SCAB TEACHERS NOT WELCOME: Rahm's Scab Army will be a debacle... Rahm's disinformation campaigns will lead to chaos for a couple of days in scab classrooms until the last TFA or New Teacher Project mercenaries are driven out of our classrooms
By summer’s end, there will be thousands of bumper stickets waiting for use across Chicago that read “I scabbed for Rahn… (and all I got was this noisome bumper sticker!)”. Whether they will wind up on a dozen, a hundred, or a thousand cars and school mailboxes remains for history to report. Based on the record of the first year of Chicago’s rookie mayor, Rahm Emanuel, however, it’s clear to more and more teachers, police officers, firefighters, and other public servants that Rahm ranks with Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker as a nationally famous union buster. He's also up there with some of the more ludicrous memories from U.S. history as a foremost scab herder and union buster.
Pickets wait at one Chicago elementary school to greet scabs during the January 1971 Chicago Teachers Union strike. By 1971, the Chicago Board of Education was unable to open one school with scabs because the students would not attend school — or be polite to — scab teachers, so the Board paid scabs to sit in empty buildings.But now push comes to shove. The lines are being drawn, and Rahm's minions at CPS are still insisting they can break the CTU contract and the union with ludicrous lies and budget manipulations. So it’s necessary to review Rahm’s record to prepare for the future, which is almost now. Rahm's record of lies indicates he intends to go all the way towards civic oblivion, again. This time, though, it won't be with phony "studies" about the length of the school day, paid preachers, or rent a protesters, pushed along by a couple of plutocratic front groups like Stand for Children, Advance Illinois, and Democrats (sic) for Education Reform.
Rahm's propagandists have actually been telling people that Rahm can raise an army of scabs in the coming year, just as he thought he had an army of rent a protester mercenaries last year. The whispering is that there are 5,000 nubile young "idealists" From Teach for America ready to roll into town for Rahm. They've got to be kidding, but like most spin stories, these are never checked for factuality. Spin is in in the Age of Rahm.
Teach for America doesn't do "boot camp" for this reality. Mercenaries are mercenaries, and scabs are scabs. A mercenary has to have a hole in his soul — but also a little guts. The jobs is not just for a kid with a fancy university degree, a vapid ignorance about reality, and a perfect score on the quiz that followed the most recent airing of "Waiting for Superman". Six viewings of "Waiting for Superman" and a couple of Attaboys from Jonah Edelman, Becky Carroll and Wendy Kopp aren't going to get your through one day scabbing in Chicago. Reality here is as close as the difference between a Latin King and a Latin Dragon, a false flag — crown up or crown down? — that can get you a year in therapy if you are lucky. They don't teach that at Princeton, and by the time Rahm's scabs wake up it will be sadly too late for them.
Rahm Emanuel will not be the first Chicago chief to try and encourage scabs during a Chicago Teachers Union strike. In the middle of the 13-day October 1983 strike, Californian Ruth B. Love (above, center) announced that she was going to open three schools "for the sake of the children" and marched, under police escort, into Piccolo elementary (above), then Whitney Young High School and Dixon Elementary School. At each location she was greeted by thousands of strikers and supporters, resulting in a public meltdown for the TV cameras at the end of the day. At that time, Love tried to compare herself with civil rights marchers in Birmingham Alabama who were attacked by police dogs launched by vicious white racist cops. The trouble with Love's version of reality was that the majority of the pickets were also African Americans, the dogs on the picket lines (see next photo) were on good behavior, and the debacle of the day backfired. The day cost Love her job, when she demanded that her contract be renewed early the following summer and the school board voted "No" and selected Manford Byrd. Seldom in Chicago history has the Spin Machine been so woefully out of touch with reality as during the year Rahm’s been in power. Even during the strangest days of the newspaper wars (famously, between Colonel McCormick’s Tribune and the old and venerable Chicago Times, which carried the New Deal to the streets every morning even if the truck drivers had to do their routes armed with shotguns and pistols against the Colonel’s right wing thugs), Chicagoans had the chance to get some reporting that included facts. If you didn’t like the Colonel’s version of viciously racist, pro-fascist America First “reality”, you could read the Times (in the morning) or the Daily News (in the afternoon).
