The generals' revolt. Why it's important.

On the steps of the  Lincoln Memorial, June 2, 2020. (Photo credit: Martha Raddatz).

"When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens — much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.” -- Gen. Mattis in The Atlantic. 

Trump has taken a political beating in the media over his threatened use of the Insurrection Act as a means to deploy the military against civilian demonstrators and send federal troops into the cities to "dominate" the protesters. State governors and local mayors are throwing him a collective middle finger on that one. But they're not his main problem.

His clownish, but dangerous maneuver Monday night to clear protesters out of Lafayette Park, stroll across H Street and hold up a Bible in front of the historic St. John's Church -- all the while flocked by a phalanx of law enforcement officials. actually cost him support among white evangelical supporters. Something few thought would ever happen.

Even more significant was the open revolt by a group of top military brass, including his own Sec. of Defense Mark Esper, at the prospect of the use of federal troops to put down the protests. General Mark Milley, the top US commander, even issued a memo to military leaders reminding them of their oaths to protect the US Constitution and the "right to freedom of speech and peaceful assembly".

All this came the heels of the resignation of James Miller, a former undersecretary of defense for policy. He announced his resignation from the Science Defense Board in the Washington Post upbraiding Esper for being such a political toady. Then came an open letter from Gen. James "Mad Dog" Mattis, who chimed in with his own strongly worded statement criticizing Trump directly for his divisive rhetoric during the protests.

Gen. David Goldfein, the Air Force chief of staff, and Lt. Gen. Jay Silveria, superintendent of the Air Force Academy, also spoke up this week in support of the protests for racial justice, with Silveria directly repudiating the use of violence against fellow Americans. In addition, Air Force Gen. Joseph L. Lengyel, who heads the National Guard Bureau, put out a statement Wednesday entitled “We Must Do Better,” denouncing the racism that has resulted in the deaths of so many unarmed African Americans

Troops from Fort Hood refused orders to go to Chicago to crush protests in 1968/ 

What the hell's going on you might ask?

Well for starters, with Trump's reelection campaign floundering and poll numbers showing Joe Biden pulling ahead, especially in key battleground states, any plan by Republicans to cancel or rig the elections in November or to hang onto power after a loss to Democrats, would require military and paramilitary logistical support.

Then there's the likelihood that the generals themselves are fearing dissension in their own ranks? Are they afraid of a revolt in the event troops are ordered to fire on members of their own communities? It wouldn't be the first time.

I'm thinking back to 1968 when the order for troops from Ft. Hood to go to Chicago for “Riot control” duty at the Democratic National Convention led to one of the most powerful rebellions by African-American soldiers who came to be known as the Ft. Hood 43.

Buckle up. These past four months have been a wild ride. The next five could get even wilder.

My next challenge

Tomorrow is the first big test for my new knee following a small rehab setback. I'm scheduled to speak on a panel on The Life and Legacies of Fred Hampton at the American History Assoc. convention over at the Palmer House in Chicago.

I'm going to have to navigate the stairs with crutches, climb in and out of a taxi and make it up to the 6th floor and back.

I'm psyched.

The panel, is organized by Univ. of Iowa Prof. Simon Balto. He's the author of Occupied Territory: Policing Black Chicago from Red Summer to Black Power.

Here's more info on the meeting in Chicago, in case you want to attend:

AHA Session 12

Thursday, January 3, 2019: 1:30 PM-3:00 PM

Water Tower Parlor (Palmer House Hilton, Sixth Floor)

Panel Chair:Barbara Ransby, University of Illinois at Chicago

Panel:Page May, Assata's Daughters

Toussaint Losier, University of Massachusetts AmherstSimon Balto, University of Iowa 

Michael Klonsky, Hitting Left

Aislinn Pulley, Black Lives Matter Chicago

Jakobi Williams, Indiana University

Then on Friday, Brother Fred and I are back on the air at Hitting Left. Our in-studio guest will be Don Rose, former press secretary to both Dr. Martin Luther King and Chicago Mayor Harold Washington.

Tune in at 11 a.m. on www.lumpenradio.com
Let's do this...

'Who do you serve? Who do you protect?': The Killing of Snoop the Barber

TWITTER/BYP100

Officers assigned to a foot assignment observe "a man exhibiting characteristics of an armed person".  -- Anthony Guglielmi, the Chicago Police Department’s chief communications officer

It's hard to say what it is that will finally push a community to the breaking point. I lived in L.A. in 1965 when the Watts riots (rebellion) began as a reaction to a police assault on a black motorist pulled over for a traffic violation. LAPD needed help from 4,000 members of the National Guard to quell the uprising. By the time the smoke cleared they counted 34 deaths and over $40 million in property damage.

In '68 it was the assassination of Dr. King in Memphis.

1992 brought the Rodney King riots.

But all these singular events were only sparks that lit the prairie fire of anger and rage. The real tinder box was years of oppression and suffering within a system of enforced racist violence, segregation, joblessness, broken schools and mass incarceration -- a political system leaving those oppressed communities voiceless and without hope for the next generation.

I was considering all this when I heard the news about yesterday's deadly shooting by police of Harith Augustus ("Snoop the Barber") on Chicago's south side. Harith was the father of a 5-year-old daughter and was a well-known barber in his South Shore neighborhood. One of his customers told local media the barber usually “brings his daughter with him wherever he goes, but she wasn’t with him today.”

Police said they encountered a man “exhibiting characteristics” of being armed. Wait, what?

There was a confrontation and Augustus was shot in the back five times and killed. An angry crowd gathered shouting,  "Who do you serve? Who do you protect?", and a confrontation ensued, a few water bottles against cop batons. Witnesses said the cop who did the shooting was quickly whisked away from the area in a police cruiser. As of this writing, she has not been named.

