The neighborhood is, perhaps one of the most economically diverse in the city, where property values and rents are high, most of the houses built between 1900 and 1930 have been renovated, but there is still a large working class presence of mixed ethnicity, a primarily white population with some of Eastern European descent, many of them Ukrainians from the time this area was known as "Ukrainian Village," along with Latinos, mostly Puerto Ricans, and a scattering of people from the Middle East. It's mainly professionals who work in Chicago's booming banking and finance, marketing, insurance and wholesale supply business, a scattering of public service professionals like teachers, firefighters and police officers, and the small business owners who populate the neighborhood, known for its cozy cafes and small shops.
Does politics ever come up in the discussions that take place among the barbers and their customers?
All the time. Let me set the scene for you.
Sam is the barber who owns the shop where he has worked for thirty years. It's on the main floor of the apartment building where he and his family live on the second floor. Because the neighborhood has grown and revitalized, so has his business, and he's added two barbers and two more chairs. Sam is a naturalized US Citizen, a Muslim from Lebanon.
His longest serving partner is Oleg, who is Ukrainian, and also a naturalized American citizen. Oleg was a teacher in Ukraine, and came here to do the same, but found out he could earn double the salary as a barber, so he trained at barber college and came into this business eleven years ago. The other barber is a friend of his, Alex, also a Ukrainian who is a naturalized American citizen. Alex was cutting men't hair in a corner of the beauty salon that his mother and aunt own, about ten blocks away, and decided this would be easier for his customers.
I was in there yesterday, and the political conversation was already going when I got there. This shop is very busy, open seven days and until 7:00 on weeknights, which makes it easy for me to stop on my way home from work. The themes of the discussion are very similar to what I'm hearing on talk radio recently. Maybe Democratic party leaders need to listen to these kinds of conversations in places like this and it will help formulate some kind of unified strategy for the party to win control of both houses of Congress in the midterm elections.
In this part of town, I've never heard anyone in this barbershop bring up anything that would indicate they are a Republican or a Trumper. In most of the precincts around here, Trump got less than 15% of the vote in 2024, and in the atmosphere of the barbershop, it's probably better not to bring him up in any discussion.
So What Advice to the Barbers and Their Customers Have For Democrats?
Much of yesterday's discussion centered on all of the speculation surrounding Trump's involvement with Epstein. Of course, there's more there than meets the eye, and among the barbershop crowd there is no doubt that the worst that can be imagined is more than likely true. The conspiracy theorists and cult admirers who make up Trump's MAGA base are not likely to accept the truth when it comes out, whatever it is, because it's becoming clear that there's no evidence to support their contentions, but among those present yesterday, there was no doubt about Trump's involvement, not just in the sex trafficking, but in the mysterious circumstances surrounding Epstein's "suicide" when he was in DOJ executive branch custody during Trump's first term.
Yesterday's discussion also included the fact that Steve Bannon recently asserted that Republicans may lose as many as 40 seats in the House at the midterms as a result of what he sees as the unpopularity of just about everything Trump has done since he's been back, from confusion about tariffs and how they are dispersed, to the "big beautiful" budget bill that gives billionaires another tax break.
What's being said in these barbershop discussions matches what I'm hearing on talk radio's call-in shows, like Stephanie Miller and Thom Hartmann, and our local hosts here in Chicago on WCPT. There is a very strong populist movement pulling Democrats back to their working class roots. There's general agreement that taxes are out of balance, and that billionaires, who have become the wealthiest 1% in the country because of benefits they enjoy provided by the government, such as favorable legislation, tax breaks and protecting their interests, are not paying their fair share. There are complaints that they are disproportionately favored in Congress and by the President, and the anti-oligarchy sentiment runs high among the customers in this barbershop.
All of the barbers are concerned about where the cost of their health insurance is going. The two Ukrainians are single, and young enough to be able to benefit from joining a group that includes other hair stylists, beauticians and barbers, and get health insurance through a non-profit group HMO, so as long as they stay within their system, the out of pocket costs are reasonable. But the premiums are set to go up considerably in October, and while they are doing well, and have as much business as they want to handle, they are still concerned.
Sam, who has relatives in Chicago, gets most of the group to agree that if America had a universal health care system like Canada, where most of his relatives now live, we would be getting better care and the taxes required to support it would be half of what we now pay in health insurance costs. He and I both have relatives who are Canadian citizens, and he gets no argument from me about the cost and quality of the health care they get. None of the other customers disagrees with us.
Discussion of the lost 2024 election has faded, but the blame falls equally on Harris' campaign and on Biden's failure to announce he would not seek re-election until well into the campaign season. There is almost universal agreement that this is what he should have done, stepped down and left the door open for a primary to choose a candidate. There is strong agreement, among the customers and the barbers, that Biden did an excellent job as a transitional President, but that he should have made it clear he wouldn't run again, and let the party decide on a candidate through a primary. Most believe that there would be a Democrat in the White House had he done that.
And there's not universal approval of Harris. It's not that she is a woman, which is a sentiment the media has interjected into the discussion. Many of the barbershop customers say it's that her campaign focused too much time and energy solidifying their social issue platform, placing an emphasis on LGBTQ+ issues, especially on transgender issues, which represent less than 10% of the party's constituency, and only spoke in generalities about the bigger issues that concerned the voters, like inflation, health care and the host of working class issues that have caused a lot of marginal voters to support Trump.
