An honest politician has the chance of snowball surviving in Hell in Chicago. There may be individuals but the Daley Machine and Timuel Black/Palmer/Obama/Axelrod/Rose leftist coalitions are too strong to overcome. Perhaps with the death of the old leftists but Obama has brought in the new Communist mafiosos of the SDS/Weathermen, Ayers, Katz, etc.
Labor has always been a target of both the Reds and the Mafia. In fact, Sidney Lens used to brag about his physically fighting off and beating the mafia in the streets while he was a communist with the Revolutionary Workers League.
Check him out. You’ll find one of the best communist organizers in the movement’s history. I’ve seen him in action. He used to write for “The Progressive” and “The Nation”. Was one of the powers behind the Vietnam Mobilization Committees, of which I was a cofounder (New Mobe).
Sid impressed me, both for his skills and for his being one of the greatest threats to American security.
They'd travel around to Cleveland, Cincy, Indianapolis, Baltimore, New York, Miami, St. Louis and so forth and literally fight these guys ~ beat them up ~ drive them away.
Roosevelt made sure they were given authority to talk to members of Congress, something that'd been off-limits for federal government employees since the Pendleton Act.
I know that doesn't sound like Roosevelt (since around here we all officially believe him to have been a mind-numbed Leftwingtard robot), but he did have his interests where the domestic Commies didn't quite fit in.
So, where do you find the materials on that (you might ask) ~ well, in the newsletter/magazine produced by the United States Postal Inspection Service over the last Century+. They covered all this stuff because management would send them out to "watch" and report back. I had a chance to read through all the old stuff right up to the mid 1980s in the USPS Headquarters library. Somebody'd declassified all the "newsletters" and put them on the shelves.
Fantastic stuff, and at the time I don't believe any professional writers knew about them.
Remember, in that earlier period of our history the Inspectors were more prominant than today and had more resources than the other federal investigative bodies. As a result they ended up in every shootout and got to follow the Commies around.
I never focused on the Chicago stuff, but there's a lot of it in there as I recall.
If you get into looking at any postal related materials keep your eye on the family name "Young". As you recall a guy named Coleman Young was elected Mayor of Detroit in 1974. Later on it was revealed he was a paid agent of the CPUSA (et al).
That's not terribly important. His younger brother was the personnel director at the Post Office. That's not terribly important either.
What is important is that once KGB or GRU defectors had been "used up" after being thoroughly debriefed, if they didn't have some serious professional education they were simply sent over to the Detroit post office to work in a craft job (carrier, clerk, etc.).
Obviously the CPUSA had "coin of the realm" in the world of Commie intraparty intrigue ~ they knew where the defectors were, which ones had been neutralized, and what they were doing.
I don't believe Chicago had any defectors but if they had the Commies would have gotten someone into USPS management who could get back to them with such information.
So, how did the Young brothers get such an important position in Commie circles?
Damned if I know!