CPS website
deletes militarism link quickly
September 12, 2005
Substance:

Score one for power of the press. Even before I saw my copy of the September Substance, when I went on to the CPS web page today I discovered that the www.military.com link has been deleted from the CPS site. Did this happen because the September Substance had raised the issue through my letter?

Congratulations. I hope you do not get too many questions when people go looking for it and can’t find it. I hope you were able to download at least the site and the advertising.

Of course, we have issues for the future now that Arne Duncan and Alderman Mary Ann Smith have unilaterally decided to disband the “Senn Tomorrow” Task Force. What part of “We the people…” do they not understand?

Craig Mousin, Chicago
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Poltrock: ‘5+5’ a ‘bullshit grievance’
September 18, 2005
Substance:

This is about the September 7, 2005 Chicago Teachers Union House of Delegate meeting. I was appalled, and I’m sure that every Chicago union member who learns the truth will be too.

During the question and answer period, Debbie Lynch [who is now a member of the House of Delegates because of her recent election as a high school functional vice president] put forward a motion to refile the 5 + 5 pension grievance against the Board of Education. From the podium, Jennifer Poltrock, CTU lawyer who is serving as parliamentarian for the meeting, said, that upon taking office, the new officers had decided that pursuing the 5 + 5 grievance was not “the best way to proceed” (or something to that effect). As the delegates stood to vote on the motion, I took an informal count of the floor vote. My count (from my vantage point on the floor as a voting delegate) was approximately 95 Yes votes in favor of refiling the grievance to 50 No votes against refiling the grievance.)

But when Marilyn Stewart announced the outcome of the vote, she reported it as 72 Yes votes and 90-something No votes! She had completely switched the totals so that she could claim the motion had been defeated. An uproar ensued as delegates, including myself, loudly accused the leadership of lying and fraud. Then a delegate motioned to adjourn and the meeting adjourned.

As I walked to the exit, I saw Larry Poltrock, Jennifer’s father and the other main union lawyer, standing at the back of the House. I approached him, and loudly asked him why, as the CTU’s lawyer, he didn’t prevent Marilyn Stewart from committing fraud and lying to the House of Delegates about the vote totals.

He started yelling back at me, “You’re never gonna get anything passed in this House of Delegates” (that is a direct quote) and, “You know that was a bullshit grievance!” I told him that the House of Delegates had the authority to decide about whether the grievance should be pursued—and had just done so—and he continued to holler, “That was a bullshit grievance and you know it!”

Another noteworthy thing about the meeting was that Pam Massarsky (the former Recording Secretary who is now retired and working in an appointed position for the union) was sitting next to Microphone Two and got up to speak under every single point. Towards the end, she was interrupting just like in the bad old days before 2001 when she used to come down from the stage where she sat as Recording Secretary and would grab a microphone.

During this particular discussion about Debbie’s motion, Diana Scheffer also spoke into the microphone trying to tell Marilyn how to handle the motion, and when PACT supporters hollered, “Who is in charge here?” Marilyn said, “I am in charge” and Massarsky and Sheffer sat back down.

At another point during the September House of Delegates meeting, I heard several UPCers clucking their tongues after a delegate spoke up. (I’m not sure but it might have been Sandy Finkel who was asking what had happened to the 2400-plus signatures on petitions she submitted in the May meeting calling for a referendum on a mail ballot.) The UPCers were loudly saying, “And we paid for her dinner?” Apparently meals paid for with CTU members’ dues money are designed to purchase the loyalty of school delegates.

I had not stayed through the end of the June House of Delegates meeting and so had not witnessed Stewart’s lying about the budget vote totals. Nor did I witness Debbie Lynch’s arrest. This September meeting was just shocking to me, and I now see that this is what the UPC leadership seems to have decided to do to keep control of the House of Delegates. Just as Larry Poltrock said, “You’re never gonna get anything passed in this House of Delegates”. I wonder why they didn’t also change the vote putting Debbie on the Executive Board. Perhaps they thought that was going too far.

