Ethnic Cleansing: Chicago Style?
Ethnic cleansing is considered by some to be too harsh a term to use for the school closings in Chicago being performed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his financial supporters. Ethnic cleansing goes well beyond bigotry and prejudice. It reeks of racial and ethnic undertones, murder, vast wealth accumulation, enforced poverty, inflicted suffering, mass territorial shifts, erasure of cultural history and other vile behavior. But, this is precisely what appears to be happening.
Murdered youth and school closing areas. Expensive, high stakes testing, scores and underutilized schools are smoke-screen terms used too cover a much larger, much more complex situation.
Why would anyone do this to human beings? The answers are simply power and money.
Lots of power and lots of money.
Imagine a city where public mental health clinics, libraries, youth services, schools and other essential services are simply closed and neighborhoods made uninhabitable while the publicly elected officials grant hundreds of millions of tax dollars to the wealthy financiers of their campaign funds. “Starve the Beast” is the book definition for this form of legalized graft and corruption. Now, don’t imagine. In fact, this is Chicago, today.
The vast majority of schools scheduled or already closed are in poor black and brown neighborhoods that sit on land that is marked for gentrification and/or new railroad yards. The same people who are pressing for public school closings are heavily invested in real estate
Murdered youth and school closing areas. Expensive, high stakes testing, scores and underutilized schools are smoke-screen terms used too cover a much larger, much more complex situation.Why would anyone do this to human beings? The answers are simply power and money.
Lots of power and lots of money.
Imagine a city where public mental health clinics, libraries, youth services, schools and other essential services are simply closed and neighborhoods made uninhabitable while the publicly elected officials grant hundreds of millions of tax dollars to the wealthy financiers of their campaign funds. “Starve the Beast” is the book definition for this form of legalized graft and corruption. Now, don’t imagine. In fact, this is Chicago, today.
The vast majority of schools scheduled or already closed are in poor black and brown neighborhoods that sit on land that is marked for gentrification and/or new railroad yards. The same people who are pressing for public school closings are heavily invested in real estate