Democracy nixed on the West Side... Jason Ervin has a hundred percent rating supporting Emanuel, but managed to eliminate opponents... Teacher Tammie Vinson was knocked off the ballot even though she had more than double the necessary signatures!
In Chicago elections, circulating nominating petitions and talking with your neighbors about the upcoming election is only the beginning of the fight to (a) get on the ballot and (b) win the election. Everyone familiar with Chicago elections knows that you can get double or triple the number of required signatures and still not have enough signatures to stay on the ballot. And so it was that in Chicago's 28th Ward, Chicago teachers (and CORE leader) Tammie Vinson was knocked off the ballot, even though she had gotten more than double the number of required signatures to get on the ballot?
Chicago teacher Tammie Vinson (above) has been a community activist and resident. Above, she testified during the November 19, 2014 meeting of the Chicago Board of Education about how the Board was neglecting her community. The November 19 Board meeting was the only Board meeting in a decade held in the community -- and the Board never did it again following the fierce turnout in opposition to the policies of the Emanuel administration. Substance photo by Nate Goldbaum.What had happened? Tammie Vinson was interviewed for this article before learning that she had been knocked off the ballot by the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners in the race for 28th ward alderman. The incumbent, alderman Jason Ervin, pushed a challenge to her nominating petitions until the election commission rules her off the ballot. Committed to and believing in the residents of the 28th ward, Vinson had collected 1,150 signatures, even though only 473 signatures were required. But incumbent Alderman Jason Ervin sent a representative to challenge her signatures, leaving no time for her to answer the challenge. She was not alone, and Ervin triumphed, Chicago style � all seven candidates challenging Erwin were removed from the ballot with this same process.
Of course, it wasn't Ervin who challenged. According to an article in DNAinfo (December 22, 2014), the objections were filed by Austin resident Emma Jean Robinson. Robinson had served as chief of staff to former 28th ward Alderman Ed Smith. Robinson was also paid $11,000 in 2011 as a consultant and to provide meals to Ervin's campaign, state records show. The article also explains how Robinson has been successful in filing objections against two candidates in 2007 and having them removed from the ballot.
As this report is published, it's too late for any of Ervin's challengers to get on the ballot, so Ervin's investment in the challenges was worth it. On February 24, he doesn't have to run a race. Also, as a result, those who would have worked for Ervin are freed to work for other Rahm Emanuel loyalists, as more people are beginning to not.
Chicago teacher Tanmie Vinson is also a leader of the Chicago Teachers Union. Above, wearing her Black Caucus tee shirt, Tammie Vinson sits during the July 2014 convention of the American Federation of Teachers in Los Angeles. Vinson was part of the Chicago delegation that introduced a major resolution in opposition to the Common Core. Substance photo by Sharon Schmidt.But what about Tammie Vinson's challenge? An elementary school teacher and union activist, Vinson had never run for political office before. She told Substance that she wanted to run for alderman of the 28th ward because: "I believe in a representative democracy. Right now the 28th ward does not have a representative democracy"
Vinson says she would make it a priority to address the mortgage crisis. House are being torn down, leaving vacant lots, she says. Vinson says people in her ward are being "pushed out of the city, I don't believe in gentrification. I teach near Manley Career Academy and there are a lot of vacant lots and houses with red X's on them. People are being pushed out and new people brought in."
Vinson also would have worked on public safety. She noted there are a lot of police in the ward sitting in cars, so she is against increasing their presence. Vinson cited an experience of her 25 - year - old son with one police officer in the neighborhood. One day he left the house and was stopped by police because he was walking along the safe passage route without a backpack. Another example she cited involved a student of a teacher she knows who worked at a job, received a scholarship to collage, and was looking forward to leaving in a few days. One night he was returning from work and saw some friends on the street. He stopped to talk with them when the police came and arrested them all. He was not a member of a gang, but lost his scholarship because of the arrest. According to Vinson, there are not enough programs and jobs to keep young men engaged, so they will often talk to their friends on the street. That same street may have had a group of gang members there before this student and his friends met, but they were not involved.
"I'm not for an increase in police presence," Vinson says. "I would rather have more community involvement or community engagement. Police should be representative of the people in the community they live in. If the people representing the police in a community have a negative perception of the people living there, then they don't represent them. Also people who don't live-in the community throw trash around when they drive through."
Vinson also addressed issues of safety, housing and economic development. "I don't think Erwin represents the people of the ward." she said, "He rubber stamps what the mayor says. He came out about the school closings; I went to the hearings too, and he actually spoke for keeping the schools open, but later there were votes before the city council where he voted with the mayor. He was put in office after Ed Smith left, who has a history as a machine politician put in there to collect pensions, make deals, use their aldermanic seat for clout building and favor giving things focused on people that could reciprocate, not considering what the people of the community and schools wanted.
