Two nights. Two meetings.

A meeting for an elected school board on Tuesday and a meeting to fight for pension justice on Wednesday.

Nothing gets my blood flowing like taking part in two grass-roots activist meetings on two consecutive nights.

Tuesday night I was at the Town Hall gathering for an elected school board. More than two hundred people filled the large space at the Logan Square auditorium to hear CTU President Karen Lewis, UIC professor and schools activist Pauline Lipman, Ames School parent Dalia Bonnila and journalist Ben Joravsky.

More than there just to listen, these folks were just one small part of a city-wide core and corps of activists, many who have been active for a decade or longer fighting against school closings and for community involvement. These were many of the parents and teachers who defeated Rahm Emanuel in the Chicago teachers strike.

A side note: Lewis is a rock star. A bunch of us headed over to Dunlay’s for a few beers and food after the meeting. Lewis was approached by a waitress who was in school doing her teacher preparation, a teacher who proudly shared that she was a union delegate at a local school and a parent who wanted to her two young children to meet Karen.

None were shy about approaching the CTU President. And Lewis responded to each with her typical effusiveness.

There are few people who think electing a school board is a single cure for what ails us. All the speakers and everyone who spoke from the audience understands Chicago politics and power. There is a sense that this is one more piece in the puzzle stretching back to the election of Harold Washington and even before that.

“The political landscape has changed,” has become the mantra.

The campaign for an elected school board and the fight to stop the planned 100 school closings are seen as connected pieces of the puzzle that fit together in creating a more democratic city.

Last night I joined fellow bloggers Glen Brown and John Dillon in a conversation with over 100 members of the Illinois Retired Teachers Association in La Grange in the western suburbs.

They were mostly retired teachers.

Nothing makes me smile more than being at a meeting where an 80 year-old retired teacher get’s up and says, “Let me give you some history about this issue…”

It reminds me just how little I know.

The movement of retirees on the pension issue is a stealth movement.

I personally have been at meetings over the past few months that have included hundreds of active and retired teachers. No politicians. No union leaders. Truly the grassroots.

The message that is getting around is that what we have here is a political failure to identify the problem: Too little revenue. A tax system that favors the rich over the poor. Corporate tax loopholes that an eighteen wheeler could drive through. Companies moving their production facilities across the border to Iowa, where they have not only a progressive income tax but a stable economy and revenue stream.

The approach of the past has been to go after pension benefits. Politicians think that they can fool people into thinking that cutting a 3% cost of living adjustment can pay for 50 years of failing to meet the state’s pension obligation so that now we have an $85 billion unfunded pension liability that must be paid.

Now the Chicago Tribune reports that “it is no secret that Governor Quinn and his people are pushing for a graduated income tax.”

It sure has been a secret up until now.

It was only a few months ago that the mere mention of a progressive income tax was not allowed in polite company. Speaking the words were like farting at a fancy dinner party.

At an IRTA luncheon, Representative Elaine Nekritz looked at me like I was on crack when I brought it up.

“You get the votes,” she told me.

Tax policy will change. What else can they do? What are the political consequences of taking away the pensions of over half a million state pension system members? There will be no federal bailout. The debt will be paid.

The political landscape is changing.

Our job is to limit the damage until they come to their senses.

The call went out at the end of last night’s meeting: A plan for face to face legislative contact. This is not just a movement for pension protection. It is a movement for justice, fairness and a new way of doing business in Illinois.