By the time the Reign of Rahm began, however, almost all of Chicago’s reporters were in the tank. Most were feeding directly or indirectly from the Ministry of Propaganda and pushing the punditry of the plutocracy. (We had a recent example in our run-in with the Plutocratic Propagandists at Public TV earlier this week, but that story’s already been told here).
Let’s review some of Rahm’s history.
While Chicago’s drug gangs were arming for one of the biggest and deadliest gang wars in the city’s history, Rahm went to war — against the city’s real public school teachers and against the Chicago Teachers Union. Day after day, Rahm repeated his talking points, and their nonsense went into the official narrative unchecked because facts were no longer important in the world of “He said, but she said” “reporting” in Chicago.
Chicago teachers often brought their pets on picket lines, as the above attack dog made clear during the 1983 strike, which is when Ruth Love claimed that the strikers were like the Birmingham Alabama police who had attacked civil rights marchers 20 years before with police dogs and fire hoses. The spin came from phony “research” repeated as often as the greater Big Lies of the previous century. Over and over and over, unchecked except here and in the Reader. A year ago, Rahm Emanuel's propaganda ministry was pushing out the Big Lie that Chicago schools had the "shortest" school day in the USA and getting Chicago's plutocratic pundits (most of the corporate media reporters) to simply repeat it. That was never true, as the facts showed, and as late as the hearings on Rahm's second budget, on January 11, 2012 at Malcolm X College, a high school teacher pointed out that Rahm's scripts about the "Longer School Day" had been a lie. At best, Rahm's propagandists were talking about Chicago's elementary school days, and there only at schools with the so-called "Closed Campus," where teachers had their lunch during the final hour of the day (so the kids went home around 2:00). Despite the nuances and the facts, Rahm grabbed the headlines and continued to repeat his talking points slandering Chicago's teachers like he was still working the D.C. news cycle inside the Beltway, where on his previous job he had been White House "Chief of Staff."
No sooner had Rahm gotten the power to push in his Longest School Day on Chicago (by state law, he can force it on Chicago in the 2012 - 2013 school year; a mistake the legislators won't make again, since Rahm's credibility in Springfield is almost as low as the credibility of his Astroturf supporters, from Stand for Children and Advance Illinois to "Democrats for Education Reform." But in the world where facts don't matter, history has ceased to exist, and context is meaningless, a guy like Rahm can simply abandon last year's lie and move on to this year's. The trouble with that approach to governance is that it usually leads to a mess (the forthcoming introduction of the Longest School Day in the city's public schools) or death (the gang murders on the streets of Chicago and the monstrous and costly results of U.S. imperialism in the mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan). Suffice to say, as a Congressman, as White House Chief of Staff, or as Chicago's rookie mayor, Rahm Emanuel has been party to some of the worst policy ideas — and the most obnoxious media spin — since the dawn of the 21st Century. The reasons we can leave to shrinks and shamans. The Who, What, When, and Where are now a matter of historical record. Spin is very expensive. CPS is spending more on its Ministry of Propaganda this year than ever before in history. The new ("proposed") budget for the "Office of Communications" is breaking all records. Previous information chiefs at CPS (two of whom were in town recently, one from Colorado and one now working for the cops again) are laughing at how Rahm keeps pouring more and more dollars into the feeble spins emanating from Becky Carroll and the boys and girls (virtually all hired since a year ago, except two) drawing those six figure salaries on the sixth floor at 125 S. Clark St.
But as the old clichés note, idle hands (and feebel minds) are the devil's workshop. So no sooner has one bad idea been shelved than a bunch of new ones, equally shallow and dangerous, are poured in to their places. Then, with assiduous energy, the Communicators move around among the pundits, trying to feed the new narrative into the mainstream of conventional thinking. Two huge ones, each more dangerous than the one before it (and both more dangerous than the Longest School Day scam) are now making the rounds:
-- PATCO
-- The 5,000 Teach for Chicago scabs waiting to take the jobs of striking Chicago Teachers Union teachers.
