WEEKEND QUOTABLES

On Sunday afternoon, nearly 1,000 people, practically all of them African American, answered Ed Gardner’s call to rally at 95th and Western to protest the continued lack of black workers on construction sites in Chicago.|

Mary Mitchell

They were young and old, teachers and parents, churchgoers and hell-raisers, politicians and their bashers marching alongside the well-to-do and those not doing so well. Protesters converged from both directions on Western — at times spilling out into the street and stopping traffic between 95th and 91st and Western, chanting: “If we don’t work. No one works.”  -- Sun-Times  

Carl Hiaasen 

Next time you reach for Angel Soft toilet paper, think of the Koch brothers. -- Miami Herald

Michelle Rhee

 Although his stance made perfect sense to me, it surprised many political observers. After all, Emanuel is a favorite within the Democratic Party, and teachers unions have long been allied with the party. --  Charleston Daily Mail, "Democrats need to stand up to teachers"

Kathryn Strom

The “no excuses” rhetoric (i.e, “poverty is not an excuse for failure”) is one that is dearly beloved by the corporate education reformers  because it allows them to perpetuate (what many recognize to be) the American myth of meritocracy and continue the privatization movement under the guise of “improving schools” while avoiding addressing deeply entrenched inequities that exist in our society and are perpetuated by school structures. -- Washington Post, "The bottom line on ‘no excuses’ and poverty in school reform"

Jay Mathews

The best charters don’t use the assessment systems reformers want regular schools to use.  -- Washington Post, Class Struggle