WEEKEND QUOTABLES

 

Robert Reich, former US secretary of labor

The most dramatic change in American capitalism over the last half-century has been the emergence of corporate behemoths like Amazon and the shrinkage of labor unions. -- Guardian

 V.P. Kamala Harris in Atlanta

"For the last year, we’ve had people in positions of incredible power scapegoating Asian Americans. People with the biggest pulpits spreading this kind of hate." -- Washington Post

Sen. Raphael Warnock 

It is a contradiction to say we must protect minority rights in the Senate while refusing to protect minority rights in the society. Colleagues, no Senate rule should overrule the integrity of the democracy and we must find a way to pass voting rights whether we get rid of the filibuster or not. -- Democracy Now

Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director General

 "Some countries are racing to vaccinate their entire populations while other countries have nothing. This may buy short-term security, but it’s a false sense of security." -- Media briefing

The gossip mill is churning. Keep your eyes on the prize.

Lightfoot on election night. A mandate for change. 

The confetti from Lori Lightfoot's Hilton ballroom celebration of her historic victory hadn't even been swept from the floor before the Facebook Lightfoot-haters' rumor mill began cranking out the news that Lori had appointed Arne Duncan to her transition team. Rumor central was the CTU's House of Delegates meeting where leaders were telling delegates that they had inside info about the appointment. This was followed by a wave of posts with comments like, "NOOOOOO" and "EWWWW".

I really need to stop spending so much time in the world of FB politics. You do too.

I asked several of the CTU folks who I know and respect for the source of the rumor. I would have thought a story this big would have hit the media before it was leaked to a union official. None of them had an answer. Some claimed the union got it from a leak at City Hall.

Then Mayor-elect Lightfoot posted this on Twitter:

Thank you SO much to everyone who has reached out to us in the past 24 hours! We’re grateful for your support and excited to keep building and mobilizing this movement for change. To everyone who’s asking—we haven't announced our transition team just yet, so stay tuned!

— Lori Lightfoot (@LightfootForChi) April 3, 2019

Here's my initial thoughts on the Duncan gossip.

First, as all my readers know, I am no fan of Arne Duncan. If you're not an avid follower (shame on you) just move your eyes over to the right-hand column and down to the TOPICS column. If you scroll down to DUNCAN, you will see 431 posts (this makes 432) I have done on the former Chicago schools chief and Obama ed secretary. They go back a dozen years and are mainly exposures of his poor and corrupt leadership, locally and nationally. I doubt there's anyone who has written more about this misleader.

Second, I have no idea who the mayor-elect will appoint to her transition team and neither do you. But whoever she chooses to help with the difficult transition, they certainly do not represent a line in the sand for me. Transition team members traditionally come from a diverse range of the city's interest groups and power centers; i.e., business and labor, race, gender and political interests. It's important for the new mayor to get input from all of them. I'm sure powerbrokers, including Barack Obama, will have some input -- as they should.

Transition team members are not the policy makers or necessarily future position holders in the administration. The team itself disbands as soon as the transition is made. I'm sure, once the team has been named, I will find appointees whose names evoke my own "EWWS" as well as smiles.

Lightfoot has committed herself to an education platform that I like and that the CTU should like as well. Especially, coming off of 8 years of mayoral control of the schools by an autocratic, union-busting mayor. It's the main reason I voted for her. Her platform includes investments in neighborhood schools, early childhood and special education, opposition to charter expansion and school closings, and support for an elected school board. These are all program points that should fill CTU members, parents, students and community folks with joy and optimism and fill Arne Duncan (who, btw, supported Toni Preckwinkle), with deep anxiety. Remember, Duncan's career has been built on opposition to every one of these points.

As a lifelong union guy, I think CTU leaders are crazy for positioning themselves in such an over-the-top, oppositional way before Lightfoot even takes office. She won this historic election by the largest margins ever over the CTU's endorsed candidate, to become the city's first African-American, woman, lesbian mayor in the city's history. Lightfoot swept every ward and won in every demographic by a wide margin. In other words, she has a clear mandate for change that we all should respect.

Why the union would want to isolate itself from this huge potential base of support, especially with contract negotiations coming up, is beyond me.

Of course, this doesn't mean no criticism. Politics is not a spectator sport and we cannot afford to sit back and hope that Lori Lightfoot does the right things once in office. But struggle should be carried out on just grounds, with reason and restraint. We need to help her become a great mayor. If she fails to do the right thing, we will hold her accountable. But that's not the same as spreading disinformation, gossip and lies in advance.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Victory in Denver Teachers Strike.

