Episodes
Wednesday Jul 09, 2014
Leid Stories - 07/09/14
Wednesday Jul 09, 2014
Wednesday Jul 09, 2014
Class Warfare, Chicago: Mass Teacher Layoffs Follow Mass School Closings
Obama Hasn’t OK’d Bipartisan Program to Reunite Haitian Families
Though 82 people were shot, 14 of them killed, in Chicago over the long July 4 weekend, Mayor Rahm Emanuel nonetheless sticks to his script that, mindless acts of violence by the underclass aside, the quality of life in the Windy City generally has improved under his tenure. But he, too, has committed mindless acts of violence—most notably last year, when he shut down 50 public schools, disrupted the education of 46,000 mostly African American children, and cut almost 3,000 teacher and support-staff jobs.
On June 26, another 1,200 received pink slips in a new round of cuts. Brandon Johnson, deputy political director with the Chicago Teachers Union, discusses Emanuel’s latest act of educational violence.
President Obama yesterday submitted a request to Congress for $3.7 billion to deal with the crisis of tens of thousands of unaccompanied children entering the United States illegally via the U.S.-Mexico border—a crisis his administration allegedly ignored.
Leid Stories revisits an emergency immigration program that got bipartisan approval four years ago, but the Obama administration refused to implement it. The program sought to reunite Haitian children with their families and relatives living in the United States after the 7.0-magnitude earthquake devastated Haiti, killing an estimated 300,000 people and displacing 1.3 million. Steven Forester, immigration policy coordinator for the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti, provides insight on the still-not-enacted program.