Happy Birthday ALEC
The American Legislative Exchange Council turns 40 this year. The notorious legislative escort service that matches compliant state lawmakers with corporations seeking favorable treatment was founded in 1973 in Chicago, so it is only fitting that ALEC would return to that city to celebrate its birthday. The party will take place August 7-9.
The question is: How will ALEC be received ?
Cities ❤ Conventions
All cities love it when conventions come to town. Conventions bring money. Think about it, hotels, restaurants, bars, cab drivers and hookers all make money when a convention comes to town. Especially an outfit like ALEC whose whole purpose is an orgy of corruption where corporate high-rollers wine and dine wide-eyed rubes from state legislatures all over the country in order to get their laws introduced in those legislatures. There will probably be dozens of catered events, side parties and after parties featuring food, liquor, cigars and who knows what all over Chicago. Hizzonor the Mayor may not actually bake ALEC a cake or address the convention, like Governor Brewer did in Phoenix, but he'll be glad to see them. You can be sure of that. However, there are indications that ALEC may encounter something less that a unanimously grateful citizenry.
Chicago Rising
As we read the news from Europe and Latin America and see people taking to the streets to protest austerity and privatization, many of us have wondered, why is America so passive ? When will Americans take it to the streets ? Well, it's finally starting to happen in Chicago, IL. An article in this week's Nation magazine describes how a culture of protest has developed in Chicago with groups of activists coming together to express their discontent publicly and loudly. I'll link the article below but here are some snippets:
On a sunny Saturday this past May, far down on the city's black South Side where corner stores house their cashiers behind bulletproof plexiglass, about 150 activists assembled at Jesse Owens Community Academy. In just a few days, Mayor Rahm Emanuel's appointed Board of Education would vote on the largest simultaneous school closing in recent history. Owens, along with fifty-three other public schools, was on the chopping block. A recent Chicago Tribune/WGN poll found that more than 60 percent of Chicago citizens opposed the closings, and a healthy cross section of them had turned out for the first of three straight days of marches in protest.
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To many national observers, this rebirth of the city's militant protest culture seemingly came out of nowhere. But it didn't. It's the product of years of organizing from sources both expected and surprising. And while the radicalized CTU under the leadership of Karen Lewis has deservedly received much of the credit, the teachers union is just the current tip of the spear in a long and potentially transformative movement.
"I think we have a synergy going on here that is unrivaled in any other city," says the Rev. C.J. Hawking, "but it could be replicated." Hawking is originally from the far South Side neighborhood of Mount Greenwood, "where all the firefighters and cops live." Twenty-nine years ago, she became a United Methodist pastor. Twenty years ago, during a historic strike in the downstate town of Decatur, she began devoting her ministry to labor issues. In 2007, she became executive director of Arise Chicago, a group founded in 1991 by local religious leaders who wanted to mass their voices together in favor of workers and immigrant rights. Arise created a thriving workers center in 2002, and in the fall of 2011, the group was at the center of the Week of Action, one of the most extraordinary protests in any US city in recent memory.
The article ends with this:
Watch Chicago. Watch it this September, when the school year is set to open with fifty fewer schools in operation. “So let me tell you what you’re gonna do,” shouted CTU president Karen Lewis in a rally last March. “On the first day of school, you show up at your real school! Don’t let these people take your schools!” The conditions are ripe for such civil disobedience: the bonds of trust within a variegated activist community; a growing culture of militancy extending all the way down to formerly quiescent middle-class parents; strategic smarts, passion, momentum. Brazil, Bulgaria, Taksim Square… Chicago. The next battle in the global war against austerity, privatization and corruption just might spark off right here.
Watch Chicago in September ? Sure, I'll be watching, but I'll be watching in 3 weeks too, in August.
Links:
The Nation, Chicago Rising: Teachers, Parents and Activists Fight Rahm Emanuel's Austerity Agenda
Fred Klonsky, ALEC is coming to Chicago, let's give them a Chicago welcome
ALEC Welcoming Committee