Portside

Rail strike raises the issue of privatization, paves way for general strike in on February 25.

Will Rahm Emanuel's effort to establish a privatized neoliberal outpost in Chicago succeed? Not if the ongoing uprising brushfires turn from kindling wood into a contemporary Chicago fire of political resistance. Kari Lydersen, author of "Mayor 1%," tells Truthout Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is representative of the neoliberal wing of the Democratic party, and he's getting significant pushback in his efforts to expand privatization and limit protests.

We need to own up to is that privatization experiments, based on ideology rather than evidence, have created disruption, neglect, and harm to vital public services and infrastructure - and those effects have undermined the private sector which depends on high quality public services. We seem to have forgotten that the public sector has long created the environment and resources necessary for businesses to prosper.

Definitely go out and buy Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to Americas Public Schools by Diane Ravitch. Reign of Error lays out step by step the relentless thirty year drive to either centralize the education of the young - on one hand - or divest it entirely into privatized hands on the other. Finally, the two sides have joined forces on a strategy that simultaneously does both. (Deborah Meier)

We will, no doubt, be needing roads - urban, local and interstate - for the foreseeable future, despite their negative effects. The good news is that we are now heading toward a transportation ecosystem that is far more varied and useful. Rather than encouraging more cars, more trucks, more pollution, less interpersonal connection and more privatized space, people throughout the country are radically changing travel and interpersonal connection.

The privatization of social services has in the past resulted in some spectacular failures.