Chicago: Puny Humans Strike Back Against Rhambo Terminators

Following on my post an hour ago (Tweed Terminates, Grady HS Resists):

Jesse Jackson joins union in protest of school closing policies as Dems chastise Mayor Rhambo as pointed out in this section from this Mike Klonsky report: Is Rahm falling from White House grace?

Following up on my post from Saturday, I'm told that Nancy Pelosi had a come-to-Jesus talk with Rahm Emanuel following her Saturday appearance at Jesse Jackson's Rainbow PUSH. It looks from here like Rahm, the autocrat, has been taken down a peg by the party bigwigs and told in no uncertain terms to heal his rift with Jackson. .

It was only a little more than a week ago that Rev. Jackson openly sided against Rahm and with the CTU and community activists, who had packed a CPS board meeting to protest the board's decision to close more neighborhood schools and hand them over to a politically connected, private turnaround company, AUSL.

Jackson and CTU President Karen Lewis openly denounced  the policies of Rahm's hand-picked board as "education apartheid," a move which immediately re-framed the whole reform discussion and put Rahm and his cronies on the defensive. A day later, Rahm made his schools boss, J.C. Brizard get up in front of the media and deny that he was running an apartheid system.

Let me repeat this again:

A day later, Rahm made his schools boss, J.C. Brizard get up in front of the media and deny that he was running an apartheid system.

How great is that? Phony Brizard who spent some time doing ed deform here in NYC and in Rochester having to deny he is running an apartheid system? Notice by the way how the ed deformers are using black machines like Brizard and Walcott to to do their selling.

Now none of this happens with a politically savvy union. People ask me how is the Chicago Teachers Union different than the UFT given that they have not been able to stop Mayor Rhambo from closing schools or any of the other charter co-loco crap. For a group in power for a little over a year and a half and consisting of leadership that were classroom teachers right up to taking over, they shown a level of fightback against a vicious mayor we have not seen here.

When Rhambo tried to force feed a longer day down their throats a year earlier by trying to bribe individual schools to abandon the union's position of actually asking to be paid a normal wage for the time, the union managed to stop the bleeding by organizing teacher and community resistance.

That's because fundamentally, even though they have made some mistakes, they are adamantly and philosophically opposed to just about every aspect of ed deform and function within that context. Not to say they don't have to compromise at some points, but they are fighting a protracted war as the tiny band of resisters. Here in NYC -- and nationally with the AFT --- we are never sure exactly which side our union is on after making one deal after another that strengthens ed deform.

Here is the rest of Klonsky's very important and incisive report:

Pelosi then flew in to Chicago, stood side-by-side with Rev. Jackson at PUSH and then endorsed Jesse Jackson, Jr. in his congressional  re-election bid. The timing and place of the endorsement was an obvious slap at the mayor who then was forced to to come out himself and openly endorse Triple J.

The party leadership is obviously worried about Rahm's rift with Jackson as well as the growing resistance to Rahm's attack on public schools, especially in the black community. There's the risk that the growing school protests will spill over into upcoming Occupy protests scheduled here for May and possibly lasting up until election time.

Teacher unions are are a badly-needed ally of Democrats in the November elections. But Rahm's war on the unions, reminiscent of the anti-union assault by T-Party guvs like  Wisconsin Gov. Walker, is obviously becoming a concern of the White House. Yesterday, Brizard stunned many of his own supporters when he came out in favor of using federal education funds to be used to send CPS kids to private schools.

Chicago Reader pic

To make matters even worse for Rahm, the White House announced yesterday that it was pulling the G8 Summit out of Chicago and moving it to Camp David. The White House says the change was not in response to the possibility of protests, which means that's exactly what it's about. Rahm had essentially moved to suspend Constitutional freedoms during the May 18-19 Summit.

According to a report in the Monitor, Rahm didn't even learn about the change until yesterday making it pretty clear that he has fallen from grace in the party's inner circles.

Monday's announcement appeared to catch many in Chicago by surprise. A spokeswoman for Emanuel said the Chicago mayor was informed about the location change in a Monday phone call from a White House official. Chris Johnson, spokesman for the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, said his organization was "just as surprised about the announcement as anybody else."

Chicago will still play host to the NATO Summit, May 20-21at great expense (conservatively estimated at $65 million) to city residents, mainly for a massive police presence. Thousands of anti-war and civil-liberties protesters are still preparing to come to the city and make their voices heard, according to Joe Iosbaker of the United National Antiwar Committee in Chicago.

Check out the Chicago Reader's Ben Joravsky who has been writing the best local stuff on this.

Now we'll see if the CTU and it's allies can take advantage of this rift in upcoming negotiations and in support of legislative efforts to stop the school closings.

=====
Join the puny humans in fighting the machines
March 10 - STATE OF THE UNION PART 2: TIME TO FIGHT BACK

 ---- See Norms Notes for a variety of articles of interest: http://normsnotes2.blogspot.com/. And make sure to check out the side panel on the right for important bits.