The Grooming Of Illinois Policymakers: Susana Mendoza

Following up on Dan Mihalopoulos's excellent piece on Concept, I thought I would do a series of short posts on public figures appearing on the CMSA website in the little testimonial video section. I've watched all of these videos--- they all have exactly the same format and are basically just political figures saying the generic types of things that political figures say in schools, except that they're really, really focused around the same questions. There are very few surprises, although there are some.

What I'm going to do is link each of these testimonials with the travel connections and other connections, and tie it back into Sharon Higgins' work (starting on page 11) detailing the Gulen Movement's talent for cultivating political figures.

Let's start with Susana Mendoza, our city clerk, who visited CMSA in early 2012 and answers the same questions everyone else answers. It's a bland sort of interview--- the only interesting bit is that she's clearly been fed the "100% acceptance rate to universities"* bit. Here she is:



Yes, yes, that's very nice. They've been working on Mendoza for a while. The Turkish American Society of Chicago and the Chicago Turkish American Chamber of Commerce, along with the Niagara Foundation, sponsored two junkets for her in 2008 and 2009, when she was the representative for Illinois' 1st House district in Springfield,

Mendoza later went on to sponsor HR0173 in 2011, which honors Fethullah Gulen, the Turkish imam who is currently in a death-struggle with the Turkish prime minister and who recently wished in a sermon that God would bring fire upon the houses of the people troubling him. Here's Mendoza's resolution itself, which I believe passed unanimously. I wish someone with press credentials would ask her where the text of this came from:

HR0173 LRB097 11142 KXB 52563 r
1		HOUSE RESOLUTION
2		WHEREAS, The members of the Illinois House of
3		Representatives are pleased to recognize Fethullah Gulen for
4		ongoing and inspirational contributions to the promotion of
5		global peace and understanding; and
6		WHEREAS, A Turkish scholar, author, poet, preacher, and
7		educational activist, Fethullah Gulen has inspired a worldwide
8		social movement that promotes humanistic values and service and
9		is known as the Hizmet Movement or the Gulen Movement; and
10		WHEREAS, Based on the principle that each human being is of
11		value, regardless of background, faith, or culture, the Gulen
12		Movement offers a multifaceted approach to seeking world peace;
13		it places a strong emphasis on intercultural understanding and
14		the embracing of differences; it values compassionate acts of
15		care and concern; and it promotes the importance of education
16		in laying the groundwork for fostering better relationship
17		between diverse populations; and
18		WHEREAS, The Gulen Movement emphasizes the core concept
19		that peace is a function of tolerance and dialogue; it offers
20		"Living to let others live" as the foundation of a life of
21		altruistic service and calls on the younger generation to
22		combine intellectual enlightenment with spirituality to make 1 the world a better place; and 2 WHEREAS, The strength of the universal values promoted by 3 the movement has led to the creation of the Niagara Foundation 4 in Chicago, which promotes academic research as well as 5 grassroots activity as a means to bring about positive social 6 change and dialogue; Fethullah Gulen and the movement for 7 social justice he inspired are truly deserving of recognition 8 for their impact on our global society; therefore, be it 9 RESOLVED, BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE 10 NINETY-SEVENTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that 11 we commend Fethullah Gulen for his dedication to working 12 towards a better world through education, service, tolerance, 13 and the free exchange of ideas and extend to him best wished 14 for continued success in all his endeavors; and be it further 15 RESOLVED, That a suitable copy of this resolution be 16 presented to Fethullah Gulen as a symbol of our respect and 17 esteem.

I imagine that 2009 junket was a fairly orchestrated thing, given the panegyrical nature of that 2011 resolution. They probably rang a little bell in Saylorsburg when it passed. Mendoza was at one time a member of the House Trade and International Relations Committee; I can't tell from the record if she ever worked on Turkish-Illinois trade beyond the praise-be-to-Gulen resolution. It's a weird resolution, you have to admit.

After the 2009 trip, Mendoza made a phone-in appearance on Samanyolu TV, a Gulenist media outlet.


IL State Rep. Susana Mendoza interviewed on Samanyolu TV from Turkish Federation on Vimeo.

