Last Thursday at Federal Plaza in downtown Chicago, State Senator James Meeks held a rally to protest the disparity in funding between rich and poor school districts in Illinois. He urged parents to boycott the first day of Chicago public school classes and enroll their children in Winnetka schools. He is also encouraging students to sit-in at various business offices throughout the Loop.

Since our very first day in 1996, PCG has been pressing for an increase in the state income tax to address inadequate and inequitable school funding. Last spring we were one of many groups that together spent over three months organizing a demonstration just before the opening of the new school year. The event attracted several hundred marchers, but limited TV coverage and even less press. A day later, it was as if the event had never happened.

The coverage is already more extensive this time around, if only because the notion of poor, black kids traveling to Winnetka captures the imagination. But there are other differences. The events which Senator Meeks is calling for feel more like a civil rights protest than did the carefully planned march a year ago. Most of those present last Thursday were members of his huge Salem Baptist Congregation and African American clergy from Chicago's south and west sides. There is at least a hint of impending civil disobedience in the air.

Maybe this helps to explain why some of the responses to Senator Meeks evoke the comments of clergy to whom Martin Luther King responded while sitting in a Birmingham jail nearly 40 years ago. One hears, for example, that children must not miss a day, and certainly not a week, of education in their Chicago schools. Is one day, or even one week, so important compared to the dream of quality education to which their protests aspire? One hears also that the tactics of seeking enrollment in Winnetka will create a political backlash. But how likely is it that passivity in the face of funding injustice will be rewarded with essential reform any time soon?

When PCG staff hold forums in churches to discuss tax reform and education funding, we often hear two responses. The first is that "money does not matter. It won't make any difference." The answer to this one is clear: "Money does matter. Research shows that it does." If it didn't, why would wealthier districts spend more for education in their schools? Further, how does one fund longer school days, universal pre-school education, and better teachers without spending money?

The second response is a close cousin to the first: "Money won't solve the entire problem." The answer here is, "Perhaps not. Of course we also need better and more accountable schools. Of course families do have a role to play in the education of their children." But is it not patronizing at best to invoke these goals when for years we have denied the funding to poor neighborhoods, mostly African American in Chicago, which is necessary to achieve them? A section of the Sermon on the Mount comes to mind: "Why do you see the speck in your neighbor's eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?…" (Matthew 7:3)

Perhaps the greatest tragedy surrounding the issue of funding and school reform is that there is no good reason why we could not have support for a comprehensive proposal for funding fairness, school accountability, and other key tax reform issues in a single legislative package right now. This obviously will not happen under current leadership in Springfield. But at some point, the opportunity for reform will emerge.

In the Chicago metropolitan area, if not the entire nation, we continue to be "separate and unequal." Is it so surprising, therefore, that we are seeing in the actions of Rev. Meeks the kind of incipient unrest that led the authors of the Kerner Commission on Civil Disorders to coin this phrase over forty years ago?

Rev. Alexander Sharp,
Executive Director