"Thousands of striking Chicago teachers rally in city park" by Jason Keyser | Associated Press, September 16, 2012
CHICAGO — Thousands of striking Chicago public school teachers packed a city park Saturday in a show of force as union leaders and the district tried to work out the details of a tentative agreement that would end a weeklong walkout....
I thought they had taken that tone the whole week with their invisible inks (Sept. 10 article never appeared in print) and rewrites (Sept. 11 article a total rewrite but I figured why bother with more censorship goose-chasing), and they just confirmed it.
The wrangling in one of the nation’s largest school districts was being closely watched around the country because of its implications for other labor disputes at a time when unions have been losing ground.
Well, they won one yesterday: Judge nullifies restrictions on unions in Wisconsin law
Members of the Boston Teachers Union traveled to Chicago to join Saturday’s rally, said president Richard Stutman. The group had already voted to send Chicago a token donation of money and took out an ad in the Chicago Sun-Times to express support for the striking teachers.
Addressing demonstrators Saturday, the Rev. Jesse Jackson said ‘‘the struggle is not over’’ and there was still a long road to ensuring that all residents of the city have equal access to quality schools, especially in neighborhoods beset by gang violence and poverty.
‘‘Our mission is very clear: We fight for equal, high-quality public education for all,’’ Jackson said. ‘‘When school opens again there will be 160 schools without a public library. . . . When school opens again, there will be schools yet without books. So we fight today for schools on the South and West Side to look like schools on the North Side.’’
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Students could be back in class on Monday.
On his way into the talks, Chicago Teachers Union vice president Jesse Sharkey was optimistic that timetable was still possible.
‘‘We’re hopeful that we can do it, but frankly like I said, the devil is in the details of this contract and we want it in writing,’’ he told the Sun-Times. ‘‘We’re going to go in today and hammer [out] the details.’’
Until teachers see the exact wording, they will continue to strike.
‘‘They are suspicious, you have to understand,’’ union president Karen Lewis told reporters Friday after a meeting with nearly 800 members of the union’s House of Delegates. ‘‘We have been a little burnt by the [school] board in the past.’’
Union members from Wisconsin, Minnesota, and elsewhere joined Saturday’s rally in solidarity, and speaker after speaker said the labor fight in Chicago was important for unions everywhere. Reflecting the optimism of the past few days, the gathering also had a festive atmosphere, with people pounding drums and grilling hot dogs, and children playing.
But forceful (sigh).
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NEXT DAY UPDATE:
It must be a test because I once again get a reedited rewrite. WTF?
"Chicago teachers put vote on contract on hold; Emanuel to ask court to end ongoing strike" by Sophia Tareen and Tammy Webber | Associated Press, September 17, 2012
CHICAGO — Chicago teachers uncomfortable with a tentative contract offer decided Sunday to remain on strike, insisting they need more time before deciding whether to end an acrimonious standoff with Mayor Rahm Emanuel that will keep 350,000 students out of class for at least two more days.
Iraq and Afghanistan should have taught you wars never end easy once begun.
Emanuel fired back Sunday night by instructing city attorneys to seek a court order forcing Chicago Teachers Union members back into classrooms. ‘‘This was a strike of choice and is now a delay of choice that is wrong for our children,’’ he said in a statement.
Presented with a choice on whether to ask members to vote on a contract that union president Karen Lewis had at one point called ‘‘a fight for the very soul of public education,’’ the union’s 800-member House of Delegates told their leaders they needed more time to talk to the rank and file before ending the city’s first teachers strike in 25 years.
Teachers had only a few hours to review a summary of a proposed settlement worked out over the weekend with officials from the nation’s third largest school district. That wasn’t enough time, they said, to digest a complicated contract that addresses two issues central to the debate about the future of public education across the nation: teacher evaluations and job security.
Oh, that is SO UNREASONABLE, isn't it?
It's not like you would want them to read the thing. Just vote yay and get back to work, dammit!
The union will meet Tuesday, after the end of the Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year.
And you thought I was just being an anti-Semite when I commented on Jewish control of education (and society through ownership and influence).
‘‘We felt more comfortable being able to take back what’s on the table and let our constituents look at it and digest it,’’ said Dean Refakes, a physical education teacher at Gompers Elementary School.
