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. 

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Mourning through militancy

Columnist Steven Thrasher

But when death has come through great injustice, mourning through a militancy aimed at stopping similarly unjust deaths is not just healthy, but righteous and ethical. Mourning through militancy is one of the more noble sides of America’s history. -- Guardian 

 West side Chicagoan Eric Smith

“It’s sad out here. There was so much blood.” -- Tribune

AFSCME Pres. Lee Saunders on Janus case

“This is the place, sisters and brothers, where we make a stand today.” -- At rally Saturday in New York City.

Claremont Prof. Charles Taylor Kerchner

"Could [Janus] put teachers' unions out of business? No. Not close. Unions can go to grass roots and get back to constant organizing fairly quickly. It might drive unions to get closer to their core, to get closer to their members, and to be sort of more in touch with what's going on." -- EdWeek 

Republican Congressman Brian Mast

 I have fired tens of thousands of rounds through that rifle, many in combat... We used it because it was the most lethal — the best for killing our enemies. And I know that my community, our schools and public gathering places are not made safer by any person having access to the best killing tool the Army could put in my hands. -- New York Times 

Arturo Sarukhan Former Mexican Ambassador to U.S.

“Even from the get-go, the idea of Mexico paying for the wall was never going to fly... It could end up with the U.S. asking itself, ‘Who lost Mexico?’ ” -- Washington Post

#VetsForGunReform

I also renounce my @NRA endowment membership as it is clear that their idea of “responsible gun ownership” means only to line their pockets and sow persistent fear. We went to combat. Combat does not need to come to us.

cc: @iAmTheWarax

— Space Cowboy (@Strike_Williams) February 18, 2018

Another look at school size and the Parkland shooting

A year ago, after taking $30M from NRA, Trump signed order loosening Obama-era gun sale restrictions.

Broward County, FL -- School's back in session here today and it will be interesting to see if the student protests continue to gain strength and capture prime media space. National anti-gun school walkouts are being planned for March 14 and again on April 20th, the anniversary of the Columbine shooting.

One thing I've learned is that my original comparison of Marjory Stoneman Douglas with Columbine doesn't hold up across the board. It's true that both were large schools -- Columbine had about 2,000 students while Douglas has more than 3,000 -- and that large school size correlates with increased incidents of violence and often breeds the kind of anonymity that prevents intervention before a Parkland-type event can take place.

A closer look makes me think that school size wasn't the big problem at MSD. While the FBI may have botched handling the tips they received about shooter Nikolas Cruz, the school's teachers and administrators didn't. Despite the size of their school, they were in touch with students well enough to anticipate Cruz as a potential violent actor and intervened in his case as best they could. Interventions took place going back to his middle-school days. Cruz faced a long string of escalating disciplinary measures throughout his academic career for insubordination, profanity, disruption, fighting and assault. Those attempts ended with Cruz's expulsion from high.

Washington Post reports:

The real problems started at least as early as middle school and quickly intensified. There were the vocal outbursts, disturbing drawings of stick figures with guns, constant disciplinary issues. There were threatening statements written on his homework and scrap paper, including a reference to killing President Barack Obama, saying he should be “burned alive and eaten.”

His middle school and high school teachers referred him to individual and family counseling, the records show. They held parent conferences and called social workers. They sent him to in-school suspension, and they sent him off campus. For a time, they sent him to a school for emotionally disturbed youth. Finally, after he was disciplined for an assault at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, they asked for an assessment of the threat he posed to his school, and ultimately he was expelled, about a year before he returned with a gun.

Up until the time of the attack, teachers were actively engaged with Cruz and acted professionally. During the attack, many acted heroically and were instrumental in saving student lives. This included football coach Aaron Feis who gave up his own life while shielding students from the gunfire.

Even if the FBI had properly followed up on tips they received about Cruz, it's unclear what actions might have been taken. The point here is that nothing the 19-year-old Cruz did up until the time of the shooting, including his purchasing of an assault rifle at local gun store, was illegal. Keeping an automatic weapon out of his hands would have been the only way to prevent the massacre in Parkland.

Pres. Trump's attempt to blame the FBI and even the student victims themselves is indicative of his own sociopathy. It was Trump who one year ago, after accepting more than $30 million from the NRA, signed an order loosening gun sale restrictions.

In a vapid response to the mounting student protests both parties are offering up meaningless bills which, even if passed (doubtful) will do nothing to prevent more massacres of this type, let alone the daily deaths from gun violence in cities like Chicago. The GOP bill simply tweaks existing state rules on gun registration.

