WEEKEND QUOTABLES

A blue sign, reading “Veterans for Impeachment,” grabbed national audience views at the World Series last night, when the cameras trained on batters at Nationals Park. The sign also appeared on the Jumbotron in the stadium where Donald Trump watched the game. When the president and first lady appeared on the Jumbotron as well, the crowd booed him and chanted “lock him up.”

SEIU 73 Pres. Dian Palmer, celebrating union's agreement with the city.

“This is a victory for working people in Chicago and shows what is possible when we unite and take action,” the head of SEIU 73 said. -- Sun-Times

CPS Board Pres. Miguel del Valle to Parents and teachers of students with disabilities

Tentative agreement in SEIU 73 strike

 “We can’t deny we’ve been deficient as a system about it. We have to do something about it, and we have to do it now,” del Valle told the group Saturday. -- Block Club Chicago

 Curtis Black

 Lori Lightfoot is not actually Rahm 2.0, and demonizing her risks isolating progressive voices vital to Chicago's future. -- Chicago Reporter

Cassie Cresswell, Illinois Families for Public Schools

“One of the issues with having hard caps is that if your system overall is underfunded, as soon as you set requirements in one area, then other stuff gets cut... If you snapped your fingers and put class caps in place, the overall system is so underfunded still, you’d end up just pushing around the dollars that you have. So you’d end up with people cutting arts or libraries. Some things (would) improve but other things won’t.” -- Tribune

David Orr

Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s budget shows leadership, equity, guts and a lot of smarts...Progressive change doesn’t happen overnight, and the mayor’s doing what she responsibly can with the limitations she has. -- Letter to Sun-Times

Columnist Laura Washington on today's anti-Trump protest

Chicago has not been a go-to stop for Trump. In March 2016, then-candidate Trump was virtually run out of Chi-Town in the wake of a highly-touted campaign event. -- Sun-Times

Jacky Grimshaw, former Harold Washington aide

“We’re inviting everyone to join the effort to help change the narrative and actions coming from President Trump and the White House that are endangering people’s lives, our democracy, and the survival of the planet.” said Jacky Grimshaw, who now chairs Chicago Women Take Action. -- Tribune

Fope Olaleye

Although the term “reverse racism” is waning in popularity, its rhetoric is still rife. Many people are still reluctant to truly understand what racism is, confining themselves to dictionary definitions, which speak abstractly about “prejudice” rather than discussing what that looks like in the real world. -- Guardian

Yes, that Eddie Burke...

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Parents tell IL State Board to suspend implementation of the PARCC test for the 2014-2015 school year.

Wendy Katten, Raise Your Hand Coalition

 “Illinois is not ready for the PARCC and the PARCC is not ready for Illinois.” -- Early & Often

Jawanza Malone, of the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization

“When they look at us and say, ‘We don’t need an elected school board because that just puts politics in education’ — what do they think is there now? … You have one person controlling the lives of millions.” -- S-T,  Coalition pushing advisory vote for elected CPS board

Chuy Garcia

Jesus "Chuy" Garcia

 "Instead of closing that many schools, you should have looked at other options. I’m not saying none of those schools should have been closed. But that was too many. It was too drastic. And you obviously didn’t heed the advice of many parents and students who said, `Please don’t do this to us. This will snuff the life out of many neighborhoods.’"  -- S-T, Garcia Blasts Emanuel

Miguel del Valle

 It’s a big job just getting him [Chuy Garcia] on the ballot but I’m hoping some labor groups get behind him, that teachers and others will get behind him. The dynamics are always different. Their personalities are different. Karen had a different kind of base than Chuy does. How those two meld has yet to be determined. -- Catalyst interview

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Catalyst

1st SOS/Chicago Meeting

“I’m still waiting to see a group that is able to ensure teachers have a real voice. I’m looking around and listening and not hearing the voices of teachers.” -- Former Chicago mayoral candidate Miguel del Valle. 

N.Y. Education Reform Summit

"We need more resources financially, we need to stop vilifying [teachers] and we need to change the tone on how we've been approaching education divisiveness that this administration has added between charter and public schools." -- Bronx Borough Pres. Ruben Diaz, Jr. 

