On the second Super Tuesday of the 2016 primary election cycle, over 680,000 Chicagoans voted in the Illinois Democratic primary. Overall, Clinton narrowly won the state with 1,007,382 votes (50.5%), while Bernie garnered 971,555 votes (48.7%). In Chicago, Clinton received 368,395 votes (53.6%), whereas Bernie collected 312,572 votes (45.5%).

Interestingly, but unsurprisingly, Chicago’s voting patterns in the 2016 Democratic Primary are strikingly similar to those in the 2015 mayoral race between incumbent Rahm “Mayor 1%” Emanuel and Jesus “Chuy” Garcia. In that election, Emanuel obtained 332,171 votes (55.7%), while Garcia received 258,562 votes (44.3%).

Voting Patterns in America’s Most Segregated City

Indeed, Bernie won several more wards in Chicago than Garcia did in his campaign against Emanuel, but those gains came only in White neighborhoods. Overall, Chicago has 50 wards. Of those 50 wards, 18 have a White plurality, 18 have a Black plurality, and 14 have a Hispanic plurality.

Not one of the 18 wards that have a Black plurality went for Sanders or Garcia in their respective races. Of Chicago’s 18 wards with a White plurality, Garcia won two in his mayoral race, while Sanders won 12. In the 14 wards with a Hispanic plurality, Sanders and Garcia each won 13. Sanders’ biggest margin of victory was in the 35th Ward, where he garnered 61.1% of the vote. In 2015, Garcia received 65.7% in the same ward.

Clinton’s largest margin of victory was in the 34th Ward, a predominately Black ward, where she collected 68.5% of the vote. In the 2015 mayoral race, Emanuel’s biggest victory came in the White 42nd Ward, where he got 84.9% (Clinton won the same ward with 60.7%).

Without question, there are many layers to these statistics: race, class, ideology, gender, geography, etc. Focusing on race and class for a moment, CNN reports that:

The Windy City, which is currently contending with a series of police shootings of black Chicagoans, is the most segregated major metro area in the nation. And it’s been in the top 3 in terms of segregation for many years, according to the Voorhees Center for Neighborhood and Community Improvement at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

In Chicago, blacks and whites live clustered in separate parts of the city. In fact, some 72% of black or white residents would have to move to a different census tract to even out the numbers, according to a commonly used segregation measure called the index of dissimilarity. In New York, the figure is 65% and in Philadelphia, it’s 63%.

The article goes on to mention that from 1990-2012, White Chicagoans saw their average household income increase by 33% to $100,700, whereas Black Chicagoans have experienced a -4% decline to $44,400. Further, the poverty rate for Whites living in Chicago is 14.7%. For Blacks, that number more than doubles to 33.6%.

Of course, none of this is new. As Edward McCelland notes, “In one generation [1950-1980], a third of the city’s community areas went from monolithically white to monolithically black. Today, only 21 neighborhoods have white majorities, and only 12 have white populations exceeding the national average of 63 percent.”

Today, McCelland reminds us that:

What’s most striking about Chicago’s pattern of racial distribution is the almost total absence of whites in black neighborhoods. Even the city’s whitest neighborhoods — Mount Greenwood and Lincoln Park — have black populations of 4.7 percent and 4.9 percent, respectively. But of the 28 neighborhoods with black majorities, most have white populations under 2 percent. The absolute most racially polarized neighborhood in Chicago is Englewood, which is 98.5 percent black, 0.6 percent white and 0.4 percent Latino. Of Englewood’s 35,186 residents, 34,658 are black, 211 are white and 141 are Latino. In the 1950s, Englewood was mostly German, Swedish and Irish. They’ve all gone, leaving only a Lutheran church.

Unfortunately, the problem isn’t limited to Chicago. In fact, a Washington Post article points out that 75% of Whites in the U.S. have absolutely no non-white friends in their social networks. And the story is similar in progressive and Left political circles. Certain movements are more diverse than others, but significant racial, ethnic and class divisions remain.

Divisions on the Left

The labor movement in the U.S. is highly segregated, particularly its leadership class, yet unionized public sector workers are disproportionately Black and Hispanic. As I’ve mentioned in the past, the environmental movement is primarily Indigenous and White, while the antiwar movement is predominantly White, older, and middle-class. The Occupy Movement was a disproportionately White movement. And the protests in Madison, Wisconsin were almost completely White. Even the NATO protests in Chicago in 2012 were overwhelmingly White. The organizations that were most vocal during the Bush years were dominated by White activists. And the list goes on.

