Long-time union guy, first-time striker . . .

From the picket line . . . .

#PutItInWriting

People always want to boil it down to teacher pay.

Yes, teacher pay is always at issue but that is far from the only one. Speaking personally, moving to Chicago Public Schools from a district in NW Indiana just this year, I have already gotten a pretty big raise, so I'm not really striking over teacher pay, per se. Let's be clear though, teachers DO deserve to paid more. I have seen good people, who were good teachers, leaving the classroom behind ENTIRELY because, for all the stress and headache involved, payday was just too marginal. Those among us who have been in education for 10+ years have seen this MANY times. Good folks decide to become principals or college professors, or they leave education entirely, and you can't even blame them. Yet we NEED good classroom teachers!

#SmallerClasses

I'm striking for smaller classes. My two most difficult classes contain 34 and 36 early high school students. They are my largest. It is NOT a coincidence that my two largest classes are my two most challenging, as any teacher will tell you. There are simply more behaviors to help guide, and to manage . . . in my largest class, there are more students than desks. Yesterday one of those classes had a TON of students absent, possibly because everyone knew the strike was looming, and human nature dictates that when a break is due, we tend to want to extend that break.

At any rate, with a large number of my west side students missing, my usually-extremely-challenging group of 34 was pared down to around 20-22. Well guess what? With a much smaller group, the class ran as smooth as butter melting on a warm griddle; like . . . waaaaay better than it usually does.

Any educator will tell you, and plus it's common sense: SMALLER CLASSES MATTER. That's why I'm striking today. I have a daughter who will attend CPS schools. I demand that she have smaller classes, rather than larger ones. That's what it's about for me

#PayTheParas

Another heartbreaking reality of living in this expensive-ass town, is that many of our support staff are BARELY making it right now. Full time teacher aides, school clerks and secretaries, and other paraprofessionals who spend their entire work lives in schools, shouldn't have to eke by on public assistance because they can't make ends meet. And we need MORE of them. Too many schools (like mine) have no librarians, or no nurses, or social workers. Our students need WRAP AROUND service.

Everyone in this district, including the mayor and CPS' CEO SAYS they want do the right thing on these issues. That's why the hash tag #PutItInWriting was adopted. A couple years ago, the state of Illinois FINALLY changed the funding formula to make school funding for the city more equitable to what downstate gets. CPS is FLUSH WITH CASH that was earmarked EXACTLY for the issues listed above. Now they are trying to slow-walk spending the money on what it's intended for. They can't be allowed to get away with it. CPS has a $1 billion that IT DIDN'T HAVE LAST YEAR. (They'll have a $1 billion more next year too.) The district cannot credibly claim poverty. We want smaller classes, more and better-paid paraprofessionals, librarians, nurses in every building, and we want it IN WRITING, not in the form of "lip service," and slow walk towards: "Well eventually we'll do something about all this." CPS HAS THE MONEY. DO IT NOW.

REALITY: this strike is going to cause financial hardship to every single one of the tens of thousands of us who isn't going to work. Whether we strike for one day, or twenty, we won't be getting paid for strike days. We are putting it on the line for our students, our own kids, and our city. They MIGHT agree to add school days at the end of the year, but I can't tell my mortgage company: "Hey, I got you in July 2020."

This strike is special because we are joined in solidarity by SEIU 73 — which services many of the security guards, secretaries, paraprofessionals, custodial staff, and teachers’ aides in our district. That did NOT happen last time. (The second picture above was from a solidarity strike with nurses trying to organize with SEIU at Mt. Sinai Hospital.)

WE ARE POWERFUL TOGETHER. AND WE ARE GOING TO WIN.

That’s all I got.

Solidarity.

Appalling: Zimmerman will walk free.

I guess I can't say that I'm shocked by this ruling, but the banality of evil is making a real comeback here in this summer in 2013. Gary Younge, a Chicagoan writing for the Guardian, pretty much nails it:

Open season on black boys after a verdict like this

Calls for calm after George Zimmerman was acquitted of murdering Trayvon Martin are empty words for black families

Let it be noted that on this day, Saturday 13 July 2013, it was still deemed legal in the US to chase and then shoot dead an unarmed young black man on his way home from the store because you didn't like the look of him.

The killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin last year was tragic. But in the age of Obama the acquittal of George Zimmerman offers at least that clarity. For the salient facts in this case were not in dispute. On 26 February 2012 Martin was on his way home, minding his own business armed only with a can of iced tea and a bag of Skittles. Zimmerman pursued him, armed with a 9mm handgun, believing him to be a criminal. Martin resisted. They fought. Zimmerman shot him dead.

Who screamed. Who was stronger. Who called whom what and when and why are all details to warm the heart of a cable news producer with 24 hours to fill. Strip them all away and the truth remains that Martin's heart would still be beating if Zimmerman had not chased him down and shot him.

I'm finding the immediate commentaries after this appalling ruling to be outrageous, if darkly humorous: "If you have happen to a black man in Florida, I mean sure, a white guy can shoot you because he doesn't like the way you look. But hey, let's stay calm, and be cool about it."

I've no love for violence, whatsoever, but wouldn't be too surprised if appeals for "calm" in the face of this extraordinarily antagonistic ruling fall on deaf ears. You don't stick a fork in someone's eye and then ask them to be cool about and calm about it. That is exactly what local officials and the media are forced to do here.

This ruling is a travesty. I'm 800 miles away, and was not immediately impacted by this whole sad episode, but in the words of Marcellus Wallace in Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, I'm feeling: "pretty fucking far from okay."

Gays in the Military: Cue the Wrong-wing Freakout in 3-2-FUN!!!!

I told you in my very last post that this was going to be fun! (It's near the bottom.) And here comes the Wrong-Wing Freakout over the end of Don't Ask Don't Tell!