Wasn't no "scuffle." CPD beat organizers with batons for throwing water bottles. This is an violent occupation. #FTP #StopTheCops https://t.co/E8Audl3cz0

— BYP100 (@BYP_100) July 15, 2018

Shortly after, the streets erupted in the neighborhood with residents turned demonstrators demanding answers from police. Police claimed a weapon was recovered at the scene. People who knew him said, Harith had a permit for the gun, that it was holstered and that he never reached for it. So much for all that Second Amendment bull crap.

By midnight, demonstrators were still in the streets, police and residents clashed and a number of people were arrested. Sun-Times reporter, Nader Issa was caught up in the chaos and was assaulted by police.

I don't know if Harith's killing will turn out to be one of those moments in time. If nothing else, this is one more brick in the wall for a mayor running for reelection and still being dogged by his role in the cover up of the Laquan McDonald killing. His only saving grace is that none of the other candidates seem to have a meaningful response to the ongoing and systematic police abuse in this city's black communities beyond calling for a new $95M police training academy.

But at the risk of being repetitive, the pumping of five bullets into the back of a man accused of no crime except running for his life, is not a training problem.

Here's some of Issa's tweets from the scene.

A very large crowd is gathering at 71st/Chappel, where Chicago Police say they shot and killed a person this evening. It's hard to put in words how tense the scene is. Witnesses say a female officer shot the man in the back while he was running away. He was a local barber. pic.twitter.com/aaV6smY07V

— Nader Issa (@NaderDIssa) July 15, 2018

Witnesses say the incident started when the officer told him not to sell loose cigarettes. He supposedly told the officer he wasn't selling them, just handing a couple to his aunt. An argument started, and he began to run. That's when the officer fired, per police and witnesses.

— Nader Issa (@NaderDIssa) July 15, 2018

I had my press badge held up in one hand and my phone in the other while I was saying "I'm a reporter." Two Chicago Police officers repeatedly pushed me, then smacked my phone out of my hand and threw me back. I lost my balance but can't remember if I hit the ground or not. pic.twitter.com/vhi4gjlNla

— Nader Issa (@NaderDIssa) July 15, 2018

 The situation has gotten as bad as its been a night. Police charged into the parking lot and started hitting people. Two officers smacked my phone out of my hand and shoved me to the ground. Don't know how many arrests, but at least a dozen from what I could see. pic.twitter.com/L7Q5xQyWSe

— Nader Issa (@NaderDIssa) July 15, 2018

Korean summit about much more than Kim/Trump wrestling match

It was just a few months ago that Trump was threatening "fire and fury" and boasting, "My button is bigger than yours". He had Pentagon on a nuclear war footing and the U.S. armada sailing into Korean waters.

Big media is looking at the Singapore meeting as if it was a pro-wrestling event. Who will win, Trump or Kim? The talking heads on CNN ponder the question. Should Trump be shaking hands with a dictator? Has he done his prep work? Is Kim just playing him? Many Democrats hope to God that the Summit is a PR flop for DT and that he returns home without a feather in his fascist cap. Trump's base will stay with him come what may.

But the way I see it, once you cut through all the bullshit, the summit offers positive prospects in a dangerous, rapidly changing world order. With an economically self-confident China, now tamping down the trade war threat and working along with South Korea to push diplomacy on the Korean peninsula, both Trump's and Kim's hands have been forced.

With the U.S. declining in global power and stature and the atomic clock edging closer to midnight, these are dangerous times. Trump is playing on American fears of lost privilege and economic ruin.

Cold War with Russia, trade war with Europe, Canada and China, and Bolton itching for pre-emptive nuclear strikes against Iran and North Korea, and all this playing on our growing sense of national insecurity. Building on that fear and insecurity was the cornerstone of Trump's election campaign in 2016. Now it's seen as the only way out (aside from purging the voting rolls) for Trump and the Republicans in the November elections. The Summit changes none of this.

But remember, it was just a few months ago that DT had the Pentagon on a nuclear war footing and sending its lost armada into Korean waters (shadowed by Russian and Chinese war ships). Remember him saber-rattling, threatening "fire and fury", and boasting: "My button is bigger than yours..."?

Kim defied repeated economic sanctions and international pressure over its nuclear regime and vowed a “merciless response” to any US provocation. Hopefully, popular world pressure and current negotiations will put a damper on all that empty, but provocative, chatter.

To the people of the Korean Peninsula, who have suffered from war -- hot and cold -- for the past 68 years and more, with distorted economies and families on both sides of the arbitrary 38th Parallel torn from each other, both captives to superpower rivalry, this is about so much more than a personal rivalry between autocrats. The people on both sides of the line want assurances of peace on a nuclear-free peninsula, trade and normalization of relations, and ultimately national reunification.

None of those things will likely come out of this first round of diplomacy. But I'm glad the Singapore meetings are taking place. If nothing else, they buy time and pull us from the brink. And right now, time is the enemy of Trump and his Republican hangers-on.

Deja vu all over again?

The missing piece is still a powerful anti-war movement here on the ground. It was such a movement 50 years ago that pressured both Democrats and Trump's reactionary, Republican and anti-communist forbearer, Richard Nixon to finally end the war in Vietnam and normalize relations with China.

