Billionaire Bloomberg says he's running. But why?

The prototype for the Rahm Emanuel mayoralty was Michael Bloomberg's New York. -- Crain's

The oddsmakers in Vegas put the odds on Michael Bloomberg winning the presidency at 14/1. That puts him even in their minds with Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg and trailing only Donald Trump 7/5, Elizabeth Warren 3/1, and Joe Biden 8/1 in the eyes of bookies.

I follow this stuff only because the bookies usually have a better handle on things than do the pollsters. That's why the house always wins.

Why is this billionaire Republicrat media tycoon and former New York mayor even considering jumping into a crowded Democratic primary as a 14-to-1 longshot? He knows the odds as well as anyone. One, because he can afford to, and two, he wants to be a hedge against the progressive insurgents like Warren and Sanders.

If either of them won the primary, I could even imagine Bloomberg running as an independent or third-party candidate in key battleground or swing states to draw away votes. Bloomberg is worried much more about the progressive ascendency than about his off-and-on frenemy Trump (who calls Bloomberg "Little Michael").

Known as the stop-and-frisk mayor in New York, Bloomberg once claimed that the biggest problem was his cops "over-stopping whites", and that he was just evening the score.

During his time in office, Bloomberg wielded his personal power against New York's communities of color and their public schools. He imposed a tidal wave of privatization on the city, including a big swing towards privately-run charter schools. What pissed me off most was how he used our "small schools" rhetoric to promote charters.

He was an advocate of using standardized testing results as the main vehicle for evaluating school and teacher performance.

He thought poor and especially immigrant parents were too ignorant to have much to say about their children's education.

Bloomberg once claimed:

“Unfortunately there are some parents who just come from — they never had a formal education, and they don’t understand the value of education...The old Norman Rockwell family is gone.”

That last part is true, and good riddance.

All this reminded me of this great quote from NYT's Michael Powell back in 2011:

"There is an 'autumn of the patriarch' feel to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg these days."

He's an outspoken enemy of organized labor and even compared the teacher unions to the NRA and used the big-lie technique to charge the unions with protecting child molesters.

Bloomberg's charter school cronies, Eva Moskowitz and Joel Klein. 

He hired corporate-style reformers like of Joel Klein and the totally incompetent (thank goodness) Cathie Black to replace public schools with charters and erode public space and public decision-making. Among his partners in crime was the city's supreme charter hustler, Eva Moskowitz, who enriched herself running the so-called Success Academies.

Bloomberg is a horrible politician who was only elected because of his bottomless war chest. You need only go back to his paper-thin 2009 victory in the NY mayor's race over relative political unknown Bill Thompson. Bloomberg poured $90 million of his own fortune into the race, a sum unequaled in the history of municipal politics, that gave him a 14-to-1 advantage in campaign spending. Yet he won by only 5%.

So, is Bloomberg's announced candidacy a bluff, a real threat to anti-Trump forces, or neither? One thing is for sure: Michael Bloomberg offers no positive alternative to Trump or to the current field of candidates in the Democratic primary.

QUOTABLES

Sean Doolittle won't go to the White House

"My wife and I stand for inclusion and acceptance, and we’ve done work with refugees, people that come from, you know, the ‘shithole countries,” Doolittle said, referring to Trump’s comments about Haiti, El Salvador and African nations in a January 2018 meeting. “At the end of the day, as much as I wanted to be there with my teammates and share that experience with my teammates, I can’t do it. I just can’t do it.” -- Washington Post

Union V.P. Stacy Davis Gates

... called it a “sad day” and criticized Lightfoot for taking “vengeance” on teachers and students. But then added, “We have a better Chicago Public Schools as a result of the last 10 days." -- Tribune

Union Pres. Jesse Sharkey

...said the last two weeks have been “tense” but added that “it’s not about me or the mayor. It’s about the members of the Chicago Teachers Union." -- Tribune

 Mayor Lori Lightfoot

"It was a hard-fought discussion. It took us a lot of time to get there. But I think this is the right thing ultimately for our city, and I’m glad that this phase is over.” -- Tribune

California Gov. Gavin Newsom fires back at Trump

“You don’t believe in climate change,” Newsom tweeted. “You are excused from this conversation.” -- The Hill

Annie Lowrey at The Atlantic

Wildfires and lack of affordable housing—these are two of the most visible and urgent crises facing California, raising the question of whether the country’s dreamiest, most optimistic state is fast becoming unlivable. -- California Is Becoming Unlivable

I was arrested on Friday on a COMPLETELY FALSE charge manufactured by the Venezuelan opposition related to their siege of the embassy in DC. I spent 2 days in jail, was shackled for extended periods & was denied my right to call a lawyer. Here's the facts: https://t.co/2Nco0OzQ7P

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) October 28, 2019

Sun-Times blows it again on teacher planning time

Sun-Times editorial asks: "But since when do salaried professionals watch the clock like hourly workers on an assembly line?" Answer: In Chicago, schools are still organized like factories (remember them?) Teachers still punch in and out.

Today's Sun-Times editorial: When teachers strike so they can teach kids less, something is wrong, blows it again.

It's the second time in a row for S-T, although the last one wasn't an editorial. They just turned over a full page to an anti-public-school harangue by a right-wing think-tanker. But now they're running neck-in-neck with the Tribune's McQueary and Kass for most ill-informed anti-teacher, anti-union pundit awards.

Kass and McQueary I understand. They are committed right-wing, racist, anti-union ideologues who never bother with seeking truth from facts. Remember when McQueary wished a natural disaster would strike Chicago to pave the way for a "rebirth" of the city?

