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| Chicago was kept safe Wednesday from angry schoolteachers. Photograph by Gregory Tejeda |
And
as I walked up Clark Street (headed to the Daley Center courthouse for an unrelated event), their chant
became clearer and clearer – Hey, hey.
Ho, ho. Rahm Emanuel’s got to go!
YES,
IT WAS the lovely batch of individuals from the Chicago Teachers Union,
picketing the Chicago Public Schools offices before marching to the Thompson
Center state government building (passing City Hall in the process) to let it
be known they think it stinks that some 3,000 people (including more than 1,000
teachers) are about to be laid off.
The
public schools system has financial problems, just like many other governmental
units these days. The raw numbers for the Chicago system sound larger because
the system itself is bigger.
More
kids than any other school system. So they need more teachers.
So
1,000 Chicago teachers is probably the equivalent of some rural school district
having to let a dozen people go.
IT
HURTS! PARTICULARLY since many of those who teach in the Chicago Public Schools
system have some sort of special dedication to education as a profession.
Otherwise, they wouldn’t put up with the constant grief they are subjected to –
and which they expressed publicly on Wednesday.
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| EMANUEL: Not the 'man of the hour' |
Personally,
the part of Wednesday’s protests that caught my attention was the police
presence. That block was likely the safest place in Chicago in the morning
hours.
I
can’t help but think those officers could have been put to better use had they
not been sent to a morning assignment that basically amounted to them standing
around watching while school teachers picketed and chanted extremely off-key.
Then
again, those officers probably felt a bit safer. Would they really have to venture
off to assignments where they’d have to encounter real criminals? Or does
someone really think that schoolteachers expressing their discontent with their
treatment are criminal in nature?
NOT
THAT ANY of this is new in nature. It was just this weekend that I picked up a
copy of The Nation magazine – which featured on its cover an essay about the level of outrage that exists in
Chicago toward “Rahm Emanuel’s austerity agenda.”
Which
really is nothing more than Emanuel bringing his hard-headed tactics from his
days in Congress and as White House chief of staff to City Hall.
This
is the man who had organized labor and Latino ethnic groups suspicious of him
because of the perception he didn’t really care about their issues, and wasn’t
about to let their concerns hijack his own priorities.
Now,
we can add the Chicago Teachers Union to the list of people who don’t have much
use for Emanuel. Although I suspect Rahm himself prefers to look at it as
gaining the support of people who’d prefer that the teachers union would just “Drop
Dead!”
SO
WHERE DOES Emanuel turn for some lovin’, or at the very least, someone who won’t
publicly detest him?
About
the only place that was willing to respect him on Wednesday was at City Hall.
For the mayor on Wednesday made public his choice of a replacement for retiring
33rd Ward Alderman Dick Mell.
Emanuel,
after using a process he created to accept applications and review the
qualifications of a dozen finalists, went along with Mell’s desire that his
daughter, Deborah, get the post.
No
one who pays attention to City Hall on a regular basis was shocked by the
choice. In fact, the only real surprise would have been if anybody BUT Deb Mell
had got the post.
BECAUSE
THAT WOULD have been a sure-fire way to trigger a political brawl, since Dick
Mell remains the Democratic ward committeeman and would have made life
uncomfortable for any Emanuel-chosen alderman not named “Deb Mell.”
Along
with the alderman himself.
And
Emanuel has enough enemies these days without needing to accumulate any more.
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