The city of Chicago is like many other large American cities in recent decades: it has been led by a rotating cast of elected officials with occasionally differing demographic characteristics but an ironclad commitment to urban neoliberalism that has included attacks on public education and public sector unions, privatization of public goods, rising gentrification and displacement of longtime working-class and poor residents, and constant, massive giveaways to nearly any corporation who comes calling.

What sets Chicago apart from other cities, however, is the working-class fightback that has cohered in recent years. That fight has been anchored in the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), which has built a model of democratic, militant unionism that teachers unions and other unions have replicated throughout the country. The CTU has built a pole of working-class politics around which other progressive-minded unions and community organizations have gathered — which has found political expression in United Working Families, that movement’s political arm that has backed a number of successful candidates at nearly all levels of government, from city council to the House of Representatives.

One of those elected officials is Brandon Johnson, a former rank-and-file CTU member and staff organizer who now sits on the Cook County Board of Commissioners. Johnson is currently running for mayor in the 2023 municipal elections, with the CTU’s and numerous other unions’ backing. But he’s up against not only incumbent mayor Lori Lightfoot, but a field of nearly a dozen candidates — including Rep. Jesus “Chuy” García, who the union backed in the 2015 election against incumbent mayor Rahm Emanuel.