But the S-T (partially owned by the CFL) just seems to be missing the mark out of ignorance, rather than ideology. Today's editorial calls on the CTU to drop their demand for more teacher planning time and get back to work.

While I have been at odds with CTU leaders over their tactics, especially their abusive, personal attacks aimed at Mayor Lightfoot and her supporters (me included), I have been walking the picket line and supportive of the teachers' demands for better pay and working conditions, including full support staffing for every school.

I am hopeful that they can settle this thing, hopefully by today, by agreeing on a fair contract which includes provisions for adequate, teacher-directed planning time.

But for some reason, this demand for more and better teacher planning time has become a minefield and one of the last barriers in the way of a tentative agreement between the board and the union. The S-T editorial, by mischaracterizing the demand, just adds fuel to the fire.

According to S-T editorial,

The CTU has repeatedly insisted on a terrible idea: Giving elementary school teachers an extra 30 minutes of prep time every day, though this would meaning cutting 30 minutes of teaching time every day. Forget it. 

No, it not a terrible idea. It's a great one and one that doesn't have to cut into classroom teaching time. But even if it did, research shows, that's not so bad.

S-T claims,

Chicago once had the shortest school day in the country, which was a national embarrassment. When kids are not in class, they cannot learn. But since 2012, thanks to the effort of many parents, educators and former Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Chicago has had a longer school day — something closer to the national average — and we cannot go back.

This is all bullcrap. Chicago didn't have the shortest day in the country and wasn't a "national embarrassment." That was all a fabrication of Rahm Emanuel's who made a longer school day his election campaign mantra so there would be more time for test-prep rather the prep time for teachers and staff.

Rahm even dragged Arne Duncan back to town from Washington to campaign for his longer school day plan. I gagged when I heard Duncan call Chicago's school day, a "disgrace" and a "badge of shame." Duncan had autocratically run the schools here for the seven years previous and with a compliant union leadership behind him, had never implemented a longer school day.

As one observer wrote in a letter to the Sun-Times in 2011,

 A longer school day without structure is like a restaurant serving “lots” of food — if the food is not tasty — who cares if you get a lot of it!

If less seat time for students was a "national embarrassment", why wasn't the Lab School, where Rahm sent his kids, embarrassed? They had a shorter school day and year than did CPS and still do. So do the wealthy suburban districts to the north of us. None of them equate more seat time with more learning.

S-T claims:

Yes, teachers need time to plan. But since when do salaried professionals watch the clock like hourly workers on an assembly line? True professionals — teachers, doctors, college professors, and even journalists — agree on an annual salary and get on with the job.

Have the S-T editors ever been inside a Chicago Public School? If they had, they would know that unlike other professionals, our teachers punch a time clock every day, just like factory workers (remember them?). No, teachers are still not treated as professionals. Real professionals have time to plan, much greater autonomy over their work and the time and wherewithal to collaborate with their colleagues.

Can you imagine a lawyer defending a client with inadequate prep time? Or doctors being told to spend more time in the operating room with less time to prepare? Or either of them punching a clock?

As I said up top, I hope the strike gets settled today and I hope teacher prep time is part of the deal. It shouldn't be that hard to reach an agreement on this.

Day 9 of Chicago teachers strike. Sun-Times gives a full page to the charter hustlers

In the wake of horrific Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Univ. of Chicago economist Milton Friedman called the event "an opportunity to radically reform the educational system.”

For all my radical friends out there, by "radically reform," Friedman didn't mean fully democratizing public ed. Rather he meant nothing less than replacing all public schools with privately-run charters. With the help of fellow free-marketeers like Paul Vallas, who became the head of post-Katrina New Orleans schools, that's exactly what happened.

It was Vallas's successor at CPS, Arne Duncan who, as U.S. Secretary of Education, dotted Friedman's i's and crossed his t's by calling Katrina “the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans.”

It was then up to Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel to sum things up with his 2012 catchphrase, "Never let a serious crisis go to waste."

Naomi Klein would later expose this shock-and-awe strategy of "disaster capitalism" in her best-selling book, The Shock Doctrine.

I'm recalling the shock-doctrine mentality while reading a full-page pitch in this morning's Sun-Times by the far-right Heritage Foundation, proposing to replace Chicago's public schools with privately-run charters in order to avoid the inconvenience of teacher strikes. Ironically, S-T is partially owned by the Chicago Federation of Labor.

The city is currently in the ninth day of a teacher's strike, with little prospect of a settlement in sight, and today's prophets (profiteers) of unregulated free markets are once again trying to capitalize on a city's crisis.

The logic behind their sales pitch is that since Chicago charter teachers are forbidden by law from being in the same bargaining unit with CTU Local 1, the city's charter schools have remained generally union-free. Thus, if you have no unions, you will have no strikes. No strikes, no inconvenience for parents. Voila!

Charter schools, public schools where families can choose to send their children instead of to an assigned district school, have remained open during the strike. Though some Chicago charters are unionized, differences in their contracts have allowed charters to keep students in school, saving families from having to make other arrangements to meet work and family commitments.

Passages Charter School

How convenient! Except for one thing. Charter schools, funded by the state, are facing the same funding crisis as public schools. Illinois is 50th of the 50 states when it comes to equitable funding of school districts.

Charter teachers, who are generally working for less pay, with less autonomy and with far worse working conditions than the teachers in regular Chicago public schools, are slowly-but-surely getting organized and speaking out against their exploitation by charter operators. And unlike traditional CPS schools, where the union bargains with a publicly-elected mayor and her appointed school board, charter teachers and their unions must each face-off with their own privately-appointed and unaccountable boards of directors. Often these not-for-profit boards actually sub-contract the operation of the schools to for-profit operating companies.

