Why does (my) vote matter? Today's blog post by a Chicago public school activist tells why

Fred Klonsky's blog, "Daily posts from a retired public school teacher who is just looking at the data," is like a little shaft of sunlight that brightens up my day. He's a tireless advocate for rank-and-file teachers and all-too-often disadvantaged students in the public schools, and a strong supporter of Ald. Jesus "Chuy" Garcia's long-shot campaign to upset Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

Today he posted an account of the first day of early voting in Chicago's April 7 mayoral election, and it was an instant classic. He quoted Chicago icon Studs Terkel -- "take it easy, but take it" -- in a column that belonged to the ages as soon as he put it up on the World Wide Web.

"It just took a minute," Klonsky said. "Just a minute until the paper tape rolled up the voting machine and my vote was cast."

Then he added:

It was then that it occurred to me.

I just cancelled out Ken Griffin’s vote.

Griffin is the richest man in Illinois. He is currently fighting with his soon to be ex-wife over child-support but he has given millions to Governor Private Equity [Rauner] and Rahm.

But I cancelled out his vote with mine.

He still has his millions, of course. And he is still powerful. He can still buy politicians.

But his vote for Rahm means nothing.

Because I cancelled it out.

It turns out that I was not the only one who was compelled to vote on the first day of early voting.

“What number was I?” I asked the poll judges.

“31.”

“Is that good?”

“Best first two hours ever.”

We'll see how it all shakes out April 7. Garcia is still a very long shot, and Griffin is still worth more than $6 billion. He and his private equity fund cronies like Gov. Rauner and Mayor Emanuel still have political resources the rest of us can never hope to match.

But we can still vote against them. It's our right.

"Take it easy," as Studs Terkel used to say. "But take it."

For the record (April 10), here's how it shook out: Garcia lost. Emanuel had 55 percent of the vote, and Garcia lost. According to a very good analysis in Crain's Chicago Business, Emanuel did especially well in the city's wealthiest wards, but easily carried the African American vote as well.

But Klonsky's vote still mattered.

Best, but probably not the last, word on Rauner

Comes now a commenter in Capitol Fax blog post with the best image I've seen so far for Governor Rauner, reacting to a thoroughly slanted writeup of one of his public appearances in Normal.

"Ignoring sound advice," http://capitolfax.com/2015/03/17/ignoring-sound-advice/. As follows:

- VanillaMan - Tuesday, Mar 17, 15 @ 6:51 pm:

He didn’t talk like this when he was a candidate, did he? So he knows what he is saying now won’t win him any friends or elections. Why is he doing this?

Every day this governor continues behaving like a parakeet fighting it’s reflection in a mirror, is another day we all go without any real governing. Our problems are not only being actively mishandled, we’ve witnessed both political parties mishandling them.

Rauner is making the fiscal situation worse by being so unbelievably dense!

I would edit out the apostrophe, but otherwise it's pitch perfect.

Context: During Rauner's "turnaround tour" -- at what the hard-right Illinois Policy Institute billed as a "town meeting" at which the governer outlined "some of Rauner’s ideas he shared with other groups, including right-to-work zones, lifting restrictions on prevailing wage and project labor agreements and other issues.in the Normal City Council chambers."

Protesters interrupted him with an Occupy-style "mic check,"

Gov. Rauner, Mayor Emanuel admit they're willing to write off school kids as they push corporate school reform agenda

What do charter schools and corporate school reform mean for school children whose daddies can't clout them into elite magnet schools?

Governor Bruce Rauner and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel have both let it slip they don't particularly care and they're willing to write them off. Emanuel let it slip to Chicago Teachers Union leader Karen Lewis, according to a Facebook post put up today by the Firefighters for CHUY Garcia campaign committee:

"KAREN LEWIS: When I first met (Rahm), we had dinner together, and he said, "Well, you know, 25 percent of these kids are never going to be anything. They’re never going to amount to anything. And I’m not throwing money at it."

Apparently not all CPS kids are financially worth it to Mayor Emanuel, and he's only willing to "throw money" at exactly 75% of them.

Vote for Chuy Garcia for Mayor of Chicago on April 7. It's time to stop throwing our money away on Rahms "Problems."

Compare what Governor Rauner told public school advocate Diane Ravitch three years ago. On Jan. 16, 2014, she posted this account to Diane Ravitch's blog: http://dianeravitch.net/2014/01/16/candidate-rauner-in-illinois-supports-charters-lower-minimum-wage/

I had a personal encounter with Bruce Rauner. Two years ago, I received the Kohl Education Award from Dolores Kohl, the woman who created it, a great philanthropist who cares deeply about the forgotten children and annually honors outstanding teachers. After the awards ceremony, Ms. Kohl held a small dinner at the exclusive Chicago Club. There were two tables, 8 people at each table. I sat across from Bruce and of course, we got into a lively discussion about charter schools, a subject on which he is passionate.

As might be expected, he celebrated their high test scores, and I responded that they get those scores by excluding students with serious disabilities and English language learners, as well as pushing out those whose scores are not good enough. Surprisingly, he didn’t disagree. His reaction: so what? “They are not my problem. Charters exist to save those few who can be saved, not to serve all kinds of kids.” My response: What should our society do about the kids your charters don’t want? His response: I don’t know and I don’t care. They are not my problem.

This was not a taped conversation. I am paraphrasing. But the gist and the meaning are accurate.

