Hello, it's the vast majority. I'm Jackman Deputy Editor Micah Eutricht.

We're now in week two of the protests that have swept the entire country and much of the world since the

Minneapolis police murder of George Floyd.

And the protests have been something really incredible to see for numerous reasons,

but one of them is how they have made the demand to defund police departments around the country

so central, and they've made it such common sense, and in

many cities and towns across the country, elected officials who are decidedly not leftists have taken up the demand.

Here in Chicago we have six people who are elected to the city council who are members of the Democratic socialists of America

who are championing this demand to defund the police. Today, Monday, they have an

op-ed in the Chicago Sun Times that's entitled cutting funding for police

could lead to a better and safer Chicago. The demand that they are putting

forward is the demand that others around the country are demanding,

which is that at a time of devastating austerity to public budgets and the cutting of public services and public goods, things like housing budgets, public education,

much more.

Why are we spending in a city like Chicago 40% of the city's budget on the Chicago police department?

The police department which like every other major city in the country has its own record of police brutality and racism,

most spectacularly in the last few years in the shooting of LeQua

Mcdonald, a black teenager who was shot 16 times.

So we are talking today to two of the contributors to that Chicago sometimes op-ed,

both of whom have been interviewed in Jacobin before,

alderwoman Jeanette Taylor of the 20th Ward of Chicago, and alderwoman Rosanna Rodriguez-Sanchez of the 33rd Ward.

And they are two of the six who wrote this op-ed,

...