Not only have the charters failed to produce better results than the public schools they are replacing, but charters are no more immune to strikes than are the schools in so-called right-to-work states like Arizona, Oklahoma and West Virginia, where strike waves have recently rocked the system.

The last paragraph in the Sun-Times piece (which reads like a last-minute add-on), makes my point:

Unfortunately, teachers in Chicago’s Passages Charter School chose to strike and called for higher pay. These striking teachers, who have since settled on a new contract, undermined the value that charter schools bring to students and families, especially during union demonstrations in district schools. And remember that CTU demand to stop charter-school growth in Chicago?

Yes, and a good demand it is.  The Chicago teachers’ union secured a cap on charter school expansion in their last contract negotiations in 2016. That should also be embedded in the new contract.

Thanks for reminding us.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

A blue sign, reading “Veterans for Impeachment,” grabbed national audience views at the World Series last night, when the cameras trained on batters at Nationals Park. The sign also appeared on the Jumbotron in the stadium where Donald Trump watched the game. When the president and first lady appeared on the Jumbotron as well, the crowd booed him and chanted “lock him up.”

SEIU 73 Pres. Dian Palmer, celebrating union's agreement with the city.

“This is a victory for working people in Chicago and shows what is possible when we unite and take action,” the head of SEIU 73 said. -- Sun-Times

CPS Board Pres. Miguel del Valle to Parents and teachers of students with disabilities

Tentative agreement in SEIU 73 strike

 “We can’t deny we’ve been deficient as a system about it. We have to do something about it, and we have to do it now,” del Valle told the group Saturday. -- Block Club Chicago

 Curtis Black

 Lori Lightfoot is not actually Rahm 2.0, and demonizing her risks isolating progressive voices vital to Chicago's future. -- Chicago Reporter

Cassie Cresswell, Illinois Families for Public Schools

“One of the issues with having hard caps is that if your system overall is underfunded, as soon as you set requirements in one area, then other stuff gets cut... If you snapped your fingers and put class caps in place, the overall system is so underfunded still, you’d end up just pushing around the dollars that you have. So you’d end up with people cutting arts or libraries. Some things (would) improve but other things won’t.” -- Tribune

David Orr

Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s budget shows leadership, equity, guts and a lot of smarts...Progressive change doesn’t happen overnight, and the mayor’s doing what she responsibly can with the limitations she has. -- Letter to Sun-Times

Columnist Laura Washington on today's anti-Trump protest

Chicago has not been a go-to stop for Trump. In March 2016, then-candidate Trump was virtually run out of Chi-Town in the wake of a highly-touted campaign event. -- Sun-Times

Jacky Grimshaw, former Harold Washington aide

“We’re inviting everyone to join the effort to help change the narrative and actions coming from President Trump and the White House that are endangering people’s lives, our democracy, and the survival of the planet.” said Jacky Grimshaw, who now chairs Chicago Women Take Action. -- Tribune

Fope Olaleye

Although the term “reverse racism” is waning in popularity, its rhetoric is still rife. Many people are still reluctant to truly understand what racism is, confining themselves to dictionary definitions, which speak abstractly about “prejudice” rather than discussing what that looks like in the real world. -- Guardian

Yes, that Eddie Burke...

Sun-Times' phony support for CPS sports teams

Sun-Times says, Simeon needs the teachers strike to end sooner than the rest of the Public League 

We have to wonder, if the strike continues through the coming week, how many students this school year will score just a little lower on standardized tests, hurting their chances of getting into a top college or winning a scholarship. -- Sun-Times editorial

I expect anti-union, anti-teacher rants from the likes of Greg Hinz at Crain's or Kristen McQueary (and now Eric Zorn) at the Trib. But I must say, I flipped out after reading today's editorial in the Sun-Times, a paper owned in part by the unions, which hit too close to home.

The editorial calls on striking CTU teachers to return to work immediately or risk hurting CPS sports teams.

If the strike does not end on or before Tuesday, all 78 CPS football teams — some 2,300 kids — will not play their Week 9 games.

It's not just football. Girls tennis teams will miss their scheduled tournament and Class 2A and 3A boys soccer teams had to forfeit every game this weekend.

And the topper...

...if the strike continues through the coming week, how many students this school year will score just a little lower on standardized tests, hurting their chances of getting into a top college or winning a scholarship.

The best solution there is, stop giving them.

First, let me say that as a former CPS basketball coach and IHSA referee, I am sympathetic to the coaches and players whose games have been put on hold, just as I am with inconvenienced parents and teachers who long to be in the classroom with their kids.

But I've always thought that educators talking to their students about a teacher strike and about the whole collective-bargaining process, can provide just as authentic a learning experience on democracy than the ordinary goings-on in the school building or out on the football field for those few days.

But I still have to call B.S. at S-T's sudden phony concern for CPS sports programs. This is a newspaper that remained silent when Mayor Rahm Emanuel was slashing sports programs for all but the elite schools.

As a coach, taking my players to suburban schools, only six miles up the lakeshore, was always a lesson in class warfare. My westside kids would walk into carpeted locker rooms in suburban schools that looked like health-club spas, past fancy offices for large athletic departments, training tables where opposing players were having their ankles wrapped by professional trainers. Courtside was often a doctor or at least a skilled nurse so injuries could be treated on the spot.

These wealthy public schools all had expanded counseling services, full-time nurses, psychologists, and well-staffed libraries. Not just because it was written into their union contracts, but because these districts received two-to-three times the per/student allotment as did city schools.

Back at CPS, I was given a tiny stipend for the hours I spent each afternoon and evening after school and at games. I often came out-of-pocket for after-practice bus fare home or for a meal at McDonald's, or for new Nikes so our players wouldn't have to play in their streetwear. We asked players' parents -- often unemployed or minimum-wage workers -- to kick in for new uniforms that fit the kids. I even had to collect the unis after each game and launder them at home.

I had to purchase a $60 book on first aid, told to read it and then given an online, true-false and multiple-choice test to pass. I was then left to my own devices, with no equipment or first-aid materials (maybe ice from the kitchen) or resources to treat ankle sprains, open wounds, asthma attacks, splint broken bones, or things much more serious until the ambulance came. All this while the game was going on.

CPS has a two-tier system of highschool sports, where the gap between the haves and have-nots was noticeably widened by Rahm Emanuel. He made sure that there were always plenty of resources for elite sports schools like Simeon (see S-T's "Why Simeon needs the teachers strike to end sooner than the rest of the Public League"), Whitney Young and Phillips, but not for the rest of us.

See also: How did a CPS high school get in line for a $13M gym to lure a star basketball coach? All one of Rahm Emanuel’s campaign donors had to do was ask.

Sun-Times sports writers help widen the gap by covering the high school sports star system as if it were big-time college or the NBA or NFL.

On the strike line this morning.

As my readers know, I have been out on the picket line supporting the just demands of the teachers for better pay and working conditions, including nurses, social workers and librarians in every school.

I don't equate our progressive mayor with Rahm. Nor do I know what the current budget will allow for sports programs. But oh, how I wished for a full-time nurse to treat sports injuries back then.

However, we were lucky enough to have a wonderful librarian who I often sent my struggling student/athletes to for extra academic help in order to keep them eligible. Yes, we need one of those in every school as well.

Today, at a union news conference, CPS sports coaches talked about the need for higher stipends, better staffing, facilities and busing for sports programs. That's something worth fighting for, during the strike and after. I'm out of the game now, but I hope they get them.

I also hope the Sun-Times editorial board members get their heads out of their rear ends. 

On the way to the picket line...

William Estrada, CTU member, Visual Arts teacher, Telpochcalli Elementary School. (Alan Maass)

It's a cold and blustery morning in Chicago. We're heading over to walk the picket line with my teacher/daughter and her colleagues at Telpochcalli Elementary in Little Village. Telpochcalli is one of the few remaining original small schools started by activist teachers, including Jennifer, back in the '90s. Its dual-language curriculum is focused on Mexican culture and the arts. My grandson Oscar, now 19, went there.

As we always do when there's a teacher strike, Susan & I will stop first to pick up a box of coffee and some donuts for the teachers (and me).

The Nation begins its story on the strike by interviewing Telpochcalli art teacher William Estrada.

Estrada teaches visual arts to classes [at several public schools-m.k.] as large as 36 students, and he doesn’t have enough chairs to go around, much less supplies. “The chairs that we have in my classroom, we actually got them out of storage from other schools that closed down because we didn’t have enough money to buy them ourselves,” he says. “We want to make sure we’re given the resources that we need in order for us to do our job and to support the students and the needs that they have.”

Yesterday, CTU Prez Jesse Sharkey told the teachers to prepare for a "short-term strike". I hope so but I'm not so sure. I don't know how he is either. Soon after union leaders had announced that they saw a path to a settlement and agreement on a contract, talks broke down and the strike was called. It seems like the list of unresolved issues is always changing and being argued out with lots of heat and not much light, mainly in the press.

I'm hoping that both sides stay focused on achieving a fair contract and on the important teacher issues, such as teacher pay, smaller class size, and staffing, including librarians, nurses and social workers, and that attempts by some in the media to frame the collective bargaining process simply as a power play between CTU leaders and Mayor Lightfoot fail.

By some, I mean Greg Hinz at Crain's, who writes:

In the end, maybe it had to come to this. A strong-willed rookie mayor who needs to establish her bona fides as the leader of a tough city vs. a labor union with new leadership and a chip on its shoulder, seeking to reclaim some of its lost glory.

It didn't help that AFT Pres. Randi Weingarten flew out for a CTU rally and announced, “We’re about to teach the new mayor a lesson.” I'm not sure what "lesson" she plans on teaching Lori Lightfoot but the idea of Weingarten teaching a lesson to Chicago's first black, gay, woman mayor sounded patronizing at best and...well I'll leave it at that. I hope she apologizes.

Yesterday, the parent group, Raise Your Hand, issued a statement on the strike which made a lot of sense.

Please remember to be good to each other out there. At the end of this contract negotiation, we are all parts of school communities that are part of a larger community, the Chicago Public Schools. Our children need all of us working together.

An ABC/Sun-Times poll appears to show nearly-half of surveyed voters supporting the teachers and also giving high marks to Mayor Lightfoot. That pretty much sums up where I'm at.

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.

There were three teacher strikes when Harold Washington was mayor

The 19-day CTU strike in 1987 was longest in city history

In 1983, Harold Washington made history in two ways. He became Chicago's first African-American mayor and the first whose election grew directly from a high tide of black resistance to racist machine rule. That movement was joined by a grassroots coalition of progressive forces citywide. During his first term, a racist cabal of 29 white aldermen, led by the two Eddies, Vrdolyak and Burke, blocked his every move in the City Council. However, by 1987, when Washington won re-election, court-ordered reapportionment of wards led to the election of some allied Latino aldermen and the mayor gained some breathing room.

At that time, the public schools, the most racially segregated in the nation, were in a state of deep crisis. Badly underfunded by Republicans in Springfield, who referred to CPS as "a black hole," and ruled by a self-perpetuating top-heavy bureaucracy, Chicago's school system was the picture of abject failure. Chicago-hating Pres. Reagan went so far as to send his racist Sec. of Education William Bennett to the city to denounce CPS as the "nation's worst" school system.