Substance has already undermined all the attempted credibility from the PATCO nonsense, even if the Sun-Times still has a pundit or two loading it for one last foray into the ink. Readers who want to re-read our analysis of that can go on line into our back issues or get a copy of our print edition where we printed out review and analysis of Joseph McCartin's PATCO book.PATCO NOT! should have been Sneed's headline, but what do you expect from a gossip columnist but nonsense?
The poor Teach for America scabs, on the other hand, will prove a much more dangerous policy move for Rahm, a mess that may even exceed his Longest School Day and Gang Banger mistakes. During the current summer, every classroom teacher, coach, clinician, teacher assistant, and clerk in Chicago is staying in contact with the parents and students of our real public schools. Coaches have been warming up the teams for autumn sports. Cheerleaders are stretching. The staffs of the extra-curricular clubs and groups from debate to publications are getting together. And from kindergarten through the upper ranges of high school, teachers and parents are going over what the word "Scab" means and what will happen if Rahm tries to deploy a bunch of scab teachers into Chicago's real public school classrooms.
Those who last more than one day to the catcalls of "Scab" from the little ones to the largest high school seniors will still have to walk in and out of our buildings every day.
And if Rahm really does lure a few nubile and pretentious ignoramoses from the ranks of Teach for America (and similar outfits, say, the New Teacher Project or Kids First) to cross those picket lines and dare to stand in front of a Chicago classroom in September 2012 when the strike starts, it will be a wonder to behold (and report in detail, with pictures) here. Of course, our ideal scenario would be for Rahm and Jean-Claude to emerge from their bunkers (they have been hiding since the days they used to put on a publicity stunt about once a week in a carefully staged CPS school) and heroically announce that they, too, along with the Seven Dwarfs (the members of Rahm's Board of Education) were going to "teach." Not just for a fifteen minute photo op as Rahm usually does while looking carefully at his watch, but for that Longest School Day he loves to prattle about.
With thousands of working class people and union members planning some Chicago picket line work alongside members of the Chicago Teachers Union when Rahm's debacle enters its tragic final phases, the sad children from Teach for America that Rahm's been whispering about won't last a day — even if they get into the buildings Rahm thinks he can open in eight weeks. And if they get there, Chicago will have one of the most delightful lesson plans in its history, as 300,000 or 400,000 children and young adults from ages four and five to eighteen and nineteen learn how to deal with scabs as our mediagenic mayor moves from mistake (the Longest School Day mess), through debacle (the attack on the city's cops that launched this year's open season by the city's drug gangs), to the catastrophy that will take place in thousands of classrooms, shops and gyms when Rahm's Scab Army tries to go to work in Chicago.
Comments:
By: Daniel van Over
Better than whistles
Come on, Bob. Whistles? It’s 2012!
We have incredible technology today that didn’t exist during previous strikes. Cell phones and smart phones and other devices with digital cameras, Twitter and tweets, Facebook and all kinds of things that I don’t have, but most of my colleagues do.
My plan is to get pictures and video of scabs and then post them all over the Internet. (And I’m gonna’ be mad as heck if we don’t have at least one scab. As one of the speakers said at the Union workshop at Crane this winter, every school *needs* at least one scab.) And then we’ll send the hyperlinks to all our friends and family and even those people in our “Contacts” who we can’t remember why they’re there—asking them to click on the links two or ten times. Once it has enough “hits,” anytime someone Googles that person’s name, the first thing they see will be “John Doe: Scab” with pictures and video of John Doe scabbin’.
Car door scratches and flat tires can be repaired good as new. Internet shame is FOREVER!
By: Xian Barrett
Scabs, kids, and the Web
Yeah, I can't imagine that the student internet discourse is going to be kind to scabs sent to teach them.
By: bob busch
'Scab whistles' will also help
Dan.
