
Students and parents from Lafayette School protest school closing (Creative Commons-licensed Photo by chicagopublicmedia)
Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Chicago Public Schools (CPS) currently intend to close fifty-four schools before the year is over. This means Chicago is likely to have the largest number of school closures in any city in America this year.
President of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), Karen Lewis, has declared, “Closing 50 of our neighborhood schools is outrageous and no society that claims to care about its children can sit back and allow this to happen to them. There is no way people of conscience will stand by and allow these people to shut down nearly a third of our school district without putting up a fight. Most of these campuses are in the Black community. Since 2001 88% of students impacted by CPS School Actions are African-American. And this is by design. ”
She added, “These actions unnecessarily expose our students to gang violence, turf wars and peer-to-peer conflict. Some of our students have been seriously injured as a result of school closings. One died. Putting thousands of small children in harm’s way is not laudatory.”
A major demonstration is planned for downtown Chicago tomorrow. The streets may look like they did back in September when CTU went on strike.
CPS has “figured out” there might be acts of civil disobedience at schools in order to save schools from being shut down. A memo that Catalyst Chicago obtained, which was written for “network chiefs” (CEOs of school networks in the school system) warns of the potential for civil disobedience and instructs them on how to handle protests and civil disobedience actions.
It states, “There may be those who wish to disrupt the education of our children. While we respect the right of those who wish to peacefully protest and express themselves, this cannot be at the expense of our children’s future.”
Closing a child’s school is far more likely to disrupt that child’s education than civil disobedience. In fact, it is inarguable that a child will learn more engaging in civil disobedience than he or she will being removed and transplanted to another school because a mayor and his city’s board of education will not continue to fund them. But, don’t expect CPS to grasp the irony in this warning.
Under “CPS Guide to Civil Disobedience,” it reads, “Protestors often explain away their acts of disruption based on “1st Amendment rights”, but then go far beyond those rights in their acts.” It is true that protestors did not technically enjoy a “First Amendment right” to engage in civil disobedience, but then, again, individuals engaged in civil disobedience understand there is a potential they will be arrested for disobeying the law. They are doing so on purpose to call attention to something unjust and hopefully bring it to a halt.
A section, “Rights and Restrictions of Protestors,” suggests “incitement,” which is speech “intended and likely to cause imminent law breaking,” would not be permitted. This is a clear misunderstanding of the First Amendment. As articulated, it could be used to target and punish anyone in schools, who is suspected or caught discussing planned acts of civil disobedience because that would, to CPS, be “law-breaking.”
The section also claims “true threats,” which are words “directed against a particular person who would reasonably perceive in the message a danger of violence,” and “fighting words,” which are words “directed at a particular person, face-to-face, which might provoke an ordinary reasonable person to violence,” are prohibited. But, aren’t children supposed to tell people who say not nice things about them they don’t like those not nice things instead of hitting people? Yet, CPS, which must be staffed with individuals suffering from anger management issues, says “fighting words” might lead a “reasonable person” to engage in violence, as if it would ever be “reasonable” to violently attack someone for merely saying something combative to them.
It asserts, “Protesters do not have a right to block pedestrian or vehicle traffic, or to prevent entry and exit from buildings,” and, also, “Protesters do not have a right to harass other members of the public.” Who determines what is harassment and what is the consequence if caught “harassing” someone from the “public”? (Note: Further down in the memo it says people using “true threats” or “fighting words” may be “escorted away.”)
It goes on to list “Overall Guidelines for the Prevention of Civil Disobedience”:
- Be approachable and supportive to feelings of unrest, anxiety or dissatisfaction
- Focus Climate and Culture on maintaining a focus on learning and removing anxiety
- Support school administration in the prevention and mitigation of protests
- Observe and report all information regarding possible protestors, locations, date and times
- Be careful of who is being allowed in the building and for what reasons they are coming in
- Ensure that proper ID and purpose of visit is screened at the perimeter of the school
Basically, further transform schools into totalitarian places and, if students are anxious, dissatisfied or appear to want to to stick it to the man, confront them.
It does not say what to do with students or teachers that might be planning to engage in protests or civil disobedience. Are they to be disciplined?
Some suggestions are given on what to do with students, who might be intent on raising their voice by engaging in sit-ins, walk-outs or other acts of protest. “Beware of larger-than-normal steady traffic of people,” “Increase patrols around egresses to prevent loitering and doors from being propped open,” and, the one that is by far the best, “Positively motivate all students to remain in the building for their safety.”
If civil disobedience happens, it says the “names and information of all teachers and students who left the building” are to be documented. In case the situation gets really “dangerous”—because running throughout this memo is the hyping of some threat, “teachers, adults and students with parental consent are permitted to leave.”
Finally, it instructs “network chiefs” to call police if there are emergencies or serious incidents involving civil disobedience. Chiefs are to document the type of civil disobedience:

“Lock down” is not a type of civil disobedience at all. It is an administrative or security response to “Occupy,” a civil disobedience action. One would imagine a “lock down” would go into effect if a sit-in or walk-out occurred. Also, “exterior protest” is not “civil disobedience” and would be clearly protected by the First Amendment. In fact, CPS seems to acknowledge this much when noting, “Peaceful demonstrations outside CPS property cannot be restricted.”
Chiefs are also to document what media is there covering the action, which may be to prevent them from returning or to aid in efforts at damage control and perception management, because that is really what this memo is all about: ensuring protests do not reach critical mass leading Chicagoans to think there is wide opposition to school closings.
In conclusion, CPS recognizes it has struck a nerve by choosing to close over fifty schools. It understands it is going to bear the brunt of great protest and resistance in the coming days and is prepared to engage in tactics of counterinsurgency to stymie the efforts of teachers, parents and students, who want to take a stand to save their schools.


