Fortune favors the organized: How Chicago activists won equity goals under austerity

ABSTRACT

What explains the recent success of municipal minimum wages and other city-level distributive economic reforms? Noting the emergence of income inequality as a political issue, scholars and media accounts attribute success to the current political focus on inequality. But such a perspective neglects the classic question of how windows of political opportunity generate actual reform. Drawing on fieldwork with community–labor advocacy organizations in Chicago, we argue that maturing community–labor coalitions have developed a strategic repertoire capable of converting political opportunity into policy victories. First, activists have developed nationally networked policy communities that supply ready-made answers to the political problem of inequality. Second, these activists have developed a range of techniques to make interorganizational collaboration and shared political advocacy more effective. Third, community organizations and local labor unions have embraced long-term political change over incremental goals obtainable in the short term. These changes help to explain the successful passage of distributive economic reforms and will likely outlast the current political focus on inequality.

Acknowledgments

We thank Stacy Harwood and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on previous versions of this article.

Funding

This research was supported by Campus Research Board grant #13206 and a College of Fine and Applied Arts Creative Research Award.

Notes

1. Fifty schools were eventually closed, in 2013.

2. In addition to Daley stepping aside for the 2011 mayoral election, the two major jolts to Chicago politics during this period—parking meter privatization and school closure—both resulted from city efforts to address fiscal stress.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Marc Doussard

Marc Doussard is Assistant Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. His research focuses on low-wage labor markets and urban economic development.

Jacob Lesniewski

Jacob Lesniewski is an assistant professor at Dominican University’s Graduate School of Social Work where he teaches in the areas of community practice, social policy, and research. His research and publication agenda focus on the workplace abuse that low-wage workers face and their attempts to reregulate the low-wage labor market through nontraditional community and workplace organizing.