Norine Gutekanst
Delegate, InterAmerican Elementary School
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U.S. Constitution:
Original meaning not simplistic...
September 13, 2005
Substance:

Recently, a colleague noted “The Brown decision came up today in Senator Kennedy’s questioning of Roberts. Had never read the decision before, so I looked it up. Was moved by this sentence from the ruling: ‘Where a State has undertaken to provide an opportunity for an education in its public schools, such an opportunity is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.”

On the Fourth of July, 2004, I went to the National Archives in Washington, D.C.. The building had extended summer hours, but that night all the potential visitors except me were out on the Mall to watch the fireworks. The decision of the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education was on display in an alcove just off the main hall. Also on display were several documents related to the anti-slavery struggle, including a Quaker petition to the first Congress.

Other famous documents were available for perusal, including the original order of the Court in Marbury v. Madison, which established the power of the courts to review the constitutionality of laws passed by Congress. For me perhaps the most inspiring paper was one I had never realized existed — the Conference Committee report on the Bill of Rights. With no one else around but the guards, I had time to read the Committee’s recommendations, noting where they had taken language from versions passed in the House and in the Senate. Nothing could more forcefully illustrate the importance of carefully crafting language. The Committee’s words have, over the centuries, had consequences beyond measure. Looking back, we can be profoundly grateful for the hours of negotiation and revision that produced this draft.

September 17, Constitution Day. Our Constitution is, and always has been, an arena in which powerful interests compete. Much foolishness has been written by reactionaries who seek to freeze the Constitution in a selective version of the “original intent” of its framers. But Abraham Lincoln, who made the Constitution what it is today, said that he never had a political thought that was not grounded in the Declaration of Independence.

The Constitution says little, except in its Preamble and in the Bill of Rights, about the hopes of the governed. It is in the “self-evident” truths of the Declaration that we find the purpose of government, an expansive view of liberty that includes the right to be left alone, and the genesis of that most American idea — equal opportunity. It’s worth remembering that Chief Justice Warren wrote the words from the Brown decision on behalf of a unanimous court.

After the September Substance published the shocking data on massive school segregation in Chicago, your editor asked many of us around the country to check out the extent of segregation in our states. Here in California, it is massive, with minorities, usually black and Latino, being segregated into black and Latino public schools.

George Sheridan

Northside School, Cool, California 95614
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Tribune’s deceit on NCLB tutoring
September 15, 2005
Substance:

I hope the Tribune gets a new headline writer soon. The August 11th headline stated: “Tutoring study shows promise in key group.” I thought, nicely done, CPS, the after school program is a success.

Then I read the article.

Paragraph five: “Yet it is unclear how much of the progress can be attributed to tutoring or better instruction during the school day. And there was virtually no difference between the students who received the extra help and those who didn’t. In fact, the study concluded that tutoring ‘did not have a large impact on student test gains’ during the 2004-05 school year.”

So why the very, very positive headline?

Can it be the Tribune cannot cover the Chicago Board of Education objectively? Can it be the Tribune is clueless?

Near the end of the article, the Tribune lists the statistics. “For the tutored group, the students averaged a gain of 1.09 compared with 1.02 for the non-tutored students and a 1.06 for students systemwide.”

So, in effect, the Tribune is saying a difference of seven hundredths of one percent is a big deal. I’m sorry, I beg to differ. The headline should have read, “After school tutoring may be helpful to students”.

Michael H. Brownstein
Mollison Elementary School, Chicago
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Stewart, Massarsky sink 5+5, tout ERO
September 19, 2005
Substance:

The current leadership of the Chicago Teachers Union, under the direction of Pam Massarsky, does not want members to have the 5 + 5 retirement option (which could benefit over 4, 000 members). Although this is part of the CTU contract, they have refused to make the CPS abide by the agreement. Even when the House of Delegates voted to approve a motion to grieve this issue by a count of 92 Yes to 70 no, they announced that the motion was rejected. Instead Ms. Massarsky and Marilyn Stewart are congratulating themselves on negotiating the ERO retirement option for up to 450 members.

