#brandon johnson

[reasonsforhope]

It was a really, really good political news day today in the US (4/4/23)

For anyone who hasn't heard, not only did Trump get arrested, but also:

-We found out that the legal case against him in this prosecution (stormy daniels hush money case) is SIGNIFICANTLY stronger than people had speculated. Like, wow do they have receipts.

-In fact, the evidence was so entirely there that the new question on prime time news (well, at least on msnbc lol) is "Hey, why didn't the federal courts prosecute him for this already???)

-Trump FAILED UTTERLY in his attempts to rally mass protests and demands for "death and destruction" if he was arrested. There was no violence at the arrest at all, and as for Trump supporters? They failed to show up in any kind of numbers--reportedly only about a hundred people were protesting the arrest

-We (aka Judge Janet Protasiewicz) WON what is widely considered to be the most consequential election of 2023, a Wisconsin state supreme court election that handed control of the state supreme court to the left

-Because of that election win, it is now extremely likely that abortion will be legal in Wisconsin, and that Wisconsin won't be able to throw out electors in the 2024 presidential election

-ALSO bc of this, Wisconsin, the most gerrymandered state in the country, will probably get nonpartisan, accurate maps, which COULD FLIP THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES in 2024

-In Chicago, Brandon Johnson, union organizer and former teacher, won the election for mayor, in a decisive win progressives, esp for meaningful criminal justice reform and investment in mental health (whereas the other guy was campaigning on hiring hundreds of new cops and being super tough on crime)

[iwriteaboutfeminism]

[Photo ID: BREAKING: Chicago Passes Ceasefire Resolution. In a 23-23 vote with Mayor Johnson as the tie breaker, Chicago today became the largest city in the US to endorse a ceasefire in Gaza.]

[worldwide-blackfolk]

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Brandy Shufutinsky

Published: Jan 23, 2024

Until about 160 years ago Black American labor was used to benefit the few, especially a small group of privileged white landowners. Today, we are still being used. Progressive academics, activists, and political leaders are constantly exploiting Black Americans as living, breathing excuses for policies that benefit progressives and their constituents but fail Black people. 

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson has set his sights on eliminating high-achieving magnet schools in the name of equity. Currently, academically gifted students from low socioeconomic backgrounds are able to compete for entrance into high-achieving schools. One need not guess why some Black parents welcome this opportunity for their children. After all, only 17% of Black students are proficient in reading and even fewer (7%) demonstrate proficiency in math. Moreover, in 2022, fewer than 10% of Black third-grade students and just under 11% of low-income third-grade students could read at grade level. These dismal figures entail that a great many talented Black students in Chicago must suffer through classes geared not to them but to their illiterate and innumerate peers. Magnet schools offer these talented students a way out. One would think that policy makers committed to providing access to quality education for all students, not just the ones whose parents were able to send them to private schools, would increase the number of high-achieving schools, rather than eliminate them. 

So, why would Mayor Johnson want to eliminate one of the few opportunities for gifted but economically disadvantaged students to access quality education? Well, according to Chicago Public Schools Board CEO, Pedro Martinez, allowing gifted students access to quality education causes “stratification and inequity in Chicago Public Schools.” One has to wonder whether this excuse (as incoherent as it is) is sincere or whether it reflects instead a cynical push to discard selective schools that have proven to be top-tier nationally because these schools compete directly with the union-led public school system. 

In Portland, Oregon education leaders are planning to roll out a system of equitable grading that calls for teachers to consider “non-academic factors” when grading student work. Portland Public School Chief Academic Officer Kimberlee Armstrong, a supporter of the policy, argues that in order to address “biases” educators must, wait for it, engage in bias themselves, by “considering the diverse backgrounds and needs of students.” Just how does considering background rather than correct answers and knowledge acquisition reduce bias? 

Oregon’s student literacy rates are slightly better than Chicago’s but still fewer than half of students read at grade level, with Black student literacy hovering around 26%. Yet rather than provide students with the necessary resources to achieve basic literacy, Oregon policymakers are simply eliminating any method of measuring student achievement. 