In the wake of the record 19-day teachers' strike (Sept. 8 to Oct. 2), angry and frustrated parents raised their demand for sweeping change. While the mayor met separately with the two sides in the strike, urging reconciliation, he refused to get involved directly in the talks or to dictate terms of a settlement.

''Everyone says I was not involved, but you solve problems through discussions,'' he said. ''I had some of our best people working on the problem. There was a constant quest on my part to resolve the strike.'' -- NY Times

The five-week shutdown, which became the longest teacher strike in city history, and the third during Washington's tenure, concluded with a tentative agreement of a two-year contract that the CTU membership ratified the following day. The new contract mandated a 4% pay increase the first year, followed by another 4% the second year, "if adequate funds could be found," and a reduction in class sizes by two students in grades K-3. But since neither side had a plan for generating new revenue, the raises came at the expense of the firing of 1,700 teachers, low-level administrators, and staff.

However, change was in the air, thanks to a resurgence of a powerful reform movement of CPS parents and community activists. Washington had been working behind closed doors on a plan to overhaul the school district. When the teachers’ strike hit, he seized on the political unrest and anger in the black community to make a public commitment to school reform.

He announced plans for an education summit that would search for a path forward that included all stakeholders. The Summit, held at UIC (Circle Campus) was attended by more than a thousand participants. Washington died of a heart attack before the summit could carry out its work, but the momentum for change remained alive.

It's important to note that at the time, black leadership of the school system was apparent. The city's mayor, school board chief, superintendent, and teachers' union president were all African-Americans.

The sweeping changes that followed were marked by a shift in power from the top of the bureaucratic machinery down to the local school level, including the creation of parent/community-dominated Local School Councils (LSCs). While the victories were short-lived and later reversed completely during the next Mayor Daley's regime, they still showed what is possible through grass-roots community organizing.

Of course, conditions today are markedly different. Since 1995, the schools are under mayoral control which the Daley and Emanuel regimes have used to maintain corporate control of the schools through privatization, charter schools and mass school closings.

Harold Washington didn't have that kind of power and didn't want it.  A new progressive tide has put the first African-American, gay, woman in the mayor's seat, along with her appointed school board, composed mainly of progressives and people of color. There's also a new crop of city council members including 6 who identify as "socialists" fresh off of election victories over the machine.

Oh, if only Harold had that going for him back in '87.

The CTU has lost its dynamic leader, Karen Lewis, but remains a strong and vital part of the progressive movement in Chicago.

One thing hasn't changed. CPS remains just as racially segregated as it was 30 years ago and has lost thousands of African-American students, teachers, and parents since then. While the legislature is now dominated by Democrats and a Democratic governor, the school system is still badly in debt,  underfunded and desperately in need of teachers, nurses, librarians, social workers, and wrap-around services.

Unfortunately, another CTU strike now seems inevitable. But strike or no strike, the union and the board will ultimately reach an agreement and hopefully move forward together.

QUOTABLES

"I will destroy and obliterate the economy of Turkey" -- Stable Genius

I'm seriously trying to avoid quotes from the Stable Genius, but sometimes I just can't help myself.

...if Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits, I will totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey (I’ve done before!). -- Twitter

CTU Pres. Jesse Sharkey on contract negotiations

 “I don’t think we can find a boogeyman. It’s a very different dynamic." -- Sun-Times 

 Arnie Rivera, CPS’ chief operating officer.

“The tone behind closed doors is very productive, very respectful for the most part. This contract for both parties isn’t just about compensation, it’s about making the school system better.” -- Sun-Times

China's Foreign Minister, Wang Yi

“China will not interfere in the internal affairs of the US, and we trust that the American people will be able to sort out their own problems." -- Global Times

Diane Ravitch on reports that Sen. Warren had a longterm affair with 24-year old Marine

Damn, she’s good! -- Twitter

Looking for something better to come from vitriolic contract talks

Striking CTU members gather over two days to study the 2012 contract offer before voting to end the strike. 

The contract talks between CPS and the CTU are going pretty much the way I expected and just the way I feared. In some ways, they are a continuation of the contentious and divisive campaign tactics that marked the mayor's race between Lori Lightfoot and Toni Preckwinkle.

Lightfoot’s victory — winning every single ward — was a blow to CTU’s power and perceptions about its influence. And the union has been struggling to get some of its mojo back ever since. CTU’s dilemma is that it’s trying to wage a war with a mayor who’s not Rahm Emanuel — an enemy CTU knew how to fight. -- Illinois Playbook

The CTU and SEIU Local 73, cornerstones of the progressive movement here in Chicago, both backed Preckwinkle who was soundly defeated by the current mayor. Both candidates ran as "progressives" but in the end, Lightfoot and a group of insurgent city council candidates rode an anti-machine wave to victory.

But as I predicted at the time,

With election day only a few weeks away, and Lightfoot apparently pulling far ahead, internecine warfare has broken out among the progressives to such a degree it's going to be hard to put Humpty Dumpty back together again when the election madness is over.

As we approach the Oct. 17th strike date set by the unions, the past nine months have unfortunately proven me right. The current negotiations are largely being carried out in the media and on Twitter as both sides scramble for public support. These tactics of grandstanding, personal attacks and demagogy increase the level of antagonism which in turn, tends to cloud the real contract issues and the systemic, rather than the personal nature of the struggle.

