Editorial

This “X” marks the spot where Chicago democracy was being strangled long before Meigs debacle

The day before this Substance was finally sent to the printer — one month late (and we apologize to our patient readers) — Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley created another immortal symbol of the arrogance of his administration. In the dead of night, with “Homeland Security” patrols preventing the press from recording the event from land or sea, Daley dispatched $175,000 worth of heavy construction equipment to deconstruct the runway at Meigs Field on Chicago’s lakefront.

As we’ve noted, Daley has been deconstructing democracy for a long time. But...

The howls from our colleagues in the media are virtually unanimous as we put this Substance to bed. Even the lap dogs at the editorial page of the Chicago Sun-Times (who traded their journalistic consciences in long before “Suzanna’s Night Out” made them a national joke by kissying up to Daley’s policies in exchange for the land under the newspapers new presses on South Ashland Ave.) had to take issue with Daley’s dictatorial thuggery. Even the Brahmins at the Chicago Tribune were moved to cover the Meigs debacle thoroughly in their news columns and add in with some of the most scathing editorial copy they’ve ever penned against a mayor whose dynasty they helped create. Pundit John Kass, who helped puff up Daley’s reputation as a “school reform” leader during the Vallas years, had to admit that the man he often praised for “courage” was a lout the last weekend of March on the Meigs question.

We’re going to be testing the sincerity of our colleagues during the next few months in an unusual way. As far as we’re concerned, their interest in a free press and democratic procedures only extends as far as their own self-interests. When Daley was promoting a “business model” of dictatorial control over the public schools, they were cheering him on. When Daley was allowed to appoint two incompetents (first Paul Vallas and now Arne Duncan, neither or whom is entitled to teach — legally — in any classroom in this state) to be “CEO” of the school system, our colleagues in most of the city’s media helped create the myth of the “Chicago miracle” locally. And that mythmaking enabled the business community that has been attacking democratic public schools to export Chicago’s lies to other cities, including Detroit, New York, and Philadelphia.

It’s personal with us here at Substance.

After we finally got out from under the rock of a million dollar lawsuit foisted on us by the Daley administration’s underlings, it took us a while to begin reorganizing things here. (One of the reasons we postponed this Substance is that reorganization, although there are others).

“ Who are these teachers!” Daley snarled to the TV reporters on January 26, 1999, when his press people, Paul Vallas, and Gery Chico orchestrated the legally buffoonish “copyright infringement” attack on Substance and our editor. Daley’s threat that night was clear. He would run out of town a newspaper, even one so small as this, that dared to expose that this emperor has no clothes. For years we pointed out that the Daley administration was the least qualified anywhere to utilize high-stakes standardized tests to ruin the lives of children and their teachers. For years, we noted that Daley would have never gotten out of high school — or through the bar examination after an undistinguished career in law school — without a form of the “social promotion” he was then denouncing.

And then we showed, using the actual texts of tests the Daley administration was promoting at a cost of millions of dollars, just how ignorant this administration was.

But the issue today, in 2003, is not what Daley, Chico, and Vallas (along with a million dollars worth of lawyers over four years’ time) did to us. By January of this year, the Chicago Board of Education had reduced its “million dollar” claim to pennies on the dollar, knowing that they could not bring their case in front of jury without making themselves a laughing stock. So they reduced their claim and hoped we would leave the field of battle. Unfortunately, some basic principles are still at stake, so we’re appealing, challenging the crazy notion that “copyright infringement” can be claimed by government against a newspaper.

On January 28, 1999, instead of supporting us, the Sun-Times and Tribune both backed the Daley Dictatorship and called for our scalps.

We survived, not thanks to the ethics of Chicago’s most powerful media.

Now that they’ve gotten a few more lessons in how their favorite local dictator operates, we’re going to give them another change to rectify a long standing wrong. Between now and June, our lawyers are preparing our appeal to the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in the now famous case of “Chicago School Reform Board of Trustees v. Substance and George N. Schmidt.” We’re going to ask our colleagues in the Chicago press to join us amicus curiae in that appeal. We’ll let our readers know whether they’ve learned anything about how to face off against a dictator since they knuckled under to him over the Vallas years and especially in January 1999 when Daley thought he could destroy this newspaper without a fight.