MY WEEKEND QUOTABLES

THE REAL RATS IN BALTIMORE...Wells Fargo Bank first pushed sub-prime mortgages on thousands of working-class, black families in Baltimore (referred to as "Mud People" by loan officers), then foreclosed on their homes. 

Baltimore Sun Editorial

It was only surprising that there wasn’t room for a few classic phrases like “you people” or “welfare queens” or “crime-ridden ghettos” or a suggestion that the congressman “go back” to where he came from. -- Better to have a few rats than to be one

Jonathan Kinloch, Democratic chairman of MI’s 13th Cong Dist

“We can’t make the same mistake Hillary made in 2016 and assume that because Donald Trump is such a vile candidate, that black people will rise up and just zombie to the polls.” -- Tribune

Simon Moya-Smith

This country has always had the capacity for cruelty, and has often acted on that capacity with the flag in one hand and the Bible in the other. -- Think

Alaina Hampton

“We are witnessing what appears to be the condoning of inappropriate behavior, which will continue to silence victims and perpetuate a culture of sexism. Speaker Madigan's organization’s used to be able to get away with this type of corruption, but this time everyone is watching.” -- IL Playbook

To the Democratic Women’s Caucus:

I have now been waiting for a year & a half for you to support me publicly, or even address me by name in a statement. Where are you? What is your stance? We all want to know.

— Alaina Hampton (@alainaxhampton) July 25, 2019

IL Appellate Judge Michael B. Hyman

 “Taking together the text of our constitution and its historical interpretation by our supreme court, we conclude that the Illinois Constitution requires, in the ordinary case, a warrant to issue before an arrest can be made. Arrests based on investigative alerts violate that rule.” -- Injustice Watch

Urban school district austerity based on colonial model

Austerity is the forerunner to colonial-style takeovers of the cities, urban school districts and democratic decision-making. What the banksters are doing in Puerto Rico is setting the stage.  

The Puerto Rico Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Act, backed by the Obama administration, Hillary Clinton, (opposed by Bernie Sanders) and Republican congressional leaders, would create a new bankruptcy-type process for PR. It imposes a seven-member oversight board with dictatorial powers. Any new laws that are passed have to be approved by the control board. Any capital investments on the island have to be approved by the control board. If passed, the legislation will be geared to protecting bondholders and paving the way for massive cuts in the island’s public services.

Sound familiar? Maybe like the Control Board established for D.C.?

Newark in '05?

New Orleans in 2003?

Philly in 2001. 

Or Michigan's Public Act 436 in 2012, that allowed criminal Republican Gov. Rick Scott to appoint emergency managers with near-absolute power in cash-strapped cities, towns, and school districts. Emergency managers who can supersede local ordinances, sell city assets, and break union contracts -- leaving local elected officials without real authority.

It's the act that led to the takeover of Detroit schools, the Flint lead-in-the-water crisis, and the end of democracy (such as it was) in the state of MI. 

After "emergency" takeover in Michigan

According to Democracy Now's Juan González, there's one big difference. 

The governor of Michigan did have the power, under the laws that existed, to do that. Puerto Rico supposedly is a self-governing territory, that was granted self-government by Congress back in the 1950s. And so, this is a situation not just of a state imposing itself on a city, but of one nation imposing colonial control on another nation. 

Now we're seeing similar plans emerging for colonial-style takeover and privatization of debt-ridden urban (mostly black and Latino) school districts like Chicago and Baltimore..

Yesteday's Baltimore Sun reports:

Baltimore City school officials said the district will save about $14 million from cutting 171 positions this year, which included 111 staff members who were notified Tuesday that their jobs were being eliminated. The new details about the layoffs were released to The Sun on Wednesday, one day after the school system executed the third round of layoffs in two years.

There have been several attempts to takeover Baltimore schools in the past decade. So far, all have been beaten back. 

Schools may not open in the fall in Chicago where sociopath Gov. Rauner has kept the state without a budget for nearly a year, forcing massive, up to 40% cuts in local schools. 

Rauner is also pushing legislation aimed forcing Chicago schools into bankruptcy and allowing a takeover and ultimately privatization while busting the CTU. So far, the Democratic majority in the legislature hasn't given in. Stay tuned. 

Still no justice for Freddie Gray

At Gilmor Homes, where Gray was arrested, Jazmin Hollaway, 20, sat crossed-legged on the ground in front of a mural of Gray. "I'm stunned. I'm speechless," she said. "When are we going to get justice?" --  Baltimore Sun

My god! They couldn't even convict a Baltimore cop of second-degree assault, reckless endangerment or even "misconduct", let along manslaughter, in the killing of Freddie Gray.  I'm not sure why they tried black cop William Porter first. He wasn't one of the cops who loaded Gray into the van, shackled, with no seat belts and then bounced him around in that steel box on one of BPD's infamous "rough rides" until he died. But he was most certainly part of the cover-up that followed. I suppose they thought they could force Porter to break the "code of silence" and make him testify in the next trial against van driver and supervising cop Caesar Goodson.