Deja vu all over again? Could be.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

"And all the boys there, at the bar, began to sing along..." -- Dixie Chicken (Little Feat)

Donald Trump

“Mission Accomplished!” Trump tweeted a day after the allied assault on Syrian facilities that the United States, Britain and France say are part of a large chemical weapons program. The phrase was the same one the last Republican president, George W. Bush, employed to his regret in 2003, when the Iraq War was far from over. -- Washington Post

Owen Jones

It was those who opposed war who were placed in the dock, our contemptuous prosecutors demanding: “What is your alternative, then?” We were deemed heartless in the face of despicable atrocities, and the useful idiots and dupes of Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi who – unlike many of the warmongers themselves – we had always opposed. -- The Guardian

Laura Washington

We have forgotten how to add. In this multi-racial city, we have forgotten that disciplined, multi-racial coalitions can prevail. Harold Washington’s “new Democratic coalition” was a combine of African-Americans, Latinos and “progressive whites” who found a common cause to beat the Democratic Party machine. Washington’s coalition disintegrated after his death and was never revived. -- Sun-Times

Wade Lead in the water

“Chicago’s water consistently meets and exceeds the U.S. EPA’s standards for clean, high-quality drinking water,” says Megan Vidis, a spokesperson for the city’s water department. -- Chicago’s drinking water is full of lead, report says

Working Families Party state director Bill Lipton 

“For eight years we tried to work with Andrew Cuomo to transform New York into a truly progressive state. For eight years he broke his promises and kept the Republicans in the State Senate, blocking critical legislation for affordable housing, women’s equality and criminal justice reform.” -- Politico

Joe Scarborough

 Despite playing tennis, golf and football during his college days, Trump took five deferments, four for college and one for bone spurs in his feet. On the day Trump graduated from college, 40 Americans were killed in Vietnam. -- Washington Post

Avery R. Young's "Lead in da Watah" (re-visited negro spiritual) from Elyse Blennerhassett on Vimeo.

1965 in the rear-view mirror

 Students who are revolutionary in spirit... have come up with real social criticism in three phases: the Free Speech Movement, which began as an attack upon the bureaucracy of the large university and turned into a protest against the impersonality of all institutions that, like the government welfare program, have lost contact with the people and values they were designed to serve; the Civil Rights Movement, which began as a campaign for Negro rights and turned into a campaign for eliminating local pockets of poverty; and the Peace Movement, which has begun as a protest against American military involvement in Vietnam and is turning into an attempt to influence all of foreign policy...

...There was also concern for the fact that, in their enthusiasm for the movement, many students were leaving their studies and shuttling back and forth among the campuses of the nation as vagabond dropouts in a vaguely academic orbit. And the unkempt appearance, condescending manner, and frequent acts of civil disobedience of many of the demonstrators added to an impression that this particular lot had spoiled, and that something must be done to keep the rest from being ruined.

-- From "The Price of Peace Is Confusion" by Renata Adler in the December 11, 1965 issue of the New Yorker

Big election wins in IL yesterday

Brandon Johnson on Hitting Left

Lots of big wins yesterday in IL. Congrats to Chuy, Brandon, Fritz, Delia, Aaron, Alma, Beatriz,  and the rest of the victorious, progressive, machine busters.

Also to Marie Newman who didn't win but ran a helluva race for congress against oinker incumbent Lipinski. He had big backing, not only from the rotten DCCC leadership, but from anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ groups as well. Sad to lose a race so close.

Also a salute to progressive Dan Biss who finished second to billionaire Pritzker and ahead of Chris Kennedy, in the gov primary race. Now Dems have to somehow pull together, at least until November, to crush Rauner.

They have a great chance, riding the anti-Trump wave. Good sign yesterday was a huge increase in Democrat voter turnout while many Repugs stayed home.

Some of Team Newman

It was a good day for teachers, advocates of elective school board and for the CTU. Bad day for school privatizers. Although I didn't agree with all their choices, the unions showed their power by backing winners with nearly every endorsement. Big win especially for CTU organizer Brandon Johnson who battled his way to victory in county board race.

FRIDAY ON HITTING LEFT... Much more election stuff to talk about on Friday's Hitting Left with the Klonsky Bros.

TODAY AT NOON ON HITTING LEFT... Tune in to www.lumpenradio.com or listen on WLPN, 105.5 FM today at noon, for a special HL show. We're continuing our 1968 retrospective with guests Cha Cha Jiminez (Young Lords Organization), Billy Che Brooks (IL Black Panthers), and SDS veteran organizer Susan Klonsky.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES 50 years ago, My Lai...

Journalist Seymour Hersh recounts the 1968 My Lai massacre in Vietnam

Fifty years ago, on March 16, 1968, U.S. soldiers "went from house to house and killed and raped and mutilated, and that just went on until everybody was either run away or killed". -- Democracy Now

Ex-CIA chief John Brennan on Trump

“When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history." -- Guardian

J.B. Pritzker on putting $69.5 million into campaign 

“We simply are trying to make sure that we’re paying the bills in the campaign, and we’re very excited about the opportunity to simply get our message out.” -- Tribune

Vincent Warren, director of the Center for Constitutional Rights

Gina Haspel should be arrested, not promoted, and the Senate, if it has a single shred of respect left for the law, should not confirm her. -- Guardian

Gary Younge

The problem with Democrats looking on Donald Trump’s presidency as a slow-motion car crash is that it concedes they are spectators at a moment when they should be in the driving seat – and that, when we come to survey the wreckage, there will be many innocent victims. -- Guardian

Kate McKinnon doing Betsy DeVos

 Analyzing the merits of public schools and charter schools, McKinnon said: “I don’t like to think of things in terms of school. It should be up to the states. In Wyoming, for example, which has many potential grizzlies, there should be a school for bears. And in Louisiana, crocodile crossing guards. And in North Carolina, stop being trans, and that’s what’s best for them.” 