Sen. Diane Feinstein and the Dems want to raise the legal age for buying AR-15s from 18 to 21. Democrats once again seem willing to snuggle up close, but slightly to the left of Trump and the GOP.  Nothing they could do could breed more cynicism among the protesting students and potential young voters. It seems the Dems have once again come up with a recipe for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in 2018.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Emma Gonzalez, a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School

“If the president wants to come up to me and tell me to my face that it was a terrible tragedy and how it should never have happened and maintain telling us how nothing is going to be done about it, I’m going to happily ask him how much money he received from the National Rifle Association."  -- Student protest rally in Ft. Lauderdale

Flint Taylor, Hampton family attorney

“When I told him I needed a recess to come to Bill’s funeral, the judge sent his respects." -- Village Free Press

Maria Thorne, 5th-grade Florida teacher to Paul Ryan

 She then told [Ryan] she was a teacher and a resident of the area, to which he responded, “Nice.” That set Thorne off. “Nice? You’re here celebrating the death of 17 children,” she admonished.Ryan weakly replied that he “didn’t want to talk politics” — an odd statement to make at a political fundraiser. Thorne persisted in her critique, and was escorted out of the event as she chanted “no more guns!” -- Ryan caught raising campaign cash in Florida

Arlie Hochschild

...if the Democratic party is to pose a magnetically attractive alternative to Donald Trump, it must address the grievances, the life experiences, the sense of losing ground, of people like those I met and describe in my book, Strangers in Their Own Land. Millions of Trump voters saw the Democrats as beholden to corporate interests as the Republicans, and I believe they are right. -- Guardian

From Littleton to Parkland, lots of hand wringing... [Updated]

I've been closely following the wave of school shootings like the one in Parkland, Florida since my days as a member of Pres. Clinton's Advisory Commission on Youth Violence, following the 1999 mass shootings at Columbine H.S. in Littleton, Colorado.

The Parkland shooting is reportedly, the 208th since Columbine. An ongoing Washington Post analysis has found that more than 150,000 students attending at least 170 primary or secondary schools have experienced a shooting on campus since then.

The similarities between Littleton and Parkland are striking. Both mass school shootings took place in large high schools. Columbine had 2,000 students. Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, 3,000.

I'm in no way blaming the school size or the educators inside the buildings, many of whom acted heroically and saved many lives during the assaults. Just noting that large high schools have a high degree of anonymity. That is, students are rarely known well by adults in the building, unless they are super-high achievers or "trouble makers". The result is, on average, large high schools have nearly ten times the violent incidents as smaller ones.

Whether it was shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold at Columbine or Nikolas Cruz at Parkland, their fellow students were more aware of their potentially dangerous environs and threats of violence within their schools than were school administrators. In both cases and in the many cases in between, school leaders may have missed opportunities to intervene before the fact.

Pres. Trump wasted no time in blaming the Douglas students themselves for the killings. Trump has been in bed with the NRA in opposing any and all gun legislation and it is unclear what if anything he or law enforcement officials would or could have done, even if fellow students and neighbors of Cruz would have reported him to officials or if the FBI had followed up on the many tips they are reported to have received. Everything Cruz did, up until the time of the shootings, was perfectly legal.

In this case, some Parkland school officials were aware of Cruz's violence issues. They even expelled him from Douglas after a fight he had with a fellow student. But this didn't raise any flags when Cruz walked into a local gun shop and bought an assault rifle. By law, it couldn't.

The shooters at both Columbine and Stoneman Douglas were reported to have contacts with neo-fascist or white supremacist groups. Klebold and Harris were white supremacists who carried out their horrific act intentionally on Hitler's birthday. Following the Parkland shootings, a local white supremacist group Republic of Florida (ROF) claimed to have ties to Cruz.

In both cases, the shooters had serious mental problems, mainly severe depression. Klebold and Harris were each heavily medicated and had suicidal tendencies.  After the Columbine massacre, a team of psychiatrists and psychologists determined they were psychopaths, in touch with reality but filled with hate and bent on mass devastation that would outdo even that caused by the Oklahoma City bomber(s).

In a society where guns and bomb weren't so readily available, the pair's names may have ended up on a list of patients receiving treatment for their mental problems, rather than on a list of mass murderers.

We don't know enough about Cruz's mental condition yet. He reportedly also suffered from depression. The point here is not about people suffering from mental illness. But rather, the conditions that enabled them to caused such horrific destruction.

In both cases, the shooters had easy access to guns (including semi-automatic weapons) despite their troubled histories. Thank gutless politicians, often the beneficiaries of huge donations from the NRA, who are afraid to pass reasonable gun control legislation, for that.

News of the Parkland shootings, which left 17 students dead, was met with prayers and lots of hand-ringing by Florida politicians like Sen. Rubio and Gov. Scott, each of whom received A+ ratings from the NRA. Rubio has received more than $3million in NRA campaign donations.

The Republican ‘Thoughts and Prayers’ cliche is so empty of meaning, it mocks the dead. #ParklandShooting

— Charles Fulwood (@Brown_Woofer) February 15, 2018

Gov. Scott signed 5 Pro-gun bills in 2014 making Nicolas Cruz fully able to purchase a gas mask, smoke grenade and an AK-47 with extra magazines. All while under the age of 21 and still in high school. He was too young to by beer but old enough to purchase an assault weapon.

