'When you close a school you open a prison'

THE PIPELINE... Hundreds marched Monday night from Lawndale to the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center to call for an end to what they call the “school to prison pipeline.” Activists began their march with a rally at Paderewski Elementary, a school that was among the more than 50 closed in 2013, down Ogden Avenue to the detention center.

Padlocks

Members of nearly 30 different community activist groups said they wanted to see more investment in education alternative programs for youth, rather than in prisons.

“Somebody once told me when you close a school you open a prison,” said Malcolm London, a member of the group Black Youth Project 100, as demonstrators placed and tied small padlocks to the fence in front of the school. “We’re placing these padlocks to symbolize being locked out of our systems,” said another demonstrator. -- Chicagoist

SPEAKING OF PADLOCKS... Byrd-Bennett changed the locks on the door at Gresham Elementary and won't give principal Diedrus Brown the keys. Silly, petty BBB. Doesn't she know that if parents want to stage another sit-in, Brown can just open the door from the inside and let them in?

WANNA BUY CPS? It's for sale. And here I thought the hedge-funders and corporate reformers already bought it.

FROM SEIU Adriana Alvarez has worked at McDonald’s for four years and makes just $8.75 an hour. She’s fighting for $15 an hour to win a better life for herself and her two year-old son Manny. This afternoon, Adriana was arrested outside of McDonald’s corporate headquarters in Oak Brook, Illinois, where hundreds of workers refused to be silenced before the company's shareholder meeting.

Call McDonald’s and tell them you stand with Adriana and the other workers who were arrested right now: 888-979-7395.

AMARA ENYIA is running for mayor of Chicago. That's who, writes Joravsky in the Reader.

"There's not one, single thing that Rahm did that made me want to run," she says. "It was an aggregation of things that he'd done. Closing the schools. Closing the mental health clinics. The cuts. The firings.