'Out You Go!' Labor Beat video reports police state tactics against protesters and massive censorship of May 22, 2013 Chicago Board of Education meeting. Official video blacked out the manhandling of protesters before the Board voted to close the largest number of public schools in U.S. history
Out You Go! is a Labor Beat video released on June 20, 2013. The video, 15 minutes long, restores to the historical record the reality of what took place during the May 22, 2013 meeting of the Chicago Board of Education. The school board meeting was punctuated by protests, while security dragged people out of the room. But when the Board meeting video was aired on Chicago Cable TV, none of the violence against protesters was aired. "Out You Go!" corrects the record. The URL for the video, for those who can't get the Hotlink above, is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyVrSQURGH4&feature=youtu.be
Community activist Shannon Bennett (hand outstretched) continued speaking about the impact the school closings will have on the Black Community after CPS secretary Estela Beltran said that he should not be speaking. In the photo above, Bennett is trying to speak while the camera shifts to Beltran (above left) and CPS security move in to drag Bennett and his supporters from the room. None of this appeared on the Board of Education's official video version of the Board meeting, which began airing on Chicago Table TV on May 25, 2013. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt."Out You Go!" shows the dramatic parts of the meeting that were edited out of the official televised version of the meeting. It features interviews with two of the community leaders who were dragged out of the meeting for trying to speak in opposition to the massive school closings on the agenda for that day. "Out You Go!" shows CPS security dragging Shannon Bennett of the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization (KOCO) and Erica Clark of Parents for Teachers trying to protest against the school closings on the agenda for that day. The video interviews the two leaders about what happened and what will take place in the future. The Board of Education, which provides Chicago Cable TV with a video version of the Board meetings, completely blacked out the protests, as "Out You Go!" shows.
At the Labor Beat web site:
http://www.laborbeat.org
Also, archived on YouTube at:
http://youtu.be/oyVrSQURGH4
In "Out You Go!" Labor Beat investigates two specific incidents at the recent and notorious CPS Board meeting of May 22, 2013, when it asphyxiated the greatest number of public schools in U.S. history. Using exclusive footage, we examine what happened when two respected community activists at different points during that board meeting were physically manhandled out of the meeting -- for speaking the truth. We interview them to hear what they experienced during these affronts, and what it was they were trying to say and why they were saying it.
In both cases CPS, in its version of the meeting they put on cable tv, edits out these scenes of physically removing speakers, so the public would forget what happened. We show you exactly where these edits were made.
We watch as Erica Clark, a CPS parent and important Parents 4 Teachers activists for a number of years, explains why she decided to read the names of all the 49 schools being closed. George Schmidt, editor of Substancenews.net who narrates us through parts of the video, notes that this was the only time during the meeting when the closed schools were actually named. When the board finally referred to the schools as they voted them out of existence, they only gave them names like "EX 9, EX 10". Impersonal numbers like those tattooed on the arms of Buchenwald prisoners. And they didn't even let Erica finish reading all the names.
We also watch what happened when Shannon Bennett, Deputy Director of the highly respected Kenwood-Oakland Community Organization, has the microphone yanked out of his hand by CPS Security, the podium dragged away from him and himself shuffled out of the meeting by a phalanx of guards. Shannon Bennett was in the middle of telling the board that they were not legitimate and had no right to toss Chicago school children onto gang-controlled streets to walk to schools now further away. We get his version of what happened and what he was prevented from fully stating.
Erica Clark notes that what happened at the May 22 board meeting will now only drive home more forcefully that the era of a Mayor-appoint school board in Chicago must come to an end.
(For the Chicago cablecast of this show -- beginning on July 4 on CAN TV Channel 19) Labor Beat will also replay our video about the successful city-wide advisory referendum for an elected school board, which got an overwhelming 87% YES vote last November.)
Length - 15:21
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