The answer is Dan Proft.
I was watching Chicago Tonite on Channel 11 (PBS) to hear about the Morton High School Students who are up for expulsion because they "Trampled" on the rights of others with their "anti-war" protest. The reporter stuck her microphone into the face of Dan Proft. This guy gets around! I've heard him as a Republican Pundit on Bruce DuMont's Beyond the Beltway radio show(6 P.M. Central Standard time in Chicago) but how did he get to Cicero???? Somehow he has gotten a very lucrative contract to represent the Cicero High School District and the Town of Cicero. His company: Urquhart Media, LLC is multifaceted. He writes opinion pieces online, for the newspapers and represents Republican politicians in Illinois.
Although his most famous client may be Alan Keyes, he also represented Jack Ryan and Jim Birkett in their campaigns and is good friends with Judy Barr Topinka and now Larry Domenich(both from Cicero). He also has a company named Starfish that helped out the Republican party in Blue Island. Other communities that have benefited from Dan's expertise are Aurora and Downers Grove.
It was Dan Proft who got Alan Keyes to move into Calumet City so he could run for Illinois senator.
His fame as a radio commentator seems to be what attracts people. If you visit his Urquhart Media, LLC website (urqmedia.com) you can read some of his commentaries. They are brief and a little disjointed and rely on slogans to get his message across. He speaks of "Hillary Clinton's cryogenic personality" and Barack Obama as a "toady" for Emil Jones in the Illinois State Senate and calling him a "biracial George McGovern".
He even has a nice little riff about yearlykos. "I subjected myself to three days of cognitive abuse at the Yearly Kos convention". and "critiques quickly devolved into Pavlovian exercises where a speaker would ding the "Bill O'Reilly" bell and the feral bloggers would respond with the obligatory hissing and screeching--followed by more hissing and then some screeching topped off with an undercurrent of cackling."
And a favorite line: "it was a peculiar strain of intellectual schizophrenia that pervaded the gathering."
Funny stuff, but intellectually vapid.
Oh, oh....I'm beginning to sound like him!
This is the guy the town of Cicero has as a spokesman? His bio says he grew up in Wheaton but loves sports and coaches a Little League
Baseball team in Cicero. How nice.
But back to the students at Morton West. As written up in a District 201 Newsletter, Superintendent Ben Nowakowski wrote:
In response to yesterday's student protest disruption of classes at Morton West, Morton High School District 201 Superintendent Ben Nowakowski released the following statement:
At 10:45 am on Thursday, November 1, I was notified that approximately 35 students had staged a sit-in protest of the War in Iraq at the Morton West High School cafeteria.
Upon my arrival at the West campus, the students were informed by school administration and Berwyn Police that their actions constituted a disruption to the school day. They were afforded the opportunity to take their protest outside where they would not be impeding the educational process and, if they did so, the would face no disciplinary action. Several members of the group elected to return to their classes. Other members of the group locked arms and refused to move from their location.
The rest of the Moron West student body was held in their classrooms while the situation was handled by administration and Berwyn Police. After some time and negotiation, the students ultimately moved from the cafeteria to the an area of the hallway adjacent to the principal's office. Once those students were relocated, the normal school day schedule was resumed and students were released from their classrooms for the lunch period.
The 25 students who elected not to disperse will be brought up for appropriate disciplinary proceedings as provided for in the school code of conduct. The parents of the offending students have been notified.
I want to stress that this action has only to do with the students' disruption of the educational process. Not only do students have a right to express themselves on matters of conscience but we encourage them to do so. In this instance, it is critical to note that the Morton administration did not say that the students could not protest. Rather, we asked that the students simply move their protest to an area of the school that would not disrupt the ability of the other 3400+ students at Morton West to proceed with their normal school day
We appropriately balanced the free speech rights of the students who sought to protest with the rights of the other Morton West students to learn. Our administration and staff acted appropriately and decisively to protect students' abilities to exercise their rights without trampling on the rights of other students to do the same.
Hopefully, Operation Push and the ACLU and cooler heads will prevail. But with Dan Proft's influence, I see only more incendiary language from the Administration and the Town of Cicero.