There's one thing of which I am certain. This is not over. The struggle for justice for Freddie Gray continues.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

"I'm not 'The Scream' in Edvard Munch's painting." -- Tribune

Rahm Emanuel

There are a lot of hands on the bloody knife, not one. . . . Sun-Times

Curtis Black

So according to the Illinois Supreme Court, when the state constitution says pension benefits shall not be diminished, it means pension benefits shall not be diminished. And somehow this bit of elementary logic comes as a huge shock to the state’s political leadership. -- Chicago Reporter

Rhoda Rae Gutierrez

 “The policies of the appointed Board of Education have exacerbated historical educational inequalities. This presses us to ask: Whose interests does the Board serve?” -- The Promise

Elizabeth Warren to California Dems

 "This country isn't working for working people. It's working only for people at the top. That's not the American dream. That's the American nightmare...We don't win what we don't fight for." -- L.A. Times

Dave Zirin

If this Waco shit (9 dead. 100 guns) happened in Baltimore, they'd be occupying Maryland w/the Nat Guard, the Canadian Mounties & the IDF.

— Dave Zirin (@EdgeofSports) May 18, 2015

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Women in Cook County Jail

Cook Country Board Pres. Toni Preckwinkle

"We had a delegation from South Africa that came to our jail to visit. They got to the end of their tour and they said, 'Where's the jail for white people?'" -- Ward Room

Prof. Salvatore Babones, Univ. of Sydney

Strangely, reform has gone from being a progressive cause to being a conservative curse. -- Salon

Jay Caspian Kang

“I kept thinking, Kids can’t learn if they’re dead.” -- NYT Magazine, Our Demand is Simple. Stop Killing Us. 

Arthur Costa, emeritus professor at California State Univ.

 “What was educationally significant and hard to measure has been replaced by what is educationally insignificant and easy to measure. So now we measure how well we taught what isn’t worth learning.” -- Quoted by Marian Brady, Washington Post

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Kevin Moore captured arrest of Freddie Gray on video.

"He was folded up like a piece of origami." -- PostTV

Derick Ebert, 19-year-old Youth Poet Laureate of Baltimore

We had hopes in Baltimore as youth that it would be different than Ferguson. We were hoping that it wouldn't have to come to this. That we would find an answer. That the police department wouldn't withhold information like they did. As soon as we saw that we weren't getting information is when we realized that we needed to take action. -- Youth Radio

Nicolas Kristof

 It turns out that the Wall Street bonus pool in 2014 was roughly twice the total annual earnings of all Americans working full time at the federal minimum wage. -- N.Y. Times

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.)

"It doesn’t matter if you live in Searchlight or Las Vegas, in Baltimore or rural Maryland: When there is no hope, anger and despair move in. Let’s not pretend the system is fair. Let’s not pretend everything is okay." -- Huffington

 N.Y. Principal Carol Burris

Assuming that Duncan is not planning to call in the National Guard to haul off opt-outing 8 year olds, the only possible “sanction” would be withholding funds. -- Washington Post

Sanctity of property

If this is all about sanctity of property... Did you know that Wells Fargo Bank first pushed sub-prime mortgages on thousands of working-class black families in Baltimore (referred to as "Mud People" by loan officers), then foreclosed on their homes. These "ghetto loans" or “affinity group marketing” as it was called by Wells Fargo bankers, tipped hundreds of homeowners into foreclosure, blighted black neighborhoods, crushed local schools, and cost the city tens of millions of dollars in taxes and city services. Wells Fargo is the largest residential home mortgage originator in the United States. No bankers were ever arrested.

 Mayor Rawlings-Blake walks back her "thug" language:

“There are no thugs in Baltimore,” the mayor, who is African-American, said at a church, where she met with members of the clergy. “Sometimes, my own little anger translator gets the best of me.”

Baltimore teacher 

Liam, a Baltimore student writes:

“I watched the mayor Monday night. It seemed like she wasn’t from Baltimore, had no connection to the people. She just didn’t care. She was talking about the rioters when she said, “These thugs…” That’s when I thought to myself, these people aren’t thugs. These are people I know, my age, people I grew up with, my friends.”

NYT reports ...When schools were closed on Tuesday, some teachers came to churches to help feed children who rely on meals they get at school. At Bethel A.M.E. Church on Tuesday, teachers from both public and private schools served sandwiches and cookies to kids who had missed lunch at school. Amber Johnson, a teacher at Patterson Park Public Charter School, talked to children aged seven to 15 about Mr. Gray’s death, the rioting and how they felt about it all.

At New York solidarity protest... Anthony Rosado, a 24-year-old teacher, said he came out so he could have something to discuss in his high school global history class in the morning.

“This is happening all the time,” said Rosado, who was born and raised in Brooklyn. “This is systemic. And it goes beyond police. It’s about power structures.”

Rosado said the agenda for his next class would be dictated less by a lesson plan than by his students. “We’ll talk about the protest in the morning,” he said, adding that he’s not going to force any issues on his pupils. “I’m just going to tell them I was here—but let them speak their mind.”

