Christopher Schroeder

Category: local

  • More From Moore

    More From Moore

    I can appreciate that Natalie Moore was able to watch both Prada movies with her mother but question the relevance of her most recent column.

    The sequel might have coincided as Moore suggests with a new Media Insight Project report, but it offers less about the future of media in the United States than she suggests. Rather, the movie relegates journalism, “Capital J” or not, to the setting for a continuing story that was started in the first movie.

    Corporate raiders might appear in the second to dismantle legacy publications, but the “page views” emphasis for example predates Andy’s return as the new features editor. Rather, the movie focuses primarily upon the relationship between Andy, who in her time away has become an award-winning journalist, and her former and future boss Miranda.

    This relationship, which occupies the center of this story, says more about time and aging, and the effects of these upon working relationships among women. Andy, who now trusts learned her instincts and advocates for herself, discovers that the world could be less vicious than she otherwise believed. Miranda in turn finds in Andy a former and perhaps future version of herself, someone who if they can collaborate will enhance both Miranda’s legacy and her life.

    This focus is not only established by the new working relationship between Andy and Miranda, but it is reinforced by the newfound friendship between Andy and her erstwhile rival Emily. Emily, who is working for Dior at the start of the movie, agrees to use her boyfriend Benji to buy the company and unbeknownst to Andy to install her in Miranda’s position, which Andy and Miranda subsequently prevent by finding yet another buyer, which nonetheless doesn’t prevent Andy and Emily from becoming friends.

    In this and other ways, this sequel is more about corporate relationships than the future of journalism, which makes this op-ed seem more like a vanity opportunity that allows Moore to reminisce about her mother and her career without offering much of substance to readers. This condition becomes even clearer in contrast with the only other op-ed in that Sunday newspaper.

    That reveals a larger concern, one that is actually about the future of journalism in Chicago. The Sun-Times seems to have generally reduced its op-eds, and some days offers none to its readers. Such circumstances can only increase the pressure for more from Moore, and from her editors and publisher.

  • The First Thing We Do

    The First Thing We Do

    I admire Zindy Marquez’s courage in confronting those of us who are retreating from “sustained advocacy, policy reform, civic engagement[,] and long-term commitments” to “racial justice” as these have become “politically and culturally unpopular,” and think she is right.

    I agree that those who believe that the United States isn’t still shaped by institutionalized inequality are ignoring “the very systems that continue to produce inequitable outcomes today,” and that such “coordinated” efforts misrepresent the past and distort the present to dictate an unequal future. And I accept her claims about the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and the communities with which it collaborates.

    I just think she has offered an incomplete account of the problem.

    Marquez to her credit mentions those who found the pursuit of social justice “easier in theory than in sustained practice,” but she ignores both the history of this inconsistency and the conditions of its continuation. In contrast, I would include the hypocrisy among activists, lawyers, teachers, and others

    Such conditions have been convincingly documented by Musa al-Gharbi (2024) in WE HAVE NEVER BEEN WOKE. He offers in this book a compelling account of the way that symbolic capitalists, or those whose status or prestige comes from the knowledge economy, have used social justice discourse, and especially cultural identity discussions, to increase their own influence while ignoring the underlying economic conditions, including their own position within such a hierarchy.

    Anyone who hasn’t read this book and cares about social justice should do so to discover the ways that we maintain existing inequalities while espousing the opposite. Such insights might make us more likely to make more productive changes, or at least more aware of the efforts we need to make if we’re to do so.

    These efforts could also challenge the persistent impression among some that progressives cannot be trusted to work and live with professional and personal integrity, which might mean more allies. If nothing else, these reduce the source of examples used by these “coordinated” critics.

    This fuller account might mean we avoid replacing one social hierarchy with another, which merely reverses this discrimination without moving the United States forward. At least it offers a more appealing account of institutionalized inequality and more convincing arguments about alternative, including shared sacrifices for a greater good.

