glazing woeful: Saturday coffee.

Saturday, June 22, 2013

Saturday coffee. | Fred Klonsky

extralarge

Reading the reports of a million demonstrators in streets of Brazillian cities this past week, it is hard not to think of my own city.

Protesters chanted, ?When your son is ill, take him to the stadium.?

And, ?Any good teacher is worth more than Neymar,? in reference to the Brazillian soccer star.

And my favorite.???The people, united, are a gigantic bunch of dudes.?

Money on sports stadiums instead of schools?

Wait. Are we talking about Sao Paulo or Chicago?

Our protests haven?t numbered in the millions.

But neither did the protests in Sao Paulo and Rio.

Until last week.

Perfect storms of outrage are hard to predict.

Just ask Michael Bilandic.

Or Jane Byrne for that matter.

And then there is the phony outrage of the media.

When CTU President Karen Lewis gave a speech to the City Club of Chicago last week she had the chutzpah to suggest that education decisions are being made by rich white people who have no connection to the working and middle class white people or the majority of minority kids who go to CPS.

?She?s playing the race card!?

Holy shit! Not the race card.

The nerve of Lewis for mentioning that race is an issue in ? of all places ? Chicago.

And just to prove the point, a few days later Rahm appointed a rich white person to the CPS board to replace the rich white person who left to go work for President Obama.

But that?s not playing the race card?