Harry Roman, Denver Teachers Union President

During the daylight hours, Roman said he found it surreal to look outside the window of the Denver Central Library’s fifth-floor conference room and see masses of red-clad teachers marching and chanting about the wages he and his team were trying to improve. “It felt like, ‘Wow, we’re creating a movement here,’ ” Roman said. “It was very, very touching.” -- Denver Post

Lindsay Graham

Kentucky kids would be better off if school funds were diverted to the border wall. “I would say it’s better for the middle school kids in Kentucky to have a secure border...We’ll get them the school they need, but right now we’ve got a national emergency on our hands." -- TPM

Senior German official 

"We fool ourselves if we think Trump is just an aberration,” said a senior German official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly. “Trump is a symptom more than a cause.” -- Washington Post

Dr. Angela Davis comes home to Birmingham

It was here [at Carrie A. Tuggle Elementary School] I watched black teachers stand up and “take exception" to white representatives of the board of education calling them by their first names. Where “I acquired, the consciousness of what it means to stand for black freedom...Here is where I acquired the sense of possibilities to resist...This school helped shape my sense of relationship with my community.” -- AL.com

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Ocassio-Cortez at Netroots: “Our swing voter is not red to blue. It's non-voter to voter." 

Anoa Changa at Netroots

“I think Trump’s win scared the shit out of everybody. I think it’s been a wakeup call for a lot of people that we have to invest. We can’t just do the traditional model where we only talk to super-voters.”

That doesn’t mean ignoring whites and Trump voters. Instead, "it’s rejecting the notion that our way to victory is having a centrist, moderate right-leaning strategy that feels like we could peel off Romney Republicans, versus investing in communities of color, marginalized groups and progressive white people." -- The Atlantic

Unite the Right comes to D.C.

Jackie Jeter ATU Local 689 President 

“More than 80% of Local 689’s membership is people of color, the very people that the Ku Klux Klan and other white nationalist groups have killed, harassed and violated. The union has declared that it will not play a role in their special accommodation.” -- Think Progress

Michael Jordan

"I support L.J.," Jordan told NBC News through a spokesperson. "He's doing an amazing job for his community." -- The Hill 

Elijah Edwards, Pres. AFSCME Local #2858

Since the Janus decision, "District 31's membership has gone up..." -- Hitting Left

Kimberly Wasserman, executive director of the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization

“There’s been enough injustice done in different communities. We’re starting to fight back.”

At this time & place for any African American, @KingJames @donlemon @RepMaxineWaters @repjohnlewis & #NFL plyrs to be criticised by @realdonaldtrump means you must be doing something right! As I have said before- Its the biggest compliment you can get. @TwitterSports @MSNBC @CNN

— TheBillRussell (@RealBillRussell) August 5, 2018

PA election another hopeful sign for Dems in midterms

Emergence of Women's March and new student (anti-gun) movements could be key to midterm elections. 

“Just two years ago, Trump won this district by 20 points. Two years before that, Democrats didn’t even bother running an opponent against the Republican incumbent. You know, I’m really enjoying this radical new Democratic strategy called ‘trying.’” — Samantha Bee

Trump and the GOP suffered another major defeat this week with the election of Conor Lamb over wing-nut Republican Rick Saccone in the PA congressional race. While the vote was close, there was no way, under ordinary circumstances, that a Democrat, even a pro-gun, anti-abortion Democrat -- a Republican wolf in Democrat sheep's clothing (sorry) -- like Lamb, could have won. But these are anything but ordinary circumstances.

Actually, Lamb only carried one of the four counties (Allegheny) in the district. But it was enough. He owes his victory to an aggressive field operation, strong union support and the reality that he was running against Trump more than Saccone.

The overwhelming Trump vote here in 2016 belied that fact that there are more registered Democrats than Republicans in the district. Trump's win was key in his carrying the state by less than a percentage point, or about 40,000 votes. Clinton's loss in PA was key to the Democrat's defeat  despite Clinton winning the popular vote by nearly 4 million votes.

The difference now was that Democrats "really tried" as Samantha Bee pointed out, and that many white district Trump  voters have become disenchanted and either stayed home or voted for Lamb.

Trump won whites with some or no college education by 39 points, a wider margin than any candidate since at least 1980.

NPR reports:

There are no exit polls to know for sure how this group voted Tuesday, but Lamb made clear appeals to them and it would be impossible to make up a 20-point gap without at least some crossover. In fact, dozens of precincts went more Democratic than in the 2016 election.

Lamb benefited from Saccone's history of supporting "right to work" legislation in the state Legislature. The district has a sizable number of union households that might have been willing to support a different Republican candidate, but unions and the Lamb campaign were able to define Saccone as anti-union.

Black women voters were key in AL election win. 

Lamb's win, on the heels of Doug Jones' narrow senate race victory over Trump-backed, white nationalist, child molester Roy Moore in Alabama could signal a Dem tsunami in midterm elections. That win came as a result of huge black voter turnout organized mainly by African-American women.

The difference in this western PA district of 700,000 is that only 2% are African-American. Seventy-one percent of residents (500,438) are registered to vote. Democrats hold a majority — 46% to 41% Republican voters.

Note that there are 118 Republicans sitting in seats Trump won by less than the 18th Congressional District in PA. Dems need to flip a net of 24 seats to take back control of the House.

