Substance Needs Your Support

Ohanian Comment: I'm very glad longtime New York City teacher (and a leading force behind the making of The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman, a film produced by Grassroots Education Movement (GEM), Norm Scott wrote this appeal for Substance, the only newspaper of education resistance. Full disclosure: I'm the Substance national resistance editor.

Substance isn't "just" a Chicago paper but contains resistance news from across the country, contributed by teachers and parents.

The Good News is that Substance exists. The outrage beyond belief is that it is in financial difficulty. If you want to help fight the corporate domination of school policy, then contribute. Contribute your words and contribute some dollars.

Substance
5132 W. Berteau Ave
Chicago, IL 60641

Here's a link for contributing online at the Substance site.


by Norm Scott

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George Schmidt writes:

As of Friday, we had $900 in the Substance checking account, owed about $5,000 in federal taxes, and faced a $4,000 cost for printing and mailing the September 2012 print edition after we print it Wednesday (September 12). We decided last week to defer the publication of the September issue because had we gone to press on September 4, the headline would have been

STRIKE?

But when we go to the printer on September 11th or 12th (depending upon how things go tomorrow) the headline will be

STRIKE!

Everyone here will be "broke" in one sense over the next few months. After all, you can't take on the Empire and expect to come out without casualties.

When all heck breaks loose after midnight tonight, we will be devoting all of our time (instead of just 90 percent of it) to publishing every story we can get, and all the analysis we can provide.

Substance has been the major source of information for Chicago teachers for over 40 years. With full monthly print editions, in addition to having a well-read web presence, the work of publisher/editor George Schmidt and his wife Sharron has played a major role in the growth of CORE [Caucus of Rand-and-File Educators] from its founding days in 2008 (George was one of the founders) to taking over the Chicago Teachers Union just two years later. Substance spread the word about CORE to every school in the city.

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Don't think print is dead and its all about the web. During the 2001 union elections in Chicago, George delivered copies of Substance to the school mailbox of every teacher 3 times during the election period. That election was won by Debbie Lynch over the Unity style leadership, an election that was a precursor in many ways to the 2010 CORE victory (Debbie's caucus got over 15% of the vote in '10 and she threw her support to CORE in the runoff which helped them get 60%).

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In many ways, Substance was the inspiration for Ed Notes' expansion from a newsletter at Delegate Assemblies to a full-fledged tabloid which led to the founding of ICE which led to the founding of GEM and both groups have played a major role in the founding of MORE. (See: My Path from Ed Notes to MORE Through ICE and GEM and MORE).

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Really, if you want to know what is going on in Chicago education read articles like this:

Press conference shows community support for CTU strike as contract talks stall because of CPS

— Norm Scott
Ed Notes Online

2012-09-09

http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/2012/09/with-strike-looming-substance-needs.html

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