As for the school shooting issue, she added, “We are working hard to ensure that all schools are safe learning environments for guns.” -- SNL

Kids now asking about the real Black Panthers

From Max S. Gordon's review of "Black Panther"

An article published this weekend in The Guardian suggests that “Black Panther” has already raised consciousness about black political prisoners. It’s exciting to imagine a generation of black children asking the question, “Who were the real Black Panthers?,” and learning that the party was created to monitor police brutality in Oakland, and expanded to include fights for healthcare, and provided free lunch programs for children; conversations that would ordinarily take place in African-American studies classes at major universities, now being taught to children in the fifth grade. 

Brother Fred and I will be doing a special edition of Hitting Left on March 21st as part of our year-long 1968 retrospective. In-studio guests will be Cha Cha Jimenez from the Young Lords Organization, Billy "Che"Brooks from the original IL Black Panther Party and former SDSer Susan Klonsky. We'll be talking about the old (original) Rainbow Coalition that turned the old Mayor Daley's Chicago upside-down in '68.

Lorraine Forte

Note to the Pearsons: Next time you're giving away $100M to help the cause of world peace, come talk to me first. U of C is the last place you should turn. They're much too busy promoting the likes of war-mongering racists like Bannon and Lewandowski.

Upcoming Friday on HL we'll be talking media/politics with Lorraine Forte, newly-hired member of the Sun-Times editorial board. Lorraine has served as the executive editor of The Chicago Reporter and editor-in-chief of the Reporter’s sister publication Catalyst Chicago.

Back from Parkland. A new student movement is born.

I'm back from Parkland where I got a chance to talk with some Marjory Stoneman Douglas students, parents and educators in the aftermath of another catastrophic mass school shooting.

Like most of the country, I shared grief with the mourners and cheered on the dozens of MSD students who boarded the buses to Tallahassee to offer their reasonable gun control proposals to the state legislature only to be ignored and insulted by state pols.

Florida happens to be the state most averse to gun control legislation with a majority of state legislators receiving big campaign donations from the NRA. In FL, for example, if municipal officials pass a firearms-related law, they must pay a $5,000 fine and lose their jobs. They can also be forced to pay up to $100,000 in damages to any “person or an organization whose membership is adversely affected by any ordinance” —such as, say, the NRA.

To show how deep the divide is, the old, white male Republicans who rule the state, after refusing to meet with Parkland students to consider a ban on assault rifles, passed a resolution declaring that pornography endangers teenage health.

Refusing to be demoralized or turned around, not even by death threats from the right, the students are turning their grief and anger into militancy, organizing an NRA boycott, two national student walkouts against gun violence and lobbying for a ban on assault weapons. The shootings have sparked a new national movement with students taking the lead.

Students have traditionally been the igniters of larger and broader progressive social movements. That was true of the Civil Rights Movement (SNCC) anti-war and anti-imperialist youth revolt (SDS) of the '60s and the student uprisings here and in Europe 50 years ago.

The power of the youth movement rests in its embodiment of a vision that transcends the immediate demands and aims at reshaping the world in which the next generation will live, work, and lead.

But the emerging militant student movement alone, even with liberal supporters cheering them on and donating money, is incapable of carrying this struggle through to the end. But as it was in Paris, Berkeley, and Columbia University in '68, there is a basis for united action between students, communities of color (who are feeling the brunt of gun violence), and organized labor, now fighting the Janus decision for its very existence.

The current student protests may never approach the scope or depth of the '60s protest movement. It's impossible to predict. But hopefully, a unifying strategy will emerge from this new vital movement so that the students won't have to go it alone. 

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Emma Gonzalez, a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School

“If the president wants to come up to me and tell me to my face that it was a terrible tragedy and how it should never have happened and maintain telling us how nothing is going to be done about it, I’m going to happily ask him how much money he received from the National Rifle Association."  -- Student protest rally in Ft. Lauderdale

Flint Taylor, Hampton family attorney

“When I told him I needed a recess to come to Bill’s funeral, the judge sent his respects." -- Village Free Press

Maria Thorne, 5th-grade Florida teacher to Paul Ryan

 She then told [Ryan] she was a teacher and a resident of the area, to which he responded, “Nice.” That set Thorne off. “Nice? You’re here celebrating the death of 17 children,” she admonished.Ryan weakly replied that he “didn’t want to talk politics” — an odd statement to make at a political fundraiser. Thorne persisted in her critique, and was escorted out of the event as she chanted “no more guns!” -- Ryan caught raising campaign cash in Florida

Arlie Hochschild

...if the Democratic party is to pose a magnetically attractive alternative to Donald Trump, it must address the grievances, the life experiences, the sense of losing ground, of people like those I met and describe in my book, Strangers in Their Own Land. Millions of Trump voters saw the Democrats as beholden to corporate interests as the Republicans, and I believe they are right. -- Guardian

The late Rev. Walker and his charter school in Harlem

Rev. Dr. Wyatt Tee Walker in Harlem

I didn't know the Rev. Dr. Wyatt Tee Walker personally, but I knew of him and admired his work, his dedication and brilliance as a heroic '60s civil rights movement strategist and aide to Dr. King, supporter of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, and later as Harlem community organizer. I was deeply saddened by his death.

While nothing diminishes my respect for Rev. Walker during that period, it's clear that at a later point in his life, his perspective changed. He became a community investment banker and real estate developer. His disdain for the lack of decent, affordable housing and education options in the black community led him to become a supporter of charter schools and school vouchers. In 1999 he helped establish and lent his name to the state's first charter school, the Sisulu-Walker Charter School (named also for the South African anti-apartheid leader Walter Sisulu).

*****

As readers of this blog know, I am not a supporter of either privately-run charters or school vouchers. But back in the mid-90's our Small Schools Workshop was an incubator for some of the first small charter schools in Chicago that opened in 1997. That was back when charters were organized and led by union teachers as a hoped-for critical force for innovation within the public school system.

