WEEKEND QUOTABLES

This, in the era of mass school shootings...

Trump Junior

Donald Trump Jr. Rips Teachers Unions In Front Of A Gun Wall.

"The teachers' unions are out of control & are destroying our kid’s futures." -- Huffington 

 U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres

“White supremacy and neo-Nazi movements are more than domestic terror threats. They are becoming a transnational threat." -- Addressing U.N. Human Rights Council

Simon Tisdall on Iran nuclear agreement

Biden’s instinct to try to break this impasse and find a diplomatic way through – supported by the UK, Germany and France – is the right one. But words are not enough. As a sign of good faith, he should swiftly relax some sanctions and unfreeze Iran’s Covid-related $5bn IMF loan request. -- Guardian

 Yuh-Line Niou, a Democrat who represents New York City's Chinatown 

“They are all calling me asking me, 'How do I get this vaccine? What’s going on?' Then they will ask me, 'Hey, can you translate this site for me?'” -- USA Today 

 Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the leader of the Congressional Progressive Caucus 

“We can’t let one or two Democrats prevent the $15 minimum wage from being in the relief bill. It’s bad politics and bad policy.” -- The Hill

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Sen. Elizabeth Warren at Chicago's Broadway Armory

Sen. Elizabeth Warren 

 "Only in Chicago is the big Saturday night entertainment politics." -- Tribune

Mayor Pete Buttigieg hasn't got a clue

"I was slow to realize" South Bend schools were not integrated. -- Interview with Rev. William Barber

Alaina Hampton settles sexual harassment suit

““Since speaking out publicly nearly two years ago, we have seen positive changes in this state,” Hampton’s statement said. “The legislature has passed sweeping legislation to deal with sexual harassment, which achieves important gains — although there is still more to be done." -- Tribune

Ald. Daniel La Spata
...in response to my blog post which called the passage of a $15 minimum wage by the City Council, a "big victory for Chicago workers."

"Of course that’s a win. One Chicago workers had already been struggling toward."

La Spata was one of the 11 aldermen who voted against passage.

Passage of $15 minimum wage is a big victory for Chicago workers

“This vote is easy for me,” Ald. Susan Sadlowski Garza, 10th, said, because it closed the gap without layoffs, increased the minimum wage and opened libraries closed on Sunday.

Chicago's city council has approved by a 39-11 vote, a budget that will raise the minimum wage for city workers to $15/hr and it won't take six years to fully implement as it does under the new state minimum wage law. The city's minimum wage will rise to $15 by 2021 and apply to youth, people with disabilities and other groups that historically have been paid less.

The vote represented a big win for Mayor Lori Lightfoot who, after only six months in office, has been able to end so-called, "aldermanic prerogative" and slowly begin to close the city's huge budget gap without a large property tax hike.

And guess what? Businesses aren't fleeing the city and the Willis and Trump Towers (unfortunately) haven't crumbled into the river as predicted by the corporate lobbyists' fear campaign.

Restaurant servers and other tipped workers aren't fully covered under the new law and that's not good.

As the Chicago Reporter's Nicole Hallet points out:

There are many good policy reasons to abolish the tip credit, including ensuring that workers have pay stability and combating the problem of sexual harassment in the service industry. Women working in restaurants with lower minimum wages than other industries in the state were twice as likely to report being sexually harassed by a customer than women who were paid their state’s minimum wage.

But tipped workers will see their minimum increase to $8.40 an hour on July 1, from $6.40 currently, and the city is directed to study the impact of tipped wages on working-class families so it can revisit the issue in the future. The tipped wage will be set at 60% of the minimum wage — meaning it will rise to $9 in 2021 — and increase accordingly as the minimum wage rises annually with the consumer price index.

As for me, I think all workers should be paid a living wage and that none should have to work for tips. But that's for another post and another day. I still think passage of the mayor's budget is an important victory for the city's working people and marks a significant break from the policies of the previous regime.

Shia Kapos at Illinois Playbook writes:

The vote should have been easy — and it was for 39 council members — but 11 progressives voted no.