In the rest of the world, there have been 18 school shootings in the last twenty years. In the U.S., there have been 18 school shootings since January 1--35 days.

Marco Rubio and Rick Scott—both of whom carry A+ ratings and endorsements from the N.R.A—leaned on similar, though less elegant talking points. 

 “I think it’s important to know all of [the facts] before you jump to conclusions that there’s some law we could have passed that could have prevented it,” Rubio said in an interview with Fox News in the shooting’s aftermath. He added that lawmakers “can always have that debate, but . . . you should know the facts of that incident before you run out and prescribe [legislation].” 

Over the course of his career, Rubio has received $3.3 million from the N.R.A. Scott has also bucked calls for gun control. After the 2016 Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando, the Florida governor infamously declared, “Let’s remember, the Second Amendment has been around for over 200 years. . . . That’s not what killed innocent people; evil killed innocent people.”

Rubio: We shouldn't "jump to conclusions" that gun control laws would've prevented Florida school shooting https://t.co/y23qCMTMaU pic.twitter.com/jMnweZ5d6f

— The Hill (@thehill) February 15, 2018

While they happened nearly two decades apart, the school shootings at Littleton and Parkland and the hundreds of others in between offer valuable lessons for creating safer schools for our children. Unfortunately, we still have a system where the NRA and other big corporate campaign donors rule congress. Until that changes radically, our children will continue to be at risk in their classrooms and on the streets.

Look for more "prayers and thoughts" coming from the politicians, but no action. Nothing from them, that is, unless Parkland turns out to be the straw that breaks the camel's back and mass protests forces some change.

These racist pols just can't help themselves...

It was 2015, but seems like only yesterday when we were out in the streets demanding the firing of Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy and State's Atty. Anita Alvarez over the cover-up of the racist police murder of Laquan McDonald. Despite Rahm Emanuel's rallying the troops behind McCarthy, we managed to run him out of town. Then we backed current State's Atty. Kim Foxx who made quick work of Alvarez in the election.

Now McCarthy's back and with Trump's political support and money coming from the likes of Rudy Giuliani, he's making noises about running for mayor against his former pal Rahm in 2019.

Rahm backed McCarthy in the Laquan McDonald cover up. 

Problem is that when it comes down to it, he and most of these backwards, newborn pols can't seem to keep their racist mouths shut. Or maybe they're just not being prepped properly. Whether it's professional hate-tweeting Trump (Mexicans are "rapists and criminals"), or Billionaire IL guv candidate J.B. Pritzker, offering to cover then Gov. Rod Blagojevich's ass on the "African-American thing", they seem to all be wired for racist-blurt.

Pritzker put it best, after being caught on an FBI wiretap describing his preference for “a safe black … one that's not going to make any waves.” He apologized by saying, "I was not my best self".

Being his old best self  Monday, at a Northwest Side fundraiser, McCarthy had this to say about the growing mass black exodus from Chicago.

"You know which Blacks we are losing, we are losing the middle class taxpayers who can afford to get out from the South and the West Side. So who is being left behind? It's the trigger pullers."

Yes, "trigger-pullers is how the former top cop views all African-American families currently living on the south and west sides. Is it any wonder that during his administration we had a record quarter-million stop-and-searches within one 90-day period.

Yesterday on twitter, a fellow Rahm critic and Troy LaRaviere supporter, implored me, that even if McCarthy or Paul Vallas should make it to a run-off, we should vote for them against the hated Rahm. I tweeted back...

You mean, support Vallas or McCarthy? You're kidding, right? Have you met me?

— Mike Klonsky (@mikeklonsky) February 13, 2018

At last night's fundraiser for Marie Newman

Rep. Jan Schakowsky introduces Marie Newman at last night's fundraiser

I'll be honest. I don't like going to political campaign fundraisers for two reasons. One, they're usually boring. And two, I can't afford them. I usually escape by making some lame excuse (except when they are at our house and I can't leave) and offering to send a check to the campaign to make up for my absence.

But this past week I went to two that I really enjoyed. The first, for Chuy Garcia, our next congressman. It was held in the neighborhood at Webster's Wine Bar, so I had no excuse. The crowd was mainly a lively and diverse group of young activists and the wine/beer tickets that came with our donation helped ease the pain. I am an avid Chuy supporter and know that he will probably coast to victory in this congressional race, even without my puny financial help (he holds a huge lead in the polls over his nearest rival, Sol Flores). But as a cautious Chuy reminded me the other night, in politics, never take victory for granted (something I always told my ball players).

Last night I begrudgingly slogged through the remnants of Chicago's snowpocalypse to the home of  long-time friend, Marilyn Katz, to help support Marie Newman's campaign.