Diane Ravitch

"People are beginning to look ahead and say, 'Now what?'" Ravitch said in an interview with the Daily News. "We're moving toward a new post-Bloomberg era, and it's time for some fresh thinking." --  Daily News

Maureen Dowd

"He acts like he is America. But America didn’t like Dick Cheney. It’s easier for someone who believes that he is America incarnate to permit himself to do things that hurt America — like torture, domestic spying, pushing America into endless wars, and flouting the Geneva Conventions." -- NYT

Miguel's speech

The victory party

Last night's Miguel del Valle victory party at Revolution Brewery, over in the 35th Ward, actually felt like victory. Even though big-money candidate Rahm Emanuel, as expected, won the mayor's race handily, spirits (no, not just those) ran high. When Miguel finally arrived, the place went up for grabs. The hundreds of supporters, including many young, hard-core community organizers,  exploded into chants of "Miguel, Miguel..." I had the feeling that this was the beginning of something big, rather than just the end of another campaign.

Of course, time will tell. I had the same feeling standing in Grant Park at Obama's victory celebration in 2008. But after that victory, the movement went to sleep, anesthetized by phony Democratic Party promises. Still, given the events of the past two weeks, from Cairo to Madison, I walked out into the crisp Chicago air feeling as hopeful in this local electoral defeat as I did that night of victory in '08.

These two young campaign organizers sum things up perfectly.

In what could have been a concession speech, del Valle laid claim, “There are people willing and able to fight the battles that need to be fought… We are going to build an agenda that says progress should be for all and not for some. I can feel it coming.” We haven’t missed our opportunity. Our moment to democratize Chicago has just begun. February 22^nd doesn’t mark a loss but a first step toward victory. -- - B. Loewe & Josh Prudowsky

Inside Miguel del Valle's campaign

Rahm lays another stink bomb

Del Valle: 'Let's stop attacking teachers'

From today's Chicago Sun-Times

Mayoral candidate Miguel Del Valle slammed candidate Rahm Emanuel on Tuesday over Emanuel’s support for a bill that would curtail Chicago teachers’ right to strike.

“Let’s stop attacking teachers,” Del Valle said after a tour of Telpochcalli Elementary School on the Southwest Side. “Trying to take away teachers’ right to strike is a direct hit on the teachers. Let’s not try to punish the Chicago Teachers Union by saying ‘We are going to take away your right to strike’ when they haven’t had a strike in 23 years. I think it’s a slap in the face of teachers. I want to stop the teacher-bashing.”

Read the entire story here. 

The Mayor's Race

Chicago's Louisiana Purchase?

Chicago mayoral candidate and Mayor Daley's hand-picked former school board prez, Gery Chico tried to think of something clever to say after rival Miguel del Valle came out strongly against Daley's sell-off of the city's parking spaces. A spokeswoman for Chico issued a statement Friday saying:

“Gery thinks the parking meter deal was the worst since the Louisiana Purchase."

I don't know what beef Chico has with the Louisiana Purchase. I mean, the U.S. got all of present-day Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, parts of Minnesota, most of North Dakota, nearly all of South Dakota, northeastern New Mexico, portions of Montana, Wyoming, Colorado and Louisiana, including the city of New Orleans, from cash-hungry Napoleon for a mere $15 million.

The only problem with the deal, so far as I'm concerned is, Louisiana ended up with Bobby Jindal running the state and Paul Vallas running New Orleans schools. Surely Thomas Jefferson could have written something into the contract to prevent such catastrophes.

