Tuesday, June 18, 2013

CPS Teacher Leads Protest Against DePaul TIF
By Jim Vail
Second City Teacher


Erika Wozniak organized a protest at DePaul University two weeks ago against the mayor's decision to give the private school $55 million in TIF tax monies to build a stadium while at the same time he closes the most public schools ever (50) because the schools have a huge budget deficit.

Wozniak called out the mayor for saying the public schools have to be closed because there is no money, then giving away tax money to a private institution.

The mayor represents the business class, and he has to deceive the public into thinking their interests are the same as the millionaires who funded his election.

Wozniak said she got about 20 people to protest at DePaul and had over 1400 people sign her petition to tell the mayor to give the TIF monies back to the schools that need it.

"This goes against everything I learned at DePaul," Wozniak told Second City Teacher.  "We were always reading Jonathan Kozol (who writes about social justice) while others were reading Charlotte Danielson and looking at lessons."

Wozniak graduated from DePaul in 2004 and has been teaching in the Chicago Public Schools for 10 years.  She teaches 5th grade today at Oriole Park Elementary School.

When she heard about the dirty stadium deal going down to move DePaul basketball games to a new facility at the McCormick Place, she said she couldn't sit still.

She said she quickly emailed about 20 DePaul professors to see if they agreed this idea was crazy, and three responded.  One, she said, was Prof. Kenneth Saltman, an outspoken and eloquent writer about the privatization of education.

The faculty did write a letter to the DePaul president expressing their opposition to the announcement by the city.

While the athletes on campus were told to steer clear from signing any petitions or showing any sympathies toward the Blue Demon protesters, two basketball players in fact signed on, Wozniak said.

"I was very pleased with the reaction of the students and community in Lincoln Park as well, at one point there was a line waiting to sign my petition:http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/join-depaul-in-fight?r_by=4438914," Wozniak wrote.  "The ONLY ones who refused to sign were athletes, which I later found out their coaches telling them NOT to sign.  They looked like fools after two of the BASKETBALL players eagerly signed!"

Wozniak said she's now handing off the protesting to the current students at DePaul.  Some of the students who protested have started a group called Students United for Educational Justice, which is already formed at the University of Chicago.

DePaul and other university students have a rich recent history protesting injustices.   Several years ago students were protesting sweatshop labor and forcing universities to sever its ties to clothing companies with contracts.

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