I was going to cut that paragraph but it is the only one that is verbatim from my printed paper so far (sigh).
That timeline, however, means the earliest classes could resume would be Wednesday. That frustrated both Emanuel and some parents, who learned late at night a week ago Sunday that last-minute negotiations had failed to produce a contract and that the strike was on.
Yeah, "some" parents. Keep that in mind please.
‘‘I think a week is a long time to be wasting time. Another week would be murder. I don’t think it’s right,’’ said Beatriz Fierro, the mother of a fifth grader. ‘‘They should be back in school.’’
Well, this is a war, and we need all the hyperbole we can get (did they teach you what hyperbole is, kids?).
Other parents continued to stand with the union.
Some, other, what's the difference, right? The difference is the vast majority of parents stuck with the teachers.
As teachers walked picket lines in the past week and rallied Saturday in a park near downtown, they were joined by parents who have had to scramble to find baby-sitters or a supervised place for children to pass the time....
Emanuel was typically blunt. He accused the union of using the city’s students as ‘‘pawns in an internal dispute.’’ He said the strike was illegal because it endangers the health and safety of students and concerned issues — evaluations, layoffs, and recall rights — that Illinois state law says cannot be grounds for a work stoppage.
He's a DEMOCRAT, right? The union guy and the middle and lower classes guy's friend, right?
The walkout, the first for a major American city in at least six years, canceled classes for students who just returned from summer vacation and forced tens of thousands of parents to find alternatives for idle children, including many whose neighborhoods have been wracked by gang violence in recent months.
Yeah, yeah, we get the point. My printed paper emphasized the "walkout," and those teachers created such trouble for the parents standing with them. suppose the teachers are also responsible for the gang violence, too.
With an average salary of $76,000, Chicago teachers are among the highest-paid in the nation.
And that is chicken feed for an expensive city like Chicago!!
You know what you learn from something like this? That I should have become a banker. Instead I have a useless history degree that I could use to teach lies.
The contract outline calls for annual raises, but it does not restore a 4 percent raise that was rescinded by the mayor last year.
That upset many teachers, said union delegate Susan Hickey, a school social worker. But she said the proposal was ultimately one teachers — who are worried that staying out beyond mid-week will further upset parents — could support.
‘‘Personally I think there’s a lot of us who don’t want to lose the parental support,’’ she said.
Why would you? Corporate media spin machine?
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What was scrapped:
"The Chicago teachers union decided Sunday to continue its weeklong strike, extending an acrimonious standoff with Mayor Rahm Emanuel over teacher evaluations and job security provisions central to the debate over the future of public education across the United States.
Union delegates declined to formally vote on a proposed contract settlement worked out over the weekend with officials from the nation's third largest school district. Schools will remain closed Monday.
Union president Karen Lewis said teachers want the opportunity to continue to discuss the offer that is on the table. "Our members are not happy," Lewis said. "They want to know if there is anything more they can get."
Oh, those greedy teachers behaving just like war-profiteers.
She said the union's delegates will meet again Tuesday, and the soonest classes are likely to resume is Wednesday.
And nothing about the Jewish holiday.
The walkout forced tens of thousands of parents to find alternatives for idle children, including many whose neighborhoods have been wracked by gang violence in recent months.
The walkout drew national attention because it posed a high-profile test for teachers unions, which have seen their political influence threatened by a growing reform movement....
Yes, the LESSON from the CORPORATE MEDIA is TEACHERS are SELFISH and DO NOT CARE ABOUT KIDS!! If only their influence had been akin to AIPAC lobby money, war loot kickbacks, or corporate campaign contributions. Then they wouldn't even have to worry about influence.
I'm sorry, readers, but whatever this is in my newspaper on my desk it is rank.
The strike carried political implications, too, raising the risk of a protracted labor battle in President Barack Obama's hometown at the height of the fall campaign, with a prominent Democratic mayor and Obama's former chief of staff squarely in the middle.
Oh, so now they are even making their defender(?) look bad.
Emanuel's forceful demands for reform had angered the teachers last year as the cash-strapped city began bargaining with a number of unions....
He's a Democrat?
Chicago's long history as a union stronghold seemed to work to the teachers' advantage. As they walked the picket lines, they were joined by many of the very people who were most inconvenienced by the work stoppage: parents who had to scramble to find babysitters or a supervised place for children to pass the time.
