Chicago Day of Action: Some Fliers
by meep
Some people picked up fliers from the Day of Action yesterday.
I thought some non-CTU people might be interested.
ENEMIES! GET THE BURGERS!
First, let us see about those who have been marked out as evil-doers by the Chicago Teachers Union and other interested parties. I will put a link to the large versions, but display something smaller here.
This was some of the silliness I was referring to in yesterday’s post.
Just a recommendation to the protestors — you need to focus. You have the following enemies list:
- Wall St. Banks
- Ken Griffin
- McDonald’s
- Rahm Emanuel & Bruce Rauner together
You guys need to focus. Alinsky’s Rule for Radicals has this recommendation: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”
The advice isn’t to pick multiple targets, many of which have little to do with each other. Pick one. You’re all over the place.
POLICY PROPOSALS
Let’s follow the links to the groups listed in the lower right-hand corner:
Obviously, one is the website for the Chicago Teachers Union.
The Grassroots Collaborative has a page on its campaigns, which includes a $15/hr minimum wage in Chicago, something about “Progressive Revenue”, and some other, older issues.
Here’s stuff on their Progressive Revenue concept:
The Solution:
We can fund the services we need by implementing 3 common sense approaches; taxing the wealthy, corporate accountability, and bank and financial reform.
Okay, what exactly do they have in mind? Here’s a pdf with their proposal. I will excerpt a few bits.
Raise the Corporate Income Tax– Corporate profits are up and their tax rate should go up as well. Instead, the IL corporate income tax rate was cut by 25% this year and very few corporations pay the full rate.
….
End Predatory Bank Deals– Big banks have made hundreds of millions of dollars in profits off the State of Illinois from toxic deals like interest rate swaps and auction rate bonds since the crash in 2008. We could win back money and prevent decades of future losses by taking legal action, demanding that banks release taxpayers, and refusing future business to banks that refuse to renegotiate.
…..
Enact a Financial Transaction Tax – Wall Street firms and ultra-wealthy investors have made huge profits from speculative trading on LaSalle Street. Raising revenue through gambling taxes on casinos primarily hits working class customers, but this type of gambling by bankers and billionaires has been left untouched, with traders paying no sales tax on these transactions. By charging even a small fee, a financial transaction tax has the potential to raise significant revenue for the state.
…..
Pass a Progressive Income Tax- Illinois “flat tax” forces working class families to pay a higher effective tax rate than the wealthy. The majority of states have a progressive income tax based on a simple principle that those who make more from the state’s economy should also contribute more to our public good.
● Pass a Commuter Tax– A significant portion of higher paying jobs created in Chicago have in fact gone to non-residents. These jobs are made possible by city services (police, fire, streets and sanitation, etc.) without a fair contribution to help pay for them.
● Pass a Luxury Sales Tax– Sales taxes tend to hit working families hard, but Illinois taxes the fewest
services of any neighboring state. Included in this are many professional and business services used
heavily by wealthier individuals and corporations (such as legal, finance, real estate, etc.)
I will not address these in today’s post.
I will make a remark, though: many/most states have a “flat tax” if they have an income tax (above a certain individual deduction – which is what makes these taxes progressive). Why do you think that is?
These items, by the way, were handed out (I think on the back of the enemies list flier):
Oh goodie, some more days of action this month.
As for shutting down Springfield… does anything substantive other than state government occur in that town? I have no idea.
I am glad that one professional event I was going to got scheduled for DC instead of Chicago, like I was originally told. I wonder how many other groups will rethink putting their events in Chicago. I understand Nashville can be fun.
CHANTS! CHANTS!
And what would be a good protest march without chants?
Two sheets of those:
I will type them out below, for copy-paste convenience of others:
Everywhere we go! (repeat)… People want to know! (repeat) Who we are (repeat)….So we tell them (repeat)
We are the students/parents/teachers! (repeat)… The mighty, mighty students/parents/teachers! (repeat)
Fighting for Justice and public education! (repeat)Call: Whose Schools? Response: Our Schools! — Call: Whose Kids? Response: Our Kids! — Call: Whose City? Response: Our City!
¡Rahm! ¡Escucha! ¡Estamos en la Lucha!
¡Rauner! ¡Escucha! ¡Estamos en la Lucha!
E! Pueblo, Unido, jamás será vencido
School cuts? No thanks! Take the money from the banks!
Pay cut? No thanks! Take the money from the banks!Hey Rahm we’re no fools!
Hey Claypool we’re no fools!
Hey Rauner, we’re no fools!What do we want? An Elected School Board! When do we want it? Now!
page 2
PUBLIC EDUCATION IS UNDER ATTACK…WHAT DO WE DO?
STAND UP! FIGHT BACK!
FAMILIES AND CHILDREN ARE UNDER ATTACK…WHAT DO WE DO?
STAND UP! FIGHT BACK!
THE WORKING CLASS IS UNDER ATTACK…WHAT DO WE DO?
STAND UP! FIGHT BACK!Starving schools…it’s a crime. Time for the bankers to serve their time.
I don’t know but it’s been said… Billionaires run the Board of Ed.
I don’t know but I’ve been told… That their pockets are lined with gold.Fat cats fat cats, we’re no fools!
You rob your workers and steal from schools.We pay taxes, why don’t they? Bankers and billionaires ought to pay.
We need teachers, we need books, we need the money that Rahm took!Money for Jobs and Education; Not for Mass Incarceration!
Money for schools! Money for books! No more money for corporate crooks!
Who pays taxes? The working class! Fat cats profit and kids come last.
Fund Mental Health… Not Corporate Wealth!
Nothing too new or surprising.
I’ve found various documents, from similar groups in Illinois, describing these various policy proposals, doing breakdowns, etc. I found some docs from 2015. I’m just going to assume it’s the same people, essentially, in all these groups.
All of the documents are about new revenue. Where it’s about cutting costs, it’s about those eeeevil bank fees.
To be sure, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some cozy arrangements whereby various vendors to the Illinois government get a larger cut than a private company would negotiate. By all means, let’s open up those books and take a look at those deals.
But I don’t think cutting a few basis points off of asset management fees and the like will bring in all that “new revenue” these groups are slavering over.
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