It all has the look and feel of your standard trade-relations type of junket follow-up, but in this case, the host organization is more in the business of advancing the goals of a transnational social-religious-political organization that is currently now in a tense competition with the actual Turkish government. Mendoza's appearance on Samanyolu is another feather in their cap.

 Incidentally, Mendoza's mom was evidently on either the 2008 or 2009 trip as well, which is always nice.

                                                                                  --Sharon Higgins

Mendoza's speech at the Niagara Foundation is here.  She says "irregardless" in this speech, which I adore. I probably voted for her.

Recently, as Sharon writes above,  Mendoza extolled the virtues of the Turkish American Society of Chicago in a nice letter. The society was sponsoring a student cultural/language event, --- and we'll be getting into these events in detail later, but you can read about it on p. 6 here. 

I have nothing against Ms. Mendoza; she seems like a decent person, and she's really only one of dozens of people being lobbied heavily to have positive feelings toward the worldwide Gulen Movement. She's certainly someone the Movement would try to cultivate; I usually think of her as the city clerk from UNO. She kicked off her campaign at an UNO school, surrounded by UNO stalwarts. She's got a grand from the d'Escoto window operation

and during her time in the legislature, she had a very compatible agenda. Right around the time of her Turkish delight, she co-sponsored SB612, which doubled the number of charter schools in Illinois set the ball moving on the ridiculously undemocratic state charter commission (the very commission that would later overrule CPS and install another Gulen school in McKinley Park).  A number of her co-sponsors on that project also found themselves being escorted around Turkey by Gulenist organizations.  She co-sponsored the 2009 voucher bill. That must have been an impactful year for her.

Like I say, she's not a bad person; she has many admirable positions. I don't think of her as an education politician--- outside of the vouchers and charters, there isn't much. I can't even find a reference to any other school visits besides charter schools, although surely there must have been some.

But she's certainly someone who's in the Gulen rolodex and being cultivated as a friend of the Movement. I won't be surprised if they give her one of their many awards in the near future.  And I point this out because the Movement is highly, highly secretive; it is extremely controversial overseas. It is devoted to a religious figure who is a central figure in an unfolding national power struggle in Turkey.  And its members run taxpayer-funded charter schools here in the city and around the country.

And I find that to be the most interesting thing about them.

Not sure who's next on the docket; there's a veritable parade of public figures recording generic video spots for CMSA available. If I've left out anything about the grooming of Susana Mendoza, please chime in.

By the way, it isn't clear to me that any of the Illinois public figures who have been circulated through Turkey on these junkets actually have to declare publicly any of these gifts of travel expenses. I don't think they do. Does anyone know?

                               *

                                 I have written a great deal on this college-acceptance metric in the past, as have others, but let me just say that if this metric is the shiny objects that makes you fall in love with charter schools, then critical thinking is not a strength of yours. 

NB:

I'm not criticizing the videos. They serve their purpose, I'm sure. They're not hugely awesome marketing pieces per se, but that's not their entire purpose, is it? Some of them appear to be filmed by kids, and I say kudos to kids for being involved...although when I think about the goals of the worldwide Gulen Movement, I think I'd rather just see kids talking about things they're learning rather than repetitively grilling strangers about how great their school is. The whole connection between children and the murky influence-building agendas of adults is one of the things that's got me looking harder at this entire issue.

What Is Going On In These Schools?

Sorry--- I'm supposed to be offline but I heard about this post about a Gulen school in Ohio. There's a lot to digest there but the testing irregularities alone are alarming. This is the same organization running the Madigan-Gulen Chicago network.

Now I'm unplugging the router again. Back to Mark Twain.

UNO Webinar, Charter Forum: Chicago Ed Policy in January

I'll be "off the grid" for the next few days, to use a tired expression. This was supposed to be the vacation where I read The Autobiography of Mark Twain. Instead, I've been immersed in Turkish history, including Balci's luminous discussion of the Nurcu movement in Central Asia. It's all very interesting but I have a feeling I'll get enough of this topic in January.