How times have changed. In recent years, charters have been captured by politically-connected networks run, not by teachers, but mostly by anti-union boards of wealthy, corporate, pro-privatization patrons who have garnered support from within both recent Democrat and Republican administrations and their departments of education -- from Arne Duncan to Betsy DeVos. Billions of dollars have been diverted from public schools to support these networks. Teachers have been disempowered and left without union representation and collective bargaining rights.

But I still try to seperate my critical opposition to charter expansion from my support for charter school teachers, parents and students. I'm encouraged by union organizing efforts on the part of charter teachers and by the coming merger in Chicago between the CTU with and the Chicago Assoc.of Charter School Teachers (ChiACTS).

*****

The Sisulu-Walker Charter School of Harlem (formerly Sisulu Children's Academy-Harlem Public Charter School, and its for-profit management company, Victory Schools) initially drew rave reviews and drew backing from wealthy investors like venture capitalist Steven Klinsky. It's opening-day ceremonies were attended by Pres. George W. Bush (then Texas governor), Governor George Pataki, Secretary of State Randy Daniels and other national, state and local dignitaries. In 2009, Mayor Bloomberg celebrated the school’s 10th anniversary by demanding an end to the state cap on charters.

It was Klinsky, with no background in education, who started for-profit Victory Schools, Inc., made high-interest loans to the school and decided the curriculum for Sisulu-Walker would be Direct Instruction (DI). It was soon claimed to be one of the top performing public charter schools in all of Manhattan based on student test scores.

But it was only a matter of time before the "luster faded", ratings fell, Klinsky's money dried up and foundations backed away. Like so many charters, it was also beset with financial mis-management issues, teacher and principal turnover, and student recruitment violations.

Sisulu-Walker had five principals in its first decade, and the state put the school on probation in 2004. After the charter was renewed, a 6th principal, Michelle Haynes, came in 2012.

[Victory's]show place charter school, Sisulu-Walker Charter School of Harlem, received the 15th-lowest score on the 2010 city progress report cards, ranking in the bottom one percent of all schools. It received “F’ grades in the school environment and progress categories. Most of the school’s teachers reported problems with order and discipline and they recently voted to unionize. (Huffington)

And unionize they did. 

No need to go on. Those who have followed the ongoing saga of school privatization can anticipate the rest. Despite its name and all the ballyhoo surrounding its opening, in the final analysis Sisulu-Walker offered nothing more innovative and no better learning environment that the neighborhood schools Rev. Walker had criticized. Life conditions for the neighborhood's poorest families grew worse and many were forced to leave Harlem. If anything, Harlem's charters were used to gentrify the neighborhood rather than a serious attempt and public school reform.

Hopefully things will change under new leadership and with the empowerment of the school's teachers.

My point here is that we celebrate the life and mourn the death of Rev. Walker despite our differences. Times and conditions bring out the best and worst in all of us.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

R.I.P. Erica Garner

Erica Garner 

"I'm in This Fight Forever" -- The Root

Lenny Steinhorn, historian at American University 

"1968 was the perfect storm that crystallized the differences in society." -- U.S. News 

 Chicago Mayor Richard Daley at '68 Convention

 When Senator Abraham Ribicoff, of Connecticut, was giving a speech, the mayor of Chicago, Richard Daley, shouted at him, “Fuck you, you Jew son of a bitch, you lousy motherfucker, go home.” -- New Yorker, "Lessons from the Election of 1968"

Arthur Goldstein @teacherarthurG

Every kid can learn, but every kid can learn differently at different times. Some kids need more time than others. Some have learning disabilities. Some don't know English. A full 10% of our kids are homeless, and as long as we continue to ignore that, we won't be serving them no matter how often we give them the meaningless label of "college ready." -- NYC Educator 

Kenzo Shibata (DSA) 

We really do need to envision what organized labor looks like and it's not always going to look like money taken out of your paycheck to pay for representing you at the negotiating table. States and different locals are approaching it differently. But people have to feel like they're together, part of a union...Changing that mindset is going to be key to their survival. -- Hitting Left 

In 1969, you have founding of the Gay Liberation Front, the AIM occupation of Alcatraz, and the formation of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, in 1970 you have the Women's Strike for Equality and the student strike against the Vietnam war. The groundwork for this is 1968

— Dave Zirin (@EdgeofSports) January 1, 2018

Erica Garner. A warrior in the long tradition of black women who see someone they loved ripped away from them and even in their mourning somehow love us enough to stand, to speak, to fight for something better. In your honor, in your name, we can never give up.

— wikipedia brown (@eveewing) December 30, 2017

Are schools really 'too small' to succeed?

Blaming school closings on small size is like shooting someone and then claiming they died from a lack of blood.

We started the Small Schools Workshop back in 1991 based on an abundance of research showing that smaller, more personalized learning environments served children and their families better and were generally safer than large mega-schools. Then we worked with teachers, schools and school districts across the country who wanted to rethink school design, curriculum, assessment, and issues of democracy and equity to create small learning environments as a critical force within the public school system.

Parents and educators created hundreds of new, highly-autonomous small, many of them teacher-led schools and restructured large high schools into smaller learning communities. This was back before the power philanthropists like Gates, Broad and Walton entered the picture and leveraged billions of dollars in grants to turn small-by-design schools into privately-run charters where unions were banned and teachers disempowered.

The Small Schools Movement, was just that -- a movement of teachers -- with close connection to parents and communities. It was the antithesis of today's so-called "choice" movement, where schools choose kids and test-scores rule the roost.

