The Chicago school closings: Finding truth amidst the lies
Filed under: Discrimination, Global Economy & Politics, Race, U.S. Politics, Unions
“Closing 50 of our neighborhood schools is outrageous and no society that claims to care anything about its children can sit back and allow this to happen to them. There is no way people of conscience will stand by and allow these people to shut down nearly a third of our school district without putting up a fight. Most of these campuses are in the Black community. Since 2001 88% of students impacted by CPS School Actions are African-American. And this is by design.”— Karen Lewis, President of the Chicago Teachers Union
It was a grim Thursday afternoon on March 21st as the news trickled out that 61 Chicago school buildings would be closed and that 54 school programs will be axed. The closings are heavily clustered in the poorest mostly African American and Latino neighborhoods, where decades of disinvestment and economic apartheid have taken a heavy toll on the residents.
Many people have moved away from these communities, driven out by the lack of jobs, the meager resources given to the schools, the inadequate city services and the resulting crime and violence. Many believe that the forced exodus is part of a land grab for real estate interests who will move in to gentrify these areas.
On the South and West Sides of the city, where the closings are hitting hardest, poverty is a policy, not an accident. The Chicago financial elite, which could provide jobs and rational investment, has chosen displacement over renewal, ethnic cleansing over neighborhood stabilization. As the Mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel is the public face of this prairie plutocracy. Read more
Fight for $15! Cuz we can’t survive on $8.25
Filed under: Global Economy & Politics, Society & Economy, U.S. Politics, Unions
It was a cold clear Saturday morning on December 22, 2012 when I got off the CTA Green Line and walked toward the St. James Cathedral to join with members of the Workers Organizing Committee of Chicago (WOCC). WOCC was planning march and sit-in to demand a living wage of $15 an hour for Chicago’s downtown retail and restaurant workers. The Illinois minimum wage is now $8.25, far below what is needed to support families or even individuals.
The Hawk, Chicago’s legendary icy wind off the Lake, was not present as I crossed the Michigan Ave bridge on the way to the Cathedral. The Hawk can easily cut through the North Face jackets favored by many Chicagoans and makes carrying a large protest banner as tricky as sailing a schooner around Cape Horn. And leafletting to passersby when The Hawk comes down? You can lose dozens of fliers in an instant if you relax your grip and then have to chase a passel of airborne leaflets through crowds of shoppers and tourists.
The weather was with us that day.
WOCC was a new union in town, barely a month old, but had already pulled off two successful public actions including banner drops at Macy’s department store and marches through Chicago’s upscale Magnificent Mile (aka MagMile) shopping district.
Chicago teachers join Elwood IL warehouse workers to confront Walmart
Filed under: Global Economy & Politics, Society & Economy, Unions, Workplace
The chants rang out across Vincennes Ave in the Chatham neighborhood of South Side Chicago:
“1-2-3-4 No one should be working poor!
5-6-7-8 Come on Walmart, play it straight!
We’re working families
Under attack
What do we do?
Stand up! Fight back!
There ain’t no power,
Like the power of the people,
Cuz the power of the people won’t stop!”
Striking teachers from the Chicago Teachers Union(CTU) had joined Warehouse Workers for Justice(WWJ) at a rally aimed at Walmart to protest its employee abuses and the dumping of millions of dollars into school privatization efforts. It was the afternoon of Tuesday September 18, only a few hours before the CTU House of Delegates ended the teachers strike. I had come to the rally with a CTU retiree.
Inspired by the labor-community alliance that the CTU had built in its strike and by a strike of Walmart warehouse workers in California, the Illinois warehouse workers led by WWJ went on strike against Roadlink Workforce Solutions. Roadlink is a subcontractor at the vast Walmart distribution center located in Elwood IL near Joliet, south of Chicago. The Joliet region is now a major distribution point in the big box store supply chain. WWJ is a project of the United Electrical Workers (UE), the legendary progressive union which can trace it’s history back to the factory occupations of the Great Depression. Read more
The U.S. Postal Service is essential to our democracy and our economy
Filed under: Global Economy & Politics, Society & Economy, Unions
The free exchange of ideas is critical to representative government and was one of the reasons why the US Postal Service(USPS) was created. At its founding the Postal Service had a deliberate policy of subsidizing the mailing of newspapers and other periodicals, precisely to encourage the communication of ideas. The importance of this was understood by President George Washington who signed the bill authorizing the US Postal Service in 1792. The idea of a postal service is enshrined in the US Constitution.
The new Chicago school budget strangles public education
Filed under: Global Economy & Politics, Society & Economy, Unions
“When you wage war on the public schools, you’re attacking the mortar that holds the community together. You’re not a conservative, you’re a vandal.” —Garrison Keeler
The 2013 Chicago Public Schools(CPS) budget received a resounding thumbs down at a community forum held at Malcolm X College on the West Side the evening of July 11. Over 200 people filled the auditorium to listen to an explanation of the budget from Chief Operating Officer Tim Cawley and then ask questions and make their own recommendations. The reaction of those who spoke from the audience was overwhelmingly negative. Cawley was loudly booed several times. Similar meetings were held at Kennedy-King and Daley colleges on the South Side. No meetings were held on the city’s North Side.
The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) described it as a “fantasy budget at best.” Read more