Home arrow Past Issues arrow November 2005 arrow Democracy: What is it good for?


Democracy: What is it good for? PDF Print E-mail
By Brian Roa

On October 18, 2005, at the Raven Theater at 6157 N Clark St., the people of the 48th Ward got a dose of what Alderman Mary Ann Smith thinks about democracy and community input. Again. Alderman Smith has developed plans to redo the park (“Senn Park”) on the west side of Senn High School. She called Senn Park a “disgrace” to the community and to Senn. Although it is in need of repairs, what Mary Ann’s true intentions are is to create an elegant entry way to her beloved Rickover Naval Academy. According to Smith, the project will cost taxpayers $1.5 million dollars. When Alderman Smith was asked about community input about the preliminary planning for what was to be done with the park, Smith responded: “Listen, the Swiss take ten years to make a road like Clark. I’m not going to take ten years to do anything.” With that time efficiency comment, Smith whisked away any wish for meaningful community input. Disagreement with the agenda will not be tolerated.

What the community asks for is not “ten years.” We don’t want to wait ten years for improvements either, said one community member. However, we do want responsible use of our valuable tax dollars. And what many suspected has become true: Smith wants to spend over a million dollars to make the present back door of Senn High School into a fancy front door for the new “ Rickover Naval Academy .”

Most community members who attended the meeting felt that those $1.5 million dollars could be much better appropriated, and the appropriation of money is where community input is badly needed.

This school year, Senn High School has almost 1,500 students. For those1,500 students, we are currently working with one computer lab with 30 computers! The Senn High School computers do not currently have Internet access. Our money should be used for the benefit of all! The situation of a “school within a school” shows the “separate but equal” status to which CPS schools have been down graded.

The Rickover Naval Academy took Senn’s computer lab and left Senn with one that is rendered unusable for anything other than glorified word processing. The naval academy has all new science labs, while most of Senn’s science labs fit into a school from the 1950’s. Over 90 percent of Senn students are on free or reduced lunch. To further disadvantage these students is a disgrace, but that is what all of Smith’s planning since the secret planning for the naval academy was revealed a year ago has been. The unfair distribution of funds shows what CPS’s and Smith’s intentions are, namely that they want to take funds away from one group of students and give them to another group of students.

When Smith was asked by a student of Senn what Smith thought about the students of Senn because there were many immigrants. She said she refuses to answer that question. She doesn’t need to respond. Her actions clearly show what she and Duncan think of Senn students. They want to further dis-advantage the students’ who would benefit most from extra resources. This is why we need to demand our voice be heard by Smith, Duncan, and ultimately, with Mayor Daley.

When Alderman Smith was again confronted about the need for more community input about the park, she responded that the plans to make over Senn Park were already done. Well then, I asked Smith, what was the purpose of the meeting? Here was a publicly posted meeting where one could assume there would be meaningful dialogue between elected officials and the community. However, the meeting was a farce. On the façade was a semblance of community involvement about important decisions that will affect students and the community. The reality was it was a meeting to dictate what was going to be done, regard-less of the publics’ wishes.

We saw the same thing with Smith’s and Duncan’s handpicked committee brought together to be an “advisory committee” last February. Eventually called “Senn Tomorrow”, the committee was originally established in secret, but was opened up to the community after persistent protests. Although handpicked by Duncan and Smith to provide input on the future of Senn, “Senn Tomorrow” voted in March to ask that the Chicago Board of Education put a moratorium on the naval academy. The Senn Tomorrow vote for the moratorium? An overwhelming 14-2 vote!

As “Senn Tomorrow” evolved over the next five months, it grew larger, stronger, and more representative of the community. But Duncan and Smith only wanted input which agreed with the policies they had already decided on. The community had seen that earlier, when Duncan told a crowd of 400 people at a meeting at the North Shore Baptist Church on December 9 that he wanted community input on the naval academy. This was a week before the board voted on the issue, but when the input was overwhelmingly opposed to the naval academy, Duncan simply refused to heed it. Despite the opposition from every major group in the community, Duncan recommended that the Board of Education vote on December 15 to approve the naval academy plan (which it did).

Later, Duncan was asked by Senn Tomorrow (his own hand picked committee) to delay the placing the naval academy in Senn to allow for the organic process of community input to come to fruition. Not only did he move forward with the naval academy, but he didn’t even answer repeated requests in writing for a response. Finally, he and Smith simply disbanded “Senn Tomorrow”. Once it became clear that “Senn Tomorrow” would not be their rubber stamp, they didn’t want it.

When the community is asked for input and actually offers it, Smith and Duncan’s real answer is: No thanks. We’re only here to spit empty platitudes.

This is what we must tirelessly bring to light. These people want nothing less than to steamroll the community until their agenda is fulfilled. Once again, as last year, the majority of people from the community were ready to say: We must stand united and fight for what is truly in our interests.

Further, we must do so without feeling fatalistic, without feeling that we cannot win. We win battles that go unpublicized. For example, we can return to the Senn Tomorrow Committee. The consensus among those who fought to get on the Committee was that it was formed with the intention of breaking the remainder of Senn (after the vote to install the naval academy) into charter schools. This was the consensus because there were Requests for Proposals at one of the initial meetings, and Smith had already met with Perspectives Charter schools. Further, Smith had plans to put a charter school in Senn’s area. The only thing Perspectives needed was a building. We stopped the privatization of our school by forcing Smith to disband the committee, and we should be proud of that! Further, we should use victories like this to inspire further changes and to combat the whatever-they-want-they-get mentality. ¡Si se puede!
 
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