http://socialistworker.org/2013/06/05/teachers-vs-the-chicago-bully
COMMENT: LEE SUSTAR
Lee Sustar looks at the challenges facing the
Chicago Teachers Union after Rahm Emanuel carried out the largest-ever round of
school closures in any U.S. city.
June 5, 2013
CLOSING 50 schools while doling out millions in
taxpayer dollars to real estate developers landed Rahm Emanuel on the cover of
Time magazine [1] under the headline "Chicago Bull."
Journalist David Von Drehle portrays Emanuel as a
tough guy who steamrollers the opposition, but all for the greater good of the
city. But to teachers and growing numbers of working people fed up the mayor's
pro-business agenda, Emanuel is just Chicago's biggest bully--and they want to
get rid of him.
The day after Emanuel's handpicked Board of
Education voted on May 22 to approve the largest round of school closures in a
single city in U.S. history, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) hosted a voter
registration meeting [2] in which several union members were trained to be
deputy registrars, enabling them to register people to vote.
"We need to figure out a way to change the
hearts and minds of the voters, the people to whom the mayor is
accountable," Lewis said at the meeting. "We have to let people know
'your vote means something.'"
Of course, the CTU has already gave the bully in
City Hall a lesson last September, when a strike shut schools for nine days and
defeated Emanuel's effort to break the union's power. The CTU fought not only
to preserve pay and working conditions, but also to defend public education
from budget cuts and privatization through the expansion of charter schools.
That fight continued as the union organized
against the mass school closings--and in the middle of that campaign, Chicago
teachers reelected their union leaders by an overwhelming margin.
Now the question for the CTU--and for people
across the city fed up with Emanuel's corporate agenda and bullying tactics--is
where the voter registration effort will lead. Could the emerging grassroots
movement for educational justice be dispersed into a mayoral campaign for a
moderate Democrat who will challenge Emanuel in the 2015 election? Or is it
possible that an electoral campaign could be used to build the movement through
an independent, pro-worker platform that would draw new people into activism?
Lewis spoke about the pro-corporate character of
the Democratic Party and the need for an alternative in her speech to the Labor
Campaign for Single Payer national meeting in January [3].
"Unfortunately," she said, "there's really only one party in
this country. It's the party of money, and there are two branches. So we have
to work with our allies to develop new coalitions."
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
IN THE near term, the CTU is continuing to
organize against the closures.
The union worked with a group of Chicago parents
to file several lawsuits [4] to stop the shutdowns. The suits argue that the
board violated its own guidelines by ignoring the recommendations of
independent hearing officers in a number of cases; that the closures are
concentrated in predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods; and that the
city's plan doesn't take into account the needs of special ed students. There
are also discussions about further protest actions at the affected schools.
The board's final decision on closures came just
days after the incumbent Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators (CORE) was was
returned to office with 79 percent of the vote [5].
But CORE members barely paused to celebrate. At
the caucus' reelection party on May 17, congratulations and toasts were
immediately followed by the question: "What march are you going to
tomorrow?" The next morning, CTU organizers were to join with student,
parent and community activists to begin the three-day March for Educational
Justice as part of the fight to keep schools open. Thus, the victory party thinned
out early so CTU officers, staffers and activists could get some sleep before
hitting the streets a few hours later.
In the end, the closures were approved--voted on
by the school board "in less time than it takes to boil an egg," as
the Chicago Sun-Times put it [6].
Despite that heavy blow, the three-day
march--which capped months of organizing and activism--achieved some gains.
Barbara Byrd-Bennett, the CEO of Chicago Public Schools (CPS), took four
schools off the closures list. Two of them, Mahalia Jackson Elementary and
George Manierre Elementary, had seen high levels of parent and community
opposition to the closures.
Manierre, in particular [7], highlighted the
gentrification-driven agenda behind some of the closures, since it sits in a
neighborhood where million-dollar townhouses stand across the street from
public housing developments populated largely by African Americans.
Moreover, Emanuel paid a high political price for
carrying through the shutdowns, which were increasingly seen as racist since 88
percent of the students affected are African American. Chicago Tribune poll,
six in 10 of those surveyed disagreed with Emanuel's closure policy. The poll
also found that 41 percent backed the CTU's positions on school policy, while
just 19 percent backed the mayor.
The shift in public opinion prompted Cook County
Board President Toni Preckwinkle to publicly criticize Emanuel and CPS for
ignoring the recommendations of the independent hearing officers [8], who
recommended that 13 of the targeted schools remain open.