Smallering urban schools...From the beginning, we made it clear that these new schools and learning communities needed to be small by design, not by attrition. So I once again got that bizarro-world feeling when I read this headline in Sunday's Chicago Tribune:

SHRINKING HIGH SCHOOLS TOO SMALL TO SUCCEED?

The article barely scratches the surface of the historical issues facing Chicago's racially segregated and inequitable school system and is basically a defense of the Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his hand-picked school board for their latest round of school closings. Like the 50 closings in 2013, these latest are all in the black community and are being carried out under the banner of "under-utilization". Like their predecessors, the closed schools will leave thousands of students in limbo and neighborhoods blighted. They will also serve as an addition to the long list of reasons black families are leaving Chicago by the thousands.

According to the Trib:

In Chicago, where funding follows students, Tilden is one of more than a dozen shrinking neighborhood high schools that has been starved of resources, leaving students like Averett to prepare for their futures in largely empty buildings that can make dreaming big a daily struggle.

 Nearly all of these 17 high schools are deeply segregated, serving impoverished African-American and Latino students who already struggle to attend and graduate from college at comparable rates to their white or Asian peers. Yet many of these schools cannot offer what are considered basic classes elsewhere, including the bare trio of science courses that will soon be part of a new district graduation requirement.

Now, as many of these schools continue to shrink and Chicago approaches the end of a five-year school closing moratorium, civic and community leaders must weigh whether some of these buildings are too small to succeed.

The writers place the onus on the schools for being "too small to succeed" as if someone consciously chose 250 as the optimal capacity size for these high schools. Like this just happened and without even an attempt to question what "success" means under current conditions. It's as if surrounding these schools with privately-run, better-resourced charters and selective-enrollment schools had nothing to do with their decreasing populations.

And all that begs the deeper question of how these same schools went from being too big in the 1980s and '90s, to too small in just a couple of decades? Of course, they didn't just become small but were the product of planned isolation, disinvestment, and disempowerment of Chicago's black  communities.

There are many other reasons, including the out-migration of more than quarter-million African-Americans from Chicago in the past few decades. But none of them occurred just naturally. Most of the reasons are systemic and the result of policies of disinvestment, ie. closings of plants, factories and surrounding business, cuts in social services, closing of medical clinics and mental health facilities, and now schools.

The same monumental demographic shifts are happening in every major city in the country and are impacting investments and therefore measurable outcomes, often in dramatic ways.

So the question isn't whether some schools in disintegrating neighborhoods are now smaller. Of course they are. It's like shooting someone and then claiming they died from a lack of blood. Wealthy families pay a small fortune to get their kids into smaller, more personalized schools. Rather, it's about adequate and equitable funding and support for public schools and their communities during these times of rapid change.

Burns Vietnam doc jarring our national amnesia

I've only seen bits and pieces of Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's 10-part, 18-hour-long documentary series on the war in Vietnam. I watched as much as I could last night, but had to leave the room when the part about the 1968 My Lai massacre came on. Although massacres of Vietnamese civilians like the one in My Lai were not uncommon, we in the anti-war movement didn't learn about it til a year later because of the press blackout. Still, it and the other earth-shaking events from '68 -- the King assassination, cities in flames, the Chicago Democratic Convention protests, and more -- are seared in my memory, along with so many of the images we are revisiting in the Burns/Novick film.

It was these very images, along with TV news reports of dogs and fire hoses used on civil rights marchers coming out of Mississippi and Alabama, that led so many of us to begin making connections and seeing the war as much more than just a mistaken policy of misguided liberals. In 1965, SDS organized the first mass anti-war demonstration in D.C. By 1968, with the war dragging on, the draft, the body counts mounting, the almost-daily images of napalmed villages coming across our screens, we moved beyond just anti-war, to opposition to global imperialism and systemic white supremacy.

I'm not ready yet to offer a full-blown critique of "Vietnam" without seeing more. Many of my friends from back in the day are already going at it, reviving the fierce debate that went on at the time over the nature of the war and how to end it. I think that's fine and I already credit the film with with jarring the national memory -- or maybe I should call it, national amnesia -- about the war, regardless of Burns' perspective. For us educators, it's a teachable moment. For organizers and activists, its a signal to get moving again.

I only wish the same heat, passion, analysis and organization, was taking shape over our current "eternal wars" in Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere in the absence of the kind of movement we built back 50 years ago. This, even as Trump, his generals and war profiteers bring us once again to the brink of nuclear war on the Korean peninsula. There are many reasons for this absence. But I'll save that for another post.

Barry Romo

On Friday's Hitting Left show, our in-studio guest will be Vietnam war vet, Barry Romo, a long-time organizer of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). Barry helped organize the protest in D.C. where decorated war vets introduced themselves one-by-one, each stating his name and rank, and then threw their medals over the fence, toward the Capital.

His story of how the war transformed him is a compelling one. Tune in Friday at 11-noon CDT, streaming live at Lumpenradio.com.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Dick Gregory in Greenwood, Miss, April 2, 1963 after a voter registration protest.

Dick Gregory, R.I.P. 

I waited at the counter of a white restaurant for eleven years. When they finally integrated, they didn't have what I wanted. -- Chicago Defender

CTU's Brandon Johnson on IL Senate Bill1

We're not having the real conversation which should be about revenue...We have a taxing system that is unfair and unjust. -- Hitting Left 

Steve Bannon

"The Trump presidency is over." --Weekly Standard

Netanyahu's hand-picked Israeli minister, Ayoub Kara

“Due to the terrific relations with the U.S., we need to put the declarations about the Nazis in the proper proportion... Trump is the best U.S. leader Israel has ever had. His relations with the prime minister of Israel are wonderful, and after enduring the terrible years of Obama, Trump is the unquestioned leader of the free world, and we must not accept anyone harming him.” -- Jerusalem Post

Historian Eric Foner

 “Obviously, we have some pretty deep divisions along multiple lines—racial, ideological, rural versus urban...Whether they will lead to civil war, I doubt. We have strong gravitational forces that counteract what we’re seeing today... People are not debating the Civil War. They’re debating American society and race today.” -- New Yorker: Is America headed for a new kind of civil war?