Of course, Democrats are quite capable of a blowing it, even while riding the anti-Trump wave. Encouraging signs for them are the emergence of the "me too" and Women's March movement (Trump won among white women voters in 2016) along with a new post-Parkland youth and student movement.  Both of which should produce a wealth of new anti-Trump midterm voters.

However, if the Democrats are banking on more pro-gun, anti-abortion candidates like Lamb, they will suffer the consequences.

Shout-outs... West Virginia wildcat strike [Updated]

“We’re furious,” said Spanish teacher Jenny Santilli.  “All hell is breaking loose.”

Updated Thursday, March 1 -- As of Wednesday afternoon, W. Virginia teachers and school workers are still on strike. Rank-and-file union members rejected the agreement reached between WVEA leaders and Gov. Justice and have shut down all 55 school districts in, what is now, a wildcat strike. 

Turns out, the strikers apparently don’t trust the the promise made by the governor will be accepted by the Republican legislature, and fear that increased health costs could wipe away their raises. The deal didn't include a fix to the Public Employees Insurance Agency (PEIA), which employees say requires them to pay premiums that are too high. That so far remains a major sticking point.

Today marks the 6th day that the militants have kept the schools closed. 

Earlier: First, a shout-out to the teachers of West Virginia who showed us all the right way to respond to Janus and the latest wave of attacks on workers and their unions. Their three-day strike ended with teachers winning a 5% pay raise. West Virginia ranks 48th out of 50 states and the District of Columbia in teacher pay, according to the National Education Association.


From Splinter:

While 5% is a mere hair’s width higher than a standard, annual cost of living wage adjustment, it’s actually a huge victory for the teachers. [Gov.] Justice initially offered them a pitiful 1% salary increase, which would amount to about $400 annually. And just three weeks ago, the West Virginia State Senate rejected a measure to increase teachers’ wages by 3% annually. So it’s clear that union power and strike power did what it’s supposed to do. When you see that, you understand why conservatives are pushing so hard to destroy unions.

WBEZ-- Activist Jitu Brown speaks at a press conference on Monday, Feb. 26 about a Chicago Sun-Times report that key supporters of closing four Englewood high schools don’t live in the community and have contracts with Chicago Public Schools. He and others called on CPS to cancel Wednesday’s planned Board of Education vote on the plan.

Next, a salute to Chicago parents, students and community activists in Englewood who are fighting valiantly to to save the last remaining public high schools in their community. As the community struggle against the latest round of school closings gains momentum and takes on a national focus, Rahm Emanuel and his hand-picked schools CEO Janice Jackson are up to their old tricks again.

Remember when Rahm was paying folks off the street $25/ea. to be bused in to City Hall as fake  counter-protesters when real school/community members were protesting the mayor's mass school closings.

Now, community members protesting the latest round of school closings are being confronted by a group supporting the closings, appearing at the meetings in matching West Englewood Coalition hats and sweatshirts. They're supporting the plan championed by new CPS CEO Janice Jackson to close Harper, Hope, Robeson and Team Englewood high schools. But when questioned about who was behind them and where they’re from, it became clear that many weren't school/community members at all, but rather a rump group organized by some CPS contractors.

Right now downtown, CPS higher ups are voting on whether to close 4 predominantly black & brown schools on the southside. This mirrors the ineffective and unfair closing of 50+ schools by Rahm Emmanuel in 2013. WHY OUR KIDS EVERY TIME? #cpsboard pic.twitter.com/gUUSmrETpU

— Chance The Rapper (@chancetherapper) February 28, 2018

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. 

Behind Randi Weingarten's secret meeting with Steve Bannon

The Washington Post reports that neo-fascist, white supremacist Steve Bannon, Pres. Trump’s former chief strategist (replacing the recently-indicted Paul Manafort) secretly met with AFT leader Randi Weingarten in April to talk about "education issues".

The meeting was set up by right-wing media mogul and Trump ally, Chris Ruddy, chief executive of Newsmax Media Inc. who, according to the Post, "is a friend of both Trump and Weingarten". Ruddy approached Weingarten about the secret meeting because Trump “likes her” and supported opening a conversation to see whether there was common ground", says Ruddy.

The idea for a conversation between the White House and Weingarten developed, Ruddy said, when he was talking to the president about education and mentioned he knew Weingarten. Trump also knew her — both were prominent figures in New York in their own fields.

“The president knows her and likes her,” Ruddy said. “He obviously knows her from the New York world. . . . So I mentioned this to the president as an opening to communications with her. Steve [Bannon] was excited about that. I set up a meeting and they had a private meeting outside the White House.”

Actually, Trump's rationale for the meeting is much clearer than Weingarten's. Trump had already been successful in driving a wedge in the labor movement through meetings with Teamsters President Jim Hoffa and AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. Each applauded Trump for pulling out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and threatening other international trade agreements. Trumka even took a seat on Trump's manufacturing council (which never met) and supported Trump's plan to build the oil pipeline through the Standing Rock reservation in North Dakota.