We must ask ourselves, who gets lost in educational politicking? Students who desire a quality education are being sacrificed at the altar of progressive policies that do them more harm than good. When I was in the third grade my teacher suggested I be tested for the Gifted and Talented Education (GATE) program. I was attending an under-resourced, high-poverty school where the majority of students qualified for the free-lunch program, including me. My GATE score allowed me access to all of the resources that I would otherwise have missed because my socioeconomic circumstance did not allow for tutors or extracurricular activities, let alone private school tuition. Fast-forward a few decades and instead of providing support for students who find themselves in a situation similar to mine, policy makers are relegating them to mediocrity. 

Who benefits from policies that disenfranchise the most vulnerable students? Many organizations that claim to work to improve student achievement by using equity-based practices have sprouted up over recent years. They offer services to school districts, providing teacher training and curricular materials with a stated goal not of teaching students the knowledge and skills they need to succeed but of “building social justice starting in the classroom.” These organizations are very successful in using our public schools to build their client base and sell their obviously political goals of equity and social justice. When it comes to improving student achievement, however, their results are dismal. Policies that eliminate access to quality education, lower standards and reframe what knowledge is will not help Black students, it will harm them. Politicizing education by lowering expectations is a racist endeavor that denies Black Americans the credit they rightly deserve for overcoming obstacles and reaching the highest levels of success. It’s the bigotry of low expectations.

Brandy Shufutinsky is a social worker, writer, researcher, and advocate. She holds her Doctorate in International and Multicultural Education from the University of San Francisco, her MSW from the University of Southern California, and her MA in International Relations from the University of San Diego. Dr. Shufutinsky has worked towards advancing the rights of victims and survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault through practice, education, and research, and is now focusing her advocacy on developing intercultural and academic opportunities to enhance liberal democratic ideals as the director of education and community engagement with the Jewish Institute for Liberal Values. Follow her on Twitter.

==

This is what "equity" does. In order to force everybody to have equal outcomes, it has to eliminate the ability for people to overachieve or exceed others. Because that would make people jealous and would be "unfair." It can't make everybody an Elon Musk, but it can make everybody a Joe Schlub. And so "equity" always results in the lowest of the lowest common denominators. When you inevitably use force to ensure that happens, that's how you get Russia and China.

The people activists who are putting in these policies are the exact same people who put in the policies that caused this illiteracy and innumeracy in the first place.

[gudamor]

An elected Chicago school board is bad. It's not any more democratic than having the Mayor appoint a board, and is arguably less democratic because you're adding half a dozen new likely-low turnout local elections.

Let the Mayor govern. Don't divide power between dozens of people.

[thingstrumperssay]

Based on this reaction I can only guess that Brandon Johnson is the new mayor of Chicago.

Good.

[subtextread]

yes!!!!!!!!!

[dragoneyes618]

"Has he achieved a ceasefire in Chicago and moved on to international diplomacy now?"

- Author Tim Murtaugh, in a reaction to Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, whose city is famously rife with gang warfare, calling for a ceasefire in Gaza because "the killings need to stop."

[homoqueerjewhobbit]

Let's go, Brandon! (Johnson, Chicago's progressive new mayor! 🩷🩷🩷)

[blackstar1887]

Are Black Politicians useless?

[pressnewsagencyllc]

Videos show Chicago police fired nearly 100 shots over 41 seconds during fatal traffic stop

CHICAGO (AP) — Plainclothes Chicago police officers fired nearly 100 gunshots over 41 seconds during a traffic stop that left one man dead and one officer injured, according to graphic video footage a police oversight agency released Tuesday. Five officers from a tactical unit who were in an unmarked police vehicle surrounded an SUV last month driven by Dexter Reed, allegedly for failing to wear…

[iwriteaboutfeminism]

[cafffine]

Chicago !!!!

Our Mayoral election is a mess and so is this post, but please vote for Brandon Johnson if you’re eligible.

Yes, Johnson is walking back his previous goals to defund the police, but he's doing it because we're going to a runoff, and Paul Vallas - the voice of our police union - is the frontrunner.

To point, here's an update on Vallas' stance on policing from the most recent debate. This is dangerous, and this will get people killed:

“Smart policing is not defunding the police. // Smart policing is filling the vacancies and pushing the police officers down to local beats, so they can respond in minutes to a 911 call,” Vallas said. (Chicago Sun Times, March 16th, 2023)

Meanwhile, while not perfect, Johnson is still pushing to cut millions from the police budget, invest in community-based emergency response, and remove the deeply harmful and racist gang database. He's also explicitly pro-abortion, plans to protect queer and trans Chicagoans, he's backed by the teachers union, supports the rights of the disabled, and so much more (this is a source to nearly all the points in this paragraph, the rest is in the sun times article linked above). We need him.