"What was the point of having public
hearings?" Preckwinkle told the Sun-Times. "Was it all a charade? If
you weren't going to pay any attention to the outcome of the public hearings or
the recommendations of the public hearing officers, why would you bother to
waste everyone's time?"
Chicago dominates surrounding Cook County, so this
was an uncharacteristically sharp criticism by Preckwinkle, who has often
cooperated with Emanuel, although occasionally taking issue publically with his
policies. As the city's most prominent African American politician, Preckwinkle
was reflecting the growing discontent with Emanuel in Black Chicago. She faces
reelection in 2014, a few months before Emanuel.
Several African American alderman also felt enough
pressure to speak at the Board of Education meeting and plead to keep schools
in their wards open--even though they made it clear that they still support the
mayor.
It was left to Alderman Bob Fioretti, an outspoken
white liberal who has been targeted for political elimination through a radical
redistricting of his ward, to declare that the board meeting was just for show,
since the school closures were a done deal. "I wasn't going to testify
today because I feel that so many decisions are made without any input,"
Fioretti said. The closures, Fioretti said, were an "inequitable burden on
African American and Latino communities. Substantial research shows that
closing schools and moving students increases the dropout rate and the incidence
of street violence."
Parents, teachers and community organizers also
challenged the board and CEO Byrd-Bennett for ignoring community voices.
CTU President Lewis pointed out that the board
didn't have the guts to take a roll call vote on the schools, instead using a
parliamentary maneuver to record a unanimous "yes" for all 50
shutdowns.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
THE ARROGANCE of Byrd-Bennett, the school board
and, above all, Emanuel has fueled sentiment for an electoral challenge to the
mayor.
Weeks before the final decision on school
closures, Lewis declared that the CTU would be at the center of an effort to
register 100,000 new voters. At the final rally against school closings May 20,
she upped the number to 250,000. But the question still to be answered is: vote
for which candidate and on what political program? In a city that is run almost
entirely by Democrats, what's the alternative?
Cook County Board President Preckwinkle's
criticisms of Emanuel has raised hopes that she might challenge the mayor. As
the former alderman for the Hyde Park neighborhood--where Barack Obama lived
before moving into the White House--Preckwinkle had progressive positions on
many issues. But a look at her record shows that while she's on the liberal
wing of the Democratic establishment, she's very much tied to the political
machine.
Preckwinkle, a former teacher, collaborated with
CPS's Renaissance 2010 plan [9], which is supposed to attract middle-class
families to the public school system through magnet programs that can squeeze
out the children of residents in a particular neighborhood.
She also urged the University of Chicago's Center
for Urban School Improvement to set up charter schools [10] in her area,
bankrolled by the Gates Foundation. " I'm very grateful to the Center for
Urban School Improvement and to the University for committing resources to the
communities I serve. They currently operate a first-class charter school in
North Kenwood, and we are fortunate to have another coming into Oakland [near
Hyde Park]," she told a reporter.
Preckwinkle is also a proponent of Tax Increment
Financing (TIF) [11], a scheme pioneered by former Mayor Richard M. Daley that
that diverts tax revenues from schools and libraries. Like other alderman,
Preckwinkle sought to use TIF money to develop her district, even at the cost
of bleeding the budget for public education and other needs.
Despite this record, many opponents of Emanuel
hope that Preckwinkle could follow the example of Harold Washington, Chicago's
first, and so far only, African American mayor, who was elected back in the
1980s. But even if Preckwinkle swings further left and challenges Emanuel,
she's unlikely to repeat Washington's success.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
A QUICK look at history shows why. Washington,
while certainly a liberal, was nevertheless a product of the Democratic machine
himself. Even so, his campaign galvanized the African American working class in
Chicago, which was fed up with segregation in housing and the schools, and poor
social services.
Washington also reflected the aspirations of the
Black middle class, which was excluded from managerial jobs in the public
sector and denied business contracts brokered by longtime Mayor Richard J.
Daley, the father of Emanuel's predecessor. Washington also forged an electoral
alliance with Puerto Rican politicians and leading activists in the
fast-growing Mexican immigrant population.
The Democratic machine had been in turmoil
following the elder Daley's death in 1976. Washington's triumph over an openly
racist opposition in the 1983 election and the defeat of the racist old guard
in a special election three years later for City Council based on redrawn
districts transformed the political atmosphere in the city. Prominent jobs in
the city bureaucracy that had been long reserved for "white ethnics"
were now available to African Americans and Latinos.
