BOARDWATCH: Chicago Board of Education meeting lets a 'Mic Check' -- chants of 'Make the Bankers Pay!' -- ring out for more than ten minutes without security dragging anyone out...
Chicago Teachers Union Organizing Director Norine Gutekanst (with mouth open as she chanted) began the Mic Check "Make the bankers pay!" in the middle of the January 27, 2016 meeting of the Chicago Board of Education. Instead of ordering Board security staff (among them right rear) to stop the "disruption," the Board President Frank Clark and Chief Executive Officer Forrest Claypool ordered CPS security to stand aside while the chanting echoed from various pre-rehearsed people, one to the other. The Board's security cheif, Jadine Chou (above left, sanding) made sure that all of her subordinates in CPS security understood that nobody was to move against the canters. Substance photo by David Vance. For more than ten minutes during the January 27 meeting of the Chicago Board of Education, the words "Make the bankers pay!" rang out from a dozen different people. Board ofEducation security did not drag away the people who were doing this 'Mic Check.' as Board security had done for the past several years. (A "Mic Check" is a term coined during the year of the "Occupy" movement to describe the kind of interruption that those inside the Board meeting witnessed January 27).
When Chicago Teachers Union organizer Norine Gutekanst stood up to signal the beginning of the Mic Check in the middle of the public participation portion of the meeting, virtually every reporter and photographer began to move to get the story. And at that moment, most observers (including this reporter) believed that the Board would order that the protesters be dragged out, as the Board has been doing for years and years.
Instead of dramatic photographs and videos of people being dragged out of a meeting of the Chicago Board of Education, all that took place was that within less than a quarter hour chanting echoed out during a Board meeting. Instead of citizens being dragged away -- as the Board had dragged out protesters like Rousemary Vega and others -- all that took place was an echo of a few years ago, when the "Mic Check" was a common tactic in various places during the brief time of the "Occupy Movement."
Marc Kaplan, who has spoken on behalf of Uplift school (in Uptown) at many Board meetings, is seen above reading from his Mic Check script as he walks away from the Board chambers on January 27, 2016. Readers will notice that instead of showing the "Mic Check" people, the big screen in the background is focused on the person standing silently at the podium awaiting the signal to resume public participation. Substance photo by David Vance. The obvious decision of the Board to ignore the protesters and let their Mic Check end of its own momentum surprised many long time obvservers of Board meetings. Substance editor George Schmidt, who was signed up to speak at the meeting, told me that he discarded his prepared remarks (published below in full here, but not spoken during the Board meeting) to give the Board a compliment and cite a history that few people present could remember. Schmidt compared this Board with the Board presided over by the Rev. Kenneth Smith, who was appointed President of the Board in 1980 following half a decade of increasingly violent disruptions. Schmidt said that Smith presided over his first Board meeting by ordering that more than 40 Chicago police officers, who had regularly been deployed against protesters during Board meetings, to leave. Then Smith told the public, according to Schmidt, that they were entitled to participate in a public meeting -- but not to disrupt it with violence. According to Schmidt, Smith's tactic worked, and for several years the Board meetings were less tumultuous than they had been during the late 1970s.
Many news photographers and camera crews were positioned at the exit from the Board chambers when the Mic Check began. Reporters experienced with the Board meetings during which violence has previously erupted were positioned to get photographs as security staff dragged protesters out.
Instead, the scene at the exist was a surprise to many. After she finished her launching of the Mic Check, Gutekanst stood with the chief of CPS security, Jadine Chou, and talked as the remaining speakers alternated with the same message -- "Make the bankers pay!" According to Chou, Gutekanst and Chou actually exchanged hugs when things were ending.
The Board members and administrative staff sat stolidly during the event. When it was over, the Board meeting continued, with more than a dozen empty seats where the people who had rehearsed and delivered the Mic Check had been sitting.
Not one of the major news reports about the meeting mentioned the important event, or the obvious change in tactics by the new leadership of CPS. Whether the Board allows the lengthy Mic Check to be part of the video that the Board releases about the meeting will not be known for a few more days, since the Board of Education website does not include the video and "Acton Agenda" from the meeting until five to seven days after the meeting has happened.
