Carlos Ramirez-Rosa was alderman of Chicago’s 35th Ward from 2015 to 2025. He is the CEO of the Chicago Park District, though the views presented here are solely his own and do not represent those of the park district.
Nothing about Donald Trump’s brazenly illegal actions against Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro suggests that the American ruling class has learned any lessons from US imperial overreach and failure in Afghanistan, Iraq, or Venezuela itself.
In a conversation with Jacobin, Chicago Teachers Union president Stacy Davis Gates, city councilor Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, and editor Alex Han discuss how Chicago’s working-class movement elected one of its own as mayor and where that movement goes now.
We’re just asking questions.
Chicago city councilor and Democratic Socialists of America member Carlos Ramirez-Rosa writes from Peru that the country’s elections this weekend offer two stark choices: a deepening of democracy or a return to right-wing dictatorship.
In Chicago’s Logan Square, gentrification has run amok. That didn’t stop socialist city councilor Carlos Ramirez-Rosa and community groups from demanding and winning 100 percent affordable housing in the community’s heart near public transit. Here’s how they did it.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot was elected last year as a progressive reformer who rejected politics as usual in Chicago. Yet her response to coronavirus in the city has prioritized the city’s corporate interests, not the vast majority of Chicagoans.
Carlos Ramirez-Rosa was once the lone socialist on Chicago’s city council — now he’s joined by five members of the Democratic Socialists of America. In an interview with Jacobin, Rosa talks about the attacks from the city’s political and capitalist class that didn’t land and the agenda for the city’s newly elected socialists.
Recently, Chicago city councillor Carlos Rosa’s socialist politics cost him in the halls of power. He speaks to Jacobin about why he refuses to “throw a movement under the bus.”