In neighborhoods across Chicago with large immigrant populations, people are banding together to form rapid response networks to support their neighbors in the event of expected deportation raids by President Donald Trump’s administration.
In the 35th Ward on the city’s Northwest Side, Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa has started what he calls the Community Defense Committee.
In Rogers Park, home to an extremely diverse immigrant population, volunteer organizers have chosen to dub their effort Protect RP.
In Little Village, the Mexican capital of the Midwest, they have picked the name La Villita Se Defiende, which translates to Little Village Defends Itself.
As with the different names, each group seems to be charting its own tactical approach, but the overarching goal is the same: to protect undocumented immigrants by resisting efforts to deport them.
Resistance eventually could take the form of actually interfering with federal agents in the performance of their duties, something not to be taken lightly but a measure of what’s at stake. Mark Brown, Sun Times
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Yesterday was Toni Morrison’s 86th birthday.
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Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and the president of a teachers union that strongly resisted her confirmation have agreed to tour schools together.
“I said I’d like to visit a public school with her, and then I’d like her to visit a choice school with me,” DeVos told Axios Thursday, recounting a recent phone call with Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). The Hill
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‘Sweden, who would believe this?’: Trump cites non-existent terror attack https://t.co/5cbpsrkssx
— The Guardian (@guardian) February 19, 2017
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Donald Trump has made a lot of big promises. Among the most ambitious is his vow to “create 25 million new American jobs in the next decade and return to 4% annual growth.”
That’s a lot of jobs to create. Even trickier than creating those jobs, however, will be finding American workers to fill them. Trump’s stance on immigration makes it unlikely that the US will be importing many foreign workers. So where will they come from?
That still adds up to around 9 million of Trump’s new American jobs that will need filling. The math gets even hairier if you take Trump at his word on deportations of immigrants who are in the US illegally. Though it’s hard to estimate with certainty, at least 7 million people working in the US today are unauthorized immigrants. If the president makes good on his plans to deport even just a fraction of them, that’s even more want-ads to post.
Get back to work!
The only other option for Trump to make good on his promise is to hire elderly workers. The share of those aged 65 and older who would have to join the workforce would soar to 32%, up from the current 19%, according to EPI’s Zipperer.
“Having the elderly work more is problematic for two reasons. First and foremost are our social priorities: shouldn’t a growing rich country make it easier, not harder, for its older citizens to retire?” he says. “Second, older individuals are already working more in record numbers.” Quartz
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BREAKING NEWS. Swedish police have released picture of the man sought for the terror attack #lastnightinsweden #swedenincident #TrumpRally pic.twitter.com/MHYSkddnU7
— Neil Macdougall (@DougallChops) February 19, 2017
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Fred Klonsky 
DeVos and Randi touring schools?
Some seem to believe that her very consistent words and actions over many years really mean little.
She will change, they say. Just meet with her, get her into schools, inform her about special ed, etc.
But that may just be arming your enemy.
Some true believers like DeVos see only what they want to see, and it is simply not possible to change them.
Click on the link (below) for a WP article on what DeVos took away from her D.C. school visit (see
her tweets) AND the later tweets from the school after she used her visit to denigrate its teachers.
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DeVos criticized teachers at D.C. school she visited;
and they are not having it
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/education/wp/2017/02/18/devos-criticized-teachers-at-d -c-school-she-visited-and-they-are-not-having-it/?utm_term=.9aa238ebc84c
By Emma Brown
February 19
Newly minted Education Secretary Betsy DeVos had a hard time getting inside the Districts Jefferson Middle School Academy last week when protesters briefly blocked her from entering.
But at the end of her visit; her first to a public school since taking office; she stood on Jeffersonrs front steps and pronounced it (quote) awesome (end quote).
A few days later, she seemed less enamored.
The teachers at Jefferson were sincere, genuine and dedicated, she said,
they seemed to be in (quote) receive mode.(end quote).
(quote) They are waiting to be told what they have to do, and that
is not going to bring success to an individual child (end quote); DeVos told a columnist for the conservative online publication Townhall.
(quote) You have to have teachers who are empowered to facilitate great teaching. (end quote)
DeVos, who has no professional experience in public education, is an avowed proponent of voucher schools, charter schools, online schools and other alternatives to traditional public schools.
Teachers across the country have been galled by what they see as her lack of faith in — and understanding of — the public schools that educate nearly nine in 10 of the nation’s children.
Jefferson educators found her comments about their work hard to take:
On Friday evening, the school responded to DeVos via its Twitter account, taking exception to the education secretary’s characterization of Jefferson teachers.
“We’re about to take her to school,” the first of 11 rapid-fire tweets said.
The tweetstorm singled out teachers like Jessica Harris, who built Jefferson’s band program “from the ground up,” and Ashley Shepherd and Britany Locher, who not only teach students ranging from a first- to eighth-grade reading level, but also “maintain a positive classroom environment focused on rigorous content, humor, and love.
“They aren’t waiting to be told what to do.”
“JA teachers are not in a ‘receive mode,’” the tweets concluded.
“Unless you mean we ‘receive’ students at a 2nd grade level and move them to an 8th grade level.”….
“resistance Sunday”. What a nice sounding phrase suggesting that good citizens are standing up for their rights. What is it is a mob of persons of color and whites brainwashed into thinking they are guilty for people being poor and having been born in countries other than the US. They will now actually promote violence against the lawful officers of the government. There is a threat that, with social media, community activists, plan on similar events during the entire summer when youth don’t have much else to do. Maybe Chicago can have it’s own riots like LA did in 1956, 1993? etc. Go for it.
You’re wrong. This is people following the direction of Kim Foxx, the Cook County State’s Attorney, the chief law enforcement officer of the county. “Maybe it’s continuing to resist, continuing to speak truth to power, escorting people to courthouses, escorting people to counseling centers, escorting people, being an advocate, putting your body in front of theirs when you know that they are coming for them is what I would suggest.”