I have studied the ERO and cannot help but wonder why the CTU leadership is characterizing this as a benefit to members. If a member opts for the ERO, he/she would pay the pension contribution for the years of service or age to come to full pension. However his/her pension would be based on his/her actual years.

So who really benefits from this? The Pension Board gets lots of money; the CPS doesn’t have to pay the pension contribution and can hire someone at half the salary of the retiring teacher thereby saving lots of money; and, the retiring teacher gets to pay lots of money out of pocket (to get their pension contribution to 33.95 but get a pension based on actual years.)

With 5 + 5 members would pay the pension contribution and get their pension based on the years of service they are paying for. In the past, when the ERO was offered, less than 200 members too advantage of it. It seems as though Ms. Massarsky and Ms. Stewart negotiated a good deal for the Pension Board and the CPS, and a really bad deal for the teachers. It begs the question, who are they working for?

Sarah Loftus, teacher, Marquette School

Oct. 9 Chicago Rally helps plan Nov. 18 Georgia protest
September 14, 2005
Substance:

I hope you and you readers can join us on Oct. 9th at St. Gertrude’s for the important event outlined below. Please spread the word. Information on this event follows from a press release.

Peace,

Chris Inserra, Chicago
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Chicago Rally to Close the School of the Americas (WHINSEC) and Welcome Back our Prisoners of Conscience

Illinois SOA Watch Rally. to build awareness, widen participation and raise scholarship funding for this year’s journey to Ft. Benning, Georgia for the Vigil and Protest to Close the U.S. Army School of the Americas with others from the Illinois

Sunday, October 9, 2005, 2 - 5 p. m.

St. Gertrude’s Social Hall

(Lower level of the gymnasium)

1401 W. Granville, Chicago

(SW corner of Granville and Glenwood. On-street parking is available. or take the Red Line and get off at Granville.)

Music by “Voices and Vicios de Papá” (one of Chicago’s hot, young Latino bands). Light refreshments will be served. ($5-$10 suggested donation (no one will be turned away)

Rally — For this year’s Convergence and Mass Civil Disobedience Action November 18 - 20 at Fort Benning, Georgia, to Close U.S. Army’s School of the Americas/WHINSEC. Last year, more than 16,000 people gathered at these gates!

Why? Hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans have been tortured, raped, assassinated, “disappeared,” massacred and forced into refuge by SOA / WHINSEC graduates who return to their countries to use their training domestically. These graduates are consistently cited for atrocities against their own people. Among those targeted by SOA graduates are educators, union organizers, religious workers, student leaders, and others working for human rights and economic justice.

Welcome Back. . . Two of our 14 friends and human rights activists who were arrested last November for crossing onto the U.S. Army base at Ft. Benning, GA where the School of the Americas/WHINSEC is located. Each was sentenced at trial to 3 months in prison. Hear from: Liz Deligio, Director of Ministry at Misericordia and Catholic Theological Seminary student. Ron Durham, St. Francis Catholic Worker.

Their courageous acts of resistance call the U.S. government to end its policy of training foreign soldiers and to close the SOA’s doors forever! Support them with your presence at the October event, as we rally together to close the SOA/WHINSEC!

Gary Cozette, Chicago Religious Leadership Network on Latin America, will provide the latest information on current legislation, HR 1217, to close the school. This bill has over 100 bi-partisan co-sponsors in the House of Representatives! Gary will tell us what YOU CAN DO to ensure its passage!

IL SOA Watch is part of the National SOA Watch organization that seeks to close the U.S. Army School of the Americas/WHINSEC through vigils and fasts, demonstrations and non-violent protest, and media and legislative work. Checks made payable to 8th Day Center for Justice to support the work of IL SOA Watch are tax-deductible. For more information call 8th Day Center for Justice at 312.641.5151 and ask for Stephanie

Cuba did better job on Hurricane Ivan
September 5, 2005
Substance:

I hope that you will share the following analysis with your readers.

