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Rahm caught using astroturf protesters to support school privatization
Rahm Emanuel has been a fierce advocate of school ''reforms'' that any Republican would be proud of, and now he's borrowing another page from the right wing play book by busing in paid protesters who didn't even know the issues at stake--they were just handed protest signs.
There was just a couple of problems: he got caught. And when some of the paid protesters heard the discussion, they put down their signs and took the anti-privatization side.
covered, but challenged by state officials on the Chicago Facilities Task Force Force. What was established by evidence and eyewitness testimony in a hearing on January 12, 2012 is that Rahm Emanuel's push to turn over public schools to private operators is his use of textbook union busting schemes to get what he wants. The most disturbing revelations about mayor 1% was the use of paid outside agitators to speak in favor of closing public schools and Board officials forging documents to push out homeless students from one school.
State Representative Esther Golar said she was at the meeting about Reed School in Englewood, which is set to receive Guggenheim students, and saw people arrive on a bus. She said she talked to them and discovered they were from a halfway house and were paid $25 to come to the meeting.
Two busloads of Rent A Protesters at the Dyett High School closing hearing on January 6, 2012, became confused when challenged about their signs and attitude, and by the end of the hearing many had taken down their signs and agreed with those who opposed the Board of Education's attack on Dyett. The signs held up by the Rent A Protests were the same at all seven hearings across Chicago on January 6. Substance photo by David Vance.
80 students at Guggenheim School had transfer notices delivered to their homes over Christmas break. Guggenheim teacher Kimberly Walls said none of these children or parents asked to be transferred to another school and were called several times by school staff insisting they take the transfer. Transfer papers were slipped under doors or taped on them.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/01/14/1054604/-Rahm-Caught-Red-Handed-By-State-Officials
State Representative Esther Golar said she was at the meeting about Reed School in Englewood, which is set to receive Guggenheim students, and saw people arrive on a bus. She said she talked to them and discovered they were from a halfway house and were paid $25 to come to the meeting.
Two busloads of Rent A Protesters at the Dyett High School closing hearing on January 6, 2012, became confused when challenged about their signs and attitude, and by the end of the hearing many had taken down their signs and agreed with those who opposed the Board of Education's attack on Dyett. The signs held up by the Rent A Protests were the same at all seven hearings across Chicago on January 6. Substance photo by David Vance.
80 students at Guggenheim School had transfer notices delivered to their homes over Christmas break. Guggenheim teacher Kimberly Walls said none of these children or parents asked to be transferred to another school and were called several times by school staff insisting they take the transfer. Transfer papers were slipped under doors or taped on them.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/01/14/1054604/-Rahm-Caught-Red-Handed-By-State-Officials
The Democratic Party needs to admit that corporate compliant pols like Rahm are the problem not the solution, and excise them like the cancerous tumors they are. It would be even better if they just admitted they have no loyalty to New Deal and Progressive Democrats and form their own party with the ''moderate'' Republicans they side with to stymie and even roll back progressive legislation.
Rahm is the highest profile of his kind, and should be a target for investigative reporting, grassroots action, and every possible means to hound him out of the party.
Otherwise, our electoral choices will become even more two corporate parties, one with religious nuts and one without.
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I wonder how the masses in Chicago are liking him -- or not liking him. Do you happen to know?
A giant sack of shit that is one of the key architects of the destruction of the Democratic Party as we knew it. 