Benedictine's last basketball game -- as good an epitaph as we'll probably ever get

When Benedictine University announced the closure of its traditional undergraduate program in Springfield at the end of the school year, the local newspapers could hardly be bothered to write it up. Maybe that's giving BenU's administration the recognition they deserve as they slink out of town in the dead of night. But it was left to an out-of-town sportswriter covering an away game in Columbia, Mo., to record the Springfield college's passing. It was a graceful and entirely fitting epitaph.

Loss to Columbia marks end of program for Benedictine-Springfield

Thursday, March 5, 2015 | 11:56 p.m. CST

BY JACOB BOGAGE

COLUMBIA — Nikki Bull-Eguez was trying to plan a fundraiser in September 2014 for the Benedictine-Springfield University athletics department — something pretty routine until she got a response she didn’t expect.

“Hold off on this,” an administrator told the athletics director.

That was weird, she thought at the time. The Bulldogs started an athletics department three years ago, which included 11 respectable programs. But they needed facilities. They needed equipment.

When the men’s basketball program started, the campus didn’t own a physical basketball, according to coach Ian Mckeithen. McKeithen went out recruiting players anyway. He landed Stephan Shepherd, then a forward at Riverside Community College in California as one of his first recruits.

“He came and saw me and he was real genuine, and I felt like I could trust him,” Shepherd said. “I liked the town. It was cool. There was a good vibe.

“But it was really weird. We didn’t have anything (at Benedictine-Springfield). No trainer. The meal times to get food were really weird. My (junior college) looked like a university.”

Bull-Eguez was assigned to fix those early deficiencies. She worked for a year to push Benedictine-Springfield into the AMC, home to Columbia College and Stephens College.

The Bulldogs needed trainers. They needed to fill teams with NAIA-caliber athletes, rather than walk-ons. Sure, Benedictine-Springfield was a small college, but it could — and would — compete, she thought.

The men’s basketball team won 15 games a year ago. The women’s team was making gradual improvements. The volleyball program was looking up, she said.

“Everything we were trying to do as a department was to better ourselves in this conference, to give us a stronger foothold,” Bull-Eguez said.

But that email, the one about the fundraiser, was eery. She mentioned it to a coworker. Then faculty members started talking.

“That to me was a little suspicious because I wasn’t trying to spend money. I was trying to raise money,” she said. “That’s when the staff started to talk a little more and we started to put two and two together. Something was changing. We weren’t quite sure what, but we knew there was some type of change coming. Then Oct. 23 was when we found out.”

Benedictine-Springfield wasn’t just going to cut its sports program, as Bull-Eguez had feared. The college was closing its doors.

The Bulldogs men’s basketball team played its final game — ever — Thursday night: an 82-43 loss to Columbia College in the American Midwest Conference tournament.

The women’s team folded midway through the year. Spring sports baseball, softball, golf, soccer and cross country will play out the end of the school year.

After the spring 2015 semester, the Springfield campus will cease its undergraduate program and instead offer online adult-education classes, the Board of Trustees announced.

“In a changing and evolving higher education environment, in order for the university to grow, we must make hard decisions,” Benedictine system president William Carroll said in a news release. Benedictine also has campuses in Lisle, Illinois, and Mesa, Arizona.

“It is necessary that we recognize where the need is and act accordingly for the long-term survival of the Springfield branch campus and for the Springfield community,” he said.

Students with junior standing will have the chance to finish their degrees at the Springfield campus, an option called “teach-out,” before the university closes completely. It will lay off 75 of its 100 full-time employees.

Thirteen positions in the athletics department, though not all of them full time, will be eliminated, Bull-Eguez said.

Former AMC member Mid-Continent University closed its doors a year ago. Sweet Briar University in Virginia announced Tuesday it would close permanently in August.

“I’ve never seen this before,” said AMC Commissioner Will Wolper.

He reached out to an old colleague earlier in the week, the commissioner of the Old Dominion Athletic Conference, the one Sweet Briar will leave, to chat about changes in higher education. “It’s unfortunate, for sure,” he said.

He’s begun talks with other institutions about joining the AMC in the coming years. At 12 teams after Benedictine-Springfield leaves, the AMC is still at a healthy size, he said.

“I felt like we fought to get in this conference,” Bull-Eguez said. “We went through a year of them looking at us and I always took it as a privilege of our university being a part of this conference.”

That’s little solace for the 11 basketball players whose careers with the Bulldogs ended Thursday night.

When McKeithen subbed out his five seniors with a minute left in the game, guard Clavontae Brown pulled his jersey over his head and sobbed. Shepherd draped a towel over his head and bit a paper cup of water.

The Bulldogs stayed in the visiting locker room for 40 minutes after the game ended. Nobody wanted to leave.

McKeithen’s eyes were glazed over and red from tears. His players stood in the hallway waiting for the bus to meet them at the front of the building.

Columbia coach Bob Burchard brought the Bulldogs to midcourt at the end of the game and asked the crowd to give them a standing ovation.

“That’s from the heart,” he said.

Meanwhile, Quintin Norris, the Cougars’ video coordinator, was waiting in the hallway to hand McKeithen a copy of the night’s game film.

“Why bother?” asked a nearby security guard. “It’s all over.”

https://www.columbiamissourian.com/a/186019/loss-to-columbia-marks-end-of-program-for-benedictine-springfield/