Our next meeting of the Chicago SW Side Greens will be this coming will be announced shortly. Our meetings are at Efebinas Cafe, 1640 S. Blue Island Ave, in the Pilsen neighborhood.
Suggestions for the agenda are always welcome. Our main project for the next three weeks will be mobilizing votes for Alberto Bocanegra for 12th Ward Green Party committeeman.
Jack Ailey, secretary
The struggle to protect the residents of the Chicagoland area from the harmful emissions from the Fisk and Crawford power plants has achieved a stunning victory. On Feb. 29, 2012, the owner of these two plants, MidWest Generation, announced it had agreed with the city of Chicago and with the Clean Power Coalition to close the Fisk plant by the end of this year and to close the Crawford plant by the end of 2014. See the Clean Power Coalition website for more details.
This is a victory for the activists who have been fighting for more than a decade to force these old, dirty, power plants to at least clean up their emissions. Members of our local have been in the middle of this fight since 2002. We put advisory referendums on the ballot in two precincts in 2004, one in Pilsen and one in Little Village, asking the City Council to take action against these polluters. Both referendums were approved by over 90% of the voters. We participated in the forming of PERRO (the Pilsen Environmental Rights and Reform Organization). PERRO participated in the different coalitions which formed to fight the pollution from these old plants. PERRO was one of the founding members of the current Clean Power Coalition.
This fight is not over. PERRO and the Chicago Southwest Side Greens will continue to work to make sure that the coal plant properties are properly remediated, that the workers who are displaced are treated fairly, and that MidWest Generation fulfills its responsibility to repair the damage to the health of community residents that its emissions have caused.
Nevertheless, this is a huge victory for the people! We should savor the moment and celebrate our victory.
[Statement written by George Milkowski, 50th Ward Green Party Committeeman and approved by the CCGP]
The Cook County Green Party is opposed to the Chicago Board of Education’s policy of classifying some schools as “turnaround” schools in which teachers and administrators are replaced en masse, and unilaterally closing others. Therefore, the CCGP calls for a moratorium on any future implementation of these policies.
For 17 years the Chicago Public Schools have been under the control of the City’s mayors, and for all of those years, mayoral proposals, whether called Renaissance, reconstruction, reconstitution, turnaround or other nomenclature, have been almost total failures when one examines the facts. Designs for Change, an independent organization founded in 1977 in Chicago to develop and advocate effective school reforms through world-class research and policy analysis, disputed the alleged successes of turnaround schools. Their February 21, 2012 report ranked 210 Chicago elementary schools with at least 95% low income students, based on the percentage of students who passed their 2011 state reading exams. The report found that only three turnaround schools operated by the Academy for Urban School Leadership ranked in the top 100. The AUSL is the major entity favored by the City and by the Mayor under the turnaround policy and was once run by current School Board member David Vitale. Two other turnaround schools run by the CPS ranked 150th and 206th in the study. These poor results are even more surprising as most “turnaround” schools usually have additional funds allocated to their operation compared to local neighborhood schools. (1)
These findings are not unusual. Turnaround schools are usually turned into charter schools, and charter schools are rarely effective. More often than not they are worse than the already existing schools. In 2009 Stanford University released a report that concluded that when comparing charter schools to equivalent traditional neighborhood schools. Only 17% of the charter schools had better tests results. In 37% of the schools the results were worse and in the remaining 46% of schools there was no discernable difference in the test results. (2)
What is at the root of the problem in the public schools? In 1966 the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare commissioned a report titled the Equality of Educational Opportunity Study to examine and identify factors that affect one’s expected success in School. Usually called the Coleman report after the lead investigator, James S. Coleman, it concluded that although teachers are the most important in-school factor affecting a child’s learning, class size and the quality of the principal are also important. However, two-thirds of a child’s learning is affected by out-of-school factors, and most crucially among these are family characteristics such as income level, parents’ education, whether there are two parents in the household, neighborhood environment, housing stock, healthcare, and so on. In 2011 Richard Rothstein, a noted education scholar, stated that “No analyst has been able to attribute less than two-thirds of the variation in achievement among schools to the family characteristics of their students.” (3)
If charter schools are effective in only about one sixth of the time, why do the powers-that-be continue to push for them? The CCGP can only conclude that an underlying reason for pushing charter schools is a less-than-obvious attempt to weaken unionized teachers.
The CCGP calls for a moratorium on establishing any more “turnaround” schools and on closing any more schools in the name of educational reform. We support the proposal in the Illinois General Assembly to impose such a moratorium through HB4487. After seventeen years, too many children’s lives have been hurt by this misguided CPS policy.
