Ideas We Should Steal Festival 2024 Harold Washington’s Promise [Video]

“I had just gotten out of college, and Harold Washington had just been elected in 1983,” Barack Obama once recalled. “And I was very much interested in seeing what the possibilities were for progressive politics in the Black community. And Chicago was the most exciting thing going on at the time.”

What was it that drew the young community organizer to the Windy City? A man he’d never met. Harold Washington was the fiery, funny, and charismatic first Black mayor of Chicago, an insurgent who, in 1983, took on a political machine rife with corruption and discrimination, and won. His was an epic story of a people-led movement — Washington’s multiracial coalition registered over 100,000 voters — that still speaks to us today.

Punch 9 For Harold Washington is filmmaker Joe Winston’s account of Washington’s stunning rise and its inevitable backlash. On November 14, to kick off our 7th annual Ideas We Should Steal Festival, Winston will join us …