Well, that's not exactly right. Six of the no-votes came from the council's socialists who blocked with a handful of what's-in-it-for-me and anti-Lightfoot aldermen to try and stop passage of what is arguably the most progressive budget in the city's history.

"No" voters: Daniel La Spata (1st), Anthony Beale (9th), Raymond Lopez (15th), Jeanette Taylor (20th), Michael Rodriguez (22nd), Byron Sigcho-Lopez (25th), Rossana Rodriguez-Sanchez (33rd), Carlos Ramirez-Rosa (35th), Andre Vasquez (40th), Matt Martin (47th) and Maria Hadden (49th) 

This from Crain's:

Supporters said Lightfoot’s proposal pointed the city’s ship in the right direction and closed a projected $838 million gap without raising substantial taxes or fees. Most aldermen praised a brand new budget team—Lightfoot, Budget Chair Pat Dowell, and Finance Chair Scott Waguespack—for conducting a transparent process that included community input.

“This vote is easy for me,” Ald. Susan Sadlowski Garza, 10th, said, because it closed the gap without layoffs, increased the minimum wage and opened libraries closed on Sunday. 

While I'm elated that there's finally some real debate in the council, I'll leave it to the 11 to explain their votes on this one.

COMING UP ON HITTING LEFT...

The overstuffed and possibly hungover Klonsky Bros. are taking today off. But you can listen to our archived interview with veteran civil rights activist, Timuel Black and his co-author of Sacred Ground, Susan Klonsky. That's today from 11-noon on WLPN 105.5 FM in Chicago. Streaming live at lumpenradio.com. 

Tune in on Friday, Dec. 6th, when our in-studio guest will CTU Pres. Jesse Sharkey. 

Big corps not "fleeing" IL over $15/hr minimum wage after all.

Crain's begs Amazon: "Come to Chicago. We have plenty of low-paid workers here."

Last year we defeated the Rahm/Rahner plan to bring Amazon HQ2 into Chicago. Why? Because they are among the worst low-road, abusive, union-busting companies with the poorest working conditions of any corporation. Plus, we knew that their promise of 50,000 new jobs was BS. Plus, despite raking in superprofits, they would have ended up paying no state or city taxes to help support our schools and city services. Preckwinkle and Daley were the only mayoral candidates who supported Rahm's plan.

Good riddance, right?

Chicago being a strong union town, along with our push for a living wage, then led to a fear campaign in the media by Rahm/Rahner claiming that other companies would now flee the state and the city if we made them pay fair taxes and a living wage to their workers.

Fast forward --  With Rauner and Rahm gone, Gov. Pritzker signed a bill in February, passed in the IL Legislature, that would raise the state's minimum wage to $15/hr. Not a living wage, but good news just the same.

The bad news is that under the new law, minimum-wage workers won't see $15/hr under for six years. Why such a compromise with Republicans in a Democratic-dominated legislature? You'd have to ask the progressive house members who crafted the bill.

But now comes the news that since the passage of the bill, corporations are coming back to IL rather than running away. In fact last week, Amazon announced plans to open a fulfillment center in Channahon, Illinois, supposedly creating more than 500 new, full-time jobs. The project, developed by Venture One Real Estate, will add a new distribution center of over 1 million square feet in size—the sixth in Will County for the online retailer, after properties in Crest Hill, Joliet, Monee and Romeoville.

“Illinois is a great place to do business and we are excited to continue our growth and investment in the state with our new fulfillment center in Channahon,” said Alicia Boler Davis, Amazon’s vice president of global customer fulfillment. “Since 2010, Amazon has invested more than $4 billion in the state through its local fulfillment center and cloud infrastructure, research facilities and compensation to thousands of employees in the state. We are excited to create more than 500 new full-time jobs, in addition to the 11,000 current employees across the state, who receive industry-leading pay and benefits starting on day one.”

And this from Gov. Pritzker:

“This significant jobs announcement is another sign that Illinois’ future is bright, and I’m excited to see Amazon build on its investment in Illinois with 500 new jobs in the south suburbs,” said Governor J.B. Pritzker. “Illinois is the transportation hub of the Midwest, and our workforce is among the best in the world."

