Substance summer survey to sample 'State of Chicago Censorship'. It's almost one year after the SOJO principal attack outspoken teachers, and a few months after the brief banning of 'Persepolis', and a growing number of violations of the First Amendment by CPS principals
With the same 25 years after the 1987 strike comes the anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Hazlewood. While the arbitrary attacks on teacher, student and human rights by the officials of Chicago's public schools have been growing during the past year, the newly empowered teachers, who organized the most successful strike in CPS history in September 2012, have been fighting back. At issue is not only the rights of teachers, but also the rights of every school community to get uncensored facts about the operations of the local school -- and the school system in general.
With more than 30 photographers and videographers covering the May 22, 2013 meeting of the Chicago Board of Education, the Board and City Hall were challenged to force the official "news" story into the Procustian Bed of CPS talking points. Above, some of the videographers and photographers who were forced into the tiny space to the side of the Board members during the Board meeting. CPS security people eventually realized that the allocation of space to the press was too small to honor the First Amendment and allowed photographers and videographers outside the holding pens. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt,During the summer of 2013, Substance will be joining with community allies on several surveys. The first will be to determine how many CPS schools have school newspapers. After that, we will work on learning how many of those newspapers are arbitrarily censored by school principals.
