Arne Duncan Chicago's Savior to Stop Violence?
By Jim Vail
Sports reporter Rick Telander has written a five-part series connecting the Orr High School basketball team and violence on the city's South Side.
While the first part left me a bit underwhelmed (I'm currently reading the next parts), I know Telander's work. He is a very capable Sun Times columnist who is very knowledgeable about sports.
His politics isn't half bad either. He was one of the few mainstream journalists who was against Chicago having the 2016 Olympics because it would have bankrupted the city.
That was at a time when the city's major dailies like the Chicago Tribune heavily backed the Olympics, only to write a recent editorial acknowledging it would have bankrupted the city.
So when I read in Telander's first part about violence and hoops a quote from Arne Duncan, the former Obama education secretary and chief of the Chicago Public Schools under Mayor Daley, I did a double take.
Arne Duncan is the expert on how to curb city violence?
I sent an email to Telander stating that Duncan actually contributed to the city's violence when he closed many Chicago Public Schools under his reign to privatize the schools.
Students and teachers complained that when he went on a rampage to close historical Black high schools like Austin and Calumet on the South Side, the violence in the receiving schools skyrocketed because gang boundaries were messed up.
Duncan is now working with the philanthropic Emerson Collective to build a small team in Chicago focused on creating job opportunities for 17 to 24-year-olds who are neither working nor in school.
This is what the Chicago Tribune wrote last fall:
"Former Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who has spoken with a number of jailed dealers, says $5 an hour is all that some make. 'Forty dollars for eight hours,' Duncan says. 'As a shooter, selling weed. One kid told me he started selling drugs at 8. He told me it was really hard, but he had no choice.'"
Can you get any more cynical? The guy who helped privatize the city's schools, thus increasing city violence among the youth, is now the spokesperson to fight for our youth.
Obviously somebody pitched this story to Telander, and included Arne Duncan. Hilarious.
And don't be fooled by Duncan. His oh shucks demeanor can barely hide a very cunning and ugly representative of the ruling class. His comment that Hurricane Katrina was a good thing (now New Orleans is filled with charter schools which he and Obama promoted endlessly with Race to the Top) proves what he thinks about violence.
And the paper promoting him - The Chicago Tribune - is equally repulsive when their editorialist states Chicago needs another Hurricane Katrina.
The cancer is from above driving our city violence. And the Sun-Times, Arne Duncans and wealthy businessmen need to be stopped, not promoted, when discussing ways to prevent it.
By Jim Vail
 |
| Arne Duncan helped increased city violence when he closed many schools. |
Sports reporter Rick Telander has written a five-part series connecting the Orr High School basketball team and violence on the city's South Side.
While the first part left me a bit underwhelmed (I'm currently reading the next parts), I know Telander's work. He is a very capable Sun Times columnist who is very knowledgeable about sports.
His politics isn't half bad either. He was one of the few mainstream journalists who was against Chicago having the 2016 Olympics because it would have bankrupted the city.
That was at a time when the city's major dailies like the Chicago Tribune heavily backed the Olympics, only to write a recent editorial acknowledging it would have bankrupted the city.
So when I read in Telander's first part about violence and hoops a quote from Arne Duncan, the former Obama education secretary and chief of the Chicago Public Schools under Mayor Daley, I did a double take.
Arne Duncan is the expert on how to curb city violence?
I sent an email to Telander stating that Duncan actually contributed to the city's violence when he closed many Chicago Public Schools under his reign to privatize the schools.
Students and teachers complained that when he went on a rampage to close historical Black high schools like Austin and Calumet on the South Side, the violence in the receiving schools skyrocketed because gang boundaries were messed up.
Duncan is now working with the philanthropic Emerson Collective to build a small team in Chicago focused on creating job opportunities for 17 to 24-year-olds who are neither working nor in school.
This is what the Chicago Tribune wrote last fall:
"Former Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who has spoken with a number of jailed dealers, says $5 an hour is all that some make. 'Forty dollars for eight hours,' Duncan says. 'As a shooter, selling weed. One kid told me he started selling drugs at 8. He told me it was really hard, but he had no choice.'"
Can you get any more cynical? The guy who helped privatize the city's schools, thus increasing city violence among the youth, is now the spokesperson to fight for our youth.
Obviously somebody pitched this story to Telander, and included Arne Duncan. Hilarious.
And don't be fooled by Duncan. His oh shucks demeanor can barely hide a very cunning and ugly representative of the ruling class. His comment that Hurricane Katrina was a good thing (now New Orleans is filled with charter schools which he and Obama promoted endlessly with Race to the Top) proves what he thinks about violence.
And the paper promoting him - The Chicago Tribune - is equally repulsive when their editorialist states Chicago needs another Hurricane Katrina.
The cancer is from above driving our city violence. And the Sun-Times, Arne Duncans and wealthy businessmen need to be stopped, not promoted, when discussing ways to prevent it.
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