Rahm to both Dyett hunger strikers and Little Black Pearl: "We don't need no stink'n public school in Bronzeville."
Rahm, Clark, Claypool & Jackson
Rahm Emanuel, cynical bastard that he is, never intended to put a school back in Dyett. From the time he closed this, the last public open-enrollment high school in Bronzeville, his plan was always to sell the building to the real estate developers -- like he's done recently with Von Humboldt in Humboldt Park and Trumbull (to Svigos Real Estate Group) in Andersonville. The awarding of the Obama Library in Washington Park has only made the incentive greater.
Like his predecessor Daley, Rahm would sell of every foot of this city's public space that wasn't nailed down, if he could. And maybe he can. The erosion of public space and public decision-making has been a hallmark of the regime's strategy of gentrifying and whitenizing the city. It's New Orleans without the flood. A quarter-million African-American citizens have left Chicago in the past decades.
Now it appears that the board's RFP for a new school at Dyett was a ruse. After 11 days of surviving on liquids and with several of the hunger strikers needing medical treatment (see the warning from local health professionals) , they've been told by Board Pres. Frank Clark (former ComEd C.E.O), that game is up. Rahm, Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Rahm to both Dyett hunger strikers and Little Black Pearl: "We don't need no stink'n public school in Bronzeville.":
