The Chicago Teachers Union is currently on the front lines of a fight to defend public education. On one side the 30,000 members of the CTU have called for a contract that includes fair compensation, meaningful job security for qualified teachers, smaller class sizes and a better school day with Art, Music, World Language and appropriate staffing levels to help our neediest students.
On the other side, the Chicago Board of Education—which is managed by out of town reformers and Broad Foundation hires with little or no Chicago public school experience—has pushed to add two weeks to the school year and 85 minutes to the school day, eliminate pay increases for seniority, evaluate teachers based on student test scores, and slash many other rights.
Teachers, parents and community supporters in Chicago have fought valiantly—marching, filling auditoriums at hearings and parent meetings, even occupying a school and taking over a school board meeting. Most recently, 98 percent of our members voted to authorize a strike. But now we find ourselves facing new opponents—national education privatizers, backed by some of the nation’s wealthiest people. They are running radio ads, increasing press attacks, and mounting a PR campaign to discredit the CTU and the benefits of public education.
PDA IL joins the Chicago Teachers Union, Chicago Teachers Solidarity Campaign, Gray Panthers, Northern Illinois Jobs for Justice, Unite Here and National Nurses United among other labor unions and Hyde Park community activists to protest against the use of property taxes going to fund the building of a new luxury hotel in Hyde Park while schools face millions of dollars in cuts.
Over 20 Bickerdike activists attend a training to learn about Tax Increment Financing (TIF) and how the inequality of TIF distribution is effecting our neighborhoods, schools, libraries, and parks.
Join PDA Chicago as we stand with the Chicago Teachers Solidarity Campaign this Wednesday, August 8, to protest public tax money going to corporate welfare.
5:30-8:00 p.m., Lake Park Ave. and E. 53rd St., Chicago, 60615
$5.2 million of property taxes intended for our public schools is going to Hyatt Hotels, a company that doesn’t need it. No more corporate welfare!
by n0madic, posted on Monday, August 6th, 2012 at 7:00 am
In early August, 1912, progressives from across the country gathered in Chicago to launch a new political party. It was to be “a convention managed by women and has-beens,” said a New York Times reporter dismissively. “About everyone here who wears trousers is an ex. There are ex-Senators, ex-Secretaries, and ex-Commissioners galore. Everybody who is not an ex is a woman.”
It was also to be a
convention that would nominate an ex-President to be their standard bearer, Theodore Roosevelt, who would do better in the general election than the soon-to-be-ex-President William Howard Taft.
Below is a transcript of Roosevelt’s speech to the convention, his “confession of faith,” as he put it. It was delivered one hundred years ago today, and in some of it’s particulars it shows it’s age. What is most interesting, however, is how much of it still needs to be said, but almost certainly won’t be, by the presidential candidates the New York Times will be focusing it’s attention on this year.
ADDRESS BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT
Before the Convention of the National Progressive Party in Chicago, August 6, 1912
To you, men and women who have come here to this great city of this great State formally to launch a new party, a party of the people of the whole Union, the National Progressive Party, I extend my hearty greeting. You are taking a bold and a greatly needed step for the service of our beloved country. The old parties are husks, with no real soul within either, divided on artificial lines, boss-ridden and privilege-controlled, each a jumble of incongruous elements, and neither daring to speak out wisely and fearlessly what should be said on the vital issues of the day.
by Mike Barr, posted on Tuesday, July 17th, 2012 at 9:33 am
My grandfather lived almost 100 years. That was his goal but he missed it by about 7 months. He wanted to make it not so much because he was having a good time but because it was a goal he had set himself. His mind was sound but his body just couldn’t take it anymore. One of his legs was going gangrene from diabetes and it would have had to be amputated. It wasn’t practical to him to just stay alive and have pieces of himself cut off just to say he’d made it to 100. So my Mom and he agreed that he wouldn’t have the operation.
Gramps was a farmer and he’d spent his life working with nature, figuring how he could make his farm work, keep it going. He had to make hard decisions many times and when it came to spending money on an operation to cut off his leg so he could live a little longer it just didn’t add up.
I spent a good deal of time talking with my Gramps about politics and what was going on in the world and what was happening to America. One day not too long before he had to go live in a nursing home we were talking and I looked over to see tears rolling down his weathered face. I was startled because Gramps was a pretty tough old geezer even at his age. I always respected him and not to many people dared to fuck with him.
Leah Fried of the UE, talks with Laura Flanders about the decision by Chicago factory workers to purchase the factory they once famously occupied when it was Republic Windows and Doors. Fried and Flanders spoke at Labor Notes 2012 in Chicago.
