd, great event, no incidents.”

100,000+ people marched at the #HandsOff rally in New York!

NYS Ed Dept. won’t sign Trump admin anti-DEI certification — risking federal funds A letter from the U.S. Education Department gave state commissioners 10 days to sign and return the formal affirmation.

NYS Ed Dept. won’t sign Trump admin anti-DEI certification — risking federal funds

What people in every part of higher education need to understand is that Republicans now want to do to universities what they’ve tried to do to labor unions: erase them from the institutional landscape. The question is how much you want to collaborate in your own destruction.

boardroom desk carved from stone with an immense roughly hewn boulder suspended above it in a menacing fashion By The Davani Group, Seattle, WA - high end fabricators

how it feels lately doing my little tasks & confronting my minor responsibilities

Democrat James Andrew Malone scores an upset win in a Pennsylvania Senate special election Democrat James Andrew Malone won a special election for a state Senate seat in a stretch of Republican-leaning Pennsylvania suburbs and farming communities, scoring an upset in a territory that a Demo...

(AP) — Democrat James Andrew Malone won a special election for a state Senate seat in a stretch of Republican-leaning Pennsylvania suburbs and farming communities, scoring an upset in a territory that a Democrat hasn’t represented in the chamber for 136 years.

@apnews.com
apnews.com/article/penn...

Voting is a fundamental right and sacred responsibility of every American.

Yet, once again Donald Trump is ignoring the rule of law and circumventing Congress.

Uh oh the Trump administration accidentally added us to their group chat

Big turnout for other "empty chair" town hall, this time for the two AWOL Ohio senators in Columbus www.facebook.com/christinapao...

“But you know what none of them voted for? To dismantle the Postal Service!”
— NALC President Brian Renfroe

HANDS OFF USPS! We will #FightLikeHell to defend our jobs and the universal service all Americans rely on!

Bernie Sanders, AOC, and Greg Casar on stage in Tucson in front a crowd of 23,000 people.

Tucson, Arizona today.

Original projected attendance was 3,000 people.

23,000 showed up.

Important note about this breakthrough:

Literally would not exist without the kind of Federal support the current administration is slashing.

Took 15+ years of research at a federal lab (Lawrence Berkeley) to get this to a point at which private enterprise could take over and make these at scale.

AOC and Bernie in front of the rally crowd in Denver

Zoomed out crowd shot of 34,000 people in downtown Denver with Colorado mountains in the background

Tonight an unbelievable **34,000 people** gathered for our Denver rally to take on billionaires and win our country back.

This was the largest political gathering in Denver since Obama in 2008.

Also bigger than the 2024 DNC.

And the largest ever rally in Bernie’s career (and obviously, mine too).

In memoriam photo of Jonathan Sterne (1970-2025)

It is with profound sadness that we mourn the passing of Jonathan Sterne, an extraordinary scholar whose groundbreaking work transformed the fields of sound studies, media theory, and the cultural study of technology.