Now, this isn’t to say that racially diverse local organizations or regional coalitions don’t exist: the point is that the most memorable mass mobilizations on the Left in recent memory have been dominated by White activists, with the exception of Black Lives Matter (BLM). Bernie Sanders’ campaign is simply the latest example in a long line of examples that illuminate the fact that the Left is thoroughly segregated.

Progressive political movements are ripe with contradictions. These contradictions, often ignored for the sake of expediency, pose major dilemmas when attempting to organize more substantial movements, or when attempting to judge victories and defeats.

For example, former Illinois State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez, who either completely botched or tried to cover-up Laquan McDonald’s murder at the hands of the Chicago Police Department, was crushed at the polls by Kim Foxx. However, is this truly a victory for BLM, Assata’s Daughters, We Charge Genocide or the Black Youth Project 100?

After all, Kim Foxx won the election primarily because of these organizations and the work they accomplished over the last year. Without their hard work, Anita would likely still be in office, though some argue that the Democratic Party Machine and its leaders made a tactical choice to back Foxx and throw Anita under the bus because she was becoming too much of a liability. Party personnel are disposable, the Democratic Party is not.

That aside, Kim Foxx is no friend of BLM or any other progressive movement. After all, Foxx was parading around the Windy City with Bill Clinton on election day, campaigning for the neoliberal-hawk Hillary. Kim Foxx, an African American woman and now a former top aide to Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle (another Clinton lapdog), is the best voters could muster after months and months of protests and struggle. Indeed, the bar is low.

Without question, battling the Chicago Democratic Machine and winning is a serious accomplishment, but many questions remain: Where does the movement go from here? Can it move beyond opposition tactics? Can it broaden its base of support? Can it form long-lasting coalitions with other progressive movements in the city? In order to be truly successful, the movement will need state-wide, regional, national and international coalitions and networks. Nothing of this sort is on the horizon.

On a side note, another example of a movement with serious contradictions would be the Fight for $15 movement. Without SEIU’s support, funding, and organizational infrastructure, Fight for $15 wouldn’t have the capacity to conduct successful campaigns. At the same time, however, SEIU officially backs Hillary Clinton, someone who doesn’t support a $15 an hour minimum wage.

Keeping an Eye on Illinois

Illinois most resembles the U.S. in virtually every category imaginable: age and sex, race and ethnicity, education, housing living arrangements, veteran population, transportation, income, poverty and so forth. For these reasons alone, Illinois is an important state to keep an eye on, not only during election cycles, but also as various other aspects of our political and economic lives unfold.

Since 1980, with the exception of Paul Simon’s victory in the 1988 Democratic Primaries (which isn’t saying much as Simon was the sitting U.S. Senator from Illinois), Illinois voters have correctly chosen the Republican and Democratic nominee for U.S. President. If the same holds true this year, we should expect Donald Trump to face Hillary Clinton in November.

Bernie’s Campaign

Nate Cohn of the New York Times has done the math for Sanders, and it doesn’t look good:

Mr. Sanders should fare better over the second half of the primary season, after black voters gave Hillary Clinton such a big advantage in the first half. But the path to a majority of delegates is nonetheless a daunting one. He would need to win the remaining delegates by around a 58-42 percent margin after falling behind again in the delegate count Tuesday night.

In my humble opinion, Sanders’ supporters should cease talking about the prospect of beating Clinton, and readjust their aims. At this point, we look quite ridiculous when we tell people that Bernie still has a shot at beating Hillary. It’s delusional thinking (and I say this as someone who has openly supported the campaign since its inception). In terms of Sanders winning the nomination, the race is finished. Iowa may have been the first nail in the coffin, but huge losses in Ohio and Florida sealed the deal.

Furthermore, the longer Sanders’ supporters are led to believe that he still has a shot at winning the nomination, the worse the heartbreak will be when he eventually concedes to Clinton. I vividly remember the heartbreak, anger and disgust when Scott Walker was reelected in Wisconsin, but the result was predictable. I remember the feelings of disempowerment and naive surprise when people finally realized that Obama wasn’t much different than his Democratic predecessor, Bill Clinton. Honestly, a lot of this could have been avoided by having nuanced and critical conversations.

