The teacher-bashing Tribune. We’ve had enough.

Public school teachers have gone through some tough times the last couple of years.

Oh, Sure. Except for the big guys on Wall Street who always find a way to make money out of every crisis, especially one of their own making, most folks have been going through tough times for a while.

But teachers. This past Spring thousands lost their jobs and union-bashers claimed it wasn’t so.

These right-wing pundits,  job-loss deniers,  claimed it was just a trick for teacher unions to get more money. How has that being going, exactly?

Salaries have been stagnant for years as union locals are forced to settle contracts at zero increases, or less.

But the Trib features front page investigative reports about six figure teacher salaries. As if the profession is made up of Wall Street Gordon Gekkos with greased back hair driving black beamer convertibles.

By the way, an Illinois teacher gets on average $58,000 a year.

Next year, any new teacher coming into the profession is no longer eligible for the current pension system and will be enrolled in a new, much lousier one. This is in part because of the anti-teacher pension campaign of the Chicago Tribune.

This campaign of teacher bashing has many impulses: A perfect storm of union haters, school privatizers, Tea Party anti-government ideologues, and traditional political conservatives who are using the problems in public education for their narrow electoral ends. With the Chicago Tribune leading the way.

Teachers have been quite clear about a financial solution. 15,000 of us were in Springfield just last April with a simple and clear plan. Reduce the dependency on local property taxes. Raise the state income tax by a couple of points. End the practice of basing the quality of an Illinois child’s education on their home address or the color of their skin.

To this the legislature said no. And the Trib said no. The Trib said the solution was to fire teachers.

This past week, Charlie McBarron, Communications Director of the IEA, wrote a letter to the Trib, canceling his subscription of 40 years.

Charlie writes that over 800 teachers responded to his post over just a few days.

If you have a sub to the Trib, cancel it. Don’t go to their website. Web hits are calculated for ad rates. Don’t link to their site. Write them and tell them why. Blog it. Tweet it. Email to your friends.

We’ve had enough.