The Dyett hunger strike goes on. Rahm may or not be softening his opposition to giving the community the open-enrollment public school it wants.
Randi Weingarten is taking two hunger strikers to DC, either to give a letter to Arne or meet him.
Mike Klonsky reminds us that Arne ended a hunger strike when he first became school superintendent in Chicago.
What wil he do now?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
We can hope Duncan becomes a good person. The odds? Info. on the Congress Blog, Jan.17, 2014, shows Duncan’s comfort level with practices like the revolving door.
“Two top Dept. of Ed. officials …came to the Department directly from the Gates Foundation…They received ethics waivers so they could continue to consult freely with Gates.”
A reminder, Microsoft and Pearson announced a deal in the summer of 2014, to develop curriculum products, for the copyrighted Common Core.
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Sauce?
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Dyett protest causes Rahm Emanuel to be rushed from stage.
https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20150902/south-shore/rahm-takes-budget-hearings-south-shore-cultural-center
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Thanks for the link.
Anger is building. The more, the politicians give to the 0.2%, the more likely, there will be widespread upheaval.
The timing of, and, the event, that foretells the boiling point, is unknowable.
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Is there sufficient pressure being felt at the top yet? Giving in to these hunger strikers and making the right decision for the community may still not be politically advantageous for Arne and Rahm.
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Has Weingarten joined the strikers?
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Arne will tell them to EAT CAKE!
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He should try eating humble pie.
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TAGO, Yvonne!
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It will be interesting to hear if Arnie can find time for them. Back in my days of charter innocence, I almost went to work for one. I found out after the fact that Arnie had given the school to the charter that year. The community had fought for years to get a new public school because of severe overcrowding. The community was so angered by the underhanded move that they sent some of their special ed students to the school. The school was totally unprepared to handle them. They had no idea of what they were doing and had no resources or services for them.
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What will Duncan do? Well he will probably take the advice of an expensive and slick PR team that will counsel him exactly what to say and do down to the last “look of concern”. And then he can go home “knowing he looks good” where it matters – the public at large. As for those risking their lives for the good of others? As long as “they” don’t make him look bad, he’ll breath a sigh of relief. Sadly this is what being in a “position of responsibility ” looks like these days. And sadly, the media is complicit in their lack of adequate coverage of this protest.
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Style over substance, eh!
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I remember some controversy during that that August 2011 SOS (Save Our Schools) protest weekend. Leading up to Sunday’s rally at the Ellipse field next to the White House, there were events and modules held at American University. There was also a protest held outside the Dept. of Ed. on Friday morning, if memory serves.
Everyone was stunned that morning when SOS leaders were invited in to meet with DOE officials, including a promised meeting with Duncan. After being led in and treated with refreshments, the SOS leaders laid out all their objections to the Dept of Ed’s policies… and alll these were met with nods… and uh huh… yeah… uh huh… from DOE functionaries.
Near the end of the meeting Duncan stopped in for a few minutes, basically saying hi and bye, then leaving. There was a promised longer meeting on Saturday afternoon with DOE officials, possibly with Duncan.
And then at the end of the day Friday, the DOE put out a release giving an account of the meeting that differed from reality. They said that the DOE and SOS were all in almost complete agreement on everything, with only minor differences… the meeting was a love-fest…. blah-blah-blah… Duncan said, that “we’re not far a apart” on most issues… “we have much common ground’”….
The SOS leaders went ballistic at this late Friday news dump, saying that there was no such love-fest, that the DOE gave no indication that they agreed with anything that SOS’s positions… as any such agreements would reflect a major 180-degree policy shifts. The SOS leaders then cancelled the longer meeting to be held on Saturday… as they would not allow themselves to be betrayed and manipulated any further. I can recall the exact words, but it was something like this…
“If Secretary Duncan or anyone else in the DOE wants to know what what the SOS is all about, they can come on Sunday to the Ellipse field (just across from the South Lawn of the White House) and hear for themselves, along with everyone else.”
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Weingarten has been passive in the face of school closings for years, and did absolutely nothing about it during the dark Bloomberg years in NYC, when her opposition might have counted for something. Yet now she wants us to believe she supports teachers and community neighborhood public schools?
She supports nothing but her own continued proximity to Power, teachers be damned.
The Dyett hunger strikers need to not only be skeptical of Rahm, but of fifth columnists in their midst, claiming to speak for them. If past practice is any guide, Ramdi will sell them out, just as she’s been doing for twenty years in the face of so-called reform.
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Arne Duncan is simply an empty suit controlled by Obama. I heard him speak at a CTE conference when he was first appointed. Apparently, his only qualifications for education czar were his basketball sessions with Obama and knowledge of the term “silos”.
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He’ll buy them lunch and tell them to get over it…the Chicago way of dealing with people who are standing up for their rights!
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