Your points are well taken. But they are also quiet. Believe me, a hundred strikers can generate a very loud noise whistling scabs past the picket line, as you will soon see. It is immediate, user friendly, and cheap.
By: Vinicius de Mello
Scabs already working - during CPS Summer School
Is it true that certified CPS teachers were dropped from teaching summer school classes so that "scabs" got the jobs?
By: Larry MacDonald
Dangerous Times Ahead
It's not time to play around, Rahm. With Police Reports in Chicago looking a lot like Situation Reports from battlefields elsewhere it is not time to escalate your attack on 400 thousand+ students and 25 thousand teachers. We are the citizens.
Get Real Rahm. If you think lunatic anti-union activities are the way to go...Well?
With a call for scabs you are attempting an impossible mean-spirited task. Give it up before you hurt someone.
By: Kati Gilson NBCT
scabs
Just try to send a scab in my place in front of my preschoolers. My students and parents will eat them alive!
By: Anthony Smith
Bring it on Rahm! Bring it on!
Rahm,
You strut around like you have a lot of "testicular verocity" (as our former Governor used to say) and you seem to be a tough guy according to all of the accounts, and you are very sharp and employ very Machiavellian type tactics.
SO, I have a proposal,
Let's settle this like men. You choose:
a. 3 out of 5 in chess,
b. teaching a full week in a regular Chicago Public High School,
c. 3 rounds of boxing in a ring,
d. all of the above.
I'd be happy to step up to see which one of us comes out the better man. And I'd bet most of my colleagues would come out the winner against you as well, if this were done in a lottery.
You want to play hardball politics we are ready for you. You want to bring scabs, bring them. Short term you may gain a bit, long term you will be the loser.
Some advice:
Since it is unlikely that you are going to change anytime soon and become a thoughtful, respectful, and inclusive Mayor who understands that maturity and compromise are important aspects of being a leader:
I suggest the following:
Take the 18 million dollars you made as a political insider, investment banker for Wasserstein Perella & Co. (since been sold) between 1998 when you left the Clinton administration and 2003, when you were sworn in as congressman, and move on.
Otherwise, I believe the course you are on is going to make you look out to be quite the villain and showcase you very unfavorably in the history books.
We are NOT afraid of you and your cronies. And more will join with us. Keep on doing what you are doing and you will see.
Sincerely,
Anthony Smith
By: George N. Schmidt
Sun-Times Pulitzer for Rahm photos on Page One?
It it true that Chicago has sent the same lobbying crew that did the Olympic bid to New York to convince the Pulitzer Prize directors at Columbia University to bring on a Pulitzer for the daily newspaper that can slavishly print the most photographs of the mayor their owners hang out with on Page One the most days in one year? The Tribune may be corrupt in its own boring way (since Sam Zell and his rock execs were ousted, the corruption has become boring again, which is fine), but those Page One Rahmshots are really the prize of the year in Chicago media.
By: Anthony Smith
The Once and Future King of the U.S.A, All Hail ...Rahm? .
Mayor Rahm can have all the pictures/photos in the world of him printed on the front page of every newspaper and magazine that he likes.
They can all help to make him King of the United states, as they helped/continue to help crown him BOSS of Chicago.
We all know what happens to Kings though, just read the history books, or if you aren't into reading that sort of thing, just read the series and/or watch A Game of Thrones on HBO.
The masses eventually catch on and the cronies eventually make deals with others, and the once most powerful leader in the land, well...suffice to say things don't turn out the way they planned. Too bad for them. Too bad for Rahm.
Sincerely,
Anthony Smith
By: John Kugler
two-legged animal with a corkscrew soul
the rumors of tfa's scabbing should not be any worry; imagine the eternal label they will have for the few coins they will collect. the tfa brand would forever be remembered as a strikebreaker organization just as the pinkerton.
The Scab
After God had finished the rattlesnake, the toad, and the vampire, he had some awful substance left with which he made a scab.
A scab is a two-legged animal with a corkscrew soul, a water brain, a combination backbone of jelly and glue.
Where others have hearts, he carries a tumor of rotten principles.