Also, around the same time as the Bannon/Weingarten meeting, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel was holding his own closed-door meeting with Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. Nobody knows what went on behind those doors. But within weeks, a voucher bill was passed in IL by a majority Democratic legislature, without any resistance from Emanuel.

Weingarten however, offers no strategic or tactical rationale for her consenting to hold the secret (from her own membership) meeting. When she tries, she sounds like someone who has drunk the  populist kool-aid.

She says, she thought Bannon sought the meeting [she thought? m.k.] because he believed there was common ground; she and her union have been critical of the power of hedge fund managers and “crony capitalists,” as has Bannon. 

Bannon, an enemy of the hedge-funders???

No, no, no. Not true... Bannon's rise to power has been largely underwritten by hedge funders and crony capitalists like billionaire Robert Mercer, a long-time Trump crony who up until this week ran Renaissance Technologies and it's crown jewel, the Medallion Fund, which, according to Bloomberg, is perhaps the world's greatest money-making machine. Medallion is open only to Renaissance's roughly 300 employees, about 90 of whom are Ph.D.s, as well as a select few individuals with deep-rooted connections to the firm. The fabled fund, known for its intense secrecy, has produced about $55 billion in profit over the last 28 years.  

Weingarten tells the Intercept:

“Look, I will meet with virtually anyone to make our case, and particularly in that moment, I was very, very concerned about the budget that would decimate public education,” Weingarten said. “I wanted it to be a real meeting, I didn’t want it to be a photo-op, so I insisted that the meeting didn’t happen at the White House.”

Weingarten didn’t take notes at the meeting, which was held at a Washington restaurant, but told The Intercept she and Bannon talked about “education, infrastructure, immigrants, bigotry and hate, budget cuts … [and] about a lot of different things.”

Her takeaway: Bannon is no Martin Luther King. Really?

The [Martin Luther] King philosophy of jobs and justice is not the Bannon philosophy, let’s put it that way.”

But on the other hand, she did buy some of his faux working-class populism.

“I think he sees the world as working people versus elites. And on some level, he’s thought about educators as working-class folks."

Lots of questions here... Why did it take seven months for this meeting to be revealed, and only then by a Bannon friend? Why, with the AFT and the labor movement in general in a state of crisis, bleeding members and money, would Weingarten look to Bannon for common ground?

I'm not saying or implying that Weingarten cut a back-room deal with Bannon. I'm not sure that either of them had the power to make any kind of deal. I think this was more of a feel-out meeting that was intended to be kept secret on all sides.

Weingarten and the union leadership seem lost at sea with no real sense of direction. She has nothing to deal. Her first instinct seems to be to scramble for her own personal seat at the table. Or as she puts it...

“If you are the president of the union and you’re fighting fiercely to get budget restorations and to not have a dismantlement of public education or of higher education and the administration asks to – or it’s made clear to you that they want to meet – you meet,” she said. “You don’t not meet. You meet.”

 At the same time she was secretly not not meeting with Bannon, she was also asking DeVos to do joint school tours with her. This even while DeVos was being picketed by parents and teachers at local public schools.

But her meetings with Bannon and DeVos did nothing to get adequate funding for public ed. Since the meetings, the federal public school budget has been slashed to pieces and billions of dollars shifted over from public schools to privately-run charters and school vouchers.

Meeting with Elites... Intercept explains:

Hearing Bannon attack elites, including the types of hedge fund Democrats who fund the charter school movement, in the same way she would, was surreal. “He hates crony capitalism,” Weingarten said. “The same kinds of things [we say], you could hear out of his mouth, and that’s why it’s so — you sit there in a surreal way, saying, ‘How can you sit right next to all these elites?'

That would be a great question for Weingarten herself to answer.

No, this is not a time for secret meetings with fascist demagogues. It is a time for organizing and mobilizing rank-and-file resistance.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Taking a knee at Oak Park - River Forest High School

Barry Romo, Vietnam Veterans Against the War

Twenty-two vets a day are killing themselves. And they aren't killing themselves because someone spit on them. They're killing themselves because they can't face the reality of the wars they went through. -- Hitting Left 

 Matthew W. Finkin, Univ. of IL law professor

"There are really no new arguments on this, just a change in the membership of the court, The unions have just been waiting for the other shoe to fall." -- Huge Stakes for Teacher Unions

 Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke

"I know it is really a good news story in terms of our ability to reach people and the limited number of deaths that have taken place in such a devastating hurricane." -- CBS

San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz

"Dammit, this is not a good news story. This is a people are dying story." -- CNN

Rep. Darren Soto (D), first FL congressman of Puerto Rican descent 

“. . . We’ve invaded small countries faster than we’ve been helping American citizens in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.” -- Washington Post

Lt. Gen. Russel Honore (Ret.)