Obama's recent successes

"Obama seems to be doing a whole lot better since Rahm left," said mayoral candidate Miguel del Valle. "Now we know where the problem was." (Chicago Tribune)

NEW YEAR QUOTABLES

Two Americas

"'We're becoming two societies, two Americas,' [sociologist Robert] Putnam told me recently. There's a deepening class divide that shows up in many places. It's not just a matter of income. Education is becoming the key discriminant in American life. Family structure is part of it too." (Doyle McManus, L.A. Times)

 More on China's test-crazy schools

"But don't the PISA results at least show that China's K-9 education is the best in the world, and that standardized testing, as U.S. President Barack Obama seems to believe, is necessary to improve American schools? Not really. According to research on education, using tests to structure schooling is a mistake. Students lose their innate inquisitiveness and imagination, and become insecure and amoral in the pursuit of high scores." (Jiang Xueqin, WSJ)

The Scott Sisters

"How can it be possible for individuals with no prior criminal record to be sentenced to two consecutive life terms for a crime in which no one was hurt and $11 was taken? Who had it in for them, and why was that allowed to happen? The Scott sisters may go free, but they will never receive justice."  (Bob Herbert, NYT)

Teachers union hosts 3rd mayoral forum

M. Klonsky photo

It looked to me like about 600-700 (mostly teachers) packing the Operating Engineers union hall last night. I didn't hear much new from any of the five candidates who showed up--Miguel del Valle, Carol Moseley Braun, James Meeks, Gery Chico and William "Dock" Walls.

As expected, Rahm Emanuel didn't deem the crowd worthy of his presence (I wonder what's really in those 20 boxes he has hidden in that crawl space in his former house?). Congressman Danny Davis was also a no-show. He phoned in a brief statement from D.C. where he rushed to heed Obama's call to vote yes on the $858 billion tax-break-for-the-rich bill. How sad.

Lots of ed clichés tossed about. We learned that all kids can learn, we should leave no child behind, and that it takes a village, etc... Del Valle had some good stuff to say on teacher evaluation. All 5 were critical of test scores as the sole criteria used to evaluate teachers. But no one is going to sit in front of hundreds of teachers and tout the current test-score mania or "merit pay".

Meeks never even mentioned the V-word, even while coming from a press conference where he vowed to push school vouchers if elected. No one dared mention the D-word, as in Daley, either. The savvy Chico ducked an important question about appointing an educator vs. a business type to run the schools. At first he seemed to agree with the others, saying that he would appoint an educator. But then he slipped in the words, "to work alongside of a CEO," and deftly moved on--not failing to drop the names of a few African-American educators (Cozette Buckney, Blondean Davis and Barbara Eason-Watkins) he has known, to grab some cheap applause. Chicago hasn't had a chief education officer since last June.

Some good stuff said on TIFs. But overall, kind of a blah "we all agree" event.

Chicago candidates forum #2 on education

"Mayor Richard M. Daley should hang his head in shame," writes Catalyst's Sara Karp. On Wednesday night, the candidates who want to replace him gave the school system he spent 20 years reforming, somewhere between a C-minus and a D. "But that's politics, right?"

Rahm Emanuel was a no-show once again at this, the second candidates' forum in two days. Ironically even candidate Gery Chico, who served as Daley's hand picked school board prez, joined in the searing condemnation, giving the system under Daley low marks. But Chico was the only candidate who would not commit to hiring an educator to run the school district. In fact, he said he would bring back Paul Vallas, the CEO of CPS during the time Chico was school board president.

Once again it was Miguel del Valle staking out more progressive territory on school reform and offering strong critiques of the current mayor's corporate reform strategy. Progressive Danny Davis was a no-show. Carole Mosely Braun bumped heads with del Valle when she came out against  tax increases to help pay for public education and chastised schools for not "living within their means." Rev. James Meeks openly pushed for school vouchers.

A look back at Tuesday's Forum #1

Del Valle told the crowd, "The future development of the city has to be an agenda that is a neighborhood agenda -- not a downtown agenda, not a business agenda." (Progress Illinois)

Miguel del Valle: "Agenda must be a neighborhood agenda."

New Chicago 2011 UIC Forum, December 14, 2010

Thousands turn out in the cold for Chicago mayoral forum

M. Klonsky photo

Rahm a no-show. Chico leaves early.

UIC's Forum was packed last night. Nearly 3,000 turned out, mainly from the city's community and social-service orgs, in the bitter cold, under the banner of New Chicago-201l. This poor frost-bitten soul was one of them. Big money candidate Rahm Emanuel wasn't, and his absence united the crowd with a round of boos.