Lightfoot did terrible damage to our city, and if Vallas wins, I can only see things getting worse, or at best, staying the same. Chicago's police and the system of violence and white supremacy that they uphold have done enough damage, please, please vote for Brandon Johnson if you can.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Big progressive wins in Wisconsin and Chicago elections this week show the staying power of left-wing positions on abortion and crime as issues heading into 2024.

Why It Matters: After Democrats became the surprise winners of the 2022 midterms, the twin Midwest results Tuesday in widely watched mayoral and state Supreme Court races showed how the party could energize its base.

• "Everybody needs to understand this, everybody advising candidates, everybody running, everybody looking at putting ballot initiatives forward: Abortion rights are a winning issue," Democratic strategist Jess McIntosh told Axios.

Driving The News: In Wisconsin, Janet Protasiewicz won in the most expensive state judicial race in U.S. history, giving liberals the state Supreme Court majority for the first time in more than a decade. The crucial election carried implications for abortion rights and redistricting in the perennial swing state.

• With Protasiewicz's win, the court could overturn Wisconsin's pre-Civil War abortion ban and revisit the 2022 congressional maps that favored Republicans.

• McIntosh said that she was surprised by the level of engagement with the down-ballot election.

Protasiewicz won by roughly 11 points, and turnout broke the previous record for a spring election not coinciding with a presidential primary, AP notes.

• Voters "went to the ballot because they understood that the right to abortion depended on this seat," she said.

• Though the election was technically nonpartisan, Protasiewicz was backed by Democrats and abortion rights groups including Emily's List.

In Chicago, progressive Democrat Brandon Johnson beat the more moderate Paul Vallas, who campaigned on a platform focused on public safety as the city grapples with high violent crime.

• Johnson's victory handed progressives control over two of America's largest three cities, following L.A. Mayor Karen Bass' win last year.

State Of Play: Tuesday's results — paired with strong Democratic performance in the midterms — underscore that voters "turn out and are responsive to" the party's messaging on key issues including abortion, the integrity of U.S. democracy and addressing crime, Colin Seeberger, a senior advisor at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, told Axios.

• Protasiewicz's victory in Wisconsin shows that "when the American people's fundamental rights are at stake, they really show up resoundingly," Seeberger said.

• Seeberger added that he was "really heartened by just the breadth of the victory."

Abortion proved to be a salient issue in other races last year.

• In August 2022, Kansas voters rejected an anti-abortion constitutional amendment, the first time voters in the U.S. casted ballots on the issue following the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade.

Meanwhile, the results in Chicago were an "affirmation of how Democrats are approaching the issue of crime, which is that they are standing resolutely in support of both accountability and prevention," he added.

Zoom Out: The Midwest victories come after other local elections and legislation have highlighted fissions in the Democratic Party over issues including crime. Republicans have also looked to capitalize on what's been cast as a major wedge issue for Dems.

• A D.C. crime law that would've reduced maximum penalties for some violent crimes entered the national spotlight when it was overturned by Congress and President Biden.

• Last year, San Francisco residents voted to recall progressive District Attorney Chesa Boudin in a divisive election that motivated further party discussion on criminal justice reform.

• New York City's 2021 mayoral election dealt a major blow to progressives with the Democratic primary win of now-Mayor Eric Adams, a moderate who promised to be tough on crime.

The Backdrop: The elections came the same day former President Trump turned himself in and was arraigned following a historic indictment in a hush-money case. He pled not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records.

• The sharp contrast between the public spectacle of Trump's arrest and Biden's relatively calm day evoked the split-screen of the 2020 election.

• Voters ultimately backed Biden's return-to-normalcy campaign — and the White House hopes they will again in 2024, should he face Trump in a historic rematch.

Go Deeper:

• House Dems curb their enthusiasm on Trump arrest

• House Dems target Trump districts for ambitious 2024 push

[nonnynonny99]

🎉🎉🎉

[makesomethingawfuleveryday]

Well Chicago, let’s try not to fuck this up tomorrow. Vote for Brandon!