Baltimore 1968

Oh, Baltimore Man, it's hard just to live, just to live -- Randy Newman

This isn't the first time Baltimore has been burning or occupied by the military. I'm not old enough to remember the white racist Pratt Street riots of 1861. 

But I do remember, almost 47 years ago to the day, when Baltimore and 125 other cities, including my home town of Chicago, exploded in rage in direct response to the murder of another black man -- Dr. Martin Luther King.

Spiro T. Agnew, then Republican Governor of Maryland, called out thousands of National Guard troops and 500 Maryland State Police to occupy the inner-city. When it was determined that his mainly-white military force could not control the rebellion, even after leaving six dead, 700 injured, and 5,800 black people arrested, the governor requested Federal troops from President Johnson. 

Agnew, riding the wave of racist white reaction that followed, went on the be elected Richard Nixon's vice-president as part of Nixon's 1968 "Southern Strategy". He would later be forced to resign in disgrace and was convicted in a bribery scandal.

Baltimore 1968 -- Guess who's coming to dinner.

Between World War II and 1968, Baltimore had changed demographically, mainly due to white flight. The total population remained constant, but the black population had grown and the white population shrunk (both by about 200,000). Whites abandoned the city in favor of segregated suburban Baltimore County. Black communities were left with a collapsed tax base, segregated sub-par housing and schooling, high rates of infant mortality, and more crime and brutal policing. They also suffered disproportionately from job loss due to the collapse of Baltimore's manufacturing sector. Black unemployment was more than double the national rate, and even higher in especially poor communities and for black youth. Those who did have jobs were paid less and worked in unsafe conditions. A lot of this is documented in the TV show The Wire and in the book, "Baltimore '68: Riots and Rebirth in an American City".

Four decades later, when I visit the city's schools and neighborhoods, I find conditions in the poorest black communities basically unchanged and in many ways worse than they were in '68. While the inner Harbor area has been redeveloped as a base for expanding gentrification and tourism and the Orioles given Camden Yards baseball stadium, the economic, political and social chasm between black and white, rich and poor Baltimore has only widened. 

The death of Freddy Gray while in police custody two weeks ago, like the murder of Dr. King 47 years ago, was simply the inevitable ignition point for a tinder box that was bound to explode sooner of later. I'm surprised it took so long. I doubt it will be the last time. 

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Standing up for Freddie Gray in Baltimore

Twelve-year-old Charles Sheppard 

...leaned against the barricade, holding a sign with a quote attributed to James Baldwin: “Ignorance allied with power is the most ferocious enemy of justice.” -- Sun

Bruce Rauner

 Rauner dismissed questions about his own potential conflicts of interest: his acceptance of campaign contributions from executives at financial firms that manage state pension money. “They are just taxpayers. They don’t do business [with the state].” -- International Business Times

Chuy was right.

Ben Joravsky

 I'll tell you this: Chuy Garcia's idea for a systematic, top-to-bottom review of the city's finances doesn't seem like such a bad idea right about now. It generally takes at least a year after an election before buyers' remorse sets in and Chicagoans realize they messed it up -- again! -- Reader

Arne Duncan

“We had some stability, like any organization needs stability, and CPS in six years I’ve been gone, I think they’re on their fifth superintendent now. And might shortly be on their sixth, and that kind of lack of continuity, that lack of stability it, it’s difficult on a child. It just makes me sad.” -- Chicago Tonight

 Rahm Emanuel to Roger Goodell

 “Just call me. I’ll take care of it for you … You don’t call anybody else....” -- Sun-Times

No surprise -- AP pass rate mirrors family income

Perhaps it should come as no surprise that the gap in student achievement across the region tracks almost exactly the differences in wealth between the state's richest and poorest jurisdictions. -- Baltimore Sun

Maryland leads the rest of the nation in AP test scores. But what the test results really show is that kids from wealthy Maryland districts like are scoring high while the gap between them and their fellow students from low-income communities is growing ever wider. Fewer than 3 percent of Baltimore city students passed an AP exam, for example, and that represents an improvement.

Despite the "no excuses" mantra of the corporate school reformers, this disparity has less to do with anything going on inside the classroom or with "bad teachers" as it does with the lives of students outside of school.

According to the Sun report:

As one might expect, the reason is that affluent families have far more time and resources to devote to their children's upbringing and education than do poor families, and the differences start long before a student ever sits down to take an AP exam. The intensive intellectual cultivation and stimulation that affluent parents — who are themselves likely to be more educated than their low-income peers — lavish on children literally begins in infancy continues throughout their school careers, and it includes everything from better diet, nutrition and health care to cultural activities, weekend sports and family vacations.

Tale of two cities

In Baltimore, a "contract school" in the neighborhood around Johns Hopkins, slated for gentrification, $40M will be spent on a beautiful new building. Meanwhile other inner city schools are in desperate need of basic facility upgrades. According to The Baltimore Sun, many school buildings in the city lack functional heating and air conditioning systems, windows that open and electrical wiring that would allow for computers to be used.