Everyone saw the commercials the Republicans ran, showing Harris' endorsement of gender affirming care, including surgery, for prison inmates.
"She may have changed her position, but she didn't make it strong enough, or clear enough, to counter the negative publicity," say the barbershop customers.
"I'm for equal rights for all Americans, regardless of their race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation," said one customer, "But that can't be the centerpiece of a campaign at a time when inflation is running over 5% and billionaires are stuffing their pockets at the expense of the working class," he said. "I still voted for her, not so much because of her campaign promises, but because I wasn't going to vote for Trump," he said.
The Party Needs a Leadership Change
In agreement with those who are expressing the opinion on talk shows, and with the general tone of the protest movement being organized against Trump by groups like Indivisible, there is consensus that the Democratic party needs to make some leadership changes. The most favorably mentioned Democrat in this particular group, considering it is a barbershop in a heavily liberal, well educated, Democratic party dominated neighborhood of Chicago, is J. D. Pritzker, the governor of Illinois. General consensus is that he'd make a great President. The other frequently mentioned name for the job is Pete Buttigieg.
There's no animosity toward Gavin Newsom, and people seem to like him, they just aren't as familiar with him as they are with the local politicians. When I asked about Ken Martin, as the new DNC chair, there was a lack of enthusiastic response from the two or three customers in the room. Two didn't really know who he was, and one, who is as active in party politics as I am, wasn't really happy about the choice. They were all enthusiastic about David Hogg, however.
When it comes to Congressional leadership, the mood is dark. The conclusion among the barbershop customers is that Schumer has overstayed his effectiveness, and needs to step down now, well before the midterms, turning the senate minority leadership over to someone else. Tammy Duckworth, Mark Kelley, or Jon Ossoff were among those mentioned. And there's not a high level of enthusiasm among this group for Hakeem Jeffries continuing on in the House minority role. They aren't seeing the kind of pushback and interference from Democrats that we get from Republicans when they are the minority and they think we need someone a little pushier and shrill. No misogyny is present in their suggestions that Jasmine Crockett or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Pramila Jayapal step into this role.
Bernie Sanders has garnered the most praise the last two or three times I've been to get a haircut. There are regrets that we didn't choose him in 2016, when we could have had eight years of a Sanders Presidency that this crowd universally thinks would have solidified working class Americans as a sound constituency of the Democratic party.
"Democratic socialism is the friend of the worker," says Alex, the barber from Ukraine. "Americans are pathetically ignorant when it comes to their use of the word "socialist." Democratic socialism is the exact opposite of totalitarian Communism," he says, "And trust me, I know."
It's Anectodal, But it Matches the Current Sentiment of Democrats
It's hard to say whether this barbershop customer group is representative of all Democrats. Most likely, from its geographic location, it tilts heavily toward the core of the party. Racially, from my observation, it's a mostly Caucasian group, with a few Chicago natives, mostly older men, and a lot of men like the barbers, from a different ethnicity and national origin. Most are Ukrainian, Greek or Serbian, with a scattering of Polish, Hungarian and Russian natives, almost all of whom are naturalized American citizens now, or in the process. Most are open about their political sympathies for the Democratic party, and I've not met anyone at this barbershop who openly claims to be a Republican or a Trumper.
I've made a couple of friendships that have carried on outside the barbershop, too. I had lunch on Friday with one man, who emigrated here from Turkey when he was two years old. His mother is Maltese, and he's probably the most outspoken liberal I know at the moment. He got a scholarship and majored in political science at Northwestern, and we had a good, long discussion about the Gaza War, at a table in the corner of the restaurant, occasionally looking over our shoulder. When you see my comments here about Merrick Garland, or about the Gaza War, some of the information comes from him.
Another friendship I've made, through our shared liberal politics in the barbershop, and now in the Indivisible chapter to which we both belong is a guy whose first conversation with me was an attempt to convert me to Eastern Orthodox Christianity. I did, in fact, attend a couple of services at the Greek Orthodox cathedral he belongs to, and we've had lunch several times, to which he always invites his priest. Democratic politics is our common ground, discussions about his Orthodox faith and my Quaker values are secondary to that.
So I don't know how "mainstream" or "grassroots" all of this is when it comes to what the Democratic party needs to hear from its constituents. But what comes out of these barbershop discussions is a strong desire to see the Democratic party's message return to its working class roots, and to set itself apart from Republicans by our strong disapproval of having a morally bankrupt, valueless, criminal and sexual deviant serving as President of the United States, and by the fact that we think they have been corrupted by him to a point where they have nothing left of value to offer the process of governing the United States.
America is, in most places now, exactly like the crowd that shows up in my barbershop. It is a mixture of native born, lifetime Americans with a wide variety of individuals, mostly naturalized citizens from all over the world, who came here to tap into the freedom and stability that is offered by living here, not to "take" anything from anyone who already lives here. Those who are foreign born tend to understand their role as a contributor to this country, more than those who simply take it for granted, and in a democratic society, they are making a contribution that benefits all of us.
It's interesting how the urban environment contributes to Democratic party values and participation. Communities form around common interests and common needs. Education isn't disdained or considered as false promotion of ideology, it is something to be valued as an uplifting element of society that helps people live better lives. And out of this mix of diverse populations comes a vision which sees the need for the Democratic party to make a strong return to its working class values.
I'd suggest some of our party leaders look up from the attention they are paying to their fundraising efforts and go spend some time in a barbershop or beauty parlor, and listen to the conversation.
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