    Those who pursue greater social justice do much harm by promoting our intellectual and moral superiority. Instead, we should demonstrate the existence of this discrimination, including the part we play in perpetuating it, and the greater benefits of more equitable options, and must do so in good faith over and over, and not just in our political ideas but also our personal choices with an obvious respect for everyone, including those with whom we disagree.

    That is a better, and potentially more productive, way to care for our entire community as we pursue a more perfect union, one in which everyone is more equal than we all are now.

  • The Rest of Us

    I wonder what Stacy Davis Gates thinks of us.

    Gates, who is president of both the Chicago Teachers Union and the Illinois Federation of Teachers, recently argued that CPS is transforming into a “sustainable community school district” of community “anchors” as a result of the recent Chicago Board of Education approved five-year equity plan and four-year union contract. These will produce “the schools our students deserve” and “true community hubs” that reflect local neighborhoods and are “responsible to students and families” within these.

    The CTU and the Board in rejecting previous privatization of education posit schools as spaces of “stability, access and care” that also address larger social problems, such as food deserts and health care gaps. Such schools both “educate young people” and “reflect and uplift entire communities” by extending support beyond classrooms and integrating local needs with learning.

    This Sustainable Community Schools approach, which according to Gates originated in Chicago, has been embraced by other cities. At its center is a concern for students and their families that supports both “personal agency” and community development.

    I’m not surprised that a teachers union president would advocate for schools as central to society. I sometimes wondered as a professor and a parent why what happened in universities where I worked and schools where my kids learned often seemed separate from what happened beyond these institutions.

    I just never assumed that public schools were the only, or even best, ways to care for Chicago students and their families. I knew that private schools do so too as do other initiatives and institutions, such as After School Matters and the Chicago Park District.

    I realized in other words that schools exist within a larger social context. In other words, education while important isn’t everything, and certainly cannot matter more than reliable roads for example or public safety, which also matter, and must be supported, by those of us who call Chicago home.

    Gates in her defense recognized this economic element in acknowledging the need for additional revenue. At the same time, she misrepresents this situation, and denies its difficulty, by describing it as a need for “a fairer tax system” as if such a perception is a citywide consensus even though it clearly is not.

    In fact, the Chicago City Council members (and Illinois legislators) seem unconvinced of the need for a corporate head tax, a property tax increase, and other self-styled “progressive” taxes proposed by the Chicago mayor, a former CPS teacher and CTU-organizer whose election was the result of the CTU support. Moreover, this failure and other challenges to this mayor’s fiscal policies, governing approach, ethical standards, and even political competence could demonstrate the danger of putting educators in charge.

    I would suggest that this this risk can also be seen in Gates herself, and the way she models a progressive hypocrisy that has been convincingly documented by Musa al-Gharbi (2024) among educators and other social elites. For example, Gates has defended her decision to send her son to a private school in what seems like a classic case of public-schools-for-thee-but-not-for-me.

    I’m perhaps as concerned in the end about the effects upon public perceptions of the CTU and unions generally. Gates might be an effective at obtaining results for union members but by overreaching in both this equity plan and union contract risks alienating those who might otherwise be sympathetic to unions.

    The only thing worse than a union, I’ve said, is no union. The better ones I believe recognize their purview and purpose, collaborate with comparable communities, and create coalitions with other constituencies to support shared goals and similar ends, which require a humility that seems scarce in the CTU and its president.

    Reasonable people can disagree on the distribution of funding across public and social services for example or the proper role of schools and education. As a result, these debates need to be ongoing, and relitigated each time budgets are prepared.

    Budgets obviously reflect values, and Chicago, and Illinois, might need to value education more. Neither however can afford to prioritize education over everything else, especially without a citywide consensus, and not just one within CTU.

    These discussions and decisions are difficult, and must be made by those whom all of us have elected, and not educators who have been elected (or bankrolled) by CTU members.