(Source: namemefish, via alexsteele)

"Today is a day of mourning for the children of Chicago. Their education has been hijacked by an unrepresentative, unelected corporate school board, acting at the behest of a mayor who has no vision for improving the education of our children. Closing schools is not an education plan. It is a scorched earth policy. Evidence shows that the underutilization crisis has been manufactured. Their own evidence also shows the school district will not garner any significant savings from closing these schools.

This is bad governance. CPS has consistently undermined school communities and sabotaged teachers and parents. Their actions have had a horrible domino effect. More than 40,000 students will lose at least three to six months of learning because of the Board’s actions. Because many of them will now have to travel into new neighborhoods to continue their schooling, some will be victims of bullying, physical assault and other forms of violence. Board members are wishing for a world that does not exist and have ignored the reality of the world we live in today. Who on the Board will be held responsible? Who at City Hall will be held responsible?"

Chicago Teachers Union president Karen Lewis commenting on today’s news that the Board of Education has voted to close 50 Chicago public schools.

While only around 40 percent of children in Chicago are black are Latino, 90 percent of children whose schools will be shuttered are black or Latino.

(via thepeoplesrecord)

fuck this country. fuck this country. FUCK THIS COUNTRY

(via searchingforknowledge)

Rahm Emanuel can go to Hell

(via aloofshahbanou)

when public schools have a low student to teacher ratio they are underutilized. and when private and charter schools have a low student to teacher ratio?

(via aloofshahbanou)

deeee-light:

Hillary Clinton pant-suit rainbow

(Source: oh-hannahdear, via thenocturnalcouchpotato)

"

Kanye West is white America’s worst nightmare. Because as much as one may attempt to dismiss him — by calling him an asshole or classless or deranged or various other adjectives that fill the comment sections of literally every article about him — you still have to turn on your regularly scheduled late night comedy program and stare him in the face. You can’t avoid Kanye. He’s made very sure of that.

[…]

Kanye is not a “new slave” in the same sense as the victims of the prison industrial complex, but he is still trapped in a world that expects him to not only be complicit with the struggle of his people, but to be appreciative that he is not one of them. And on top of all that, while he gets to exist in the world of the 1%, having the money and signifiers of success still aren’t enough to make his (white) 1% peers actually even respect him.

[…]

The ideals of Public Enemy are as relevant today as they were in the 80s, but hip-hop was nowhere near as dominant and omnipresent a cultural force as it is at this moment; to compare the reach of their messages is silly. Upper-middle class white families did not have to deal with Public Enemy if they didn’t want to. Similarly with politically-minded “noise rap” artists that have been name-dropped in reviews of Kanye’s new material — it’s all well and good for Death Grips and Blackie and even Killer Mike to espouse similar messages and sounds (and honestly, the sonic qualities of “New Slaves” and “Black Skinhead” are hardly at the top of the list of why they’re important), but none of them have anywhere near the amount of visibility and influence as Kanye, even if they did hit it first.

[…]

People in current positions of comfort and stability are so willing to dismiss the transgressive thoughts of an angry black man that they will use any convenient excuse to diminish from them; if someone says something that makes you uncomfortable, why not immediately change the subject to his girlfriend’s ass or that time he yelled at a papparazzi or that time he got drunk and embarrassed a white girl? When was it exactly that Kanye shifted, in the eyes of the mainstream, from lovable polo-wearing backpacker to perpetually and unanimously An Asshole? When, precisely, did everything he said get immediately categorized as a “rant” or “controversial” regardless of the actual content? I want to say it was around the time when he said that George Bush didn’t care about black people on live tv. Hmm. Odd.

"

Meaghan Garvey, Who Will Survive In America? (via machistado)

(via frijoliz)

[In an effort to get back into the habit of feeling like a living lady, not just a slug, I will try to write 250 words a week – I’m including this intro/explanation in my word count today because I’m rusty and still more slug than lady.]

Anyway, on work – I think a big part of ~the issue~ is that some of us, inside and outside the organization, thought that we were in the business of finding future great teachers and it feels like a bit of a surprise, at least to me, whenever we talk about a different ~mission~ entirely – that is, finding future leaders and give them teaching experience that will color the rest of their lives, hopefully for the better. That last part is up for debate by everyone, of course.

Perhaps the real ~issue~ is that these aims attempt to coexist, sometimes within the individual and sometimes within a larger team, all the way up to the top, and I’m not sure that they can, and I’m not sure that anyone is interested in clearing things up. Yes, the organization is so large that it feels easy to put your energies behind the goals that you’d like – of course, you end up supporting it all anyways. I guess that’s where my uneasiness comes from. Who knows how this will change after my promotion.

I wonder how different my perspective would be if I had been recruited, accepted in the corps, and then took this job on staff?

I realize that I don’t write in my journal or on any of my blogs these days and that’s got to be some kind of cry for help -

"Crying does not indicate that you are weak. Since birth, it has always been a sign that you are alive."

Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (via libranta)

(Source: arpeggia, via nidyasarria)

View high resolution

hoodsofchicago:

fuckyeahmarxismleninism:

Chicago: South side march for education justice begins, May 19, 2013.

Photo by Jenna Pope

FYI: there will be another march tomorrow as well. 

(via frijoliz)

"I am tired of living in fear of having my family separated at any moment. Why are we losing 1,100 people every day while legislators talk about immigration reform, when the President has the power to suspend deportations of our parents now, just as he did with students"

Xanat Sobrevilla, an undocumented immigrant who is part of a group of seven immigrants who are taking a stance today by blocking doors to Broadview Detention Facility in Illinois.

The protesters also urged the public to support 3 cases of people facing deportation in Illinois by calling the Chicago immigration office in their support. Wilmar Guzman (A# 097-745-437), Lourdes Moreno Carrero (A# 200-837-411) and Octavio Nava Cabrera (A# 075-785-334) are all Illinois residents facing deportation, whose cases supporters and family argue should be closed as low priority according to the prosecutorial discretion guidelines.

Seven Undocumented Illinois Immigrants Block Broadview Detention Center Road with Locks and Chains Calling for Suspension of Deportations

(via tortillachronicles)

(Source: frijoliz, via reclaimingthelatinatag)

(Source: iheartthexfiles, via suchadowner)