Carol Caref,

Chicago Vocational High School, Chicago
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The Two Americas

By Marjorie Cohn (09/03/05 “t r u t h o u t”)

Last September, a Category 5 hurricane battered the small island of Cuba with 160-mile-per-hour winds. More than 1.5 million Cubans were evacuated to higher ground ahead of the storm. Although the hurricane destroyed 20,000 houses, no one died.

What is Cuban President Fidel Castro’s secret? According to Dr. Nelson Valdes, a sociology professor at the University of New Mexico, and specialist in Latin America, “the whole civil defense is embedded in the community to begin with. People know ahead of time where they are to go.”

“Cuba’s leaders go on TV and take charge,” said Valdes. Contrast this with George W. Bush’s reaction to Hurricane Katrina. The day after Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, Bush was playing golf. He waited three days to make a TV appearance and five days before visiting the disaster site. In a scathing editorial on Thursday, the New York Times said, “nothing about the president’s demeanor yesterday - which seemed casual to the point of carelessness - suggested that he understood the depth of the current crisis.”

“Merely sticking people in a stadium is unthinkable” in Cuba, Valdes said. “Shelters all have medical personnel, from the neighborhood. They have family doctors in Cuba, who evacuate together with the neighborhood, and already know, for example, who needs insulin.” They also evacuate animals and veterinarians, TV sets and refrigerators, “so that people aren’t reluctant to leave because people might steal their stuff,” Valdes observed.

After Hurricane Ivan, the United Nations International Secretariat for Disaster Reduction cited Cuba as a model for hurricane preparation. ISDR director Salvano Briceno said, “The Cuban way could easily be applied to other countries with similar economic conditions and even in countries with greater resources that do not manage to protect their population as well as Cuba does.”

Our federal and local governments had more than ample warning that hurricanes, which are growing in intensity thanks to global warming, could destroy New Orleans. Yet, instead of heeding those warnings, Bush set about to prevent states from controlling global warming, weaken FEMA, and cut the Army Corps of Engineers’ budget for levee construction in New Orleans by $71.2 million, a 44 percent reduction.

Bush sent nearly half our National Guard troops and high-water Humvees to fight in an unnecessary war in Iraq. Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Paris in New Orleans, noted a year ago, “It appears that the money has been moved in the president’s budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq.”

An Editor and Publisher article Wednesday said the Army Corps of Engineers “never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security - coming at the same time as federal tax cuts - was the reason for the strain,” which caused a slowdown of work on flood control and sinking levees.

“This storm was much greater than protection we were authorized to provide,” said Alfred C. Naomi, a senior project manager in the New Orleans district of the corps.

Unlike in Cuba, where homeland security means keeping the country secure from deadly natural disasters as well as foreign invasions, Bush has failed to keep our people safe. “On a fundamental level,” Paul Krugman wrote in yesterday’s New York Times, “our current leaders just aren’t serious about some of the essential functions of government. They like waging war, but they don’t like providing security, rescuing those in need or spending on prevention measures. And they never, ever ask for shared sacrifice.”

During the 2004 election campaign, vice presidential candidate John Edwards spoke of “the two Americas.” It seems unfatho! mable ho w people can shoot at rescue workers. Yet, after the beating of Rodney King aired on televisions across the country, poor, desperate, hungry people in Watts took over their neighborhoods, burning and looting. Their anger, which had seethed below the surface for so long, erupted. That’s what’s happening now in New Orleans. And we, mostly white, people of privilege, rarely catch a glimpse of this other America.

“I think a lot of it has to do with race and class,” said Rev. Calvin O. Butts III, pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. “The people affected were largely poor people. Poor, black people.”

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin reached a breaking point Thursday night. “You mean to tell me that a place where you probably have thousands of people that have died and thousands more that are dying every day, that we can’t figure out a way to authorize the resources we need? Come on, man!”

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff had boasted earlier in the day that FEMA and other federal agencies have done a “magnificent job” under the circumstances.

But, said, Nagin, “They’re feeding the people a line of bull, and they are spinning and people are dying. Get off your asses and let’s do something!”