 “The mayor is living on a cot. I hope the president has a good day at golf.” -- Mediaite 

...Such poor leadership ability by the Mayor of San Juan, and others in Puerto Rico, who are not able to get their workers to help. They....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 30, 2017

You're going straight to hell, @realDonaldTrump.
No long lines for you.
Someone will say, "Right this way, sir."
They'll clear a path. https://t.co/xXfJH0KJmw

— Lin-Manuel Miranda (@Lin_Manuel) September 30, 2017

Chris Kennedy discovers his inner-left

Oliwia Pac

“This raise means that I can finally afford my rent, get groceries, not have a hassle trying to pay off my student loans,” Oliwia Pac, who helps passengers in wheelchairs, escorts children traveling alone onto flights and works security at O’Hare Airport, tells the Sun-Times. 

“It could be better. But this is a very big step that has occurred for us as airport workers. I’m just beyond ecstatic. We’re slowly but surely winning.”

Born-of-the-manor Chris Kennedy could have at least shown the decency to congratulate the airport workers and SEIU Local 1 on their strike victory before bashing the settlement. Instead guv candidate Kennedy, appearing on Ben Joravsky's show on WCPT, in an otherwise fine interview, attacked the victory celebration claiming the hard-won raise of the minimum wage to "no less than" $13.45 wasn't high enough for him.

He asks Ben, "Is the city council proud of the fact that they're paying somebody $13.45 and hour? Does somebody think that's a good idea? Does anyone think that that's a living wage?

No, Mr. Kennedy. I doubt that anyone thinks that? But if you're making ten bucks an hour and you raise the minimum wage 30%, that's something to cheer about.

The workers also won the right for baggage handlers, cabin cleaners, aircraft maintenance workers, security guards and other contract employees to organize without interference, for the first time. To win this, they had to agree to a "no strike" clause. But agreements like this have never stopped workers from using an array of tactics beyond the legal strike to win their demands.

Kennedy, who like the rest of the IL Dem primary candidates, has suddenly discovered his inner leftism, at least up until election day, has never had a real job himself and obviously has never walked a picket line. Of course $13.45 is not a living wage. Neither is $15 as in "Fight For 15". But buy raising the floor, the SEIU-led victory lifted up all the airport workers. The struggle for a living wage and for full union rights continues.

BTW, Kennedy was not a big fan of workers rights when he chaired the U of I Board of Trustees and had faculty members fired or discredited for their political views.

Danny Rodriguez on Hitting Left.

Tune into Hitting Left today at 11 CDT on Lumpen Radio to hear our Labor Day interview with O'Hare airport striking worker Danny Rodriguez. Chris Kennedy should listen in as well. He might learn something.

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

A union leader and a corporate school reformer abandon Trump's ship

"It's never met, we've never had a meeting," Trumka said.

The stunning events in Charlottesville have stirred so much public anger towards the Trump regime that they've driven many of his closest collaborators, including corporate CEOs worried about tarnishing their brand, to abandon ship. Trump's open support and praise for murderous white supremacists, anti-semites, KKK and nazis has become a source of concern and embarrassment, even for many Trump allies, staffers, and collaborators who have hung with him up until now, despite a long string of similar racist and chauvinist outbursts.

Two particular breaks, one in the last few days, have especially caught my eye because they involved, not right-wing conservatives, but a union leader and a Democrat corporate school reformer.

The union leader is Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, the largest group of labor unions in the country, who quit Trump’s manufacturing council Tuesday evening, saying he refused to accept any tolerance of “bigotry and domestic terrorism.”

All well and good. But the question remains, what was Trumka doing as the only union leader, on that sham council in the first place? And why did he quit, obviously under pressure from below, only after the departure of the CEOs from Walmart [30 hours earlier -- h/t C.B.], Merck, Under Armour and Intel?

One answer is that Trumka has long been a fan of Trump's failed America First protectionist and racist jobs strategy. Remember, Trumka sided with Trump at Standing Rock in support of the Dakota Access Pipeline, in that way diminishing the moral standing and political credibility of the labor movement. While most unions were taking the line of resistance to Trumpism, all Trumka wanted was a seat at the table, even one that didn't really exist. The council NEVER MET.

Now, only after Trump's promise to "bring back American jobs" has been discredited, and on the eve of Trump's disbanding the council altogether, did Trumka finally criticize it for not taking meaningful steps to help the workers he represents.

“It’s clear that President Trump’s Manufacturing Council was never an effective means for delivering real policy that lifts working families and his remarks today [on Charlottesville] were the last straw.” 

"We would say to DeVos that public school choice is a great thing." -- Shavar Jeffries

The corporate school reformer is Shavar Jeffries, president of  the misnamed, Democrats for Education Reform. DFER, founded by a group of hedge-fund operators, was never really Democratic nor about school reform.

The group was the most influential force pushing so-called "choice" and school privatization policies within the Obama White House  and inside Ed. Sec. Arne Duncan's DOE. They were also a force behind Eva Moskowitz's Success Academy charters in New York, helping her rise to fame as a highly paid, anti-public school, anti-union superstar.

Moskowitz has become one of Trump's biggest cheerleaders and contended with Betsy DeVos for Trump's favor in a run at the Sec. of Education cabinet post. In return for DFER's financial support, Jeffries was given a seat on Success Academy's Board of Directors.