Marilyn is a talented Democratic Party fundraiser with a big, beautiful home and she's good at turning out supporters for progressive causes. When she calls, it's hard to say no. Plus she's a great cook and I hadn't eaten much all day.

If Newman defeats Lipinski, nazi GOP candidate Jones is next.

Marie Newman is running against Rep. Dan Lipinski in Illinois 3rd Congressional District Democratic primary. If a diseased chicken was running against Lipinski, I would donate a bucket of antibiotic-laced chicken feed to the campaign fund. Lipinski is the classic Chicago machine Democrat, the kind they used to call blue dogs, but now just call Democrats. He's anti-choice for women, anti-gay, and he voted against the Affordable Care Act.

Marie was introduced by Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, one of the few good people in the current House. Marie's own rap was short, spirited and to the point. Lipinski keeps getting elected in a district that voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama and for Bernie Sanders. There's no reason for him to get re-elected unless progressives sit on their asses while the machine turns out it base.

Marie has solid progressive credentials besides being not-Lipinski. Plus, she also has a good chance to win. Recent polls show her leading the race by about 5 points.  CNN, Politico, The Hill, Huffington Post are touting the race as one of the most pivotal democratic primaries to watch in 2018.

If Marie can beat Lipinski in the primary, guess who her Republican opponent will be? None other than Arthur Jones, the open nazi running unopposed in the GOP primary. Marie will be well prepared for Jones, since on most issues he's the same as Lipinski.

I was so impressed with Marie, I'm inviting her to be a guest on Hitting Left, even though Brother Fred and I promised each other no more pols for a while. We'll make an exception in this case if she can fit it into her busy schedule running up to election day.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES: The search for truth

Dana Milbank on the death of a border patrol agent

Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it. -- Washington Post 

Porter’s ex-wife, Jennifer Willoughby

"Truth exists" whether Trump "accepts it or not". -- CNN

Tad O’Malley, conservative conspiracy theorist in the X-Files

“Truth is fluid and alterable.” -- The Verge

 Gary Younge

...before radical history can be embraced by the establishment it must be washed clean of whatever ideology made it effective. Radical change is most likely to come from below, be fiercely resisted by entrenched interests from above and achieved through confrontation. -- Guardian

On FOX Chicago, reporter Mike Flannery asks former Chicago top cop Garry McCarthy about the LaQuan McDonald shooting death and officer Jason Van Dyke's culpability. McCarthy, a Trump supporter and pal of neo-fascist Rudy Giuliani, is making noises about running for mayor.

Here's an excerpt of that interview. 

Mike Flannery: Many Chicagoans look at that (video of Jason Van Dyke shooting Laquan McDonald) and they see a murder. Do you?

Garry McCarthy: Um. He's gonna have a hard time, Jason Van Dyke, explaining why he did what he did. That's the bottom line. He gets his due process just like anybody else. But it's gonna be really difficult to make a case. There are cases -

Flannery: Do you see a murder?

McCarthy: You know (long pause)

Flannery: Why are you reluctant to say that?

'Let children read whatever they want and then talk about it with them.'
- Judy Blume, who celebrates a landmark birthday today. Happy birthday!#MondayMotivation pic.twitter.com/6QkZ2YERcL

— Waterstones (@Waterstones) February 12, 2018

How many selves does Pritzker have?

"I was not my best self", claims Pritzker. 

The IL governor's race may be the most expensive in history. But while the two largely self-funded billionaires in the race may still win their respective primaries, they are both losing more credibility with every dollar they spend on their own campaigns

The week started with the announcement that an open nazi, Arthur Jones, was on the cusp of claiming the GOP nomination in the state's 3rd congressional district, and went downhill from there.

Incumbent Gov. Bruce Rauner is now rapidly losing ground to alt-right neophyte candidate Jeanne Ives, whose current disgusting racist, transphobic, anti-abortion, and anti-immigrant ads are stirring the downstate Republican base in a way reminiscent of the 2016 Trump campaign.

The base feels betrayed by faux-Republican and Rahm Emanuel drinking-buddy Rauner, who signed a measure to expand taxpayer-subsidized abortions after promising he would veto the bill. Now Ives, echoing Trump, Bannon, and the fascist Jones,and backed by right-wing billionaire Dick Uihlein, is promising to deliver "the revolution" they've all been waiting for. Uihlein, a former Rauner donor, was the top donor to racist, child molester AL Senate candidate Roy Moore.

Rauner, taking his primary victory for granted, had been spending millions on ads directed not at Ives, but at Democrat billionaire and primary frontrunner J.B. Pritzker. The ads, using FBI wiretaps of Pritzker talking to then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich, have been effective in tearing away Pritzker's progressive cover.

Fred Klonsky toon. 

In the latest ad, you can hear Pritzker leveraging his status as a huge party campaign donor, to encourage Blago to choose "least-offensive" African-American candidate Jesse White to fill Barack Obama's open senate seat. 