When asked about the looting, the mayor said that except for a few “knuckleheads,” it is the result of desperate people trying to find food and water to survive.

Nagin blamed the outbreak of violence and crime on drug addicts who have been cut off from their drug supplies, wandering the city, “looking to take the edge off their jones.”

When Hurricane Ivan hit Cuba, no curfew was imposed; yet, no looting or violence took place. Everyone was in the same boat.

Fidel Castro, who has compared his government’s preparations for Hurricane Ivan to the island’s long-standing preparations for an invasion by the United States, said, “We’ve been preparing for this for 45 years.”

On Thursday, Cuba’s National Assembly sent a message of solidarity to the victims of Hurricane Katrina. It says the Cuban people have followed closely the news of the hurricane damage in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, and the news has caused pain and sadness. The message notes that the hardest hit are African-Americans, Latino workers, and the poor, who still wait to be rescued and taken to secure places, and who have suffered the most fatalities and homelessness. The message concludes by saying that the entire world must feel this tragedy as its own.

[Marjorie Cohn, a contributing editor to t r u t h o u t, is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, executive vice president of the National Lawyers Guild, and the US representative to the executive committee of the American Association]

Conservatives say: “Impeach Bush!”
September 13, 2005
Substance:

As the following article shows, some capitalist intellectuals (along with media giants like the Chicago Tribune, the NYT and others) now see George W. Bush’s tenure and strategy as a danger to the system’s stability and their long-term interests . (Of course, to cover their tracks and make it look like it’s just Bush and his neocons, the writer of the following column chooses to ignore the Senate and House’s overwhelming majority votes for the Bush budgets that trashed hurricane protection and pushed forward the war in Iraq. Evidently, they share the ABB (“Anybody but Bush”) approach, as if it’s just about him and the neocons.)

Their fears for their system ring out below. I’ve been watching such warning articles in the Chicago Tribune for several years now. The very loyal, big capitalist opposition sees this debacle as their opportunity to further isolate Bush’s crowd and put them on the defensive. In my opinion, this also motivated the clear and damning pictures and reports we all saw from New Orleans. After all, reporters don’t get to make their assignments nor do they control what parts of their stories and pictures make it in. Men who work at the Hoover Institute are not used to writing things like the following against Republican presidents and their governments. Perhaps they know even more about the horrors that await than we realize at this point.

Earl Silbar, Chicago

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Impeach Bush Now, by Paul Craig Roberts

[Paul Craig Roberts. Mr. Roberts is the John M. Olin Fellow at the Institute for Political Economy, a Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute. A former editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal and columnist for Business Week and the Scripps Howard News Service, he is a nationally syndicated columnist for Creators Syndicate in Los Angeles and a columnist for Investor’s Business Daily. In 1992, he received the Warren Brookes Award for Excellence in Journalism. In 1993, the Forbes Media Guide ranked him as one of the top seven journalists.]

IMPEACH BUSH NOW

The raison d’etre of the Bush administration is war in the Middle East in order to protect America from terrorism and to ensure America’s oil supply. On both counts, the Bush administration has failed catastrophically.

Bush’s single-minded focus on the “war against terrorism” has compounded a natural disaster and turned it into the greatest calamity in American history. The United States has lost its largest and most strategic port and thousands of lives, and 80 percent of one of America’s most historic cities is underwater.

If terrorists had achieved this result, it would rank as the greatest terrorist success in history.

Prior to 9-11, the Federal Emergency Management Agency warned that New Orleans was a disaster waiting to happen. Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project (SELA) in order to protect the strategic port, the refineries and the large population.

After 2003, however, the flow of funds to SELA were diverted to the war in Iraq. During 2004 and 2005, the New Orleans Times-Picayune published nine articles citing New Orleans’ loss of hurricane protection to the war in Iraq.

Every expert and newspapers as distant as Texas saw the New Orleans catastrophe coming. But President Bush and his insane government preferred war in Iraq to protecting Americans at home.