However, the hoped-for social changes never
materialized. Federal budget cuts under the administration of Ronald Reagan led
to a squeeze on city finances and layoffs of public employees. Chicago was no
exception. The squeeze on school budgets provoked the longest-ever CTU strike
in 1987 while Washington was in office.
When Washington died suddenly in 1987, the
alliance he created fractured immediately. Eugene Sawyer, one of the African
Americans who competed to succeed him, was elected mayor by allying himself
with the white racist aldermen who opposed Washington down the line. Two years
later, Richard M. Daley, the son of the former mayor, won office by
reconstituting the old Democratic machine.
Daley crafted an electoral appeal to liberals and
forged a deal with Latino politicians to pre-empt the Black-Brown electoral
alliance of the Washington years. Rep. Luis Gutierrez, then an alderman and one
of Washington's trusted allies, endorsed Daley in what was widely seen as an
act of betrayal [12] by what was known as the "Washington coalition."
Ever since, the Democratic machine has relied on its growing Latino base.
Over the years, Daley used his powers to appoint
alderman to replace those who resigned--or were indicted. As a result, a number
of African American aldermen owed their political careers to Daley, rather than
the community groups that had propelled Washington into office. "They used
to call it plantation politics," Alysia Tate wrote in the Chicago Reporter
in 1999 [13]. "A handpicked group of Black politicians won elected
offices, but lacked any real power."
In his 22 years in office, Daley did the bidding
of real estate developers and finance capital as he remade Chicago as a
"world city." Democratic machine hacks now coexisted with technocrats
who took over social policy, targeting city services for privatization. The
white flight that had panicked Corporate Chicago was halted in the 1990s, thanks
to pro-gentrification policies.
Meanwhile, the demolition of public housing led to
Black flight. According to census data [14], of the 200,000 people who moved
out of Chicago between 2001 and 2010, some 180,000 were African American.
Daley's other social policy innovation was school
"reform," which consisted of mass firings of teachers at
"underperforming" schools--and, later, school closures, concentrated,
then as now, in African American and Latino neighborhoods.
The political machine was retooled with a growing
Latino voting base through the Daley-dominated Hispanic Democratic Organization
and the nonprofit group UNO, which thrives on housing contracts and charter
school operating funds, with allegedly corrupt insider dealing [15]. The old
machine, based on municipal patronage jobs, has given way to new political
alliances based on contracts to run privatized city services.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
BY 2010, having left the city broke, Daley decided
to quit while he was ahead--or perhaps, according to the swirling rumors,
before he was indicted. Enter his former aide, Rahm Emanuel, whose rising
political fortunes allowed him to bag more than $18 million during a
two-and-a-half-year stint as an investment banker [16], before moving on to Congress
and chief of staff in the Obama White House.
As mayor, Emanuel has accelerated the property
development drive and the privatization of schools and city services. As he
curtailed library hours and shut down mental health clinics and schools, the
mayor boosted Chicago's profile by hosting a NATO summit, wooing more corporate
investors, and locking up Occupy and antiwar protesters.
Emanuel--dubbed "Mayor 1 Percent" by the
left--has suffered sharply declining approval ratings over the last year [17],
with 50 percent of respondents supporting him and 40 percent expressing
disapproval. That's raised the hopes of many people that he can be run out of
office in two years.
But as former alderman and University of
Illinois-Chicago professor Dick Simpson says, "You can't beat somebody
with nobody."
So who is the potential challenger--and how could
they unseat Emanuel, who enjoys the backing of the president of the United
States? The usual political logic of the union leadership in such circumstances
is to find a Democratic candidate who moderate enough to be considered
"electable"--and tone down labor's message to fit that campaign. That
strategy failed utterly in Wisconsin, where union-busting Gov. Scott Walker
easily survived a recall election against Democrat Tom Barrett, who had an
anti-labor record of his own as mayor of Milwaukee.
There won't be a repeat of the Harold Washington
years, either, when the rising African American middle class tied its fortunes
to his campaign or were pressured by voters into backing him.
These days, a new generation of African American
politicians, representing a shrinking Black electorate, have close ties to City
Hall. They are prime examples of a wide class divide in Black Chicago. The same
can be said of the new Latino Democratic establishment, which takes liberal
positions on issues around immigration, but prefers to angle for political
patronage and city contracts, rather than lead a political insurgency.