1. Chicago Sun-Times, February 22, 2012, “Study Disputes turnaround stats”. Rosalind
Rossi.
2 Center for Research on Education Outcomes, Stanford University, 2009.
3. Substance, September, 2011, “Firing Line: The Grand Coalition Against Teachers”,
Joanne Barkan.
The Illinois Green Party Presidential Primary is now open until midnight on February 19th. This vote will help determine how delegates are assigned to candidates at the Green Party Presidential Nominating Convention in Baltimore in July. Anyone is welcome to vote, but you must also sign up on line as a member of the Green Party. The ballot includes a registration form, which will also work to renew current members for the upcoming year.
There will be several caucuses held throughout the state if you would like to meet other members to discuss the candidates and where they stand on the issues that matter the most to you. Here is a list of times and places for Green Party Caucuses:
If you prefer to vote online, or if you’d just like a sneak peek at the ballot before you go to the caucus, you may do so here. For more information about the rules or the primary process, please contact Illinois Green Party Election Administrator, Patrick Kelly, at patrick.kelly@ilgp.org.
Rahn Emmanuel has proposed extreme measures limiting the rights of protesters. Here is a useful analysis by Don Rose.
Emanuel’s Incipient, Self-Engineered Train Wreck
By Don Rose
One has to wonder whether Mayor Rahm Emanuel is actually trying to provoke a violent confrontation between police and demonstrators next May when both the G8 and NATO hold their international meetings here in Chicago. Maybe show the country what a really tough mother a ballet dancer can be.
A couple of weeks ago I wrote of his plan to massively increase fines for resisting peace officers—one of those catch-all crimes like “disorderly conduct”— to say nothing of deputizing almost anybody he wants as a “peace officer,” plus purchase all the surveillance and spying equipment he wants without going through traditional contract procedures.
Provocative? Threatening? You betcha.
Now he’s making things worse. Much worse.
He is asking for restrictions on marches and demonstrations that will be virtually impossible to adhere to under the circumstances. He wants to limit the duration of marches or demonstrations, require the organizers to provide one parade marshal for every 100 marchers, register all participating groups in advance and limit the decibels of sound that may emanate from loudspeakers or musical instruments.
This may sound reasonable to an extent, except for the fact that few if any of those issues are in the control or capability of the organizers of the G8/NATO protests. These events historically draw crowds from all over the world. No person or organization is in charge of all the protestors, nor can anyone predict how many people will show up, how many marshals will be required, who will or will not have a bullhorn or trumpet, how long it will take for everyone who has something to say to speak their piece nor how long it will take a crowd to march from the staging area to the site of the meetings.
In other words, he is building in failure to comply with the new laws and putting all the protestors at risk of arrest and huge fines. As Harvey Grossman of the ACLU and many others have pointed out, these tough restrictions will do little or nothing to actually keep potential demonstrators away or alter their behavior, but they will come very close to violating rights to speech and assembly. They are more likely to provoke bad behavior.
Consider: some of the city’s favorite gatherings, such as the St. Patrick’s Day and the Bud Billiken Day parades would violate most of the proposed ordinances. You may be shocked to hear there is an occasional drunk and disorderly celebrant of the former. If they let Irish revelers get away without massive fines or let a marching band break the sound barrier, the city would be guilty of unequal enforcement of the law and clearly would violate the First Amendment.
Or will Mayor Rahmbunctious crack down on St. Paddy, too?
He says he wants to protect the city from violence as well as protect people’s right to protest, but his actions contradict that goal. To paraphrase John F. Kennedy, those who make peaceful protest impossible will make violent protest inevitable.
Laurel attempts to submit petitions
On December 27, the Illinois State Board of Elections refused to accept nominating petitions for Laurel Lambert Schmidt for Congress for the 3rd district. This is an outrageous denial of democracy. Illinois accepts that political parties can become “established parties” in individual election districts by receiving at least 5% of the vote in the last general election. Laurel ran as a Green Party candidate in that district in 2010 and received over 6% of the vote. Green Party volunteers circulated petitions for Laurel to get her on the 2012 primary ballot and tried to turn them in Dec. 27. However, the ISBE refused to accept these petitions on the grounds that all Congressional Districts have been redrawn and supposedly this wipes out whatever we achieved in 2010. In fact most of what was in the 3rd district is still in the 3rd district.
The ISBE is adopting the least democratic view of the law, denying voters a choice, and benefiting the two corporate parties. The Illinois Green Party and Laurel are suing to get this decision reversed. This issue is now before the Illinois Supreme Court. A big difficulty we are facing in getting an objective ruling on the law is that fact that all judges in Illinois run for office as Democrats or Republicans. They owe their positions to these parties and do not often make decisions favoring democracy over the narrow interests of their corporate party sponsors.