“I’m sure you thought of this one, but Jesse White,” Pritzker tells then Gov. Rod Blagojevich. “Even though I know you guys aren’t like, you know, bosom buddies or anything, it covers you on the African-American thing.”

“Correct,” Blagojevich replies. “(White)’s totally, he’s totally, you know, uh, he’s Senate material in a way that Emil Jones isn’t, if I may say,' Pritzker says … 'But if you’re forced to put an African-American in the spot, which my guess is, you’re not forced to do anything, but my guess is a lot of pressure to do it, of all the African-Americans I can think that are sort of like qualified and vetted and people will say, ‘Oh, that’s, you know, that’s that’s a pretty good pick,’ the one that’s least offensive and maybe gets you the most because it gets you that secretary of state appointment is Jesse White,’ Pritzker tells Blagojevich.”

With his private racist comments laid bare, Pritzker is now in damage-control mode. In his defense, and flanked by a small coterie of African-American party loyalists and beneficiaries of Pritzker largesse, including Jesse White, City Treasurer Kurt Summers and Aldermen Pat Dowell, Michael Scott and Walter Burnett, Pritzker claims,

"On that call, I was not my best self."

Wrong response. It raises the question of how many "selfs" does  Pritzker have? The real one is usually the one that comes out when others aren't listening. (Or when you think no one's listening.)

The beneficiary of all this seems to be State Sen. Dan Biss who's become the main target of  Pritzker's own ads and who, despite them, has now cut into Pritzker's lead in the polls. Despite our past sharp differences, Biss has become my pick in the guv's race.

Says Biss:

“For too long our broken system has allowed the wealthy to have unfettered access to the decision-makers in our government,” Biss said in a statement. “That’s what breeds corruption. And when that access involves two wealthy white men making political calculations based on skin color, that’s what perpetuates a racist system.”

He's got that right. It's another example of what can happen when billionaires, used to buying politicians, become one themselves.  

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Happy birthday, Rosa Parks

Actor and activist Cynthia Nixon 

“We have to be more than the anti-Trump party,” she said at the annual Human Rights Campaign Greater New York gala, where she was given the Visibility Award. “In 2018, we don't just need to elect more Democrats, we also need better Democrats.” -- Politico

Eagles tight end Zach Ertz

“If they had overturned that [touchdown], I don’t know what would have happened to the city of Philadelphia." -- MSN

Teaching Tolerance Project

"In the ways that we teach and learn about the history of American slavery," write the authors of a new report from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), "the nation needs an intervention." -- Teaching Hard History: American Slavery 

 Kristiina Volmari, Finnish National Agency for Education 

“We let children be children for as long as possible...We want our teachers to focus on learning, not testing. We do not, at all, believe in ranking students and ranking schools." -- SBS News

Trump: 'I't may take a traumatic event to unify the country.'

Truth be told, I didn't watch Trump's shit show last night. Watched the Pistons demolish the Cavs instead. Much more satisfying.

I rarely watch SOTU. I wait to read the transcript the next day looking for keywords. The first thing I look for, out of force of habit, is education. D.T.'s only mention was this:

 Let’s open great vocational schools so our future workers can learn a craft and realize their full potential. (Applause.) 

Nothing about "choice", vouchers, charters, teacher unions, Betsy DeVos...nada. As for unfunded voc-ed for the poor, Nancy Pelosi said it best:

Build new vocational schools? With what? Your FY18 budget *cuts* these programs and career technician education, @realdonaldtrump. #SOTU

— Nancy Pelosi (@NancyPelosi) January 31, 2018

I won't take up space here to debunk last-night's long trail of lies and disinformation. MSM did that well enough this morning.

Two things Trump said really worried me.

The first was his commitment to expand the nuclear arsenal and use the threat nukes as a "deterrent".

The second, even more frightening took place in his earlier meeting with network news anchors. Trump told them that he would like to "unify the country" but that because of the "tremendous divisiveness", it would likely be impossible without a traumatic event affecting Americans.

“I would love to be able to bring back our country into a great form of unity,” Trump said. “Without a major event where people pull together, that’s hard to do. But I would like to do it without that major event because usually that major event is not a good thing.”

His meaning was clear.

Buckle up! Resist!

