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| Trumbull Local Schools Council member Ali Burke hugs Wendy Kattan of Raise Your Hand following the board of education's vote to close 50 Chicago Public School, May 22, 2013. | Jessica Koscielniak ~ Sun-Times |
In less time than it takes to boil an egg -- This morningColumnist Mark Brown
In the end, the board was so tone deaf to its audience that on the crucial vote that closed most of the schools, they used the parliamentary maneuver of adopting the previous favorable roll call — instead of taking the extra 30 seconds to each say “yes” once more. The average person in attendance didn’t even know the closings had been approved until it was over. -- "CPS closings vote shows it’s time for an elected school board"
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| Whitney Young students hold vigil. (Sun-Times) |
One key component of this strategy is demographic inversion- moving the poor out of the center city into the periphery, where they will no longer be able to physically or politically threaten the global elites who will be working and playing in the redeveloped Center. This process is already well under way in cities like New York, Chicago, Washington and Milwaukee- with the result being that more poor people now live in suburbs than in cities...Prof. Federico Waitoller, Dept. of Special Ed, UIC
... "Erasing History In Chicago and Other Places"
This combination of factors will make school closings doubly hard for students of color with special needs. The sheer magnitude and speed of these changes will be especially painful for what is already the school district’s most vulnerable population. -- Letter to TribuneSports writer Dave Zirin
It all starts with the person who seems committed to win the current spirited competition as the most loathsome person in American political life: Mayor Rahm Emanuel. The same Mayor overseeing the closing of fifty-four schools and six community mental health clinics under the justification of a “budgetary crisis” has announced that the city will be handing over more than $100 million to DePaul University for a new basketball arena. -- The Nation
Wendy Katten of Raise Your Hand said this: "...I was embarrassed as a Jewish woman to have a Jewish mayor experimenting on black children after listening to a bunch of board members say that black parents don't know how to raise their children." She speaks for me too.
ReplyDeleteAnd me. This is suffocatingly ghastly. The hopes and promises of our democracy ... snuffed. How can they dare?
DeleteYes, a lot of us Jews are thoroughly embarrassed by and disgusted with Rahm --and we are reminded that, "What one Christian does is his own responsibility, what one Jew does is thrown back at all Jews." --Anne Frank
DeleteThere are so many politicians from whom we had no reason to expect anything but fear and loathing — and they never fail to meet those expectations.
ReplyDeleteBut, yes, relative to the expectations that many of us less-clued-in observers may have had, Rahmses the Grate is certainly winning the Race To The Top of the loathsome scale.
There is no comment I could make to express the rage I feel against Rahm and the billionaire organizations behind him and his behavior. Yes, that includes Penny Pritzker as well.
ReplyDeleteClosing schools destroys community and community. The schools embodies the history of families. Parents, grandparents, and their children attended that school wiped out in a year. The teachers and administrators who are sometimes the most trusted and highly educated people in a community are gone and with them the trusted resources they bring. And the children become alienated, parents lose hope, communities lose connection. An erasure of culture.
ReplyDeleteSo Rahm and his corporatist friends can exploit the destroyed neighborhood for their own purposes.
I'm friends with the man who was Emanuel's roommate back in the 80's when they were both starting out their careers in Washington, DC. The arrogant, smirking, screaming, yelling, power-obsessed bully you've read about IS an absolutely accurate portrayal of this very disturbed individual.
ReplyDeleteHow do people like this get into power? How can someone this obviously sick, mean-spirited, and...well, sadistic, be elected to such an important office as Mayor of Chicago?
Rahm Emanuel, as an American of Jewish heritage, should honor the good and noble tradition of his people, and the way in which they were treated when they were subject to the power of others.
Emanuel's acting out as the "tough guy" is having horrific effects on the people of his city. As an occasional visitor to his home in the 80's, I witnessed, first-hand, Emanuel's overwhelming greed and lust for power, control and dominance---he would prop himself up on the couch or window seat in such a way to insure that HE would always be the tallest one in the room...and I wish I were only kidding about that.
This is truly, one sick puppy. Unfortunately his illness will also impact so many innocents who did nothing to merit this reprehensible treatment.
LET'S GET RID OF RAHM AND HIS FLUNKY SCHOOL BOARD.
ReplyDelete