Bush’s war left the Corps of Engineers only 20 percent of the funding to protect New Orleans from flooding from Lake Pontchartrain. On June 18, 2004, the Corps’ project manager, Al Naomi, told the Times-Picayune: “The levees are sinking. If we don’t get the money to raise them, we can’t stay ahead of the settlement.”

Despite the dire warnings delivered by the 2004 hurricane season, the Bush administration made deep budget cuts for flood control and hurricane funding for New Orleans. The U.S. Senate, alarmed at the Bush administration’s insanity, was planning to restore the funding for 2006. But now, it is too late. Many multiples of the funding that would have saved the city are being spent to rescue it.

Not content with leaving New Orleans unprotected, it took the Bush administration five days to get the remnants of the National Guard not serving in Iraq, along with desperately needed food and water, to devastated New Orleans. This is the slowest emergency response by the U.S. government in modern times. By the time the Bush administration could organize any resources for New Orleans, many more people had died and the city was in total chaos.

Despite the most dismal performance on record, Bush’s homeland security secretary, Michael Chertoff, said on Thursday that the Bush administration has done a “magnificent job.”

The on-the-scene mayor of New Orleans sees it differently: “They’re feeding the people a line of bull, and they are spinning, and people are dying.”

“They’re thinking small, man, and this is a major, major deal.”

It is a major deal, one that will affect Americans far beyond New Orleans. According to reports, 25 percent of our oil and gasoline comes through the New Orleans port and refineries, all out of commission. Needed goods cannot be imported, and exports will plummet, worsening an already disastrous deficit in the balance of trade.

The increased cost of gasoline will soak up consumers’ disposable incomes, with dire effects on consumer spending. U.S. economic growth will be siphoned off into higher energy costs. American lives far from New Orleans will be adversely affected.

The destruction of New Orleans is the responsibility of the most incompetent government in American history and perhaps in all history. Americans are rapidly learning that they were deceived by the superpower hubris. The powerful U.S. military cannot successfully occupy Baghdad or control the road to the airport — and this against an insurgency based in only 20 percent of the Iraqi population. Bush’s pointless war has left Washington so pressed for money that the federal government abandoned New Orleans to catastrophe.

The Bush administration is damned by its gross incompetence. Bush has squandered the lives and health of thousands of people. He has run through hundreds of billions of borrowed dollars. He has lost America’s reputation and its allies. With barbaric torture and destruction of our civil liberty, he has stripped America of its inherent goodness and morality. And now Bush has lost America’s largest port and 25 percent of its oil supply.

Why? Because Bush started a gratuitous war egged on by a claque of crazy neoconservatives who have sacrificed America’s interests to their insane agenda.

The neoconservatives have brought these disasters to all Americans, Democrat and Republican alike. Now, they must be held accountable. Bush and his neoconservatives are guilty of criminal negligence and must be prosecuted.

What will it take for Americans to re-establish accountability in their government? Bush has gotten away with lies and an illegal war of aggression, with outing CIA agents, with war crimes against Iraqi civilians, with the horrors of the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo torture centers, and now with the destruction of New Orleans.

What disaster will next spring from Bush’s incompetence?

[To find out more about Paul Craig Roberts, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2005 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC. Originally Published on Tuesday September 6, 2005]

‘Naval academy’
wrecking Senn H.S.
September 21, 2005
Substance:

I was interested to read [Substance letters, June and September] that some of your readers support the military and take issue with my work in opposition to the militarization of Chicago’s public schools. I hope that those same people — including members of the Substance staff — will spend a day or two at Senn High School before they continue their letter writing activities, although expressing their opinions is their right as Americans.

But please, can they at least get on the front lines of this discussion. I only ask them to watch the “educational” program of the “Rickover Naval Academy” in action and contrast the opulence which the military “school” has received with the scarcity of almost everything imposed on the majority of students in that same building. Those students still attend “Nicholas Senn High School,” which thanks to policies which your pro-military letter writers support now is forced to share its building with a second “school” — the “Rickover Naval Academy.”