I guess the big corps like Amazon aren't scared off by Pritzker's Fair Tax initiative. I didn't think they would be, even with Indiana and Wisconsin right next door.

And the great irony is that starting salary at the new center will be (you guessed it) $15/hr. Six years before the new law takes full effect and with no union representation for workers.

This should also bring some organizing-the-unorganized jobs for union organizers.

Ed activists enter the lion's den, win some important concessions

In an unexpected move, Democrats have revised the K-12 education section of their party’s 2016 platform in important ways, backing the right of parents to opt their children out of high-stakes standardized tests, qualifying support for charter schools, and opposing using test scores for high-stakes purposes to evaluate teachers and students. -- Washington Post

Party platforms mean little and are usually forgotten the day after the election. This year's platform fight within the Democratic Party is more significant than usual because it reflects the struggles of real movements on the ground -- the Fight For 15 Movement, for example -- and because of the realignment of forces within both major political parties.

Dem platform now supports Opt-Out

Throughout the primary campaign, Sanders continually tried to drag Clinton leftward on policy. Leading up to the national convention, Sanders insisted that the party adopt “the most progressive platform ever passed.” That may be a low bar, but it did.

For the first time, after intense internal debate between the Clinton and Sanders factions, the DNC's platform committee backed the unqualified inclusion of the $15 minimum wage as the official policy of the party. They also dropped their statement of support for TPP.

With education activists like Chicago's Troy LaRaviere leading the way, the Sanders forces wrung concessions from Clinton loyalists and came away with an education plank that broke from the current administration's outright support for privately-run charters and high-stakes testing. The party is now on record in its support for the opt-out movement of parents and students.

Also among the unity amendments was a Sanders-Clinton compromise on education that included free public higher education for families with income of up to $125,000 a year.

If you don't think that matters, check out the whiny responses from Arne Duncan's former deputy, Peter Cunningham, and from the hedge-fund school "reformers" from DFER.

Here's my brother Fred's response.

Democrats are now against “high-stakes standardized tests that falsely and unfairly label students of color, students with disabilities, and English Language learners as failing.” Peter hates that.

Cunningham even has reservations about the rather tame criticism of charter schools: He calls it “extreme” that the Democratic Party supports “high-quality public charter schools,” as long as they don’t, “replace or destabilize traditional public schools.”

DFER's Shavar Jeffries claims that the original draft on education was “progressive and balanced.” but that the new language “threatens to roll back” President Obama’s education legacy. I hope so, considering that what Jeffries calls "Obama's education legacy" is actually George Bush's.

The platform shift marks a setback for these corporate reformers and their patrons--Gates, Walton, Broad, etc... I have suggested that Eli Broad should even demand his $12M back from Cunningham and Edu_post. They obviously have no juice.

Here's an example of the disrespect these guys have for the millions of Sanders supporters.

Looks like Sanders delegates plan to make a stink at the convention.https://t.co/epb52WyEmm

— Peter Cunningham (@PCunningham57) July 12, 2016

I'm still waiting to see what Cunningham's former boss, Duncan, has to say on this.

There's  much in the platform that progressives will dislike. Some things I personally find offensive. As the Nation notes:

After the amendment to secure the rights of Palestinians was voted down, the room unanimously supported a move to eradicate wildlife trafficking that would have helped save creatures like Cecil the lion.

But at least on education and a few other issues, Sanders' people were able to leverage some concessions. In exchange, if he can deliver the party at least 70% of his voters (and I believe he can) he will all but ensure a Trump defeat. More important, Sanders has promised to keep the movement behind his campaign going after the election.

Looking back, this is the kind of negotiation that should have taken place on the part of AFT and NEA leaders before their now discredited early and divisive Clinton endorsement.

I have no doubt that after the election, Clinton and the party leadership will try to backtrack on the education plank. But now at least, there's a document that activists, parents and teachers can use to hold her feet to the fire. Something that wasn't done during the Obama years.