But earlier this summer, Jeffries resigned from the board.

According to POLITICO:

Moskowitz and Jeffries now represent the charter sector’s two ideological poles in the Trump era. While Trump and DeVos’ call for a national school choice system would appear to align them with Democrats who support an expansive charter sector, but the president’s controversial comments about minorities, and his education secretary’s plan to slash $9 billion from the federal education budget, have complicated that support.

 On one side, reform-minded Democrats have warned that Trump's embrace of school choice could eventually destroy education reform. New York magazine columnist Jonathan Chait, who supports charters, has called some charter leaders’ embrace of Trump a potential “the kiss of death” for the movement reformers have been trying to build for decades. Jeffries said much the same shortly after Trump’s election: “the policies and rhetoric of President-elect Trump run contrary to the most fundamental values of what it means to be a progressive committed to educating our kids and strengthening our families and communities.”

So Jefferies' departure had little do do with Moskowitz's anti-union or school "choice" policies which have found a home inside DeVos' DOE. In fact Jeffries is in lock-step with most of these policies. Unlike most Democrats, he even says he's open to school vouchers as well as privately-run charters.

If they’re going pursue some sort of voucher program, we’ll examine it whenever they put it together...

Like Duncan, he's also a backslider on school desegregation, opposing "coercive" school integration and claiming, "There's not a political will to bring about integration..."

Like labor leader Trumka, DFER and other charter/voucher supporters have been hurt and embarrassed by their direct and indirect ties to Trump. It's all about the brand.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

A setback for union organizing in the south. The struggle continues. 

Dennis Williams, U.A.W. president

“Perhaps recognizing they couldn’t keep their workers from joining our union based on the facts, Nissan and its anti-worker allies ran a vicious campaign against its own work force that was comprised of intense scare tactics, misinformation and intimidation.”  -- New York Times

Boyah J. Farah

I came to America as a refugee from Somalia. I know what happens when a group of people is labeled as a threat -- Salon

Andy Borowitz

The special counsel, Robert Mueller, just called Donald Trump to tell the President that he was “the most innocent person ever,” Trump told reporters on Thursday. -- New Yorker 

Sen Biss on Hitting Left

Candidate for governor, Sen. Daniel Biss

I support a complete moratorium on charters. The notion that we're opening charters and closing public schools is wrong-headed.  -- Hitting Left 

Pasi Sahlberg

The idea that Finland recruits the academically “best and brightest” to become teachers is a myth. In fact, the student cohort represents a diverse range of academic success, and deliberately so. -- Diane Ravitch Blog

Local Mississippi radio warns Nissan workers they'll go back to "picking cotton and digging ditches" if they unionize. (via @DoBetterNissan) pic.twitter.com/0ZO4PDSzer

— Jack Smith IV (@JackSmithIV) August 4, 2017

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

"We want the USGA to dump sexist Trump because women and men deserve to make sure that they are safe and that sexual predators are not considered ambassadors of sports." -- Protesting Trump at U.S. Open

Catherine Rampell

Everything is a distraction from something much, much worse. -- Washington Post 

Walt Gardner 

It's so easy to scapegoat teachers' unions for all the ills afflicting public schools ("State of the Teachers Union," The Wall Street Journal, Jul. 6). Critics point to the success of charter schools, which are overwhelmingly non-union, as evidence.

But what these critics don't admit is that states like Massachusetts and Minnesota, which have strong teachers unions, also post high test scores. Is that merely a coincidence or is it evidence that the critics are wrong?  (Correlation is not causation.)  Moreover, not all charter schools post positive results by any means. -- Reality Check

 Jessica Valenti

 Perhaps this shouldn’t come as a surprise from DeVos, who appointed Candice Jackson as a civil rights official in the education department – a woman who denounced feminism and claimed she was a victim of discrimination for being white. -- Betsy DeVos enabling rape deniers 

Fired Rauner staffer

“We fought for the governor [to hijack the state budget for two years] with our very last breath only to find out he was planning to fire us anyway. We gave him everything, blood and guts, and this is what we got. A kick out the door.” -- Sneed

Trevor Timm

 The Robert Mueller special counsel investigation into Trump and Russia could take years to complete. And it probably won’t directly lead to Trump himself being indicted. Mueller is likely to submit his findings on Trump himself to Congress for action rather than bringing an indictment. And if people really think Republicans are going to impeach Trump, they are kidding themselves. -- Guardian

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

“I’m here because I oppose how education in Germany is structured, that they’re training us to be workers and not thinkers.” -- Hendro Myrow, 18, a student in Hamburg.

