RAHM WATCH: Another chapter in 'Emperor of Chicagoland'?... Rahm's 'friends' at Bud Billiken -- the reincarnation of the paid protesters?
Surrounded by black children who were proclaiming their support for him, Mayor Rahm Emanuel marched with a banner that credited him with making Chicago a "City of Learning" during the annual Bud Billiken Parade. Rahm's lack of popularity on the West Side and South Side, where his regime has destroyed an unprecedented number of community public schools in Chicago's Black Community, has made the media-hungry mayor afraid to go out into the communities except behind a carefully constructed wall of deceit. A process of destroying real public schools, escalated dramatically after Rahm's May 2011 inauguration. The massive privatization of public worker jobs has also destroyed the economic power of many of what were once Chicago's Black Middle Class communities, making their citizens (and children) more and more dependent on preacher patronage such as that which gathered "supporters" for Rahm's Longer School Day program in 2011 and his constant attacks on the unions since the Chicago Teachers Strike of 2012. As several observers have reported, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel was surrounded by the usual grouping of little black children during the Bud Billiken Parade on August 9 2014. Left out was that the children were all there with the same guy who provided Rahm with many of the paid protesters three years ago, when Rahm needed to stage "community support" for his proposed Longer School Day. Once again, when Rahm needed a prayer, the Rev. Roosevelt Watkins came through with blessings and more to help set the stage of the Mayor of Chicagoland. [Disclosure: This reporter was not at Bud Billken, but gathered this report from sources who were there].
Surrounded by black children who were proclaiming their support for him, Mayor Rahm Emanuel marched with a banner that credited him with making Chicago a "City of Learning" during the annual Bud Billiken Parade.
But for more than a year, the mayor has been afraid to appear without a phalanx of security and media flacks when he goes into the city's ghetto communities. Rahm's lack of popularity is intense on the West Side and South Side. There, his regime has destroyed an unprecedented number of community public schools in Chicago's Black Community, in many cases adding insult to injury by using phony standardized test and other "data" to proclaim that the schools (and their teachers, most of whom were black) have "failed." The massive closings of schools (50 by the mayoral appointed Board of Education on May 22, 2013 along) was accompanied by proclamations that the mayor was going to improve the inner city's schools, but constant budget cuts belied those claims.
Rahm's allies in the Academy for Urban School Leadership (AUSL), meanwhile, have been paid enormous amounts of money as "turnaround consultants" after Rahm's Board of Education has slandered the schools's staffs and ordered them "reconstituted."
Rahm Emanuel's propagandists have been trying to garner the images of the Harold Washington campaign by dressing their black supporters in blue. Above, the CPS "parents" and children who accompanied schools CEO Barbara Byrd Bennett at the Bud Billiken Parade.Desipite a major attempt by Hollywood to create a hagiographic movie dedpicting Rahm as a local hero in the CNN film "Chicagoland," his actions, rather than the Robert Redford version of Rahm, have made the media-hungry mayor afraid to go out into the city's poorer communities except behind a carefully constructed wall of deceit.
The Chicago programs of destroying real public schools, escalated dramatically after Rahm's May 2011 inauguration. The massive privatization of public worker jobs has also destroyed the economic power of many of what were once Chicago's Black Middle Class communities, making their citizens (and children) more and more dependent on preacher patronage such as that which gathered "supporters" for Rahm's Longer School Day program in 2011 and his constant attacks on the unions since the Chicago Teachers Strike of 2012. The mayor has also tried to loot the public worker pension funds of Chicago teachers and other public workers behind the "austerity" smokescreen while refusing to raise taxes on his wealthy supporters or end TIF policies which steal from the public schools and those they serve.
By mid-2014, only some well subsidized preachers were hospitable to Rahm in Chicago's Black Community. One of them who provided marchers with Rahm in the Bud Billiken Parade was Rev. Roosevelt Watkins, who had done the same services for the mayor covertly during the "Longer School Day" debates of 2011 - 2012.
Although his attacks on the city's real public schools were not as notorious as the ones by his colleague Rev. Senator James Meeks (who once proclaimed that the Chicago Teachers Union was a worse enemy of Black people than the city's notorious street gangs, the Disciples, Black P. Stones, and others), Watkins has added to the sulfuric pulpit denunciations of Chicago teachers and the Chicago Teachers Union. On many occasions, however, Rahm's preacher supporters are being challenged by their own congregants because of the corruption of the pastors' words.