Activists learned they could enter the lion's den and win some victories. Now the struggle moves back out in the streets, the communities and the schools.

No, don't leave minimum wage, testing, or school deseg to the states

Just got a robocall from CTU organizer Brandon Johnson reminding me to call my state senator (Iris Martinez) and push for passage of HB557, the elected school board bill. So I did. Thanks Brandon.

Donald Trump now says, he supports a raise in the minimum wage. Good thing I'm wearing my flood pants. The campaign bullshit is already ankle-deep.

On NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday, Trump told Chuck Todd, “I don’t know how people make it on $7.25.” Soon after, on ABC’s “This Week,” the Republican added, “I haven’t decided in terms of numbers, but I think people have to get more.”

 TODD: Right. You want the fed– but should the federal government set a floor, and then you let the states– 

TRUMP: No, I’d rather have the states go out and do what they have to do. And the states compete with each other, not only other countries, but they compete with each other, Chuck. So I like the idea of let the states decide. But I think people should get more. I think they’re out there. They’re working. It is a very low number. You know, with what’s happened to the economy, with what’s happened to the cost. I mean, it’s just– I don’t know how you live on $7.25 an hour. But I would say let the states decide.

I haven't heard so much states-rights pandering since the Supreme Court ruled on Brown vs. Board of Ed in '54,  when the big scare in Dixie was that the federal gov't was going to force school desegregation at gun-point upon the states. That sure as hell didn't happen. Did it?

Ironically, it was Pres. Obama's right-hand man in education, Arne Duncan, who undercut the Justice Dept's own move against Louisiana's use of vouchers and charter schools to promote re-segregation. Duncan's argument against "forced integration" echoed those of AR Gov. Orville Faubus and AL police chief "Bull" Conner in the '50s.

Trump says, let the states compete over minimum wage with corporate-tool govs like Bobby Jindal in LA, Bruce Rauner in IL, Scott Walker in WI, or John Kasich in OH leading the charge. Great plan, Trumpf. Isn't that what we have now? MW will be down to a dollar a day.

As a direct result of the Fight For 15 Movement, several cities have already passed $15/hr. minimum-wage ordinances on their own. And guess what? The Golden Gate Bridge hasn't fallen into the bay. In fact, biz is booming wherever the MW is the highest. Companies are not fleeing San Francisco, Pittsburgh, L.A., or N.Y.  A federal minimum-wage floor would ensure that they can't.

But Trump isn't the only one raising up the new states-rights banner. After all, isn't that the gist of the new national education law that even the teacher unions are raving about?

Pres. Obama signs new ESSA law. 

ESSA supposedly ends the years of testing madness imposed by the DOE (good) and greatly limits the federal government’s control of education policy that began in 1965 when the original Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) passed as part of President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty.

I guess the war is over. Poverty won.

But there's no indication that leaving testing (or poverty) in the hands of the states will eliminate or reduce testing madness or improve learning outcomes.

Arguments for or against federal power mean little without content. Yes, keep big gov't (state and federal) hands off our cell phones, churches and out of our bed rooms. Cut the Pentagon war machine, yes.

But on things like environmental protection, federal lands and national parks, enforcement of civil rights law, gun control, and protection of our drinking water (Flint, MI) -- hands on.

As for unrestricted states power over education, take a look at what's going on in IL.

Chicago Public Schools are now 10 months without a budget. Gov. Rauner continues to hold the budget hostage, hoping for a pro-business, "grand bargain" with Boss Madigan that includes draconian cuts to social services and the neutering of the state's teacher unions. State colleges universities like Chicago State, are on the brink of collapse and corrupt charter school networks like UNO are laughing all the way to the bank.

Where are you feds?

Need a new minimum wage ordinance in Chicago

Some days the encampment under a bridge just south of downtown and just north of Chicago’s Chinatown has the feeling of a bedraggled backyard barbecue. Men from Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala cook frozen shrimp or crab over a fire, drink beers, joke and even sing. On this Saturday in February, however, the men are silent, and the fear and misery in the air are palpable. It is just too cold. -- The Guardian

Now that the Fight-For-15 Movement has gained such broad support and with 14 cities and states passing $15/hr. minimum wage laws in 2015, isn't it time for new legislation here in Chicago?