I thought that merited an enlargement considering what the webbers were treated to above, remember?
To win friends, the union representing 25,500 teachers engaged in something of a publicity campaign, telling parents repeatedly about problems with schools and the barriers that have made it more difficult to serve their kids.
Isn't that what CORPORATIONS and GOVERNMENT does? Yeah, I AM TIRED of the SUBTLE ELITIST INSULTS and the AGENDA-PUSHING SLANT I am getting in my "newspaper."
Yeah, I guess TELLING the TRUTH is a "publicity campaign" to a media that seems to do anything but!
They described classrooms that are stifling hot without air conditioning, important books that are unavailable and supplies as basic as toilet paper that are sometimes in short supply.
That LAST ONE is REALLY IMPORTANT!
The district staffed more than 140 schools with non-union workers and central office employees so students who are dependent on school-provided meals would have a place to eat breakfast and lunch. But most parents refused to leave their children at unfamiliar schools where they would be thrown together with kids and supervising adults they may never have met.
What my web search added:
The strike upended a district in which the vast majority of students are poor and minority. It also raised the concerns of parents who worried not just about their kids' education but their safety.
Yeah, those parents who.... overwhelmingly support them (sigh).
Chicago's gang violence has spiked this year, with scores of shootings reported throughout a long, bloody summer and bystanders sometimes caught in the crossfire.
I suppose that is why Rahm is going after the teachers.
Now you just never mind that gunfire and mayhem in the street.
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I thank you, journalgazette.
And WTF is the FBI doing in Chicago?
"Teen arrested in car bomb plot
I'll bet the teachers taught him how to do it!
CHICAGO — Undercover FBI agents arrested an 18-year-old man who tried to detonate what he believed was a car bomb outside a downtown Chicago bar, federal prosecutors said Saturday. Adel Daoud, a US citizen from the Chicago suburb of Hillside, was arrested Friday night in an undercover operation in which agents pretending to be extremists provided him with a phony car bomb. The device was inert and the public was never at risk. (AP)
Another load of public relations bs with a stoopid patsy so the government can justify the police-state tyranny and perpetual war state -- against its own people in the land of the free.
All for a $elf-$erving band of elite $pecial intere$t$, if you get what I mean.
"FBI tracks, thwarts Illinois terrorist bid" Associated Press, September 17, 2012
HILLSIDE, Ill. — The investigation started months ago, when the FBI noticed an e-mail message: A man in the Chicago suburbs was using an account to distribute chatter about violent jihad and the killing of Americans.
Two undercover agents reached out and began to talk to him online. In May, they introduced him to another agent who claimed to be a terrorist living in New York.
Maybe I should start typing "Al-FBI-Duh."
The operation ended Friday night, an affidavit describing it says, when the man was arrested and accused of trying to detonate what he believed was a car bomb outside a Chicago bar. Prosecutors said an undercover agent gave Adel Daoud, a US citizen from the Chicago suburb of Hillside, a phony car bomb and watched him press the trigger.
The US attorney’s office in Chicago, which announced the arrest Saturday, said the device was harmless, and the public was never at risk.
Yeah, it's just a big psy-op so the FBI can show you how much we need them, and so the false premises of the war on terror can be reinforced.
Think about it: if they weren't creating terrorists to bust they might have to do something else -- like rounding up the Wall Street criminals.
Daoud, 18, is due to make an appearance in federal court Monday morning on charges of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction and attempting to damage and destroy a building with an explosive.
The FBI often uses similar tactics in counterterrorism investigations, deploying undercover agents to engage suspects in talk of terror plots and provide fake explosive devices.
One time they did not: First WTC attack
In his conversations with the undercover agent, Daoud explained his reasons for wanting to launch an attack, saying the United States was at war ‘‘with Islam and Muslims,’’ the affidavit said.
And anyone else that stands in the way of the New World Order.
Daoud also told the agent he wanted an attack that would kill many people, the document said.
Then why didn't he drive it into the mob of striking teachers, etc?
I mean, I'm not trying to give anyone ideas here. I guess Daoud is just another product of the Amurkn ejerkashunel sistum, 'eh?
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Yeah, what a joke.
I think we all know what is next, and it won't be funny at all. Talk about telegraphs.