[This article is reposted from the DuPage County Green Party website.]
Posted on December 12, 2011 by Steve Alesch
A crime of unthinkable proportions was perpetrated by the Obama administration and the other developed countries during the last two weeks in Durban, South Africa, at the latest UN Global Warming conference, which concluded Friday.
At that conference, a deal was struck that put profit over people resulting in the escalation of global warming deaths that are currently occurring at the rate of tens of thousands per year worldwide and are now, based on this deal, estimated to exceed hundreds of thousands of deaths per year by the end of the decade. Global warming apartheid is disproportionally impacting Africa because of their tropical climate. Scientists measure that for every 1 degree global temperature increase, Africa’s temperature increases 1.5 degrees.
Predictably, the US media, of which 80% is controlled by 5 CEOs, is filling the echo chamber with stories indicating that an agreement was reached that is the next step in the previous Kyoto agreement and that the world’s government, including the US, are working together to deal with Global Warming by 2020. This fabrication is also being echoed by the BBC and other worldwide news sources.
The reality is that what has been agreed to, as a result of strong arm tactics by the US and other developed countries, much to the resistance by and detriment to poorer countries, is a deal that allows global warming causing polluters to continue polluting at current or higher levels until 2018, which is when the first binding global warming reduction requirements take affect per this agreement.
World scientists have reached consensus that the 1990 global warming pollution levels need to be reduced by 40% by 2020 to insure that the global temperature does not exceed 2 degrees Celsius by 2020. With this agreement which delays enforcement another 7 years, global warming pollution is expected to actually exceed current levels by 2020, resulting in a 4 to 5 degrees Celsius increase, meaning a 6 to 8 degree increase in Africa.
Fortunately we still do have news sources outside the tenacles of those 5 CEOs. The majority of today’s DemocracyNow.org’s one hour news broadcast is devoted to describing the details about this crime that just went down. Note that, if you are reading this after Dec. 12, 2011, you will need to go to the show archives and search for the Monday, December 12, 2011 show.
Further compounding the harm done to the 99% by this unfair deal, due to the US presidential debate monopoly created by the Democratic and Republican Party controlled Presidential Debate Corporation, Green Party and independent presidential candidates will be kept off the debate stage once again in 2012, resulting in little or no discussion regarding the looming catastrophic global warming crisis during the upcoming 2012 presidential campaign, which may be our last chance before we hit the tipping point, when all the money in the world won’t be able to reverse massive human extinction.
The 99% have much work to do. This is yet another reason why I Occupy.
Steve Alesch
DuPage County Green Party, Chair, IL, USA
Occupy Naperville, Occupier since October 22, 2011
Join with PERRO and Occupy Chicago in march and rally for Clean Power and Environmental Justice.
We will have several actions to target the main culprits; Midwest Generation and it’s investor Bank of America.
Schedule:
11:00 AM – Bank of America Customers pull their money out at 18th Street Branch – with rally outside.
12:00 Rally at Plaza Tenochtitlan 18th Street and Loomis Ave.
12:30 PM Press Conference
1:00 PM March begins
2:00 PM We arrive at LaSalle and Jackson and join Occupy Chicago then march to Midwest Generations Corporate HQ at 440 S. La Salle St.
List of endorsing organizations:
Pilsen Environmental Rights and Reform Organization <pilsenperro.org>
Occupy Chicago <occupychi.org>
Ocupa el Barrio
Join PERRO for Wednesday’s Dia de los Muertos ‘Clean Air Brigade’ procession through Pilsen.
Muertos de la Risa with the Clean Air Brigade Day of the Dead Community Procession – remembering those that have died from pollution and calling for clean air!
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Join PERRO this year’s Dia de los Muertos celebration, Muertos de la Risa with the Clean Air Brigade- an evening of spectacle, community activism and ancestral remembrance in joyful celebration, thigh-slapping carcajadas and belly lautghter.
DATE: November 2, 2011
TIME: 4-7 p.m.
WHERE: Dvorak Park, 1119 W. Cullerton St.
COST: FREE
Join us for a community procession featuring giant pole puppets, face painting, and street-level ofrendas – remembering those that have died from pollution and calling for clean air!:
4 p.m. Face painting and Community Ofrenda
5 p.m. Calavera Circus
6 p.m. Community Procession (starting from Dvorak Park)
7 p.m. Refreshments: Hot Chocolate and Pan de Muerto
For more info visit: pilsenperro.org or call Jerry Mead at (312) 502 7867
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