24 Comments


Fascism….. Ugly unadulterated fascism.
Nice job, not!
Karen Lewis is the real thing.
Among other matters, she points out that closing schools in poor neighborhoods is about “gentrification,” i.e. condemning property & Rahm can sell it to his RE supporters for dimes on the dollar.
139 of 681 CPS schools are only half full or less.
Maybe they could just close off half the building rather than close half the half full schools.
I’m assuming the reason for the closures is ostensibly related to money. Who wants to bet that a few piles of cash will ultimately be dug out to shovel into charter and other dubious “education” ventures?
Rahm is a scumbag, straight up.
the company you keep….. (Obama)
Real estate development. Watch Lewis’s speech.
How much cash for Rahm’s campaign have the charter schools given him, his relatives and friends?
Cash can be no show jobs, fat contracts to businesses Rahm and his friends and Family own, stock options etc this is Chicago and laundering bribe money is an art form.
I have no doubt that he wants to sell off the land on the cheap. He will have to engage in some obligatory “educate the children” bullshit, however I put the odds pretty high that a few of his cronies will get greased on that aspect, too.
Sell the school property to Rahm’s friends and relatives at very cheap prices just blame the real estate market crash wait a few years flip the property sell it back to the city or a charter school using cash from the city to expand and make a huge profit.
Illinois polls love to buy land before government plans to buy the land and for some reason every time they do buy land they get a great price.
have they not thought of hiring whoopi goldberg to come in and start a choir?
What’s the right number of school closures?
http://www.newgeography.com/content/002057-chicago-takes-a-census-shellacking
The Census results are out for Illinois, and it’s bad news for the city of Chicago, whose population plunged by over 200,000 people to 2,695,598, its lowest population since before 1920.
The Black Only population plunged by 177,401 as blacks increasingly moved to suburbs.
Great Stats Alan. It brings much needed background to this story.
Gentrification will simply be a stop on the way to setting up schools that suck up tax dollars for rahmbo’s friends. That way money can be made on the RE transactions for one time occurrences and then long term in the school business. Doing this in the predominantly black people’s area is a no brainer because the consequences will be minor to rahmbo and cronies. rahmbo will then be able to show what an educational progressive he is.
I guess it’s not terribly surprising that school closing affect mostly minority kids since less than 9% of CPS students are white.
http://www.cps.edu/about_cps/at-a-glance/pages/stats_and_facts.aspx
First they came for the schools of the mostly not white….
Overall enrollment in Chicago Public Schools has declined 6 percent in the last 14 years, a loss of 28,289 students. In that time, CPS has opened more than 120 new schools, many of them charters, shifting enrollment patterns.
http://www.wbez.org/news/truth-squad-enrollment-down-cps-not-much-104297
I’m a long way from Chicago, but it seems like opening new schools during 14 years if declining enrollment is a recipe for, well, what they have now.
what if the 50 schools affected formed a charter school corp?
be interesting to see what they could do with the per student funding to recreate neighborhood schools …
Better link, I hope. (Karen Lewis keynote speech)
>
that’s rahm & that’s chicago – using public force to enable the crony capitalist destruction of public education – -
my kind of town : by theCCC
>>
check out this heat map of 2012 homicides overlayed on the CHI school closure list..
closing schools in decimated and abandoned areas of chicago
chicago, on the vanguard of class division&public education privatization – coming to the abandon areas of your mega-opolis soon courtesy of “no child left out of the race to the top” educational posturing by greedy speculators and bought off regulators…
Isn’t Karen Lewis, along with the other leaders of the teacher’s union the ones who stopped the striking teachers?
Weren’t they the ones who were railing about the lack of ACs and too many students per class … and then they accepted Rahm’s deal to give the teachers more (but nothing about class sizes or ACs)?
In the long ago thread on this, some said that Rahm would betray them and still close schools and open charters and that this was a giant con to buy-off the teacher’s union leaders and the teachers themselves?
Well they stopped the strike and gave Rahm everything he wanted. Now he can do whatever he wants. And he is. If anyone is surprised by this, including Ms. Lewis, …
They betrayed themselves, their students, and everything they supposedly believed in. Couldn’t happen to a a nicer bunch of sellouts (or complete morons if you want to be generous.
This is just like WI when the leaders of the unions made sure no strike, of any kind would happen. But they sure gave some nice speeches.
I think your missing Alan’s point. it should read, ‘First they came for the schools of the mostly vacant . . .’
So CPS is all knowing and the last word on the rights of American citizens, excuse me while I puke!
You’re excused.
CPS may not be all knowing, but they seem to have done research, rather than knee jerk and project.
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-12-10/news/ct-oped-1210-schools-20121210_1_shutter-schools-public-school-district-charter-schools
Commission on School Utilization
http://www.schoolutilization.com/