The 2,800-strong crowd booed. They probably would have booed Emanuel if he had attended. The neighborhood groups were demanding a mayor who paid as much attention to Roseland and Little Village as the Loop. It wasn’t Rahm’s kind of room. (Ward Room).

That left "Slow" Eddie Burke's guy, Gery ("I have to leave early") Chico as the lone machine candidate and rightfully number-one target of the progressives in the audience and up on the stage--Carol Mosely Braun, Danny Davis, Miguel del Valle, and Patricia Watkins. Most interesting to me was that education reform became the hot-button issue that seemed to resonate with the crowd and cut through most of the usual campaign phrase-mongering. In particular it was the current administration's mass, arbitrary closing of neighborhood schools that drew their ire.

M. Klonsky photo

Former Senator Carol Mosely Braun started it off, hitting at Chico's record as Daley's hand-picked school board president during the Paul Vallas era. Chico came to the board after serving as the mayor's chief of staff.

Braun declared that no schools should be closed without involving parents and the community, then said, 

“Mr. Chico, you need to be responsible for some of the things happening in the Chicago schools.”

Chico returned fire at Braun, boasting, "We took over the schools in 1995, when they were in terrible shape. By the time I left in 2001, we were on the upswing. I built 65 new schools. We didn’t close schools. We built them.” 

But it was Miguel del Valle who got the biggest cheers of the night. He condemned the city’s “parallel system of public education. On one track, the magnet schools, on the other track, the neighborhood schools. We need to turn low-performance neighborhood schools into high-performance schools.”

When the subject turned to immigration, del Valle turned his fire on Emanuel's vacant chair.

“The man who was supposed to sit in this chair is the individual who is most responsible for blocking immigration reform as a congressman and White House chief of staff,” he shouted, to a standing ovation. “How can we expect him to protect the rights of immigrants in Chicago?”

Chico announced he had to leave early due to a previous engagement and exited the stage to another chorus of boos. 

Back out in the tundra, I felt a sparkle of hope that maybe Emanuel won't be able to just waltz onto the fifth floor of City Hall with his sense of entitlement intact. I also left feeling a longing for days when Harold Washington brought black and Latino communities together with progressive whites to end the reign of the old Daley machine. At times, I could feel that spirit of unity in the room last night but in current times it doesn't translate into a unified opposition anti-machine candidate.

Other messages starting to come through in mayor's race

A version of this post is on Huffington.--M.K.

For the past month in Chicago's media, it's been all Rahm, all the time. But this week, cracks began to appear in the wall protecting Emanuel. New, critical voices are coming through, making his cakewalk into the mayor's office a little more slippery. It's becoming obvious that not everyone, even in the city's business and political hierarchy is happy about the prospects of Emanuel taking over so easily.

Case in point--check out Greg Hinz' latest column in Crain's Chicago Business ("Miguel del Valle echoes Harold Washington in long-shot mayor's bid"). Hinz, probably more than any other journalist, has his finger on the pulse of the city's business community and del Valle is arguably the most progressive candidate in the mayoral field — similar, as Hinz points out to the late great Mayor Harold Washington, who also ran on a platform of economic justice and institutional change.


Del Valle is gaining credibility, in part because he brings an added dimension in that his candidacy is reflective of the great demographic shift with Latino's about to become the city's largest ethnic group. Immigration reform could prove to be a critical issue with del Valle coming out strong at yesterday's press conference. He landed a solid blow with his criticism of Emanuel's "lack of courage" on the issue.



But education remains key to this campaign because, for the past 15 years, the mayor has ruled the schools, appointed all board members and hand-picked the CEO. The current chaos and flat-lining of CPS's pulse can be directly attributed to Mayor Daley's autocratic rule and the failure of his corporate-style, top-down, reform named Renaissance 2010. Emanuel promises more of the same. Del Valle--not.

More from Hinz:

He [del Valle] was one of the fathers of the local school council model that largely was dumped during the Richard M. Daley years, and he'd clearly like to go back to some sort of system that spreads the wealth. "It's time to focus on the low-performing schools," he says. "We don't need a dual-track system."