We had broad support for it here until Mayor Rahm Emanuel undercut a move by the City Council's Progressive Caucus by countering with his own $13/hr. bill. But Chicago workers won't see even  $13/hr. for three more years under the mayor's plan. This year Chicago comes up 50 cents from Illinois' $8.25 rate, which is already $1 higher than the federal rate. After that, the wage will go up by 50 and 2017, and by $1 in 2018 and 2019.

Now that Rahm is on the ropes politically, it seems to me that this is the time for a new $15 bill to be introduced. He would have a tough time opposing it, especially in a national election year. Rahm is already facing a probable teachers strike in May. The CTU has already called for a $15/hr. floor for all CPS employees. A united front of unions, City Council members, and the Fight-For-15 Movement would be pretty hard to beat.

Families can't survive at the current $10/hr. rate. The result is too many workers are still finding themselves homeless. Too many students are coming to school hungry or having to drop out of high school to find work. Too many black families (200,000 African-Americans) have left Chicago, many in search of livable wages.

Bernie Sanders has been leading the charge nationally for the $15 MW. Hillary Clinton, ever the triangulator, has been resistant to such a federal law. Up until now, she's pushed for a gradually-imposed $12/hr. bill,  but now says she could sign such a $15 bill with "stipulations", if elected.

I guess this is what they mean when they say Bernie is "pushing her to the left". I'm doubtful.

How I get my news

At Fight For 15 rally in Chicago

Funny way to get the protest news. This morning's traffic report on NBC News warns me to watch out for Fight for 15 protests tying up downtown traffic. Thanks @KyeMartin. I'll rush right over.

More breaking news from CJR. Arne Duncan and his replacement at DOE, John King discover there's actual school segregation in Pinellas County, Florida.

 ...the US Department of Education opened a civil rights investigation into the district, the Times reported. Top department officials had first visited the district after reading the original Times series, which made clear that these aren’t just any struggling schools—they’re schools where student performance plummeted beginning in 2007, when the district abandoned an integration plan that had been in place for decades and the schools became resegregated.

Remember, it was then-Ed Sec. Duncan who, in 2013, came out firmly against what he called, "forced integration".  Shades of  "Bull Connor" and Orville Faubus.

CJR and local media have labeled re-segregated, impoverished Florida schools as "failure factories", a term more appropriate for the Duncan/King Dept. of Ed.

Duncan's reign was marked by his misuse of federal funding to favor (even mandate through Race To The Top) the spread of privately-run charter schools.

This from Phi Delta Kappa:

The fact is we don’t have to guess about the consequences of one of the Obama Administration’s most visible policies: the national expansion of charter schools. We need only turn to a large body of relevant research showing that charter schools, on average, don’t have an academic advantage over traditional public schools (Gill et al., 2007; Gleason, Clark, Tuttle, & Dwoyer, 2010), but they do have a significant risk of leading to increased segregation (Booker, Zimmer, & Buddin, 2005; Gulosino & d’Entremont, 2011).

Remember too, that it was Duncan, while CEO of Chicago schools back in '07, who lobbied to have the city's deseg consent decree thrown out, which it finally was in 2009.

So the next time you hear these guys say that "education is the civil rights issue of our time", nod and ask them, "which side are you on?"

NOW: dual marches of home care and fast food workers converge on Loyola campus! #Fightfor15 pic.twitter.com/zoU256BruM

— Fight For 15 Chicago (@chifightfor15) April 14, 2016

Civil Rights Movement Rebirth in 2014-15

Today makes it 6 years since Oscar Grant was killed at the Fruitvale Bart Station. 

The Fannie Lou Hamer-Ella Baker model...There's been a rebirth of Civil Rights Movement in 2014-15, says Politico. Thousands of youth and community activists have been energized, politicized. I'm wondering why few political candidates (including progressives) are addressing issues it's raised?