I have made no secret of my disagreement with some of the mayor's as well as the union's views on education. For example:

Actually, shortening the amount of seat time, giving teachers more planning/collaboration time is good sound practice. Better than Rahm's longer school day, as I pointed out back when. It's how they do it in the rich kids' progressive schools. https://t.co/2Ztyh2TMVv

— Mike Klonsky (@mikeklonsky) October 4, 2019

I support the demands of the teachers for decent pay and working conditions as well as for adequate and equitable staffing, teacher prep time, and wrap-around services for schools. And as I've said many times, if the negotiations break down leading to a strike, I will be walking the picket line, as I've done in 2012 and '16 with my CTU daughter Jennifer and her colleagues over at Telpochcalli Elementary in Little Village.

But I am also cognizant of the fact that this struggle is taking place within a system that criminally underfunds public education, erodes public space and decision-making while supporting all manifestations of corporate greed. It also encourages antagonistic relations between those that should be united in common cause.

I believe that the mayor and her team are committed to the goal of public education, including racial desegregation, better pay for teachers, adequate and equitable staffing. But how to fully fund all these and how much is contractual and/or budgetary are matters for collective bargaining. It's the very process that Republican governors have liquidated in Wisconsin, Ohio and other red states as well as the main issue behind the wild cat teacher strikes in right-to-work states like Oklahoma and Arizona.

It's these conditions that have led to the contentious relationship between some union leaders and the most progressive school board in Chicago history.  All this, while teachers voice their righteous anger and the board tries to grapple with its own inadequate budget. The only short-term resolution lies in serious collective bargaining by both sides.

The mainstream and corporate media attacks on the teachers and their union have been disgraceful and have made things worse, especially when you consider that the Sun-Times, which ran a greedy-teacher editorial, is partially owned by the CFL.

Then there was Greg Hinz at Crain's who has the hutzpah to equate the union with Trump.

Crain's @GregHinz must be vaping some weird flavors. Just lost all credibility equating Trump's high crimes with the CTU asking for librarians and social workers. https://t.co/c3qc0gszec

— Mike Klonsky (@mikeklonsky) September 30, 2019

It's also no secret that I've had sharp disagreements with the leadership of the union over their own false equation of Mayor Lightfoot with Rahm Emanuel. I've also been critical of the union's unfocused and personal attacks against, CPS negotiators, and progressive board members like Miguel del Valle and Elizabeth Breland.

CTU mocks Board Pres. del Valle

 The forces at the table at this year's contract negotiation are far different from those in 2012 and '16 and I'm encouraged by the fact that educators now dominate the table on both sides.

According to the Sun-Times:

Former teachers and principals now make up the bulk of CPS’ team, which both sides say is a welcome change from the bureaucrats negotiating for the schools in 2012 when just one teacher attended the talks, and only a second, Barbara Byrd-Bennett, joined in after the CTU walked out. In 2016, three educators were on the CPS team that struck a deal with the union minutes before a strike deadline.

 “The tone behind closed doors is very productive, very respectful for the most part,” said Arnie Rivera, CPS’ chief operating officer. “This contract for both parties isn’t just about compensation, it’s about making the school system better.”

Teachers, parents and community members have no interest in sharpening the hostilities some in leadership seem to relish, or in rehashing last year's election.

I'm hoping against hope that both sides can reach an agreement in the next two weeks and avoid a strike. My greater hope is that the energy and turmoil created around this struggle, strike or no strike, will drive an even greater vision of democratic schooling that transcends the current contract issues as well as the leadership necessary to push that vision forward.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES -- 'Savages'

DT calls for "civil war" if he's impeached. 

I usually try and limit myself to only one hair-brained or fascist quote from Trump per week. But this weekend, there were two that creeped me out badly enough to warrant a second look.

First, there was DT referring to six members of the House of Representatives -- two Jews and four women of color -- as "savages" on Saturday morning. This, even though they were among at least 223 House Democrats who now support an impeachment inquiry.

Can you imagine if these Do Nothing Democrat Savages, people like Nadler, Schiff, AOC Plus 3, and many more, had a Republican Party who would have done to Obama what the Do Nothings are doing to me. Oh well, maybe next time!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 28, 2019

He went so far as to suggest that one of those Jewish "savages", Rep. Adam Schiff,  be arrested and charged with "treason". 

Speaking of violence, the second was him threating "civil war" if he's impeached.

....If the Democrats are successful in removing the President from office (which they will never be), it will cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal.” Pastor Robert Jeffress, @FoxNews

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 30, 2019

In my mind, each of these adds on to the long his of impeachable or criminal offenses in their own right. And I'm not the only one.

Harvard Law professor John Coates
...argued that the social media post itself is an "independent basis" for lawmakers to remove him from the White House.

This tweet is itself an independent basis for impeachment - a sitting president threatening civil war if Congress exercises its constitutionally authorized power. https://t.co/JL9XzClGXf

— John Coates⚽️ (@jciv) September 30, 2019

Beto O'Rourke

When he calls 6 members of Congress—all women of color or Jewish—“savages,” he wants you to think of them as less than human. Like when he calls immigrants an “infestation” and says "no human being" would want to live in Baltimore. We can’t be surprised when violence follows. -- Twitter

Gabrielle Bruney

"Savage" has a long history as a racist term used to mark people of color as supposedly being less civilized than their white counterparts...In July, Trump called for this same group of congresswomen to "go back" to the "broken and crime infested places from which they came," despite the fact that all are American citizens and three were born in this country. -- Esquire

What's happened to Chicago schools since Arne Duncan got Judge Kocoras to lift the deseg consent decree

Students wait for the bus in front of Bouchet Elementary Math & Science Academy in Chicago's South Shore neighborhood. More than 74% of students whose neighborhood school is majority black schools are bussed to majority-black schools. (Manuel Martinez/WBEZ)

I'm reading Sarah Karp's WBEZ story about Chicago's experiment with school desegregation and recalling how Arne Duncan helped get a federal judge to quash the city's deseg consent decree.