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Samantha Eyler-Driscoll

Senior Editor at the Stigler Center and its publication ProMarket, and one of six members of the ProMarket editorial board, I have opposed since its inception the proposal by my colleague Luigi Zingales to provide a platform to Steve Bannon at the Stigler Center, as well as the use of ProMarket to promote the provision of that platform, on grounds that it normalizes white nationalism and implicates us in the concrete violence wrought on American lives every day by that ideology. -- Resignation statement

Donald Trump

"I wouldn't say I'm a feminist..." -- Interview with Piers Morgan 

Janelle Monae

 “We are also daughters, wives, mothers, sisters and human beings. We come in peace, but we mean business.” -- Grammys

Tiffany Kidd, Ballou H.S. math teacher

“I feel like we’re now in a culture where we’re forced to fail students, where we used to be able to provide solutions.There’s been anger and frustration.” -- Washington Post

Chicago State board member Nicholas Gowen 

...said he was taken aback by Vallas’ resignation. “Quite frankly, I’m a little floored,” Gowen said. “If he desires to run for mayor, then of course he can’t keep this position, but that should have been made clear early on if that was his desire. I find it hard to believe this was a lark.” --  Tribune

Recess is the fourth R https://t.co/4176f7JKJ6

— John Merrow (@John_Merrow) January 29, 2018

The late Rev. Walker and his charter school in Harlem

Rev. Dr. Wyatt Tee Walker in Harlem

I didn't know the Rev. Dr. Wyatt Tee Walker personally, but I knew of him and admired his work, his dedication and brilliance as a heroic '60s civil rights movement strategist and aide to Dr. King, supporter of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, and later as Harlem community organizer. I was deeply saddened by his death.

While nothing diminishes my respect for Rev. Walker during that period, it's clear that at a later point in his life, his perspective changed. He became a community investment banker and real estate developer. His disdain for the lack of decent, affordable housing and education options in the black community led him to become a supporter of charter schools and school vouchers. In 1999 he helped establish and lent his name to the state's first charter school, the Sisulu-Walker Charter School (named also for the South African anti-apartheid leader Walter Sisulu).

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As readers of this blog know, I am not a supporter of either privately-run charters or school vouchers. But back in the mid-90's our Small Schools Workshop was an incubator for some of the first small charter schools in Chicago that opened in 1997. That was back when charters were organized and led by union teachers as a hoped-for critical force for innovation within the public school system.

How times have changed. In recent years, charters have been captured by politically-connected networks run, not by teachers, but mostly by anti-union boards of wealthy, corporate, pro-privatization patrons who have garnered support from within both recent Democrat and Republican administrations and their departments of education -- from Arne Duncan to Betsy DeVos. Billions of dollars have been diverted from public schools to support these networks. Teachers have been disempowered and left without union representation and collective bargaining rights.

But I still try to seperate my critical opposition to charter expansion from my support for charter school teachers, parents and students. I'm encouraged by union organizing efforts on the part of charter teachers and by the coming merger in Chicago between the CTU with and the Chicago Assoc.of Charter School Teachers (ChiACTS).

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The Sisulu-Walker Charter School of Harlem (formerly Sisulu Children's Academy-Harlem Public Charter School, and its for-profit management company, Victory Schools) initially drew rave reviews and drew backing from wealthy investors like venture capitalist Steven Klinsky. It's opening-day ceremonies were attended by Pres. George W. Bush (then Texas governor), Governor George Pataki, Secretary of State Randy Daniels and other national, state and local dignitaries. In 2009, Mayor Bloomberg celebrated the school’s 10th anniversary by demanding an end to the state cap on charters.

It was Klinsky, with no background in education, who started for-profit Victory Schools, Inc., made high-interest loans to the school and decided the curriculum for Sisulu-Walker would be Direct Instruction (DI). It was soon claimed to be one of the top performing public charter schools in all of Manhattan based on student test scores.

But it was only a matter of time before the "luster faded", ratings fell, Klinsky's money dried up and foundations backed away. Like so many charters, it was also beset with financial mis-management issues, teacher and principal turnover, and student recruitment violations.

Sisulu-Walker had five principals in its first decade, and the state put the school on probation in 2004. After the charter was renewed, a 6th principal, Michelle Haynes, came in 2012.

[Victory's]show place charter school, Sisulu-Walker Charter School of Harlem, received the 15th-lowest score on the 2010 city progress report cards, ranking in the bottom one percent of all schools. It received “F’ grades in the school environment and progress categories. Most of the school’s teachers reported problems with order and discipline and they recently voted to unionize. (Huffington)

And unionize they did. 

No need to go on. Those who have followed the ongoing saga of school privatization can anticipate the rest. Despite its name and all the ballyhoo surrounding its opening, in the final analysis Sisulu-Walker offered nothing more innovative and no better learning environment that the neighborhood schools Rev. Walker had criticized. Life conditions for the neighborhood's poorest families grew worse and many were forced to leave Harlem. If anything, Harlem's charters were used to gentrify the neighborhood rather than a serious attempt and public school reform.

Hopefully things will change under new leadership and with the empowerment of the school's teachers.

My point here is that we celebrate the life and mourn the death of Rev. Walker despite our differences. Times and conditions bring out the best and worst in all of us.

'Underutilization': The devastating language behind school closings.

It's time to reconsider the word, "underutilized" as CPS code language for schools in black communities, in the same way "Norwegian" has become code for white in the Trumpian lexicon.

