WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Linda Ronstadt at the Kennedy Center Honors

Linda Ronstadt

“I’d like to say to Mr. Pompeo, who wonders when he’ll be loved, it’s when he stops enabling Donald Trump.” -- Rolling Stone

Sam Greisman, son of the actor Sally Field, another honoree

“Linda Ronstadt got up to get laurels, looked the fucker right in the eye and said ‘maybe when you stop enabling Donald Trump’” -- Guardian

Greg Hinz on ComEd's annual Mike Madigan fundraiser

Source... “It was put together by a combination of ComEd and Exelon. . . .I went because I understood it was part of the process." -- Crain's 

Sharkey on Hitting Left

CTU Pres. Jesse Sharkey

We characterized Rahm as “Mayor 1%”, you know, as a “corporate shill”. We picketed his house…The thing about Rahm was that he was such a clear corporate figure who had taken a year-and-a-half off from government work to make $16 million as a stock trader or private equity guy. And that’s clearly not Mayor Lightfoot. She’s not in that same category. -- Hitting Left

Pete Buttigieg cuts ties with a campaign donor

"I learned about it this morning and within about an hour of that, he's no longer involved in the event or the campaign. Transparency and justice for Laquan McDonald is a lot more important than a campaign contribution." -- CBS News

Trump tells Jewish group...

A lot of you are in the real estate business, because I know you very well. You’re brutal killers. Not nice people at all, but you have to vote for me you have no choice...“You’re not going to vote for the wealth tax. Yeah, let’s take 100% of your wealth away,” Trump said, slamming Democratic presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren during his speech at the Israeli American Council-- Market Watch

Atty. Gen. William Barr...

...threatens communities of color with loss of police protection. 

If communities don’t give that support and respect, they might find themselves without the police protection they need. Barr didn’t specify which “communities” he meant, but his comments were interpreted by many to refer to groups that have protested police violence against people of color. -- Washington Post

Summing up Rahm's role as the arts mayor

Rahm sold off this public art masterpiece by Kerry James Marshall...

Mayor Rahm Emanuel is on what I call, his image rehabilitation tour. In the process, he's trying to repaint his image from that of a closer of schools, libraries and public space, into a patron of the arts and philanthropist.

...and fought a losing battle for this. 

It's sad watching local media play along with this charade. See for example, Mary Mitchell's recent column with the headline: Mayor Rahm Emanuel to put his money where his heart is. 

Two things wrong here. One, the money wasn't his. It was a million bucks left in his campaign fund. Two, his heart is where his money is, not the other way around.

It did my heart good to hear that Mayor 1% is still pissed that we ran his pal George Lucas, along with his hideous Star Wars Museum out of town.

" It became a jihad," cried Rahm, reverting to his IDF persona. 

"You had the power of Lucas Films and someone willing to give $150 or $175 million to the city in philanthropy". 

Funny, I never saw that offer in writing. What I saw was a mayor willing to give a billionaire movie mogul public park land for his for-profit amusement show.

Anyway, whenever Rahm's pissed, I'm happy.

But it turns out, losing that gross-looking museum wasn't the mayor's biggest "arts" regret. That one was rightfully his shameful selling off of the great Kerry James Marshall work of public art.

Here's how Marshall took it:

“It just seemed like a way of exploiting the work of artists in the city for short-term gain in a really shortsighted kind of way,” he said of the plan to auction off “Knowledge and Wonder,” which Marshall painted for the Legler Branch public library on the West Side, in order to reap an expected multimillion dollar windfall that would pay for upgrading the Legler. “And so I made a decision at that time I would never do another public work.”

So to sum up Rahm's history as a steward of Chicago arts: He fought like hell for the Star Wars Museum in order to kiss a billionaire's ass in exchange for hoped-for philanthropic handouts while selling off a public arts masterpiece by one of the great African-American artists for a quick hit of cash. 

Ella Fitzgerald. Born on this day in 1917.

Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong

ELLA FITZGERALD sang jazz in a voice so pure and perfected that it admitted no pain -- and America loved her for it. In her sound we soared over the darkest passages of our nation's history, to a place where race and class lost all dominion. -- Nina Bernstein, New York Times

Growing up in poverty and a shattered home life, Ella survived on the streets of Harlem by hustling and engaging in petty crime. Smithsonian Curator of American Music John Hasse says they were terrible days. "It was a really tough time: segregation, the Great Depression, poverty, unemployment."

She was confined to a reformatory for more than a year after she was an orphaned teen-ager.

According to Bernstein, 

The unwritten story survives in the recollections of former employees of the New York State Training School for Girls at Hudson, N.Y., and in the records of a government investigation undertaken there in 1936, about two years after Miss Fitzgerald left. State investigators reported that black girls, then 88 of 460 residents, were segregated in the two most crowded and dilapidated of the reformatory's 17 "cottages," and were routinely beaten by male staff.

At a time of renewed calls for institutions to rescue children from failed families, this lost chapter in the life of an American icon illuminates the gap between a recurrent ideal and the harsh realities of the child welfare system.

Like Miss Fitzgerald, most of the 12- to 16-year-old girls sent to the reform school by the family courts were guilty of nothing more serious than truancy or running away. Like today's foster children, they were typically victims of poverty, abuse and family disruption; indeed, many had been discarded by private foster care charities upon reaching a troublesome puberty.

Later, E.M O'Rourke, one of Ella's teachers remembered her as a model student.

"I can even visualize her handwriting -- she was a perfectionist," she recalled. There was a fine music program at the school, she said, and a locally celebrated institution choir.

But Ella Fitzgerald was not in the choir: it was all white.

"We didn't know what we were looking at," Mrs. O' Rourke said. "We didn't know she would be the future Ella Fitzgerald.

After her talent was finally recognized, Ella was paroled to Chick Webb's band. The rest is history.

Food for thought for teachers... Her former school superintendent Thomas Tunney recounts:

If she was almost lost to us, how many like her have been? "How many Ellas are there? She turned out to be absolutely one of a kind. But all the other children were human beings, too. In that sense, they are all Ellas."

How many Ella's are sitting in your classroom?

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Congressman John Lewis’s bestselling graphic novel March: Book One was inspired by a 56-year-old comic, Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story, that helped spawn the Civil Rights Movement. 

Rep. John Lewis

It doesn’t matter how Senator Sessions may smile, how friendly he may be, how he may speak to you... We need someone as attorney general who’s going to look out for all of us, and not just for some of us. -- Democracy Now

Jean-Marie Guehenno, CEO of International Crisis Group

"Regardless of how you view Trump and his positions, his election has led to a deep, deep sense of uncertainty and that will cast a long shadow over Davos." -- Business Insider

Singer Jennifer Holliday not going

“I was honestly just thinking that I wanted my voice to be a healing and unifying force for hope through music to help our deeply polarized country… Regretfully, I did not take into consideration that my performing for the concert would actually instead be taken as a political act against my own personal beliefs and be mistaken for support of Donald Trump and Mike Pence.” -- Raw Story

Dem consultant Robert Shrum: Hillary's going

“She will have a stiff upper lip.” -- Guardian

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Urban Prep students support their teachers at a rally earlier this year. (Arielle Zionts)

Noel Perez-White, Urban Prep English teacher

"I support the unionizing efforts at Urban Prep because our students deserve a school where teachers return year after year. Teacher turnover has a grave impact on students. I believe a union will create a more supportive climate for teachers at Urban Prep -- ending the revolving door, and creating a more consistent learning environment for students". -- Progress Illinois 

Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights 

“The evidence from across the country is clear and compelling: Our nation must dramatically change the way that educational resources are distributed so that there is true equity in America’s classrooms.” -- Washington Post

Milwaukee School Board member Larry Miller

 “The whole idea of regimented, special discipline for African-American children doesn’t work for me...How are you bringing music? How are you bringing the arts? Kids need much more than just academic rigor.”” -- Neighborhood News Service

Zabe Davis, the chief of the campus police at Senatobia [MS] High 

“We were instructed to remove anyone that cheered during the ceremony, which was done. And then Jay Foster, the superintendent, came and pressed charges against those people.” -- New York Times

Phil Neuenfeldt, president of the Wisconsin A.F.L.-C.I.O.