At this moment, the “Rickover Naval Academy” has 120 students in the Senn building, while Senn High School has well over 1,000 students in the same building. The contrast between what is available to the military and what is not available to the public school is shocking. This is not a theoretical debate, but a question of public policy as it is unfolding in Chicago right now.

At a recent public meeting of the “Senn Tomorrow” committee (which, I understand, is now “Friends of Senn”), I heard appalling stories about what is happening both in Senn and in the new naval academy which has been foisted off on the community in the Senn High School building.

First, on the naval academy. Since when does the staff at “Rickover Naval Academy” have the right to inflict corporal punishment on the students, yell at them in public, and humiliate them in various ways? Doesn’t the Chicago Board of Education have strict rules against inflicting corporal and emotional punishment on students? Or does “Rickover” have an exemption to allow its staff to force 13-year-olds to line up and drop for push ups while a large adult hovers over them and refers to some of them as “Pussy Butt” — and perhaps worse?

Why does the “Rickover” staff have the right to have the students march around drilling loudly in the halls of Senn High School — and with drums — when serious academic classes are taking place that they disturb on a regular basis? If any of our neighbors tried this, we would say what they were doing was disturbing the peace.

Why does “Rickover” have the right to tell students from “Senn” that they cannot walk down the halls in the “Rickover” part of the building, while the “Rickover” programs use Senn for everything from drill to classroom instruction? Will a Senn High School student be arrested for trespassing if he goes down the same hallway he used last year to get from one class to another? Or does the “Rickover” staff have the right to detain that students and force him, too, to drop for pushups while being called a “pussy butt”?

Why should the military academy have opened the school year with bright and shiny classrooms, facilities and books, while many of the Senn students and staff have no books, or books that are ten, twenty and thirty years old? What message are we sending to Senn students, many of whom come from all over the world, when the military gets the best classrooms and books and they have to spend hours in run down class room space in numbers that run way over class size limits? Is it true that Senn has been deprived of most computers, while Rickover has new ones? Are these the true priorities of Chicago and our community — money, books, computers, and decent conditions for military training in our public schools, while the general high school students get leftovers or nothing at all?

Last year, the majority of residents in our community voted overwhelmingly against the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Today, the majority of Americans oppose these overseas military adventures. Chicago’s City Council has voted for withdrawal from Iraq. Every major group at Senn High School and in the Senn community — the local school council, the students, the teachers, and community residents — opposed the imposition of the “Rickover Naval Academy” upon us. And now we are being forced to watch this tragedy unfold first hand and tolerate the humiliation of public school students “dropping” for push ups and getting their “pussy butts” up?

The campaign to Save Senn must continue. In our community, everyone must join in saying “Rickover Out!” And we should also remind our neighbors that the Daley administration and its allies, like Alderman Mary Ann Smith, are planning further expansions of Chicago’s military programs. Have we no decency left.

Neal Resnikoff
Andersonville neighbors for peace
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Even Tom Reece wasn’t this nasty
September 23, 2005
Substance:

We have just read the United Progressive Caucus (UPC) version of the June 1 Debbie Lynch fiasco in the September 2005 issue of the union newspaper. The fact that the leadership felt it necessary to contradict the news media, including Substance, indicates some apprehension on their part. We’re glad they have been put on the defensive.

It’s a shame that many readers will accept their version of the events. But even people who do not read Substance might have some questions. For example, Ms. Lynch’s “associates” are described as “verbally abusive.” What, for example, did they say that was so “abusive?” The UPC does not say. Again, the article states that Ms. Lynch has “on several occasions” shouted from the balcony when she “disagreed with something that was occurring.” The article does not state what was “occurring.” A careful reader might ask why Ms. Stewart felt it necessary to have the police “protect the facility” from Ms. Lynch, who could hardly, even if she had wanted to, make a dent in even one pillar of Plumber’s Hall.