Chicago Public Schools finally released data last month, showing that it considers more than 200 of its schools -- almost a third of the total, and nearly all with black or Latino student populations -- to be underutilized and therefore primed for closure and possible replacement with privately-run charters. CPS no longer calculates space use for privately-managed charter or contract schools.

Some 229 buildings now are considered underutilized, nearly as many as CPS considers to be efficiently used. That’s according to a newly-revised formula CPS employed to compare numbers of classrooms in a school with the number of students enrolled, calculating approximately 30 kids per classroom.

Another 29 buildings have been deemed overcrowded, including a few selective enrollment schools that can screen applicants and limit who gets in. That leaves 231 “efficient” buildings — now defined as where enrollment constitutes between 70 and 110 percent of a school’s ideal capacity. The efficient range used to be between 80 and 120 percent.

The study's release, timed with the lifting of the self-imposed cap on school closings, immediately caused confusion since officials had once again, changed the way they calculate “space utilization,” leaving principals and parents unclear about how their schools’ capacity grew since CPS last made the calculations.

Whether it comes to evaluating test scores, graduation rates, special education, or crime rates, Mayor Rahm Emanuel has never been adverse to juking the stats for political advantage.

More importantly, in communities, where the needs for learning spaces as well as for youth and adult social activities are great, there's no reason for so many schools to be shuttered, left as vacant hulls contributing to blight and crime and destabilizing the lives of so many children and families.

This is especially true in neighborhoods like Englewood and South Loop where the city is about to close even more schools while spending hundreds of millions of dollars for new school construction, only blocks from the school buildings they are about to abandon. The question as always, is who are the new schools for?

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I'm looking forward to the release of  Eve Ewing's new book, When the Bell Stops Ringing: Race, History and Discourse Amid Chicago's School Closures. I caught up with Eve last night at the Read/Right Library in Humboldt Park, reading from Electric Arches and talking CPS school closings. She was right on time. 

********** 

It's impossible to understand so-called underutilization or shrinking school populations without coming to terms with the forced mass exodus of hundreds of thousands of Chicago's African-American families over the past three decades. It's an exodus which gov candidate Chris Kennedy, for his own opportunist reasons, laid on MRE's doorstep, for what Kennedy called the mayor's “strategic gentrification.”

Kennedy caught hell from the media for "playing the race card" and the Rahm-protecting Sun-Times even called him a "Stalinist". But he was only saying what everybody already knew, although the push-out of black and poor people from the city predates Rahm's regime. It's been part of well-documented initiatives to whitenize Chicago that goes back decades involving not only previous mayors, but the city's biggest investment banks, corporations and real estate developers, including Kennedy himself.

So whenever a new study on school utilization by CPS comes out, you can bet that the plans for the next wave of school closures have already been laid. Why even bother to go through another round of phony community hearings. Parents, students and community members have consistently voiced opposition to closing their schools only to have their voices ignored.

With former school CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett in prison and former CEO Forrest Claypool forced to resign in the face of corruption charges, it will now be up to Rahm's newly appointed CEO Janice Jackson, to sell "underutilization" to the community.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Women's March, New York

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

The women’s marches were the beginning, not the end. What happens next will be decided by what we do. Movements do not come to us from heaven, fully formed and organized. They are built by actual people, with all their political questions, weaknesses and strengths. -- Guardian 

Betsy DeVos to AEI 

"Common Core is dead" -- NPRed 

Mulvaney: Shutdown "kind of cool".

Mick Mulvaney, director of OMB

“I found out for the first time last night that the person who technically shuts down the government down is me, which is kind of cool." -- Vox 

Jill Abramson

So prevalent is the use of Trump’s name as a slur that the White House had to issue a formal statement saying the president “condemns violence, bigotry and hatred in all its forms, and finds anyone who might invoke his or any other political figure’s name for such aims to be contemptible”. -- Guardian 

Sen. Pat Leahy (D-VT)

"Being from Norway is not a skill." -- To Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen 

Rauner asked, 'Is David Duke a racist?' He dodges like Trump did.

 "Just so you understand, I don't know anything about David Duke, OK?" he said. "I don't know anything about what you're even talking about with white supremacy or white supremacists." -- Donald Trump, Feb. 2016

Remember when candidate Donald Trump refused to condemn the KKK and specifically David Duke as racists? It certainly was a harbinger of things to come.

Fast forward to the current race for governor in IL where racism and the push-out of thousands of the state's African-American families are among the hot campaign issues. It's deja vu all over again.

WVON's Maze Jackson and his morning show co-host, veteran Chicago newsman Charles Thomas, (a former guest on on Hitting Left) asks Gov. Rauner if Donald Trump and/or David Duke can be considered racists?

It went down like this...

MAZE JACKSON: “The President of the United States used language that we’ve never heard before, we call – we said he said ‘shitolee’ on this show. You heard his comments. Is Donald Trump racist? Is he a racist?”