This re-energized millennial movement, which will make itself felt all the more in 2015, differs from its half-century-old civil rights-era forebear in a number of important ways. One, it is driven far more by social media and hashtags than marches and open-air rallies. Indeed, if you wanted a megaphone for a movement spearheaded by young people of color, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better one than Twitter, whose users skew younger and browner than the general public.

Ella Baker

According to Politico,

...the young activists are inclined to the “Fannie Lou Hamer-Ella Baker model”—an approach that embraces the grass roots and in which agency is widely diffused. Indeed, many of the activists name-checked Baker, a lesser-known but enormously influential strategist of the civil rights era. She helped found Martin Luther King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference but became deeply skeptical of the cult of personality that she felt had formed around him. And she vocally disagreed with the notion that power in the movement should be concentrated among a few leaders, who tended to be men with bases of power that lay in the church. “My theory is, strong people don’t need strong leaders,” she said.

Don't miss this excellent summary of 2014 corporate-style school reform and charter hustling, posted by Jeff Bryant at Salon.

In 2014, charter schools, which had always been marketed for a legendary ability to deliver promising new innovations for education, became known primarily for their ability to concoct innovative new scams.

Forecasts about what 2015 will bring to the education landscape frequently foresee more charter schools as charter-friendly lawmakers continue to act witlessly to proliferate these schools. But make no mistake, the charter school scandals of 2014 forever altered the narrative about what these institutions really bring to the populace.

Rahm wants all the credit for this pitifully weak Chicago minimum-wage law. This, even though he undercut the effort by the Progressive Caucus to push for a $15/hr. minimum, like Seattle, Tacoma, and San Francisco have. Instead he responded to massive protests and demonstrations and tried to outflank the Caucus by settling for a $13 increase over 4 years. Hardly a livable wage.

Jesus "Chuy" Garcia's spokesman Monica Trevino says "raising the minimum wage was not a tough choice, as the mayor likes to say. It was an easy one that he should have made his first year in office."

"Mayor Emanuel took only two weeks to put out a TV commercial after the increase passed, and it should be clear to everyone that Mayor Emanuel only makes hard choices ... when they personally benefit him," Trevino added.

If you want to improve learning outcomes, raise the minimum wage

Ald. John Arena speaking at a Raise Chicago Coalition news conference on a minimum wage proposal expected to be approved Tuesday by the Chicago City Council | Brian Jackson/ Sun-Times

One way to really improve student learning outcomes and lower dropout rates is to raise the minimum wage. A bill to do just that comes up today before the Chicago City Council and is likely to pass since it has the support of the mayor and many community organizations and unions in town.

Rahm's bill, which would gradually raise Chicago’s minimum wage to $13 an hour over the next five years, was approved by a key City Council committee Monday evening, clearing the way for it to be brought before the full Council today.

It's not the bill we wanted -- $15/hour, like San Francisco -- but still a partial victory if it stands. It preempted a minimum wage bill in the IL State Legislature that would have raised the MW only to $11/hour and might have exempted Chicago altogether. One issue for progressives is the fact that the mayor’s plan only raises the hourly wage for tip workers by a dollar, to $5.95.

I liked the way the S-T's Spielman and Slodysco described Rahm's opportunism and his motivation for pushing the bill through the council:

Passage of the minimum wage hike is a cornerstone of Emanuel's shift to the political left — a move that will help him undercut the progressive base of his two strongest challengers: Ald. Bob Fioretti (2nd) and Cook County Commissioner Jesus "Chuy" Garcia.

If that's the case, thanks to the left flank for pushing Rahm to act, if only to buy some political credibility.

 On Emanuel’s left flank, progressives argued the wage hike, which will be phased in over several years, doesn’t go far enough. Indeed, members of the Council’s progressive caucus were pushing for a $15-an-hour minimum wage. 

“It’s not enough. Clearly, it’s not enough. $15 an hour… is what we’re going to continue to fight for,” Fioretti said.