Sydney Chaffee, 2017 National Teacher of the Year

Let’s work to ensure that education represents liberation. Let’s keep our ears and hearts open to our students’ brilliance, even when it makes us uncomfortable. Let’s envision education as a time machine that helps our students travel to worlds we have only imagined — ones that are built on ideals of justice and equity and collaboration. -- National Education Association 

47th Ward Ald. Ameya Pawar, candidate for governor in IL

Ald. Ameya Pawar

"You have to have a progressive income tax. We owe what we owe [to state pensioners] and if I'm elected, we will make good on that promise...We can't allow the pension system to go belly-up and by extension, to allow the city to go belly-up. I have always voted to protect pensions. I don't know that everyone in the race can say that." -- Interview on Hitting Left with the Klonsky Bros. 

Rahm Emanuel's big lie

“What’s very, very important for the people in Chicago, all of the taxpayers and all of the employees and employers, all four of our pensions — police pensions, fire pensions, laborers pension and municipal employees pension — you have a secure retirement now.” -- Chicago Tribune 

French President Emmanuel Macron as G20 ends

“Our world has never been so divided.” -- Washington Post 

Pope Francis warns G20 about 'dangerous alliances'

 "The G20 worries me, it hits migrants in countries in half of the world and it hits them even more as time goes by." He said the greatest danger concerned immigration, with "the poor, the weak, the excluded and the marginalised" juxtaposed with "those who... fear the invasion of migrants". -- Reuters

Sen. Rob Portman's code word for Jews?

 “We aren’t going to allow a handful of Socialists, many of whom are from New York, to disrupt our ability to serve the needs of the Ohio constituents who contact us in need of vital services every day,” -- Washington Post  

Chicago and its public schools have become profit centers for privatizers

I don't think so. 

Under our last two mayors, the city of Chicago and Chicago public schools have become centers of privatization. All public space from parking spaces, to red-light cameras, to trash collection, to the highways and skyways have become fair game for the privatizers.

The move to privatize everything public, to erode all public space and public decision-making comes as a reaction to the real and sometimes manufactured financial and other crises which have shaken cities from New Orleans, Detroit and now Chicago.

The pains of privatization have taken their greatest toll on public education, turning schools into profit centers mired in corruption and waste and impacting everything from the way we teach to the way we test. Relationships between students and their teachers have been torn apart with the massive closing of neighborhood schools and replacing them with networks of privately-managed charters.

Things will only get worse with the election of privateer Donald Trump and the appointment "choice" fanatic Betsy DeVos and Secretary of Education.

The privatization of CPS has been a disaster. It has further expanded racial segregation. It has led to union busting and the degradation of teachers and school staff. Schools under the management of Aramark and SodexoMagic have been left filthy and disgusting. They are also charging CPS $80M to oversee custodial work instead of custodians reporting to school principals through their union at no cost.

Privatization has also meant massive corruption leading to the great SUPES scandal and the conviction of former CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett who is on her way to prison.

The latest moves by autocratic Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his hand-picked schools chief Forrest Claypool, to expand the privatization of custodial and building management services, has been met with resistance from school principals, parents and labor unions.

One of those unions is local143 of the International Union of Operating Engineers. Union Pres. Bill Iacullo will be our in-studio guest this Friday on Hitting Left. He will be joined by two of the city's top progressive political campaign strategists and communications specialists, Joanna Klonsky and Brian Sleet.

Tune in to Klonsky Bros. Hitting Left Radio, 105.5 FM, streaming live at 11 a.m. on Lumpen Radio.

Death by 1,000 cuts at CPS

"Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them." -- Frederick Douglass

Donald Trump thinks Frederick Douglass is still alive. In one sense (certainly not the one intended) he may be right. Douglass' words, his warning, that if we don't resist oppression, we will get it's full measure, are alive and as relevant today as they were more than a century-and-a-half ago. They were ringing in my head this week as I watched our Trumpian Gov. Rauner veto a bill that would have put $215M back in the schools.

We're now in our third year without a state budget and Rahm Emanuel's schools CEO Forrest Claypool has just announced another $46M in cuts at CPS and I'm asking myself just how much more of this death by 1,000 cuts of public space are we willing or able to endure?

The cuts have created more chaos throughout the system, forcing principals to re-engineer their budgets in the middle of the school year and give up as much as half of discretionary money for textbooks, field trips, technology and hourly workers who staff recess and after school programs. CPS is also cutting $5 million in teacher professional development funds.

As expected, Claypool put all the blame for the cuts on the more-than-deserving, "Trumpian" Rauner. But Claypool, Rahm and the Democratic Party leadership in Springfield have blood on their hands as well. They've acceded to Republican demands for more and more cuts with little more than a whimper, and Sen. Pres. John Cullerton is currently colluding with Rauner in the Grand Plan to loot the pension fund and weaken the unions.

They are also unwilling to tax the state's wealthiest for badly-needed revenues and instead are considering other ways to save money, including shortening the school year. How ironic, considering that Rahm made the unfunded, compulsory longer school day the centerpiece of his first campaign for mayor.

Taking the biggest hits...As I scroll down the list of CPS schools to see which ones are affected the most, something jumps out at me. It's how Claypool wielded his sword in favor of the mayor's pet selective-enrollment high schools, which were hardly touched. Compare for example, Walter Payton (.049% of its budget was cut) or Northside Prep (0.13%)  with Clemente (4.20%) or Juarez (4.14%). Newly opened Dyett, the product of a community hunger strike, took a 5% hit.

