On September 1
st, 2012, roughly 18,000 parents, students, and
teachers took to the streets in another massive demonstration of the public’s
growing weariness of corporate-style school “reform” that deprofessionalizes
teaching, disrupts low-income, minority communities, disenfranchises parents
from decisions that affect their children, and threatens public education as a
whole. The very next night Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel was ironically extolling
the virtues of the Democratic Party as he delivered his speech to the
Democratic National Convention.