Parents occupy school building to keep it from being demolished

[proud2BlibKansan]

Community breaks police blockade, 'Camp Whittier' gets a third night to demand a library for the children

It could have been a scene from the blacklisted movie "Salt of the Earth," or from any of a dozen other films that depict the struggles of working people. But it was happening in real time in Chicago in 2010, and once again a group of working people, most of them women and children, broke a police blockade and thwarted attempts by Ron Huberman and the people who rule Chicago's public schools to demolish a simple wooden building just west of the century old Whittier Elementary School on Chicago's Southwest side.

Part of the crowd celebrating the departure of Chicago police from the Whittier Elementary School field house at approximately 3:00 p.m. on September 17, 2010. The protesters above had defied a police cordon and swarmed down 23rd St. to the site of the protest just before police were to move in and arrest the mothers who had been occupying the field house for two nights and days. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt.The stage had been set all day, as Chicago police, acting on orders from two Chicago Public Schools officials, CPS Communications Chief Monique Bond and CPS Security Chief Michael Shields, prepared to arrest a small group of protesters, most of them mothers, who had occupied the Whittier Elementary School fieldhouse in the 1900 block of west 23rd St., to stop the demolition of the structure. The community wants the building turned into a library. The Board of Education wants to demolish and turn into a soccer field primarily for the use of a parochial school (Cristo Rey) nearby.

The word had spread at "Camp Whittier" that the Chicago police were going to force the protesters out of the Whitter field house and arrest those who refused to leave. The police all day had been acting under orders from CPS officials, leading to some strange questions about who was in charge of Chicago's understaffed police department. Police officials had made it clear that when CPS officials asked them to clear "CPS property", they would have to do so. They had made it equally clear that the arrests would begin around 2:45 p.m. on September 17, 2010, after the overcrowded Whittier Elementary School had dismissed its students for the day so the little ones wouldn't be watching the eviction of their mothers and neighbors from a public building.

But the "little ones" and many of their parents and siblings had a different idea.

more . . . http://substancenews.net/articles.php?page=1663§ion=Article

[babylonsister]

1. Love this, love the link, love the love of education that motivates

some people!

Thanks, Proud! Rec'd!

[madfloridian]

2. Good for them.

:applause:

[madrchsod]

3. buried in the sun times education section

http://www.suntimes.com/news/education/2722022,CST-NWS-fieldhouse18.article

i did`t find anything in the tribune

[dmr]

4. If the school is structurally unsafe & should not be occupied, then please

tell me why they are still educating children there? Either it is or it isn't. My question probably answers why a copy of the engineer report cannot be copied & passed out to reporters.

Why are they over-paying the school's security top leadership so much money? Far, far more than their predecessors.

I'm hoping the community prevails over those who should be representing them, but are not.

I wish more in America were standing up to this kind of bullshit. They want a library. A library! How can CPS not support that? (Rhetorical question)

:argh: :banghead:

[Hannah Bell]

5. kr for the pushback.