WEEKEND QUOTABLES

All school districts across the state of New York are cleared to open, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said in a news conference by phone Friday morning.

Maggie Mulqueen, psychologist

School has never been just about the curriculum. It’s also about students’ health and development...But schools can’t fill those needs while an epidemic is raging. It is quite possible that reopening schools could actually be worse for children. -- Think

Bill Gates

Commercial labs have left customers struggling with long waits, while “very wealthy people have access to these quick-turnaround tests.” -- CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS

Derrick Morgan, on jump in Black gun ownership

“Whether it was fear of a food shortage, lack of a grocery store, the short response times for law enforcement or whether people were just fearful they were going to be attacked, I don’t know,” said Derrick Morgan, national commander of the Black Gun Owners Association, to Politico. -- Black Enterprise

Trump (#OINk)...

...slammed Ocasio-Cortez as “a real beauty” who “knows nothing about the economy.” He singled out policies in her Green New Deal proposal. “She knows as much about the environment — do we have any young children here? — as that young child over there. I think he knows more,” Trump said. -- NY Post

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

On April 3, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. traveled to Memphis to support AFSCME sanitation workers. That evening, he delivered his famous “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech to a packed room of supporters. The next day, he was assassinated.

Dr. Martin Luther King

The two most dynamic movements that reshaped the nation during the past three decades are the labor and civil rights movements. Our combined strength is potentially enormous. -- Speech given to the Illinois State AFL-CIO, Oct. 7, 1965

CTU's Jesse Sharkey

“We’ve got our big bargaining team coming in on a holiday, and we’re trying to see if there’s a deal here. So far, there isn’t.”

“Everyone knows that if you tried to lay off 5,000 people in the middle of the school year, you would crash and tank the schools, and if you did that, you would only get halfway through their claimed deficit. So no, I don’t think that any of us think (Claypool) was really going to do it. But I don’t have any doubt that they’re contemplating making cuts.” -- Sun-Times

Flint water bill over $1,000 with late fees.

 Stephen Mittons DCFS worker

If the wealthy elite use the Supreme Court to silence us, who will oppose big corporations and their CEOs when they manipulate our economy and try to buy our democracy to serve only themselves? And without unions, who will speak up for the middle class? -- Sun-Times

Flint, MI mom

 "I can’t afford to go buy 20 gallons of water just to bathe him one time,” said Hawk, a 25-year-old single mother of three who attends Mott Community College and is pregnant. "We get treated like … we don’t matter,” she said. “That’s how it’s been feeling.” -- Detroit Free Press

Michael Moore in Flint

 “This is not a mistake. Ten people have been killed here because of a political decision. They did this. They knew.” -- Detroit Free Press

Portugal's hot!

"Against the Troiks"

"We are faced with a wall of intransigence. The government better understand that negotiating is not the same as imposing." -- Carlos Silva, the head of the 500,000 members-strong UGT

It's hot here in Lisbon and I'm not just talking about the weather.  Luckily we're able to get around the city pretty well, arriving in town just after another strike shut down the Lisbon Metro for the 4th time in the past year.

Lots of young people in the streets. Graffiti is ubiquitous. Unemployment is at a record level, 17.8% with youth unemployment at a record 42.5%. Among Lisbon's large African immigrant population from Portugal's former colonies, it's much higher. The whole country is reeling under the burden of imposed austerity and while things are pretty peaceful here, say as compared to Turkey, neighboring Spain, or Greece, signs of resistance are everywhere.

Saturday's protest.

Saturday, more than a million people took to the streets here and in 30 other cities, the largest protests in Portugal's history, and marched against, what protesters call the Troika -- the European Commission, European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund - Portugal's one-percenters.

The Lisbon protest ended with the hymn to the 1974 revolution that overthrew the dictatorship, sung by hundreds of thousands in the Plaza de Comercio.

Yesterday, the country's biggest unions announced support for a general strike, called for June 27th. It will be the second general strike here in 6 months.

This all has a familiar ring as we learn about the dismantling and closing down of social services,  layoffs and falling wages for public sector workers, and increased privatization. Among the hardest hit, Portugal's already suffering public school system and one of the weakest in Europe. Thousands of teachers are being fired under pressure from the I.M.F. which issued a report recently, singling  out public school teachers as a "privileged group within society."

I don't think many Portuguese would have a tough time relating to the mass closings of public schools, health and mental clinics and the attacks on public sector unions we're facing back in Chicago.