Former WI Senator Russ Feingold

 Even if the white supremacists are condemned, even if the entire Republican party rises up in self-professed outrage at white supremacists, if voter suppression and other such racist policies survive, the white supremacists are winning. -- Guardian 

 Gen. Curtis LeMay wrote:

 “We went over there and fought the war and eventually burned down every town in North Korea anyway, some way or another… Over a period of three years or so, we killed off, what, 20 percent of the population?” -- In “Strategic Air Warfare,” by Richard H. Kohn

If 'bailouts' are good for Wall St., why not neediest schools? Retiree pensions?

(BGA grafic)

Gov. Rauner has vetoed the school funding bill, thereby continuing to deprive the state's neediest districts of millions of dollars and threatening the opening of schools in the fall.

Rauner claims that the bill takes money away from wealthier white districts in order to "bailout" needier, mainly black and Latino districts like Chicago. He also claims, the bill,  "includes a bailout of Chicago’s broken teacher pension system.”

Both claims are false, says the BGA. 

In fact, under the new funding formula no school district gets less state money, but many low-income districts get more. With low-income students accounting for 80.2% of its enrollment, CPS is among the latter group.

The biggest problem with the bill as I see it, is that it fails to identify new sources of revenue, ie. a graduated income tax, making the wealthiest pay their fair share. But nevertheless, the bill, which passed both houses in Springfield needs to be signed, and fast.

Rauner's been using the big-lie technique to play off white students against students of color, urban schools against downstate and suburban schools and everyone against teachers, their unions, and retirees.

But let's say, for the sake of argument, that his "bailout" claims are correct. What's wrong with bailing out public schools or other public institutions in distress? If IL paid its fair share of education dollars, a bailout wouldn't be necessary. IL continues to rank near the bottom when it comes to school funding.

The state, by constitutional mandate, has the primary responsibility for funding its public schools but has never come close to covering even 50% of the cost. In recent years, the state's contribution has dipped below 30%, forcing local school districts to raise their property tax levy or cut programs.

According to the group, Raise Your Hand, IL is 50th out of 50 in percentage of funding that comes from the state. So, public schools rely on local taxing bodies to make up the difference, which causes great inequity between poor and rich districts.

Illinois spent 9% less in real terms on general state aid per student this year than it did five years ago.

IL also has the most unfair school funding system in the nation. The state's school districts with the greatest number of students living in poverty receive substantially fewer state and local dollars than their more affluent counterparts — nearly 20 percent less.

Furthermore, the state hasn't been paying into the State Retirement Fund, as required by law, for decades. As it stands, the state pension fund is underfunded by about $130 billion. If IL had been contributing it's mandated share, no bail out would be needed and the TRS would be is good health. The same is true for Chicago's pension fund.

If a bail out was fine for Wall Street banksters and energy companies, many of whom didn't need it or even want it, why not bail out the schools? The Wall Street bailout does nothing to create jobs, create social equality, or eliminate poverty. A bail out of struggling (through no fault of their own) public school districts, would help do all of the above.

Will Dems dare to take advantage of GOP health care debacle?

“President Obama tried to move us forward with health-care coverage by using a conservative model that came from one of the conservative think tanks that had been advanced by a Republican governor in Massachusetts, Now it’s time for the next step. And the next step is single payer.” -- Sen. Elizabeth Warren

Yesterday was a smashing defeat for Trump and the Repugs in their attempt to loot Medicaid and gut healthcare for more than 22 million people. Their cynical revanchist move against Obamacare was seen by the great majority of angry and terrified citizens for what it was, another attempt at a major redistribution of wealth upward in the form of a trillion-dollar tax break for the 1% at the expense of the health and welfare of working and poor families. 

The factionalism and a shattering to smithereens of the GOP leadership cadre plus the mass revulsion for Trump and the GOP leadership felt by most voters forced Sen. McConnell to pull the bill (at least for now) or risk even more desertions. 

As a result, the climate is ripe for a Democratic take-back of Congress in 2018 and for the passage of a national, single-payer healthcare bill. But that would require a radical change at the top before Democrats would dare champion such a bill or back a slate of progressive candidates to run nationally with it. A progressive takeover or even a coalition with progressives are prospects that current party leadership appears to fear even more than a continuation of Trumpism. As a result, there may be little to excite the Democratic base beyond hatred for Trump, once again in 2018.

Dems seem locked into their defeatist strategy of running Republican-light candidates simply on the slogan of, I'm not Trump, in a transparent appeal to the moderate Republican base rather than to their own. Ossoff's defeat in Georgia in the most expensive rep race in history is a perfect example of the predictable failure of such a stand-for-nothing strategy and unfortunately an omen of things to come. 

Clem Balanoff (left) with Chuy Garcia and Bernie Sanders

In the absence of a nationwide powerful and independent, interracial mass movement of the poor -- the kind being organized by leaders like Rev. William Barber down in North Carolina -- it's once again left to Sens.Warren and Sanders to rally the troops and build on this Republican crash-and-burn.

LOCALLY, HERE IN ILLINOIS, it's the same story. Even after Sanders' near victory in his run against Hillary Clinton in the 2016 primary -- he pulled nearly a million (49%) of the votes -- we're once again forced to choose from a group of traditional Democrats in the gov's race against the universally-hated Bruce Rauner. 