Karp writes:

Most of the city’s 78 magnet and test-in schools — including classical, gifted and selective enrollment — were created under the decree as a way to lure in a diverse group of students. But even after the court order was lifted, school district officials said they believed integration was important, and they started integrating by the socioeconomic status of children.

In 2009, U.S. District Judge Charles Kocoras lifted the consent decree ending three decades of efforts to integrate Chicago schools. The decree’s bilingual education provisions, according to Kocoras, duplicated protections in state law. The ruling came despite evidence presented by DOJ lawyers in court that the district repeatedly failed to enroll English learners in bilingual education fast enough or provide them with required services.

Since then, writes Karp, CPS has continued busing and spending extra funding on magnet and test-in schools and also added 13 new ones plus more charter schools that have been shown to contribute to segregation. This year, the school district plans to spend $50 million for bussing and extra positions at these schools, which serve 62,000 students.

But, says Karp, the WBEZ analysis finds only about 20% of magnet and test-in schools meet the racial makeup goal set out in the court order, compared to 35% a decade ago. Under that definition, the goal was for white students to make up between 15% and 35% of the student body and black, Latino and Asian students to make up between 65% and 85%.

Six schools of the 65 in existence 10 years ago went from being considered integrated to not, while only one of the new schools has that mix of students. Among the schools no longer meeting this definition of integrated are Skinner North Elementary School, which opened in the last decade, and Walter Payton College Prep High School — two schools often named as the best in the city and the state. They have both seen significant increases in white students. 

Magnet schools and busing programs that were created and funded for the purpose of encouraging racial desegregation have since been turned into their opposites. Now magnets have increasingly become privileged selective-enrollment schools, anchors for neighborhood gentrification with expensive busing programs taking children miles away from their neighborhood schools and into segregated ones.

Niketa Brar on Hitting Left

Niketa Brar, executive director of Chicago United for Equity, and a frequent guest on Hitting Left, says magnet and selective schools have been used as a way to allow families to avoid the problems of the public school system. This is especially true in gentrifying neighborhoods, she said, where parents put their children on buses to be driven away from their local schools.

Brar tells Karp:

“They become little havens of white people feeling like they are participating in the public school system while actually keeping their children segregated from the impacts of a local neighborhood school that have the same resources that every other child in their neighborhoods gets.”

It's worth recalling that it was Pres. Obama's Secretary of Education and former CPS school chief, Arne Duncan, along with Mayor Daley and Duncan's successor Ron Huberman, who pleaded with Judge Kocoras to scrap the decree a decade ago. They claimed that the city had done all it could do to desegregate its schools and that the deseg struggle was "futile and a drain on district funds".

This,  even though research has shown that the period in which school deseg was in full play was when the district had made the greatest gains in measurable student learning and closing the so-called achievement gap.

Duncan maintained that if the consent decree was lifted, CPS could save $300 million, mostly in eliminating bus service to magnet and selective enrollment schools. It was all a lie. Busing service and selective enrollment programs and charter schools have been expanded. Only their purposes have changed.

Under Rahm Emanuel, Chicago's selective-enrollment schools became even more exclusive.

During the period of 1981 to 2015, the total population of African-American students in CPS plummeted from close to 240,000, 60% of all CPS students, to 156,000 or 39% of CPS. The loss of so many poor and black children and an increase in wealthier white students have since been ignored as an explanation for claimed rising test scores and graduation rates.

I'd argue that they, along with school resegregation, have lots to do with it.

We'll see if and how things change over the next four years with a new mayor and city council. 

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Biggest climate protests in history. 

Climate activist Greta Thunberg 

"We are not just some young people skipping school,’ she told thousands of school strikers in Manhattan, on a day when millions around the world demonstrated for action. "We are a wave of change. Together, we are unstoppable." -- The Guardian

Nate Silver

He refers to Sanders supporters as "residue". Oops!
Not sure Bernie should get credit for having more diverse support than last time given that he has far less support than last time. A lot of voters have left him. White liberals have been particularly likely to leave him (for Warren) so the residue of what's left is more diverse. -- Tweet

The Hindu

The India of Mr. Modi’s Hindutva dreams, advancing rapidly under his rule, will be “one nation” with one people, one language, one religion, one election, one market, and one everything — a homogeneous, Hindu utopia. -- Commentary: One people, many countries

 Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. on U.S.-Saudi arms deal

 "A secretive monarchy that commits atrocities in Yemen, that murders dissidents and journalists and lies to the world about it, and that treats women as property is not one to which we should be giving some of our most sensitive military technology." -- NBC News

I stand shoulder to shoulder with the Chicago teachers making their voices heard to demand living wages, smaller class sizes, and all the things teachers need to do their jobs well. America's teachers take on powerful work every day, and we must treat them with respect. #1u

— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) September 22, 2019

Happy 20th to @ProjExplore, an organization I founded in 1999 with the aspiration of bringing scientists together with Chicago young people least likely to have an opportunity to experience the wonders of science. Join me & @ProjexED 9/26 to celebrate! https://t.co/TUgBpwYUTT pic.twitter.com/TTwWZ8Xia8

— Gabrielle Lyon (@LyonGabrielle) September 23, 2019

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

BIRMINGHAM SUNDAY--56 years ago, white supremacists bombed the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, AL, killing four girls and injuring dozens more.

