Leader of ‘Bad Ass Moms’ speaks out
Rousemary Vega, with daughter Zamara, is a mother of four, and a leader in the battle to save our public schools.
PHOTO/ANDY WILLIS
PHOTO/ANDY WILLIS
CHICAGO — “How can you celebrate anything when you kill schools and over test our children . . . Stop threatening students and teachers, stop over testing and closing schools . . . stop making it rain with our tax dollars!” These words took aim at Mayor Rahm Emmanuel at a public event on March 4 to celebrate Chicago’s 177th birthday. Rousemary Vega, a mother of four children and a leader in the battle to save our public schools, was forced to use this method to address our mayor with grievances she shares with thousands of parents and teachers across the city. “This was an action of frustration,” she explained during an interview for Momenpopcast,* “because the mayor is not listening and he needs to know what he is doing to the community.”
The movement to “opt out” of taking yet another test (in this case the ISAT) grew into a citywide protest with over 80 schools reporting that parents were refusing to let their children be tested. “This vigorous testing is taking away the children’s creativity and their ambition of wanting to be educated. Our schools are becoming testing camps. We’re crying over this money we don’t have and yet we have tests raining on our children. Why can’t we make good use of this money we are spending on tests?”
Rousemary became active attempting to stop the city from closing Lafayette Elementary, in the Humboldt Park neighborhood, where her children were happy and doing well, and taking advantage of a great music program. The heartbreak of losing that battle has prompted Rousemary to deepen her commitment to seeing this struggle through to the end. She is a founder of the group Bad Ass Moms (BAM), a group of Moms with diverse backgrounds and coming from all parts of the city. “We believe in equality for the children.”
Momenpopcast talked to Rousemary about the present inequality in education, and the process of sucking the funds from public schools and selling schools to corporations (charters). “What they are creating is hunger games in education . . . a competitive Leader of ‘Bad Ass Moms’ speaks out | People's TribunePeople's Tribune: