CTU releases satiric video against the 'Fat Cats' who are trying to destroy public education... Rahm's team, Rauner go crazy after CTU video hits home... Becky Carroll, paid three times more than the average teacher as CPS Mistress of Propaganda, goes off!
'Fat Cats...'? Yes --- FAT CATS... is fast becoming the hottest video hit on You Tube since the Occupy Movement targeted the "one percent" as the source of the problems of the '99 percent' in this era of monopoly finance capitalist. The dramatic release of a new video by the Chicago Teachers Union has created a storm of protest from some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in Chicago within hours after its released. The satirical cartoon, depicting the rich people who are attacking the public schools as "Fat Cats," was prodcued by the Chicago Teachers Union and became public on December 10, 2012.
The URL for those who can get to a FAT CATS link is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1eV8EHII5Q
And for those who are blocked by the Fat Cats at CPS, the video can also be found at the Chicago Teachers Union Website, www.cutnet.com.
It's a five-minute video produced by the Communications Department of the Chicago Teachers Union just in time for the holidays, and just in time to give the Grinch a run for his millions as the billionaires carp and complain that the teachers are, once again, picking on them — rather than simply allowing them to continue stealing from public schools and public services while they get fatter and fatter.
By noon on December 11, 2012, there was a great deal of Fat Cat traffic on the Web. So this report will scroll some of that stuff, ending with the rage of one of the major Fat Cat supporters of the Noble Fraud charter schools. (Tune in next month for that exposé if you haven't been paying attention)...
CTU's Fat Cats video came out to the public on December 10, 2012. The CTU issued a press release on the release of the Fat Cats video:
CHICAGO—The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) today kicked off a public education campaign against the rise of school privatization schemes and the corporate assault on public education with the release of an animated, satirical short film, Stand Up to the Fat Cats. The video seeks to rally the public against corporate infiltration in public education and encourage them to join the fight to provide resources and support for neighborhood schools.
The five-minute film can be viewed on the www.ctunet.com home page or on MoveChicago Schools Forward.com.. YouTube page: Stand Up To The Fat Cats
Stand Up to the Fat Cats places a spotlight on the history of corporate school reform in Chicago and proposed 20th century advancements that ultimately led to the deterioration of many of the city’s neighborhood schools. The film also introduces us to parodies of popular faces in Chicago’s education debate, including venture capitalist Bruce Rauner, Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Board of Education member Penny Pritzker, venture philanthropist Bill Gates, the Broad Foundation, the Koch Brothers and out-of-town school reformers such as Stand for Children and Democrats for Education Reform.
“We need business leaders who will work with us and our schools to create an engaging and vibrant environment of education for students and their families, not corporate dilettantes only looking to serve their own interests,” said CTU President Karen GJ Lewis. “This is not some social experiment—this is a damaged system in need of repair.”
From the formation of the CTU in the mid-20th century to its present-day battles with lawmakers and charter school operators, wealthy, private-interest fat cats have had their paws in public education for years. After a dominant new feline landed in City Hall in 2011, bringing in a litter of corporate cronies, the CTU went on a year-long offensive in a cat-and-mouse battle against anti-teacher propaganda.
Through Stand Up to the Fat Cats, viewers can revisit how Chicago’s educators stood up to these frisky and felonious kitties once again during the 2012 strike, rallying throughout the city against the closing of public schools, the endangerment of their livelihoods and the jeopardizing of the future of thousands of the children. As the bedtime story depicted in the video goes: Rowdy Rauner and the Litter Box Crew are out to destroy the teachers union and starve neighborhood schools in a sneaky campaign to fatten the pockets of private charter operators and their billionaire friends.
“The public needs to know who sets Chicago's education agenda — corporate CEOs, bankers and real estate developers in the Commercial Club of Chicago; hedge fund investors such as Bruce Rauner, and billionaire philanthropists such as Bill Gates,” said urban education scholar Dr. Pauline Lipman.
“They use their political connections and immense wealth to drive charter school expansion, closing neighborhood schools, and union busting — policies that are devastating public education and destabilizing African-American and Latino communities,” Lipman said. As the Chicago Public Schools system is expected to announce by March 31, 2013, the closing of nearly 150 neighborhood schools, the mission of the Stand Up to the Fat Cats campaign is clear: Don’t let fat cats bully students or educators anymore!
Within a couple of hours after the latest Chicago Teachers Union's video came out, the spokespersons for the Fat Cats came in right on schedule.
“These kind of mean-spirited tactics have no place in our school system as they do absolutely nothing to help kids or support their learning,” said CPS spokeswoman Becky Carroll in the Chicago Sun-Times.
Becky Carroll was awarded a $165,000 per year job at CPS by the Emanuel administration to be "Chief Officer Communications" in May 2011 and has been issuing propaganda on behalf of Rahm Emanuel's office out of the public schools since then. Carroll, whose propaganda department expanded threefold after Emanuel took over, has spent the past 18 months issuing propaganda for Emanuel and ignoring the realities of the schools. Carroll's annual salary, three times that of the average public school teacher (including most of those at her alma mater, Lane Tech) has zero teaching experience in CPS, but orchestrates the talking points that regularly come out of the ever expanding "Communications" department at 125 S. Clark St.
She never taught in a Chicago public school, but is paid more than 24,000 teachers and more than 600 principals.
Carroll isn't the only person from the side of the Fat Cats to carp about the satire. “To be lectured by a leader of a failed union who protects a failed school system would be laughable if it were not so sad,” said billionaire Bruce Rauner. “These union leaders are a joke, just not a funny one.” Rauner, a billionaire whose work has been in controversial financial investments of the type exposed after the financial collapse of 2008, has unlimited access to the Op Ed pages of the Chicago Tribune and has contributed to the Noble Network of Charter School Frauds, one of whose "campuses" is named after him.
By noon on December 11, 2012, the side of the teachers and democracy was weighing in fiercely.
"The only way to win educational justice for our children is through bringing attention to those that wish to harm them, intentionally or not!" said Brandon Johnson. "This campaign is brilliant and timely; Keep it up Stephanie, folks are calling emailing texting in support of this. Let justice roll down like a river, and righteousness a never ending stream, the book of Amos!"
A report on the video hit the local TV stations on Channel 5 Chicago on December 10, 2012.
"I am sick of wealthy, self-righteous, white folk feeling some-type-of-way about the cover being pulled off of them. I am sick of the experiments that they perform on children who look like me…enough," one teacher responded. "They’re mad, huh??! For real?! So what. We have a whole city full of poor black kids that are mad, too. The audacity of their anger is sickening. How many out of work teachers near retirement but not close enough to retirement are out of work and homeless?! Let’s man up and do what we do — tell the truth! I am happy that we are going for them. Let the chips fall where they may.
NEWS REPORTS ON THE EXPLOSION OF COMMENTS ABOUT THE FAT CATS VIDEO...
By: Hugo Gonzalez
Fat cats video
This video is very informational. A bit aggressive but at this point necessary.