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| EMANUEL: Is he really all-powerful? |
That
actually was the tactic of the Chicago Teachers Union, which on Thursday put
together a bus tour meant to take unsuspecting people to the neighborhoods that
will be impacted by the Chicago Public Schools plan to close some 60
facilities.
AS
THOUGH IF people see for themselves the street gang-infested neighborhoods that
some children would now have to walk through or attend schools in due to the
closures, officials will suddenly feel sympathy.
Somehow,
I doubt it worked. Largely because the Chicago schools officials already are
putting on their “game” face that they’ve acted, and they’re not in a
reconsideration mood.
That’s
how I take schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett’s comments earlier this week about
how she’s insulted that people are describing the schools closure plan as
“racist” because so many of the schools that will be closed down are in
African-American neighborhoods.
Somehow,
I don’t think taking people on a bus tour of black-oriented neighborhoods will
sway that many people, because too many Chicagoans already are oriented to
ignoring such neighborhoods.
PERHAPS
THEY MIGHT think, “It’s not my neighborhood,” so they don’t concern themselves
with it. One only has to look at recent activity along Michigan Avenue
involving robberies to realize that there are no barricades between
neighborhoods, and we really are tied together as one city.
One’s
problems ought to be considered as all of our problems.
Now
I have stated before that I think the real tragedy concerning the fight about
closing schools is that it puts people living in substandard neighborhoods into
fighting to maintain schools that are substandard themselves.
We
ought to be thinking about how to improve the opportunities for those people –
rather than encouraging this particular fight that has the ability to make
everybody look seriously stupid.
OR
ARROGANT, WHICH is how the Emanuels are now coming across in this particular
political fight.
Take
Mayor Rahm’s brother, Ezekiel, the one who is getting attention these days for
the book he recently wrote about the lives of himself, Rahm and third brother
Ari. He also is the guy who went on the Huffington Post to “advise” the Chicago
Teachers Union to, “give in now. Give in now. Rahm will win. He always does
win.”
He
also elaborated that the unions, by putting up any fight to Emanuel and the
Chicago Public Schools (who are merely following Rahm’s dictates on this issue)
are merely “banging their heads against the wall.”
That’s
tough talk! It seems that Rahm Emanuel (if his brother’s talk is at all true)
thinks he’s already as mighty and powerful a municipal executive as anyone
named Daley!
AS
ONE WHO remembers the mayoral terms of people like Eugene Sawyer, Mike Bilandic
and Jane Byrne, I’m well aware that it isn’t the position itself that gives
people the power to treat Chicago like their personal fiefdom. Particularly in
the case of Byrne, this city has a way of snapping back at people who try to
push too hard!
It
makes me wonder if the final outcome of all of this is going to be the bloody
political showdown that will make the racially-tinged hostility of “Council
Wars” seem like a political tea party!
All
I know for sure is that we have a teachers union that is angry enough to
charter a bus to drive around some neighborhoods that many of us try to pretend
do not exist. That is, if we have ever even bothered to set foot in those
neighborhoods (which may be the real problem).
It
could end in a hard-fought victory for the mayor, if certain circumstances work
in his favor.
THEN
AGAIN, IT could also turn out to be a case where Emanuel (as in the mayor) gets
hung out to dry.
.jpg) |
| Could this someday become the sight of a bloody mess? Photograph by Gregory Tejeda |
Because
that kind of arrogance (“He always does win!”) is usually the type of attitude
that causes people to desire the equivalent of a severed head put on a pike
just in front of the Picasso statue!
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