Peaceful Anti-TIF Demonstration Ends in Arrest
At a peaceful demonstration protesting the Tax Increment Financing (TIF) program which takes $250 million from Chicago’s public schools each year, CTU Staff Coordinator Jackson Potter and Chicago ADAPT Co-Coordinator Amber Smock were arrested at approximately 1:30 p.m. today at the Grossinger City Autoplex on criminal trespass charges.
“Today parents, students, teachers and members of the labor movement put Chicago’s corporate tax cheats on notice. We will not stand by and let them take money from our schools. We will keep the pressure on,” said CTU Vice President Jesse Sharkey.
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“I told police I would have done it again,” said Potter, who is scheduled to appear in court April 15. “Big business is taking resources away from schools and working families, and we want it back immediately.”
Jackson Potter, a Little Village High School of Social Justice teacher and member of the Chicago Teachers Union, and another woman identified as Amber Smock from ADAPT were both arrested after leading 150 to 200 people -- about half of them teachers -- to march and rush in to Lincoln Park's Grossinger City Cadillac dealership as part of a rally for tax increment financing (TIF) reform. The two were arrested for misdemeanor criminal trespassing and were taken to the Near North police district.
The rally Saturday afternoon started at Jenner Elementary Academy of the Arts in the Gold Coast neighborhood, gathering teachers, students and parents, and multiple community organizations, including Kenwood-Oakland Community Organization, UNITE HERE Local 1, and the Albany Park Neighborhood Council.
CTU Protest Of TIFs Leads To Arrests
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ADAPT is a national grass-roots community that organizes disability rights activists to engage in nonviolent direct action, including civil disobedience, to assure the civil and human rights of people with disabilities to live in freedom.
http://www.adapt.org/
CTU Aldermanic Outreach Coordinator Joseph McDermott and Activist Attorney Jim Fennerty carry Past Due notice.
A group of teachers, students and local activists march on W. Division St. to protest tax increment financing (TIF) funds being used for corporate interests instead of public education Saturday, March 19, 2011, in Chicago. | John J. Kim~Sun-Times
Organizers claim TIF funds are used to help develop private businesses, depriving funding for things like schools.
Marchers gathered in the Grossinger City Autoplex on North Avenue, one such business they claimed benefits from TIF funding, to request a meeting with the manager, Potter said. A company official declined the meeting and called police.
2 arrested in school funding protest
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“There’s a giant myth being spread all across this land ... that local governments have no money, they need to take it out of the backs of teachers, take away their pensions,” Cook County Clerk David Orr told the cheering protestors. “Chicago ain’t broke. Chicago has put $2 billion tax dollars that the public doesn’t know about into these TIFs and there’s another $500 million being added every year. There needs to be a moratorium on these TIFs because there has been enormous abuse. They are supposed to go to blighted areas. It’s gone to Willis Towers. It’s gone to Grossinger. It’s gone to other major corporations. As we uncover the mayor’s slush fund, which this is, we’re going to discover that money can go to help the schools.”
Anti-TIF marchers demand $4M from N. Side auto dealer
http://www.suntimes.com/...
The group then marched up North Clybourn Avenue, making a pit-stop at a Bank of America branch, where 20 people went inside as Potter tried to negotiate for the banking giant to sign a pledge to return TIF money.
While other protesters stand in the background, Jitu Brown of the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization (KOCO) presents the group's demands to the Bank of America branch manager at the Bank of America branch at North Ave and Halsted in Chicago. Substance photo by Garth Liebhaber.
The group then continued on to march in full force into the Grossinger car dealership. Within minutes, police arrived to usher the protesters back outside. Potter, who had tried to speak to a deskful of employees at the dealership amid the rally cries to ask for the same pledge, was arrested moments later as a leader in the rally and march.
The group targeted Grossinger because the luxury car dealership got $8 million in tax increment financing.
After Bank of America, the group went to the nearby Grossinger Cadillac dealership, which CTU research had shown received $8 million in TIF money to develop its five story dealership building at Dayton and North Ave in one of Chicago's most expensive communities (the $15 million mansion of Penny Pritzker is less than a mile to the northeast of Grossinger. Challenging the city's claim that TIF money was being used to help development in "blighted areas," the protesters pointed out the paradox. Photo by Kenzo Shibata CTU Member Communications
By the time the march arrived at Grossinger Cadillac at North Ave and Dayton on Chicago's north side, there were enough people in the group to fill the lobby. Above, Jitu Brown, Amber Smock, and Jackson Potter discuss the demands of the coalition on the TIFs, which asked Grossinger to give $4 million of the $8 million in TIF money it had received from Chicago back to the public schools. A few minutes after this photograph was taken, Chicago police arrests Amber Smock and Jackson Potter. Substance photo by Garth Liebhaber.
Chicago police (above, background with wagon) arriving at Grossinger Cadillac were told they would be making arrests, but the crowd left the building's lobby when ordered to by police officials. Amber Smock and Jackson Potter were talking with a Grossinger official about meeting the protest's demands regarding the TIF funds when police arrested them. Most of the marchers didn't even know about the arrests until they arrived back at Jenner school. Substance photo by Garth Liebhaber.
The outline of Jackson Potter can be barely seen in the photo above, taken shortly after he was placed in the police wagon following the surprising arrest of Jackson Potter and Amber Smock. Substance photo by Amber Smock.
Over 100 Chicago Public Schools do not have a stand-alone library staffed with a librarian.
Chicago's struggle for school libraries continued at Whittier Elementary School during the opening weeks of school in September and October 2010. As the sun rose on September 18, 2010, the people who had thwarted the Chicago Board of Education's attempts to clear the "Whittier Moms" and their allies out of La Casita began their day. For the next month, round the clock, teachers, parents, students and their allies conducted a sit-in at Whittier Elementary School's "La Casita" (the "Little House") demanding that it be converted into a library, which the school did not have. Sit-In Success Story Parents in a low-income Chicago neighborhood endured a 43-day sit-in to get a library for their children. Kristine Mayle, Chicago Teachers Union Financial Secretary in cap and blanket. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt.
Instead of using property tax dollars to ensure our students have the resources they need, Chicago gives nearly $250 million of it every year to connected developers in the form of Tax Increment Financing (TIFs).
Can You Spot the Blight?
Insiders say Mayor Daley wants to re-up the Central Loop TIF, a barely overseen slush fund that sucks tax dollars away from schools and other public services in the name of stimulating development. http://www.chicagoreader.com/...
The TIF program was designed to eradicate blight, add jobs and spur economic growth. It supports public and private sector projects including infrastructure, parks, schools and corporate subsidies.
Of the $1.2 billion designated for private sector projects since 2000, nearly half was earmarked for some of the area’s most profitable corporations.
Corporate Giants Received TIF Money, Records Show
http://www.nytimes.com/...
Solving state and federal budget crises will require lots of actions like this (along with strikes and other job actions), and the courage of people to get arrested (and even face state violence).If not, the budget crises will continue to be used as justification for slashing wages and benefits, gutting social programs and continuing to reward greedy businesses with tax breaks and corporate subsidies.
The march back after two activists were arrested
Non-violence does not mean acceptance, but resistance; not waiting, but acting. It is not at all passive. It involves strikes, boycotts, non-cooperation, mass demonstrations and sabotage, as well as appeals to the conscience of the world, even to individuals in the oppressing group who might brake away from their past. - Direct action does not deride using the political rights, the civil liberties, even the voting mechanisms in those societies where they are available, but it recognizes the limitations of those controlled rights and goes beyond.
More on TIF Corruption
Chicago TIF money, records show given to Corporate giants
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