"There was a child that was killed at California and Harrison (by an officer of the 15th district), and parents were going there to find out what person did this," Tammie went on, "and at the same time it came out that a new commander put a gun in a teenager's mouth. And Erwin supported that commander. He was supporting a black commander with such a macho gung-ho rapport with his people -- the police just loved him -- so they felt they could police in the same manner. I am not saying we don't support police..."
The complexity of the situation on the streets is one of the main concerns Vinson thinks must be addressed by the alderman. "I don't support police that overstep their bounds," she continued. "How can the alderman support that? We don't have to support a new black commander that is so macho and his officers feel that they are empowered to go out and police in that manner instead of protect the people. There are young men I taught in the area that are afraid to walk down the streets because of police retaliation and there is so much race profiling in a predominantly black area and that is so bad. How can you believe that is ok?" she asked."
"There are so many schools in this area that have been closed including in the 27th ,28th, 29th, and 37th wards," Vinson continued to Substance. "Melody was closed. May schools was turned into Leland; Delano is now "May," Emmet, where I taught, has been closed, turned around and reconstituted.
In the Douglas Park Schools (24th ward) almost every school in that area is now run by the "turnaround" group AUSL (That Academy for Urban School Leadership).
�They have been trying to push out public schools for years," she said. "Closing reconstituting them so the parents in that area fight regularly because the charter schools get all these resources and neighborhood schools, they are trying to push them out. The schools on the West Side and South Side are so underfunded. Emmet had been under resourced for years. I was there for two years, but my understanding is that the school was under resourced for ten to fifteen years prior. Money was allocated because the building structure was old, the electrical and plumbing was old. There was no air conditioning. The nail in the coffin was that the school was not handicapped accessible," she continued.
Vinson pointed out there were capital expenditures allocated to upgrade Emmet 15 years prior, but they didn�t get them because they didn�t like the principal or whatever. "The money was then reallocated somewhere else," she continued. "And they used the condition of the building as a basis to shut down the school even though Emmett had higher scores than any other school in the area, not that I believe that test scores should be used that way."
Like many other teachers from those communities, Vinson is now at another school. "I now teach Special Education at DePriest," she said, "and 33 percent of the students are special education students. I have 13 autistic students in my class and am supposed to have two teacher assistants. One of the has personal circumstances, so I have only one teacher assistant to assist with the 13 students. I have written letters and complained, but nothing has happened. Other teachers in the building with the same type of class have three teacher assistants."
�My goal is to have ward-based meetings or precinct-based meetings to find out how to prioritize issues in the community," she continued. "Seniors need to be able to leave their homes without being accosted. Older people think young people will hurt them, and young people don�t have jobs or quality programs within their communities. Some people feel that the bike trails are bad, but I can�t assume what the ward needs, I need to go out and see how services are working and then prioritize.
�One need is good libraries. We need longer library hours, which were cut to save money. The library in my ward with the highest traffic is the oldest located on Pulaski near Jackson, and has not been renovated for probably 70 years. All community libraries should be upgraded to the level of services need. The library we attend the Hard Core delegate training, the Richard M. Daley library, is located on Kedzie and Chicago Ave. It is a brand new structure. They have partnered with the Walton Family and offer additional support to the students that live in the community. The big, old, long-standing library farther south has nothing like that. I don�t know who is responsible for providing these services. The old library has been servicing the community for a long time, and it is not up to code with the tech that�s needed and the resources, and there is a large population of kids in need of those services."
�There are many parks in the our ward -- Douglas, Garfield and Columbus. Columbus has a fitness center for older people but the younger people could use some programs. Some of the parks offer after-school programs and open gym. There is nothing in the parks or community to engage these young people without causing parents, whose budgets are stretched to the brim, to allow them to use those resources.
�There are a bunch of committees in the city council and my goal is to figure out what information is supplied to aldermen before they create legislation or vote on stuff, decisions of late are not trying to improve neighborhoods these aldermen represent.
�There are a number of parks, libraries and schools in my ward. Some are better resourced than others. In the least represented communities those resources are almost nil. We knew from the schools that those that can leave will leave and the people left behind are underrepresented and have less power.
�Financially, our new city budget is getting money through fines and fees, It looks like they are going after working people. The red light cameras are all over, everywhere. The research shows that they are not timed properly, not distributed evenly throughout the city, and not safer. Each ticket from those red lights is $100; if you don�t pay for them, they double it up and with one ticket you can get booted. These aldermen who vote for this, how can they support something that is a financial burden on people who are already financially burdened?�
