Lisa Yun Lee and Sunny Fischer of the National Public Housing Museum join us in studio for a conversation about the history, the present and the future of public housing in Chicago and the nation. We're not just talking affordable housing, but public housing for every person who needs it.

Veteran Chicago Reader columnist and progressive talk radio host Ben Joravsky and Amisha Patel, Executive Director of Chicago's Grassroots Collaborative talk with Mike about the way Chicago politics works and doesn't work.

Fred's gone this week, so brother Mike is flying solo with guests Susan Klonsky and Professor Timuel Black. Tim just turned 100 years old AND has had his latest book, Sacred Ground, The Chicago Streets of Timuel Black as told to Susan Klonsky from Northwestern University Press.

Tom has literally written the book on corruption in Cook County. Page is an activist in the Black Lives Matter movement and founder of Assata's Daughters.

Susan Sadlowski Garza is a teacher who now is a sitting alderman running for a second term. Joining us are three more women who are teachers and political activists running for city council.

Don Rose has been a political organizer, publicist and strategist for 60 years. Henry Wallace, Martin Luther King, Jane Byrne, Harold Washington, the protests against the wars in Iraq. Don has seen it all.

This podcast brother Mike is taking some time off. Newly elected, former teacher and CTU leader, County Commissioner Brandon Johnson. Lori Lightfoot is running for Mayor of Chicago. Niketa Brar, coming off a great win to save the National Teachers Academy is now working on the Vote Equity Project

Lawyers Brendan Shiller and Aaron Goldstein were organizers of the first electoral defeat of a sitting Cook County judge in nearly 30 years. Judge Coghlan was heard cases involving Jon Burge and Reynaldo Guevara, dirty cops and torturers and was most blatant in bias towards the police. The conversation moves to the Chicago Democratic Party and the changing demographics of the city is forcing progressive change.

The union of part-time faculty at Chicago's Columbia College have been bargaining with their administration for over a year. It is a story of the corporatization of what once was a unique gem of a learning community. What is happening there has implications for organizing adjuncts nationally and for the transformation of work to a gig economy.

We are talking neighborhood disinvestment and neighborhood gentrification. Two sides of the same coin. Christian Diaz is housing organizer with the Logan Square Neighborhood Association. Cory Stevenson is a designer and community activist around equity and the built environment at Open Architecture Chicago.