Benedict Arnold Republicans Destroy Military and our National Security

From those Fun-Loving GOoPers at the American Family Association's "Rightly Concerned"

By Bryan Fischer

We are now stuck with sexual deviants serving openly in the U.S. military because of turncoat Republican senators. (Dictionary definition of “deviant”: “departing from usual or accepted standards, esp. in social or sexual behavior.” “Deviant” is not name calling, it is truth-telling.) . . . .

Yep, it took this asshole all of one sentence to make it clear that he believes that homosexuals are "deviants," and to quote the dictionary to back up this claim. But it gets better. Did you know that other nations allow gays in their militaries specifically because they are planning on having the USA bail them out?

The armies of other nations have allowed gays to serve openly in the military. The reason they could afford to do this is simple: they could allow homosexuals to serve in their military because we didn’t allow them to serve in ours.

They knew they could count on the strength, might, power, and cohesion of the U.S. military to intervene whenever and wherever necessary to pull their fannies out of the fire and squash the forces of tyranny wherever they raised their ugly heads around the world.

Those days are now gone. We will no longer be able to bail out these other emasculated armies because ours will now be feminized and neutered beyond repair, and there is no one left to bail us out. We have been permanently weakened as a military and as a nation by these misguided and treasonous Republican senators, and the world is now a more dangerous place for us all. . . .

Wow. Our army will be feminized and neutered beyond repair? Jeepers too bad, eh? Our macho-beyond-belief military was so masculine that having gay people in it will actually destroy it forever. So I guess having a Harley-ridin butch lesbian serve in the military will feminize it? Go figure.

But it gets better. Our nation is apparently DOOOOOOOOOOOOMED!!!

This isn’t a game, and the military should never be used, as is now being done, for massive social re-engineering. The new Marine motto: “The Few, the Proud, the Sexually Twisted.” Good luck selling that to strong young males who would otherwise love to defend their country. What virile young man wants to serve in a military like that?

If the president and the Democrats wanted to purposely weaken and eventually destroy the United States of America, they could not have picked a more efficient strategy to make it happen.

Rarely can you point to a moment in time when a nation consigned itself to the scrap heap of history. Today, when the Senate normalized sexual perversion in the military, was that moment for the United States. If historians want a fixed marker pointing to the instant the United States sealed its own demise, they just found it.
It won’t happen overnight, but happen it will.

Strong young males? Virile, young men? Who talks like that? Methinks this prick, Bryan Fischer, doth protest too much.

And seriously, this is "the instant the United States sealed its own demise?"

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!! Uh yeah, the Bush-engineered bank bailout was more what I was thinking, but if you want to push it a year or two and blame the gays in the military, sure I guess we can quibble.

You know, I just knew that if I hunted down a picture of this asshole it would be hilarious. And guess what? It was:

Who is this asshole? Ned Flanders's gay uncle? What a douchebag. Gotta love the macho-macho perfectly coiffed white hair and Christmasy sweater. Nothing says "No I most certainly am NOT gay. I'm not gay I'm not gay damnit!" than a look like that, and lots of kvetching about "virile young males."

Too funny!

Some welcome good news.

For lefties like me, the last few months have been pretty demoralizing. From the debut of our new Citizens' United-enabled right wing majority in the People's House of Congress, and the startling speed with which monstrous, corporate-backed interest groups were able to officially purchase our election process with obvious results on November 6th; to the politically inept and dangerous precedent set by the President's total capitulation to the GOoPers' insane, budget-busting obsession with tax cuts for millionaires, it's been a tough haul.

That's why news like this is a very welcome relief for progressives*, an overdue but welcome victory.

Senate votes to repeal ban on gays openly serving in military

"Washington (CNN) -- The military's prohibition of openly gay people serving within its ranks is one step closer to ending, after the Senate voted Saturday to repeal the armed forces' "don't ask, don't tell" policy. Eight Republicans and independent Joe Lieberman of Connecticut joined the chamber's Democrats to back the legislation, which passed around 3 p.m. by a 65-31 margin. The bill needed a simple majority -- meaning support from 51 of the Senate's 100 members -- to pass. . . .

"Gay and lesbian service members -- brave Americans who enable our freedoms -- will no longer have to hide who they are," [President]Obama said in an e-mailed statement to supporters. "The fight for civil rights, a struggle that continues, will no longer include this one."

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, in a statement, that he'll "approach this process deliberately, (making changes) only after careful consultation with the military service chiefs and our combatant commanders."

Clifford Stanley, a retired Marine and the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, will "immediately proceed" to execute the Pentagon's plan, Gates said."

The end of "Don't Ask Don't Tell" puts a final nail into the coffin of the idea that one's sexual preference affects one's ability to not just serve the country, but to do any job, really. This is good news not just for boys who like boys and girls who like girls, but to anyone who has ever been discriminated against, for any reason. Although the media response to this Friday-evening news dump story (so far) hasn't fully picked up steam, I'm guessing that it'll be fun watching the response of the reactionaries wigging out, the self-righteous pricks. No doubt the heads of right-wingers will be exploding all across the airwaves on Monday. And that's always a fun thing.

For a fascinating look at the history of the movement that finally achieved this victory you can go here. I never thought I'd be thanking Senator Joseph "Sanctimonious Prick" Lieberman for anything ever again. But I will say that on this one, along with Former Rep. Ellen Tauscher, Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-PA), Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader Reed, and President Obama, Lieberman was among the main backers of the repeal effort, so give credit where credit is due.

After all the disappointment of the last couple of months, this is something about which to genuinely cheer: a legitimate, and long-overdue victory for civil rights.

* You know, the compassion-for-fellow-your-fellow-human-beings people.