I haven't seen the list yet of charter schools. I've read that charters could see their funding cut by a total of $18 million in April to match the spending freeze and furlough days imposed on district-run schools. But charters are also benefiting from outside funding streams that remain inaccessible to most public schools. The also pay their non-union teachers less and push out veteran teachers in favor of less-experienced, lower-paid TFAers.

I know in some cases, I'm comparing apples and oranges here, due to size of the schools and their overall budgets. For example, Lane Tech, the city's largest high school, stands to lose about $890,000, by far the largest of any school. But Lane also had the largest pool of discretionary funds to begin with. Forty other elementary and high schools are targeted for an average of $300,000 for cuts.

But percentages and sizes of cuts are still indicators of the two-tier system of schooling Rahm is building, by attrition and subtraction, here in Chicago, where privately-run charters and selective-enrollment continue to supplant community-based schools according to policy.

Back to Frederick Douglass -- The heart of the resistance is still the public employee unions, AFSCME, CTU and SEIU, along with parent and community groups.

The CTU used one of Claypool's 4 forced, unpaid furlough days to protest the cuts and call for his resignation. AFSCME #31 is taking a strike vote as I write this.

CTU Pres. Karen Lewis summed it all up nicely,

"Rahm and Rauner are both to blame, There's no separation between their intention to destroy publicly funded, public education in Chicago."

### 

Dems leave teacher unions hanging on DeVos

IEA graphic.

Hillary has her picture on milk cartons since she went missing after election day.  SNL even picked up on it. Seems like the entire old-guard leadership must be out in the Chappaqua woods with her, especially when it comes to resisting the Trump juggernaut.

Most notably, at least from this educator's perspective, is their deafening silence around Trump's nomination of Betsy ("Make America Christian Again") DeVos for Ed Secretary. While NEA and AFT leaders, Eskelsen-Garcia and Weingarten, have been outspoken in the opposition to DeVos, they have been left dangling in the wind by the very Clinton wing of the party they risked their reputations for with their premature endorsements of Hillary.  

As you might expect, this rift is reflective of much broader post-election inner-party conflicts over who will lead the Dems forward towards the mid-term congressional elections. Of note is Weingarten's defense of Keith Ellison who represents the Sanders/Warren progressives against the Podesta old-guard faction, for party chairman. That seems like a big shift to me. But time will tell. 

For the unions, it's not just a matter of the mid-term elections. DeVos represents an existential threat to public education itself as well as to the entire teaching profession. Her history in Detroit as an active supporter of privatization, Christianization, and vouchers has even garnered support from supposedly anti-Trump reformers and think-tankers like Fordham Institute's Michael Petrilli and former Arne Duncan aide, Peter Cunningham who calls DeVos the "champion of choice".  

Thankfully, the teacher unions aren't alone in their defense of public ed from the Trump/DeVos assault. The NAACP and other civil rights groups like Black Lives Matter and the Journey for Justice Alliance, have also been clear in their opposition to the DeVos program of vouchers and un-capped charter expansion.


Think-tankers go thumbs up on DeVos

While there are many unknowns about Betsy DeVos I'm going w/ 2 thumbs up, especially considering the alternatives @PoliticsK12 @caitlinzemma pic.twitter.com/bRtaUFWxFV

— Michael Petrilli (@MichaelPetrilli) November 23, 2016

WEEKEND QUOTABLES ... No chances for Trump

DFER Pres. Shavar Jeffries

“DFER congratulates Betsy DeVos on her appointment as Secretary of Education, and we applaud Mrs. DeVos’s commitment to growing the number of high-quality public charter schools. -- Press Release

Lee Saunders, chairman of the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s political committee

"We underestimated the amount of anger and frustration among working people and especially white workers, both male and female, about their economic status." -- New York Times

Donald Trump

 “In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.” -- Washington Post

Frayda Levin, chair of Americans for Prosperity

“In creating the Koch network, I don’t think that we ever envisioned that we would be supplying staffers to this semi-free market, semi-populist president." -- Politico

Stephen Bannon's former co-writer, Julia Jones

 Ms. Jones, the film colleague, said that in their years working together, Mr. Bannon occasionally talked about the genetic superiority of some people and once mused about the desirability of limiting the vote to property owners.

“I said, ‘That would exclude a lot of African-Americans,’” Ms. Jones recalled. “He said, ‘Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.’" -- New York Times

Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf

“I like to compare this to conscientious objector status.We are not going to use our resources to enforce what we believe are unjust immigration laws.” -- New York Times

#NewsOneNow w/ @rolandsmartin NOW #FidelCastro:There were competing legacies.He fought against discrimination&stayed at the #HotelTheresa. pic.twitter.com/HmFMjxsARQ

— Rev Jesse Jackson Sr (@RevJJackson) November 28, 2016