When a scab comes down the street, men turn their backs and angels weep in heaven, and the devil shuts the gates of hell to keep him out.
No man (or woman) has a right to scab so long as there is a pool of water to drown his carcass in, or a rope long enough to hang his body with.
Judas was a gentleman compared with a scab. For betraying his master, he had character enough to hang himself. A scab has not.
Esau sold his birthright for a mess of pottage.
Judas sold his Savior for thirty pieces of silver.
Benedict Arnold sold his country for a promise of a commision in the british army.
The scab sells his birthright, country, his wife, his children and his fellowmen for an unfulfilled promise from his employer.
Esau was a traitor to himself; Judas was a traitor to his God; Benedict Arnold was a traitor to his country.
A scab is a traitor to his God, his country, his family and his class.
--- Jack London (1876-1916)
By: Sue Furman
TFA potential scabs
Nubile: Ready for marriage; of a marriageable age or condition. Used of young women.
What was meant was a reference to young, untested, unexperienced teachers was maybe not the best word choice, but we got it.
By: mary jewers
Will SEIU workers be forced to become Scabs?
I am a Special Ed. Aide (SECA), in the SEIU union — not CTU- — though I work in CPS. I very much want to support the teachers and their contract, and had every intention of standing with them if they strike.
HOWEVER, I was told that I would have to go to work during the strike, as it is not MY contract under negotiation. Am I considered a Scab? I would be considered "AWOL" and could lose my job. I was also told the aides (not in CTU) and the Lunch staff will be watching the kiddies. Show up or lose your job — again — it is not 'our' contract. It puts us in a very bad spot.
By: Danny van Over
Re: SEIU workers
Mary
CPS *can't* hold school if 23,000 teachers are out on strike. And if there's no school, they won't need SECAs on hand with no work to do.
If there's a strike, please join your fellow educators on the picket line.
By: John Kugler
Krzysztof is Promoting Strikebreaking
From: Krzysztof Rudzinski Monday, July 16, 2012 7:06:07 AM
Obviously, it is a conflict of interest. No sign of unity. Just drop your union membership and be ready for work during a strike IF ANY. Thanks to you, many posters have a job now. For how long? It is a different question.
____________________________
From: Krzysztof Rudzinski Monday, July 16, 2012 10:15:34 AM
The process is described in the Illinois Labor Relations Act(it depends on your personal situation) and it is is available online. People, who were not properly represented /or/and not represented at all by our union leadership should notify them about the fact and ask for a removal from the membership list. The Illinois law gives you the ability to sue a labor organization for lack of representation. You always can notify a Talent Office / CEO/Board of Education about your availability.
By: Kimberly Bowsky
SCABS don't improve education or economy
NO SCABS. Right now, we suffer a deprivation because of our profession being run by disconnected 1%ers. They don't care about us OR our students. Our jobs are not safe NOW--not safe from the cruel and backwards decisions of the arrogant few who have money. WE'RE BEING DEPRIVED NOW AND HAVE BEEN. So, if there is a strike, it would be a deprivation for all of us. A strike hurts, but it is a cosmic reaction in kind to the attacks on workers. Why should we suffer further indignities because the wealthy control the money and manipulate the law? THEY HAVE WASTED OUR MONEY for years with their useless educational experiments, their friends' contracts, and their austere panaceas. We have, to some degree, gone along with these, thinking that we'd be safe and have jobs. We should have felt the boa constrictor tightening, but we just breathed shallower.
They've been picking off at us bit by bit. Their voucher movement didn't work, so they corrupted the charter-school idea and fired a bunch of us to reduce the numbers of union members. They've instituted a teacher evaluation system that prizes false science and tricky math over the improvement of teacher practice. That'll get rid of more. They shift position numbers and encourage "coaching" opportunities so that they can fire teachers who have earned their higher pay with dedication and longevity. They write regulations that insist that workers can only talk about timelines. Our displaced workers blame the union for rules that were set against us teachers by the 1%. That is, until we go back to the idea of what a union is: It is WE, TOGETHER. Don't be fooled that individualism and separation will win you a pat on the head from BIG CORP. BIG CORP uses scabs, then spits them out. It is easier and cleaner to have the ranks issue friendly fire than it is to issue attacks from above. Why do you see the big wigs less and less?