Speaking of January, don't forget about these two spectacular ed policy events being co-hosted by RPNPS. The first is a webinar on January 9, at 7 PM.  Byron Sigcho will present his comprehensive review of the UNO financial and pedagogical model, updated with the latest developments. Just because UNO is laying low doesn't mean they're going away--- their whole financial model depends on building, building, and more building.  It's a really, really interesting topic. Register for the UNO webinar here.  It's free.

Then on January 14, 2014, we'll be co-hosting (with many of Chicago's finest community groups) a forum on the impact of charter expansion in Chicago. Remember, we're living in a city where they just closed down 50 schools for "underutilization," where the CEO goes on at length about a budget crisis, and yet their plan is to open as many as 31 new charter schools in the next two years.

In a functioning democracy, these people would be recalled and indicted for malfeasance. It's as if the entire ruling class of a major city has lost its mind.

This will be an excellent forum; we'll provide summaries of the latest research on charter schools, as well as detailed description of how each and every one of these schools reduces the funding/programming available at neighborhood schools. And some of these charters --- the ones approved by the ALEC-designed, undemocratic, and bizarrely funded state charter commission-- take a much bigger chunk than others. Then we'll make an action plan for the future.

There is no registration! Come as you are.  January 14, 6:30 PM at Shields Middle School,  2611 W. 48th Street, Chicago.

Many people around the city and around the world already know that we're also going to be moving forward in January with extensive work on the Gulen issue; I can only advise you to stay tuned for more information. Meanwhile, review the Sun-Times piece, do some research, bring yourself up to speed, and brace yourself for a tsunami of disinformation coming from the Movement. 

And now, I'm unplugging the router. 

The Phone Call That Won't Be Happening Any Time Soon

I've been getting some chuckles for wishing in the previous post that Arne Duncan would get on the phone and try to reel in the growing influence of Fethullah Gulen and his followers in the American public charter school sector.

It is kind of funny, I grant you.

The Movement has a gift for cultivating US politicians--- the various network organizations festoon these people with awards, and it works. Check out the 2007 Niagara Foundation Awards here in Chicago. Basically if you're in public life in Illinois, you're going to get an award from Fethullah Gulen sooner or later. You're also going to be recording a PR segment at one of the schools.  This is no small-time operation. Arne Duncan gets an award in the clip below, along with other local luminaries, including Chicago's then top cop, which gives me pause..


Note: this video is produced by ebrutv, and yes, it's a Movement production house. As of this instant there's a embed code available and no visible copyright restrictions.

Arne Duncan is no sooner going to get on the phone than I'm going see a forensic audit of the $518, 214.00 that Concept Schools, Inc. picked up in management fees in 2011 from CMSA alone.

None of this is easy to piece together without some background reading. Can I suggest this, for starters?

Concept Schools, Illinois, and the Gulen Movement by Sharon Higgins

What This Gulen Mess Is Really About

Update: The video referred to below--- the fire on your houses speech--- has disappeared, as I knew it would.  I haven't been able to track down who originally posted it---whether it was a Gulenist outlet or not. If it was a Gulenist outlet, they've been told to take it down. If it was someone else, they got hit with a Youtube copyright strike. I could probably find another posting of it, but I took the precaution of downloading the original for future reference. 

It's a familiar pattern. Gulen says something; it goes out on Youtube. Then word of it spreads beyond the Movement, and suddenly the video is gone. What goes on in the Movement stays in the Movement. 

It's out there, the video. People will upload it until they're told to take it down. I have it, if you want to see it. I'm going to say very bluntly that from my point of view it's bizarre, and I don't blame the Gulenist PR operation for shutting it down. If the company line is now that all of these people are simply "inspired" by this one individual, then it would be important to minimize the bizarre public appearances of this one individual. All very much in keeping with the whole secrecy thing, too. 

The point I'd like to make is that we have a worldwide social-religious-nationalist movement here where you're not allowed to see the Leader speak unless you're already in the Movement. The great scholar Joshua Hendricks would say that this type of secrecy-above-all-else strategy doesn't compute "culturally" in the US, and I agree. 

Except that I'd go further: it's sketchy. It's suspicious. And it's weirdly inept.  They're going to need to come to terms with the fact that this long tradition of secrecy not only doesn't compute culturally, it doesn't add up at all. 