As former Substance reporters who covered the House of Delegates meetings for several years, we were often appalled at the lack of democracy and the strong arm tactics engaged in by the UPC. People were cut off in the middle of speeches, UPC members crowded to the microphones and on occasion pushed others away. Valuable question time was taken by speakers who wasted time simply praising the UPC and asking non-questions such as Ted Dallas’ “How can we get everybody on board?” Larry Poltrock, when appealed to by a non-UPC delegate as “parliamentarian,” would almost always ignore the request and refuse to make a ruling.

However, reading Substance for the past few months, we see that the House meetings are now conducted in a way that even Tom Reece would never have gotten away with. The House of Delegates sounds more like a petty dictatorship than a union meeting. What recourse do Union members have when their dues seem to be going mainly to perpetuate a dynasty which does not seem to have the least interest in the welfare of the people they represent?

We hope Substance readers will share the facts with their colleagues. We hope they will point out the picture of Debbie Lynch in the police car along with the bullying and ineffective Poltrock, whose only interest seems to be to promote the UPC so that his law firm can continue to be awarded lucrative contracts. Continue to tell the truth. Remember, the mills of justice grind slowly, “yet they grind exceeding small.”

Pat Breitzer and Chuck Wemstrom, Retired
Mount Carroll, Illinois
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Individual schools in hurricane wake
September 18, 2005
Substance:

Please send this on to colleagues and friends. I received an e-mail from Cindy Elliott, who is a professor at LSU, requesting support for the following schools. Cindy and I have been working together. She is courageous and kind and it is a privilege for me to be working with her. Here’s the information Cindy sent to me:

There are two schools that were opened in East Baton Rouge Parish School System that need everything. They don’t even have desks and chairs.

Mayfair Elementary (K-6)
9886 Hyacinth Ave.
Baton Rouge, LA 70810

This school has about 70 students and processing more every day.

Scottlandville Middle School (K-8)
9147 Elm Grove Garden Dr.
Baton Rouge 70807

The principal at this site is Mrs. Joseph. I do not know the numbers of children that are going here, but at least some of them are from the River Center Shelter.

Denny Taylor, Hofstra University, New York
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Organizing part-time higher
education workers
September 21, 2005
Substance:

Friends, colleagues, relatives, fellow activists,

I am sending this form letter email to all my personal contacts and to all the lists I have access to. Excuse the duplication and pardon the self promotion.

I am proud to announce the October (exact date not yet set) publication of my book on organizing contingent (non tenure track, precarious, adjunct, temporary, etc.) college and university faculty. Reclaiming the Ivory Tower: Organizing Adjuncts to Change Higher Education is being co-published by Monthly Review Press and the North American Alliance For Fair Employment (the network of groups concerned with contingent work generally).

This book is not just my work, but also reflects the contributions of hundreds who have contributed to the movement (and to me) over many years. It is meant to be an organizing guide, sort of a “Troublemaker’s Handbook” for contingent faculty. Because of this, I am not hesitant to ask my friends, colleagues and the whole movement to help me in circulating the book. It is short, paperback and cheap ($13 or less) so that it can get into the hands of people who can use it.

Here is what you can do to help right now:

1. Go to the new website www.reclaimingtheivorytower.org

2. Order an advance copy (discounted).

3. Get your union or other group to do a bulk order (also discounted).

4. Get your library to order one hardbound..

5. Do a review for your favorite publication, print or online.

6. Send your review and any other comments to the discussion section of the website.

7. Set up an event for me to come and speak, with books, at a bookstore, campus, organizational meeting, or any interested group. See the website section for what events have been set up already. I expect to be traveling with the book in the weeks before and after Campus Equity Week/Fair Employment Week.

8. Plan to use the book (and perhaps me) in your Campus Equity Week

activities October 30-November 5, 2005.

9. Send out the book flyer or other notice to your own lists and

networks.

I did not write the book mainly to get a Ph.D., though I did get it, nor to get rich or famous (or even employed full-time tenure track). It is probably way too late for that for me. I did it mainly to help the over 500,000 of us organize ourselves. If you think this can help, then give a hand.

I look forward to hearing from you.

In solidarity,

Joe T. Berry
1453 W. Flournoy, #3F
Chicago IL 60607
Phone/fax: 312-733-2172

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