So, IF there IS a strike, we ALL will face uncertainty and deprivation. Aren't we now? Haven't we? Remember the Clemente 20. Remember the Curie 12. How will capitulation and scabbery improve education or our lives, Kryzstof?
By: George N. Schmidt
Rudzinski barred from commenting here
Readers should please note that Kryzstof (or whatever he is calling himself) Rudzinski is barred from commenting at substancenews.net. John Kugler's comment above quotes from a Rudzinski posting at another location. For more than a year, Rudzinski's scabrous emails on other sites have libeled and slandered Karen Lewis and the union leadership as well as the Substance editors and staff. Additionally, he regularly tries to post comments (one recently referred to him as a "genius") using somewhat funny pseudonyms (often, a female name). When we see anything coming up from him (and from a small handful of other trolls) we simply delete it. When we smell a pseudonym (most recently "Anna Gerza" with a phony email address), we email the "person" after removing the supposedly comment. If the person turns out to be real (at that step, we require a phone number and call the "person"), the comment will probably stay up.
Certain people can ply their scabby and slanderous stuff on the Internet, but not here. We believe our readers have the right to know who is commenting, just as they have the right to know who is reporting our stories and who is providing source information for our reporting. From time to time, rarely, we allow out sources to remain off the record (especially as the number from inside Casa Brizard is growing as the Rahm Purges increase), but that, too, is rare.
The new leaders of the Chicago Teachers Union and the new generation of fierce fighters for real public schools and real democracy in public education in Chicago did not get to where we are by hiding behind anonymous fig leafs, or by strutting and fretting (as Rudzinski does) his brief hours upon and ever smaller stage.
"Genius" indeed.
By: George N. Schmidt
Rudzinski barred from commenting here
Readers should please note that Kryzstof (or whatever he is calling himself) Rudzinski is barred from commenting at substancenews.net. John Kugler's comment above quotes from a Rudzinski posting at another location. For more than a year, Rudzinski's scabrous emails on other sites have libeled and slandered Karen Lewis and the union leadership as well as the Substance editors and staff. Additionally, he regularly tries to post comments (one recently referred to him as a "genius") using somewhat funny pseudonyms (often, a female name). When we see anything coming up from him (and from a small handful of other trolls) we simply delete it. When we smell a pseudonym (most recently "Anna Gerza" with a phony email address), we email the "person" after removing the supposedly comment. If the person turns out to be real (at that step, we require a phone number and call the "person"), the comment will probably stay up.
Certain people can ply their scabby and slanderous stuff on the Internet, but not here. We believe our readers have the right to know who is commenting, just as they have the right to know who is reporting our stories and who is providing source information for our reporting. From time to time, rarely, we allow out sources to remain off the record (especially as the number from inside Casa Brizard is growing as the Rahm Purges increase), but that, too, is rare.
The new leaders of the Chicago Teachers Union and the new generation of fierce fighters for real public schools and real democracy in public education in Chicago did not get to where we are by hiding behind anonymous fig leafs, or by strutting and fretting (as Rudzinski does) his brief hours upon and ever smaller stage.
"Genius" indeed.
By: John Kugler
Chicago Labor History Lesson
Effigy of Frank Curry, strike-breaker, hanging over 42nd Street and Wentworth Avenue during the Chicago City Railway Strike 1903.
Strikers image of an effigy of Frank Curry, strike-breaker, hanging from a cable line above 42nd Street and Wentworth Avenue during the Chicago City Railway Strike in Chicago, Illinois.
A railway car and pedestrians are visible on the street.
http://chsmedia.org/media/dn/00/0014/DN-0001418.jpg
By: Bob Busch
Preparation — get 'Scab Whistles' now
Note to the CTU: Contact vendors now and lay in a supply of whistles. They are very effective cheap, an embarrassing way to confront scabs.