One of the biggest problems I’ve encountered with Bernie’s supporters have been their inability to talk about what comes next. One of the first events I attended for Bernie was in Northwest Indiana, back in June of last year. Immediately, I saw the campaign as an opportunity to meet people and hopefully make some long-lasting connections. To be honest, I never expected him to win, but I did expect him to do better than the pundits were predicting. In fact, I made the same argument about Trump, but that’s a conversation for another day.

However, I knew the campaign was going to have a rough road ahead when I attended an event in Michigan City, Indiana, a city that’s about 33% Black, only to find not one black person attending the event. Even worse, Bernie’s supporters didn’t want to talk about it. The supporters I spoke with either shrugged it off, or cynically blamed Black people for voting against their interests.

So, where do Bernie’s supporters go from here? Some of my friends who are working on the campaign argue that Bernie should stay in the race as long as possible to educate the masses, mobilize progressives and push Clinton further to the Left. On the other hand, many of my friends who haven’t been organizing with the campaign argue that people should finally abandon the project, support the Green Party candidate Jill Stein, or focus their energies on building alternative political parties or local and regional organizations.

Some people, including myself, have asked, “Where are the independent organizations being built as a result of this campaign?” So far, various local organizations have formed. My friend who lives and organizes in Chicago’s 25th Ward told me last night that his neighborhood has created an independent political committee as a result of the campaign.

And just the other day someone who lives and organizes in St. Louis informed me that progressive groups are indeed being formed in the city and that local activists are doing more work than at any time in previous memory. All of this is good to hear.

Neoliberalism or Neofascism?

My great friend, Roberto, who’s been a community organizer in Chicago for the last decade, recently told me that, “Rahm Emanuel will most likely be defeated in 2019, but who’s going to replace him? Right now there are some rumors and names being floated, but all of them are Neoliberal-Light.”

Yes, getting rid of Emanuel would be fantastic for the city, but Roberto’s point is that the Left doesn’t have the power to organically produce candidates, nor does it have a third-party infrastructure, so, for now, we’re stuck with whatever the professional political class gives us.

In cities such as Chicago, Detroit and Cleveland, the Democratic Party is King. There are variants within the party, but those differences are limited in scope and lacking any level of independence. In Chicago, the major political impediments to radical change are the Democratic Party, corrupt unionism, and Neoliberalism. The Republican Party operates at the state level, but will never gain serious control or political power in the city.

Likewise, the GOP has been able to maintain control of state houses and even some branches of the Federal Government, but Republicans have a very difficult time winning national elections. After all, they had to steal both the 2000 and the 2004 U.S. Presidential elections to get a Republican in office.

In all reality, the GOP hasn’t won a national election since 1988, hence the reason they continue to go after voting rights. Republicans fully understand that the nation’s shifting demographics don’t play well for their particular brand of racist-sexist-xenophobic-theological politics.

That being said, the future, to me, looks a lot like the present: Neoliberalism will be the model, not Trump’s Neofascism. Trump’s supporters will become increasingly angry and isolated, and possibly dangerous, but they will not operate on a national level. They’re very disorganized and rely on messaging, image and spectacle. There is no “movement” taking place in this country. Yes, there are various militias and nationalist organizations who are using Trump’s rise to gain membership, but those groups operate in relative isolation.

Many of my father’s union buddies are Trump supporters. They’re not involved in any organizing. They don’t attend meetings or fundraisers. For the most part, they send each other emails and talk about Trump at the local VFW or neighborhood pub. These people aren’t “mobilized” in the traditional sense of the term.

However, the Neoliberals are mobilized and they are diverse. The Chicago Democratic Machine and the Clinton Machine are good examples. Plus, the majority of elites in the U.S. prefer Neoliberalism to Neofascism, which is why numerous right-wing commentators have already proclaimed their support for Clinton over Trump. The business community will do the same.

The primary political challenge facing the Left is not an explicit form of White Supremacy and Authoritarianism in the form of Donald Trump or Ted Cruz, but a bankrupt liberalism that touts progressive social policies, yet simultaneously genuflects to the alters of Wall Street and the U.S. Empire. Obviously, politicians like Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Rahm Emanuel and Barrack Obama are the perfect representatives of this political tendency.

Vincent Emanuele can be reached at [email protected]