“Scott Walker didn’t have the stature, influence or money to become governor on his own or to end collective bargaining on his own. All of that flowed from Mike Grebe, the Bradley Foundation and a network of influential conservatives, including the Kochs.” -- New York Times

Spike Lee takes on Rahm and his puppy-dog alders

Flanked by parents holding photographs of the children they've lost to gun violence in Chicago, Lee defended his choice to make a movie about the city with the Iraq-inspired title "Chiraq." (Brian Jackson/Sun-Times Media, via AP)

“Art must be courageous, and anybody who wants a more peaceful America will understand where the heart of this film is,” John Cusack said. The actor called Lee’s project a “film of conscience.” -- Sun-Times

 “It’s not a First Amendment issue, and I’m on the board of the ACLU." -- Ald. Burns

It's Friday afternoon and the shooting victims are already falling in the city's most isolated and blighted neighborhoods -- areas where Rahm Emanuel's school closings, joblessness and cuts in city services have had their greatest impact.

Spike's new film has the mayor and puppy-dog alders with undies in twist, even before it's made. Why? All because of the title, Chiraq. This while thousands of neighborhood folks lined up, hoping for jobs working on the film.

At St. Sabina's yesterday, mothers who’d lost loved ones to gun violence clustered around Lee. They held up framed photographs of the lost. One woman brought an urn containing her daughter’s ashes.

RAHM'S RESPONSE... "It's bad for tourism", cries the mayor.

"We'll take away your $3 million tax break" [for filming in Illinois] threatens faithful sidekick, Ald. Will Burns (4th). Burns, who spends most of his time fighting against community activists who are trying to save Dyett High School, apparently fancies himself the city's new cultural minister. 

Another Rahm city council pup, Ald. Anthony Beale (9th) piles on. When asked about the film maker's First Amendment rights, Beale said he's okay with the Amendment so long as you're not saying anything important or critical.

"Freedom of expression still does not mean you can insult the people of this city,” says Beale.

Uh, yes it does Alderman.

It seems that whether these guys are trying to steal retiree pensions or censor a movie, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are just pieces of wall decorations. Denying that the attempt by politicians to leverage tax-payer dollars in an attempt to politically influence a film is a First Amendment issue, Burns even claims to be on the ACLU board of directors. Wow! I hope not. 

From DNAInfo:

Spike Lee came to Chicago Thursday to tell everyone who complained about the “so-called title” of his next film, "Chiraq" — and that means you, Ald. Will Burns — they’re going to “look stupid” when the film hits the big screen.

“People act like they've never seen my films, like I was grabbed off the streets. Everything I've done led up to this film,” the New York City filmmaker said, pointing out that people criticized arguably his best movie, “Do The Right Thing,” before its debut.  

“The same thing is going to happen in Chicago. They are going look stupid and end up on the wrong side of history,” Lee said.

Father Pfleger

Count on Father Pfleger to tell it like it is:

 Very disappointing to see Ald. Will Burns trying to block the tax break for Spike Lee's movie. He has not seen the script, nor know the story line but wants to ignore an iconic Director his First Amendment Right! Perhaps with 112 Killed and 607 Shot in Chicago in the first 4 months of 2015, we should be much more concerned with the reality of loss of life than a name of a movie we don't know anything about yet. Ask Brothers on the Street or Parents who have lost their children to violence, or children going to and from school each day in fear, or ask the IIT student who turned down a scholarship for college to get out of the city, what they're more concerned with

Burns was still shaking after his threat. Never in his life has he ever imagined taking away a tax break from a millionaire. Somehow, I think Spike will do OK either way.

Big Shout out to Spike Lee and his folks....Over 3500 people came thru the casting call today at St.... http://t.co/gtzE6rpDi1

— Fr. Michael Pfleger (@MichaelPfleger) May 9, 2015

This Is Modern Art

Thanks to Kevin Coval and Idris Goodwin, two of my favorite poets/writers/performers for writing a play that really means something. We went to Steppenwolf last night to see This is Modern Art and stayed in the theater for the lively after-performance discussion with Kevin.