Gene Patterson, the editor of the Atlanta Constitution in 1963

A Negro mother wept in the street Sunday morning in front of a Baptist Church in Birmingham. In her hand, she held a shoe, one shoe, from the foot of her dead child. We hold that shoe with her. Every one of us in the white South holds that small shoe in their hand. -- Tampa Bay Times

 Laura Washington

Let’s put another trope to rest: It’s the one about how these angry black women can’t get along. These two women don’t have to like each other. They probably never will. So what? -- Sun-Times

Stephen Colbert on the Democratic debate

Let the 'humble background games' begin. -- Guardian

Kamala Harris on Trump 

Donald Trump [on trade]… he reminds me of that guy in the Wizard of Oz, when you pull back the curtain, he’s a really small dude. -- The Hill

Donald Trump doing his best Don Quixote

"Goddamn windmills..."  -- Washington Post

Talk about privilege. Rich get to live longer. Poor & middle class don't.

"Poverty is a life-threatening issue for millions of people in this country, and this report confirms it."—Sen. Bernie Sanders

There are now around 100 million, or nearly a third of the U.S. population living in poverty or near poverty. This figure is missing from glowing news reports about the booming Trump economy. While there are millions of white people living in poverty, poverty rates among African-Americans, Latinx, and Native Americans run two to three times higher. 

A newly released report from the U.S. General Accounting Office on Retirement Security, commissioned by Sen. Bernie Sanders reveals that the rich are living longer lives, while poor and middle-income Americans are dying at a comparatively earlier age. Talk about privilege!

This from the report:

GAO found that among Americans aged 51-61 in 1992, fewer than half of those in the poorest 20 percent of America’s wealth distribution had survived by 2014—48 percent. Among the richest 20 percent, 75.5 percent were still alive. The poorest 20 percent were twice as likely to die over the 22-year period than the wealthiest 20 percent.

 GAO similarly observed this massive disparity in life expectancy when examining income and education: only half of those without college degrees and in the bottom 20 percent of the income distribution survived to 2014. Among those with college degrees and in the top 20 percent, based on mid-career earnings, 80 percent were still alive.

There's some -- but not much -- mention of racial inequality in the report.

GAO also found that white households in the bottom two earnings groups had higher estimated median incomes, and white households in all earnings groups generally had greater estimated median wealth, than racial minority households in those earnings groups.

"We must put an end to the obscene income and wealth inequality in our country, and ensure living wages, quality healthcare, and retirement security for our seniors as human rights," said Sanders. "If we do not urgently act to solve the economic distress of millions of Americans, a whole generation will be condemned to an early death."

Bernie never mentions race in his introduction to the report. It seems to be his perennial blindspot. But he deserves credit for being the only candidate speaking out forcefully on income and wealth inequality.

Cunningham's response to the devastation of black communities? Bring in 'new people'.

Just when you think we've heard the last from the disastrous duo of Arne Duncan and Peter Cunningham, they become media go-to guys on (of all things) gun violence and community development.

Remember, this was the pair that ran the Chicago Public Schools and the U.S. Dept. of Education for years, promoting austerity, mass school closings, privatization and uncapped expansion of privately-run charter schools in black communities. Their policies helped lead to the devastation of urban school districts and contributed to school re-segregation and the push-out of thousands of black and poor families from cities like Chicago.

Why media would turn to them for meaningful solutions to the problems they helped create is beyond me. But here we are.

Cunningham's Sun-Times commentary yesterday (To revive declining South and West Side neighborhoods, import people) was the most egregious. The headline says it all. Now that 300,000 African-Americans have been pushed out of Chicago over the past few decades, Cunningham sees their replacement with thousands of "new, middle-class people" as the city's salvation.

How unoriginal. I have referred to it as the whitenization of the cities. But it's deeper than that.

CUNNINGHAM QUOTES VITO...

Cunningham asks, just how do you attract the gentrifiers into formerly segregated, disinvested and isolated neighborhoods like Englewood? He turns to Godfather mobster character Vito Corleone for an answer. "Make them an offer they can't refuse."

So, what would it take to get 4,000 young middle-class families to move into these neighborhoods? The answer, or at least part of it, is affordable, high-quality housing. Sell the houses at cost.

If that’s too high, help cover the down-payment. Still no takers? Help pay their college debt or give them a 10-year property tax exemption, something Philadelphia has done.

Welp, where has that been? Why wasn't that offer made to the families who lived there before, the ones who built those neighborhoods and went to the now-closed neighborhood schools? The ones whose homes were foreclosed upon during the subprime crisis?

As for Duncan, who now runs Chicago CRED—a counseling and job placement service (not exactly what he was primed for by the Emerson Collective), he's cited as an expert on neighborhood gun violence in a Crain's column by Joe Warren. 

There, he carefully avoids any mention of gun control. Instead, Duncan appeals directly to his corporate pals, asking them to hire some gun offenders.

"My selfish interest is that the business community own this and see this as an economic problem, not a crime problem," Duncan says. "We have to hire our way out of this, not arrest our way out of this."

Yes, hire more and arrest less. But this doesn't even begin to deal with the enormous scope of the problem, as Mayor Lightfoot has pointed out in her recent jousting with Ted Cruz. 

But how do we stop the flow of guns and drugs into the city? What do we do about mass youth unemployment, disinvestment, and under-resourcing of public schools? The notion that the answer to Chicago's gun violence epidemic rests simply with more counseling and job placement is absurd on its face.

To quote the mayor:

“There’s a great need across this country for federal leadership in particular to step up and come forward with a real plan to deal with the gun violence that we’re seeing not only in cities like Chicago but really across the country.”

Duncan hasn't a clue.