That's one of the issues we will be discussing Friday on Hitting Left with our in-studio guest, Clem Balanoff who chairs Our Revolution Illinois/Chicago, the organization that grew out of the IL Sanders campaign for president. Tune in at 11 a.m. on Lumpen Radio. 

Coming of Age in California

At Dodger Stadium

The Klonsky Bros. are winding up our Hitting Left listening tour, combing L.A. for current and future listeners. Our search has taken us from ocean-front Santa Monica and Venice, through Topanga Canyon to the Valley, and back west with a stop in our old Silverlake hood for lunch.

Yesterday we touched base with potential listeners at Dodger Stadium while watching one of the great pitching match ups of the century between the Nationals' Stephen Strasburg and the Dodgers' Clayton Kershaw. Dodgers won, of course, by a predictable 2-1 score.

Having come of age here in the '60s, I've had to come to grips with the reality that (for better or worse) this is not that California. Aesthetically it's so much worse. Politically, it's so much better. I grew up and went to college here in the Nixon/Reagan era when the state always went red in national elections and big ag and the defense industries ruled the roost. Republicans won the state in nearly every presidential election between 1952 and 1988.

But the expanding need for farm and service workers led to an explosion in California’s Latino and Asian populations which boomed in the 1990s and the GOP's racist and anti-immigrant stance became the party's achilles heel. It still is.

Since the party closely tied itself to Proposition 187, a ballot measure that denied public services to those without legal documents. Democratic candidates have won decisively in every election since 1992 by performing well in the most populous areas. Despite failing to win the presidency, Hillary Clinton won a higher percentage of votes than any candidate since Franklin D. Roosevelt. When Dems keep talking about how she won the popular vote by 3 million -- it was essentially California.

Is Gov. Brown the new leader of the "free world"? Politics in CA these days are a bundle of contractions. The state has become a leader in green technology and regulation of big polluting companies. Now its the information movers and high-tech that have the power and enormous concentrations of private wealth. Their globalists, not nationalists and they especially like their pan-Pacific partnerships.

After Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Accord, CA's Gov. Jerry Brown, stepped into the breech and took up the environmental banner. His recent meeting with top Chinese officials will lead to a massive expansion of cooperative business ventures. It also had Brown and Chinese President Xi Jinping sharply criticizing Trump's America First line.

According to the Washington Post:

Xi “has definitely given the green light for more collaboration between China and California and, I would say, other states through this subnational-level arrangement,” Brown said.

So while Trump's unilateral abandonment of the Paris Accord pretty much handed over leadership of the pact to China and Europeans, it also has opened up possibilities for states like California and cities to act autonomously or in concert, forming global partnerships for the new economy.


The other side of the California contradiction lies in the assault by a handful of billionaire corporate reformers, Republican and Democrat, on the state's public school system. What ties the likes of Democrat-leaning CA billionaires Eli Broad and Bill Gates to Trump and Betsy DeVos is their autocratic style, disdain for government regulation, dislike of public employee (especially teacher) unions and their ideological bent towards privatization, "choice", charters and vouchers.

Broad recently bankrolled successful pro-choice school board election campaigns in the most expensive board elections ever.  His dream is nothing less than the total replacement of L.A. public schools with privately-run charters, a la New Orleans.

But we will keep hitting left.

Tune in tomorrow at 11 CDT to Klonsky Brothers radio on WLPN FM,streaming live on the internet at Lumpen Radio to hear move about our west coast listening tour.

Big Pharma's Baxter replacing laid-off CPS teachers with retired execs

In line with the times, CPS is moving further into the ownership-society orbit.

The latest is the board's deal with pharmaceutical giant Baxter Int'l. The Sun-Times reports that Baxter will be funneling retiring execs into CPS classrooms to teach health science classes. This while 1,000 teachers and staff has been pink-slipped.

The company was introduced to the idea by Alan Mather, who heads CPS’s Office of College & Career Success. He worked with Baxter when he was principal at Lindblom Math & Science Academy, where he was honored with a Golden Apple award.

 The idea came about more than a year ago when Mather was in New York. It was a personal trip, but he made time to visit with IBM to hear how it pays employees to go back to school to become teachers. “I thought it sounded like something we could try,” Mather said.

How it works: Companies contribute $15,000 for employees nearing retirement or preparing a career change to earn a teaching certificate. 

They’ll then move into the classroom, where they can talk from personal experience about how these technical subjects are used in the real world.

Real world, indeed. I doubt that CPS students will be learning much about global health care or health industry ethics from these Baster execs.

Don't get me wrong. I don't want to single out Baxter and there's nothing wrong with Chicago companies contributing money and personnel to help support public schools.

Baxter's role in CPS goes back to the Daley administration. They should do more of it. Paying their fair share of taxes would be a great start.

The problem comes in when we turn public schools into beggars, more and more dependent on corporate support for survival, and when corporations move their retirees in as replacements for existing teachers and their training programs in as replacements for existing programs which have been destroyed by budget cuts.

Looking back on when Rauner clouted his kid into an elite selective-enrollment school.

In the same vein (no pun intended),...CPS Inspector General Nicholas Schuler says that wealthy families are still scamming their kids into the city's selective enrollment schools. Nobody is really shocked at such news. We remember how Gov. Rauner made that notorious phone call to Arne Duncan to make sure his unqualified daughter would be put on Duncan's secret VIP list for back-door admission to selective Walter Payton High School. And it wasn't just Rauner. The city's rich and powerful clouting their kids into elite schools worked then and is still working says Schuler.

CPS's Emily Bittner basically told Schuler to stuff it.