If art is meant to provoke, to challenge, to make the strange familiar and the familiar strange, TIMA succeeds. It's a great Chicago story, with a fine crew of young actors. It tells the the tale of a group of young graffiti and street artists (yes, there are now some old ones) who "bomb" the Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago (based on a true story).

Kevin Coval dialogues with audience.

I went partially as an act of solidarity with our young street artists and muralists who have made our dingy city a more beautiful, colorful and more interesting place (except for the asshole who spray-painted my garage door) and who have been damned and often persecuted and prosecuted by the self-appointed and usually moneyed defenders of the dominant culture (Rahm Emanuel's ubiquitous digital billboards). Yes, unapproved graffiti is now a class 4 felony carrying big fines and long prison sentences.

How's that working?

I felt solidarity also after reading S-T film critic's Hedy Weiss' scathing, horrible, ignorant review. She calls the play "damaging" and charges Coval (founder of Louder Than a Bomb) and Goodwin with promoting "vandalism" and engaging in "sanctimonious talk about minority teens invariably being shut out of opportunities and earmarked for prison." She brings to my mind images of the vicious critic Tabitha as portrayed in the film Bird Man. 

But critics be damned. The play, which unfortunately closes tonight, packed Steppenwolf every night with a mostly young and enthusiastic crowd. I'm almost certain that none of them were the ones who messed up my garage.

If you can somehow find a ticket for tonight's show, grab it.

Community Rejuvenation Muralist Desi Mundo

Desi Mundo

Strong coffee this morning with Desi Mundo, visionary artist and  founder of the Oakland-based Community Rejuvenation Project. Desi grew up tagging and writing on the walls of Chicago and eventually became an airbrush artist of renown. His work in Oakland and surrounding towns has covered the walls of schools, grocery stores, housing projects, bridges, and buildings threatened with demolition.

Desi was in town to complete a new street mural at 75th and Coles, and to present a series of 5 vivid portraits of Liberation Theologists of Latin America, created in collaboration with artist Lavie Raven. He also presented a portrait of the beloved late educator Sarah Spurlark to Hyde Park's Ray Elementary School, which Desi attended as a child while Spurlark was the principal.

Sarah Spurlark mural

The Community Rejuvenation Project in Oakland brings together artists to work with communities in creating new art that reflects the stories of residents and their institutions--schools, playgrounds, parks, housing projects and even grocery stores. CRP describes itself as a "policy to pavement organization that cultivates healthy communities through public art, beautification, education & celebration." To learn more about this work and the art of resistance to gentrification, privatization, and destruction of communities, visit:  http://crpbayarea.org/

The kids are alright

Sam Spitz met Teddy Williams at a barber shop, and they documented their story in a film, "The Greens."

I couldn't be prouder of my friend Sam Spitz, a budding young film maker with a good camera eye and a strong social conscience. With film-making activist parents like Jeff and Jennifer Amdur Spitz, neither is any surprise. Sam's first independent, no-budget film, The Greens, is starting to get some play. If you put a camera in Sam's hand and turn him loose in Chicago, he's going to use it to tell some great stories. Here's one of them, picked up by CNN.

I know something about this kid also. Jennifer Klonsky is a wonderful Chicago elementary school teacher, mom, and local rock-and-roller who also created and directs Little Kids Rock at her school. She made a guest appearance Sunday on Live From The Heartland where she tells Katie Hogan how she integrates art and music in and out of her classroom.  Her interview starts at 4:55.

GOOD READS...Just got my advanced copy of teacher/activist Jose Vilson's book, This is Not a Test. Lots of great personal stories about Jose's baptism-under-fire as a New York public school teacher intertwined with his notions of race, class & social justice. I can't put it down.

Jose's book pulled me away (for a moment) from Gregg Kot's I'll Take You There: Mavis Staples, The Staple Singers and the March Up Freedom's Highway. Kot is the Tribune's great music critic who is obviously taken (as I was) with the power of music in the Civil Rights Movement. Mavis and the Staple Singers are practically a metaphor for the freedom movement which followed the great migration of African Americans from the south to Chicago.