On the heels of last week’s controversial Chicago Board of Education vote to shutter 50 public schools across the city, several of Northwestern’s social justice and multicultural student groups hosted a top Chicago Teachers Union official to talk Tuesday night about the racial elements of the closings.
Debby Pope, a union activist working in CTU’s grievance and organizing departments, spoke and took questions in front of a crowd of about 30 students at Harris Hall. Pope, who has taught for CPS on the South and Southwest sides of Chicago, helped coordinate last year’s weeklong CTU strike.
Pope added hers to a slew of voices criticizing the proposed closings for unfairly targeting black students, including concerns relocating schools will force students to travel through gang territory. The board cites a $1 billion deficit and underutilized schools as reasons for the closings.
“They want to destroy public education as we know it,” Pope said of the closings’ supporters. “We are definitely not for that.”
Pope outlined the history of CTU’s advocacy for social justice and highlighted the continued importance of the union’s fight for equality in public education. She said the union is trying to find someone to challenge Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who is up for re-election in 2015.
“The battle is about having schools that are good for all children,” Pope said. “Not just for rich kids, not just for white kids, not just in the suburbs, not just in magnet schools, for all children.”
Pope had harsh words for CPS administrators on issues such as charter schools. She accused them of ignoring a group of Chicago’s lower-class minority students who are not getting the necessary education to move up in life, referencing the “school-to-prison pipeline” developing as a result of CPS policies.
“This is a racist policy of closing the schools in the African-American community,” Pope said. “It’s designed to say, ‘These kids, they’re not worth more than that.'”
Tuesday’s event was presented by the Peace Project and endorsed by For Members Only, Alianza and the Asian Pacific American Coalition. Peace Project president Kathryn Prescott said the group thought Pope’s experience in racially diverse schools gave her a valuable perspective in ongoing campus dialogues about race. Prescott contrasted Pope with last week’s College Republicans speaker Dinesh D’Souza, who Prescott called a “talking head.”
“To say that racism no longer exists, it’s inaccurate, and it’s silly to even say,” said Prescott, a Communication sophomore. “We wanted to bring a perspective that Mrs. Pope has. She’s been in the schools we’re talking about. She knows what she’s talking about.”
Prescott said the Peace Project wants to show it stands in “solidarity with the Chicago Teachers Union.”
CTU’s accusations of racism in the closings came to a head May 15 when parents backed by the union filed two lawsuits in Cook County to reverse the board’s decision. One of the suits alleges the proposal, which at the time of the suit’s filing sat at 54 potential closings, violated the Illinois Civil Rights Act by discriminating against black children. According to the suit, black children make up more than 80 percent of the children who would be displaced under the new proposal, despite comprising just 42 percent of all CPS students. The suit alleges the 54 schools are less than 1 percent white.
“There is no way people of conscience will stand by and allow these people to shut down nearly a third of our school district without putting up a fight,” CTU President Karen Lewis said last week in a news conference. “Most of these campuses are in the black community. Since 2001, 88 percent of students impacted by CPS School Actions are African-American. And this is by design.”