Emanuel's electoral fortunes could get worse if
the economy sours and if opposition to his policies continues to rise. But he
has plenty of political and financial resources at his command, a record of
ruthlessness in squashing political opponents and the devoted support of the
city's capitalists.
And even if a challenger to Emanuel does emerge
within the mainstream of the Democratic Party, the pressure would be on for the
candidate to conform to Democratic Party polices that are far to the right of
the party's positions in Harold Washington's day.
Public education is a prime example. The Secretary
of Education under Barack Obama is Arne Duncan, who was promoted to the top job
nationally after presiding over the Chicago Public Schools and pushing a
corporate school reform agenda. Given the bipartisan consensus on austerity and
neoliberalism, even liberal Democratic mayors are compelled to administer
cutbacks.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
SO DOES all this mean that the growing opposition
to Rahm Emanuel has to sit out the 2015 election?
Not at all. An independent campaign backed by
labor, community organizations and social movement activists, could build on
the widespread support for the CTU during its strike and for the parents,
students and teachers fighting school closures. The idea has already been
circulating for months: At a rally during the strike, several teachers and
supporters shouted for Karen Lewis herself to run for mayor--but she waved them
off with a smile.
A teacher--or another unionist or community
activist--would be an ideal figure to lead an electoral challenge to Emanuel
that's independent of the Democratic Party. While mainstream political
commentators would deride such a campaign as "symbolic," the effort
could be a powerful organizing tool for building the movement for social
justice. It's even possible that one or two independent candidates for alderman
could be elected, potentially creating a platform on the City Council for labor
and the left to challenge Emanuel's agenda.
At a time when newspapers and other media outlets
have slashed their staffs and narrowed their focus, activists are using their
own publications and social media to reach a new and growing audience. That's a
big reason why the Chicago teachers' strike was so popular, despite the outrage
from editorial boards and Emanuel's political hacks. And it's a renewed social
movement--not a new face in City Hall--that can resist the austerity drive.
Such a project would be challenging, but the
potential to revitalize the left and progressive movements is real. If Rahm is
determined to be Mayor 1 Percent, then the 99 percent should have a candidate
of their own.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Published by the International Socialist
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[1]
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2144556,00.html
[2]
http://www.progressillinois.com/quick-hits/content/2013/05/23/ctu-kicks-effort-change-political-landscape-chicago-video
[3] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmaokSaAYvM#!
[4] http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/05/29/chicago-school-closures-teachers-union-and-parents-file-third-lawsuit/
[5]
http://www.ctunet.com/blog/excerpt/CTU-2013-ELECTION-RESULTS-WITH-NOTES.pdf
[6]
http://www.suntimes.com/20258773-761/cps-makes-history-closing-scores-of-schools-in-less-time-than-it-takes-to-boil.html
[7]
http://socialistworker.org/2013/05/21/fighting-for-our-schools
[8]
http://www.suntimes.com/news/cityhall/19978282-418/cps-parents-want-mayor-to-walk-new-routes-reconsider-school-closings.html
[9] http://www.hydepark.org/education/2010.htm
[10]
http://www.hydepark.org/education/UCchartersandCharters.htm
[11]
http://chicagomaroon.com/2001/05/22/community-leaders-convene-for-panel-on-gentrification/
[12]
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1989-02-13/news/8903040994_1_gutierrez-alderman-timothy-evans
[13]
http://socialistworker.org/http/%252F%20www.chicagoreporter.com/999/02-99.main.ltm/>
[14]
http://www.suntimes.com/news/nation/4459678-418/black-population-shrinking-in-major-cities.html
[15]
http://www.suntimes.com/news/otherviews/20418227-452/uno-cant-whitewash-this-scandal.html
[16]
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/04/us/politics/04emanuel.html?pagewanted=all
[17]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/09/rahm-emanuel-approval-rat_0_n_3247489.html
[18]
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0
(Cartoon: Ethan Heitner / More at: freedomfunnies.wordpress.com)It
isn't easy to find common ground on the Common Core. Already hailed as
the “next big thing” in education reform, the Common Core State
Standards are being rushed into classrooms in nearly every district in
the country. Although these “world-class” standards raise substantive
questions about curriculum choices and instructional practices, such
educational concerns are likely to prove less significant than the role
the Common Core is playing in the larger landscape of our polarized
education reform politics.
