Progress Illinois

Parents and community groups from Chicago and Philadelphia stood in solidarity against school closings at a gathering outside the Chicago Board of Education’s headquarters Tuesday morning. The activists also blasted the national trend of privatizing education.

“There’s another agenda going on in this city and throughout this country, and that’s the agenda of private business corporations taking over the schools,” said Shannon Bennett with the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization (KOCO).  “But the community and the people have spoken, and we’re going to continue to do our due diligence, to do the work that we have to do, to dismantle this system.”

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Working inside the White House is not as glamorous and eventful as some popular TV shows make it out to be, former Obama administration staff members said at a recent panel discussion in Chicago.

“The truth of the matter is that not every single day is incredibly action packed in the White House,” said Elizabeth Jarvis-Shean, former White House research director.

Although Jarvis-Shean worked on issues she said she had a special interest in, such as the Affordable Care Act of 2010 and repealing "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell," about 50 percent of her time consisted of “mundane” day-to-day assignments.

Some of her typical tasks included editing speeches or vetting somebody expected to stand on stage with the president, among other things, she said.

Also, White House staffers are not as witty as the characters on “The West Wing” TV show, said Chris Lu, former White House cabinet secretary.

“If you’ve seen ‘The West Wing’ TV show, you know the whole thing is walking and talking,” Lu said at the discussion, sponsored by the University of Chicago Institute of Politics. “You can’t walk and talk in the West Wing ... it is tiny in the White House.”

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The city of Chicago lost more than $3.1 billion in wealth, or about $2,900 per household, in 2012 as a result of the foreclosure crisis, according to a new report from the Alliance for a Just Society.

And more than $192 billion in homeowner wealth was lost nationally last year, the new analysis shows.

Communities of color in Chicago saw more foreclosures and lost wealth per household compared to other communities.

In 2012, the average Chicago household in zip codes with the highest concentration of people of color lost $3,700 in wealth, the “Wasted Wealth” (PDF) report found.

In comparison, the average wealth lost in segregated white communities was about $1,300 per household.

“Seeing this loss of wealth per household is profound," said the Rev. Marilyn Pagán-Banks, president of IIRON, which also worked on the release of the report. "People of color in Chicago, whose majority equity holdings remain in real estate, have been particularly affected by the crisis.” 

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Parents and members of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) stormed the steps outside the Academy of Urban School Leadership’s (AUSL) office Thursday and raised concerns over the Chicago Public Schools’ (CPS) plan to turnaround six schools at the end of the academic year.

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