RAUNER: “I’ll say this. That language has no place in our political conversation.”

 JACKSON: “But is he a racist?” 

RAUNER: “That language has no place in our political conversation.”

JACKSON: “But we’ve got it. We heard it. He said it. So it’s in the universe. So, to a – to the Haitians that live in this city, in the state – what’s up with Donald Trump? How do you respond to that?” 

RAUNER: “That language has no place in our political conversation.” 

CHARLES THOMAS: “But you won’t call him a racist?” 

RAUNER: “No place.” 

THOMAS: “Is David Duke a racist? I mean, is… what about Donald Trump? 

RAUNER: “You know what? We have racists in our society. We have got to come together to change the system in Illinois. Illinois is broken. Our system is broken. African American families are suffering in Illinois. It’s worse than anywhere with unemployment. We have got to change our system.”

So shameless Rauner, who has a wing-nut Republican on his right and Democrats on his...you decide, won't publicly call out racism in its most obvious form for fear of alienating what remains of his right-wing, downstate base. Now he's suddenly for overthrowing the whole system.

Trying to avoid total embarrassment, we later hear this from a Rauner staff member:

“The governor believes that David Duke is a racist,” Justin Giorgio, a spokesman for Rauner’s campaign, said later in an email. “As he stated in his interview this morning, the governor is working to bring all Illinoisans together to overcome the racism that exists in our society.”

For all this slip-sliding and evasion, Rauner gets a personal thank you from the former Grand Dragon himself.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

"I am not a racist."  (Painting by Haitian-American artist, Watson Mere)

“We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial “outside agitator” idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.” -- Martin Luther King Jr., The Radical King

Steven W. Thrasher

As often as American politicians are always saying they wish Ferguson or NFL protesters did things “more like King”, white Americans have never really liked any kind of racial protest, and didn’t especially like King when he was alive. They didn’t like him marching at Selma or helping run a bus boycott in Montgomery. The didn’t like him organizing a Poor People’s Campaign to try to bring together economically exploited people of all races. And they certainly didn’t like him showing up in Memphis to help sanitation workers strike for better working conditions after two of their own, Echol Cole and Robert Walker, were killed on the job. -- Guardian

U.S. & Norwegian educators statement

“The vile and unacceptable comments made by President Trump must be condemned with the strongest possible force. Norwegian and American educators stand in solidarity with their sisters and brothers in Haiti, El Salvador and across Africa—and people of African descent in both of our countries—who who will bear the brunt of bigotry." -- Union of Education Norway and AFT on President Trump’s Racism

Rev. William H. Lamar IV

“Donald Trump is America’s id,” said Pastor Lamar, whose 180-year-old church is five blocks from the White House. “He is as American as baseball and apple pie.” He added, “America has to think long and hard about whether it wants something different.” -- New York Times

In a world where unstable leaders wield weapons of mass destruction, Hawaii is a wake up call. Nuclear buttons and ballistic missiles only serve to terrorize innocent civilians. They endanger us. They do not protect us.

— Eugene Gu, MD (@eugenegu) January 13, 2018

Friday's show. What I would have asked Delia.

I thoroughly enjoyed today's show for two reasons.

The first was watching my brother Fred's first day at the controls as producer. With a day of training under his belt, Fred sailed the Hitting Left ship successfully off to sea, proving you can teach an old dog some new tricks. Congrats bro.

Second, was having Delia Ramirez, candidate for state rep in IL Dist. 4, as our in-studio guest. She proved to be a lively and forthright guest and handled herself well under pressure (we don't do puff on HL). I came away thinking this Prosser High School alum with deep roots in the neighborhood, will make a great rep. Thanks Delia.

Delia Ramirez

I regret that time ran out before I could ask her what she thought about Gov. Rauner's veto of the state's school funding bill, a measure that was designed to clear the way for a major overhaul of how the state distributes dollars to public schools.

Yes that's the very same bill that overcame Rauner's earlier veto and passed easily through the legislature back in August, with Rauner and the Republican caucus, following the lead of Madigan, Cullerton, Rahm Emanuel and the rest of the state's Democratic leadership, down the school privatization path. The trade-off for school funding for the Democrats was acceptance of the state's first school voucher program.

Under that program, individuals and corporations can give money for scholarships to private schools in exchange for a tax credit worth 75% of their donation.

Rauner not only signed the bill, but then took credit for its passage.

But now that the bill has become law, Rauner has used his amendatory power to once again veto it in a so-called "trailer bill". Weird, I know. (Can he do that, Delia?). It seems he now wants to lower the bar and include even more unvetted and unauthorized private schools in the feast at the public trough.

I wanted to get Delia's thoughts on how she as a legislator would work to resist this unethical and probably illegal assault by the governor on public education funding. But alas, time ran out and even having Fred at the control board couldn't change that.

If you missed today's show, you can listen to it here on Mixcloud.