Chicago aldermen afraid to endorse the boycott

It's not easy being a Chicago alderman and having to work on Daley's plantation. With Mayor Daley still controlling jobs and the purse, an alderman has to walk the line between Daley patronage and the demands of his/her community. Case in point-- Black Caucus alderman yesterday, SUPPORTING, but afraid to ENDORSE Rev. Meeks' proposed first-day-of-school boycott. The boycott idea, to dramatize the funding disparities between city and rich suburban schools, has drawn broad community support and was embraced by ministers from 50 West and Southside churches yesterday.

Comparing Marshall's 46 percent graduation rate to New Trier's 99.8 percent rate, Rev. Marshall Hatch of New Mt. Pilgrim Church denounced disparities in which students on the North Shore have thousands of dollars more spent on them than Chicago schoolchildren. "Money does matter," Hatch said. "The funding disparity, of course, brings not only unequal investment but obviously unequal outcomes."

But it's drawn fire from the mayor, governor and other politicians who've been sitting on their hands while state funding for schools remains at a political impasse in Springfield.


Not the first time


1963 CPS boycott flyer

This isn't the first time Chicago school students will have stayed home to protest the inequities in the system. Some 45 years ago, civil rights groups led boycotts by African-American school students protesting segregated, overcrowded schools, the use of trailers as classrooms, and the policies of the notorious Supt. Benjamin Willis. Willis and the board filed injunctions against the movement and used many of the same arguments being heard today--"kids shouldn't miss a day of school," "kids are being used," etc... But the boycott came off and more than 100,000 African-American students stayed home.

Those early school boycotts marked the beginning of a sustained protest movement, the Chicago Freedom Movement of 1965-1966, that culminated in the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr's arrival in Chicago to lead the struggle for equal opportunities in education and housing.


The newest pacifist

Don't you just love the idea of George Bush preaching pacifism to the Russians. That's chutzpah.

From the AFP wire:

"I said this violence is unacceptable," Bush told US broadcaster NBC, in reference to an exchange he had with Putin while they were attending Friday night's opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics."I expressed my grave concern about the disproportionate response of Russia and that we strongly condemn bombing outside of South Ossetia...I was very firm with Vladimir Putin."