For worldwide coverage of the unfolding drama overseas, see this, this, this, and this.  It's a hot mess, to put it plainly.

I don't question anyone's right to be an actor in the unfolding Turkish drama or to advocate positions about the nature of the modern Turkish state, including the religious character of the government.

I don't question anyone's right to religious beliefs or anyone's freedom to associate with others.

All of these things are fine. And the US certainly has a long, long history of meddling in foreign affairs and trying to determine the outcome of this crisis, or that election, or the long-term consequences of various invasions and conquests.

What's different about this is that somehow American public schools got drawn into it.

Back in the old days, when we were trying to impact the outcome of a foreign civil war, we'd sell missiles to Iran and divert the cash to some really, really violent people in Central America, and then the President would just basically lie about it and everyone would forget.

These days the commodity is the ownership of public schools. And people can't even focus on it because they've been conditioned to feel that there's this existential crisis caused by urban school teachers.

I have no doubt that Fethullah Gulen is living in the United States because the US has taken a position in the Turkish drama. Somewhere, somehow, the people pulling the strings have decided that there's a strategic advantage to the man's presence here.

I just wonder if they knew that his peeps would leap into the great unsupervised abyss of the American public charter school sector and take advantage of the huge opportunities for scandal that exist there. Did that behavior get green-lighted in a meeting? Or did it come as a surprise?

Could anyone even stop it now?

Could Arne Duncan call up Fethullah Gulen tomorrow-- and then hand the phone over to someone with some actual knowledge and an authoritative edge in his voice, and have that person explain to the preacher/tycoon that he's gone too far?

I doubt it.  Our Turkish guest has more juice in Washington than Arne Duncan has ever or will ever have anywhere.

The thing is melting down, and it won't end well.

CNN:

Gulen posted a video on his website accusing the government of ignoring real issues. "Those who don't see the thief but go after those trying to catch the thief, who don't see the murder but try to defame others by accusing innocent people then may God bring fire to their houses," he said in the video.

It's a cluster. You should see some of the parody videos. I won't link tonight to them because I've already heard from the Movement about copyright. There's a time and a place for everything.

In my experience, when the ally you've favored in a foreign conflict starts talking about God bringing fire into his enemies' houses, well, things are about to go south.

Secrecy, evasions, lies, "strategic ambiguity"---if you study it long enough you learn that these phenomena are considered to be virtues if employed in the service of the larger goal of the Movement.

It's just that they're incompatible with and wholly new to the long history of elected governance of our public schools. Corruption is sort of built in to the wild west that is the charter movement, unfortunately.  It's a movement that would do well to call for more oversight, more sunlight, in every respect.

If I were an actor in a foreign conflict, and I needed an unregulated network and guaranteed income, I would for sure open an American charter school management organization and then expand.

I have no opinion about what kind of nation Turkey should be. I wish them peace and prosperity and democracy and good health.

But I wish Arne could make that call.

NOTE: As for CMSA and Concept specifically, well that's also about local corruption,  overhyped schools, and a financial model that puts taxpayers on the hook for extravagant financing. It's similar the UNO model, where the thing has to keep growing to pay off earlier loans. It's our little gift of love and compassion to taxpayers of the future. And one more thing: it's about the sheer number of Illinois politicians who can't even Google someone's name for ten seconds before getting on a plane for a junket.

Read The Whole Thing!

Because of the way the Sun-Times posted Dan Mihalopoulos' story, some people might not read all three parts, but I highly recommend the whole thing.

The main story about the Madigan - Charter Commission link, a deal greased by the Gulenists with "generous" travel, including junkets for many marquee (for Illinois) names in the Democratic Party.  Also Joe Moore, who has two of the really fabulously corrupt charter organizations (UNO and Concept) in his ward due to his basic weakness, in my opinion. 

The travel record. This only includes the state lawmakers. I'm not surprised to see Elaine Nekritz in there but I was surprised to see Linda Chapa LaVia, who has come to her senses regarding the charter commission and should be supported. The Gulenists are basically running an indoctrination travel agency for Illinois Democrats. 

The link-list, where Dan goes dot-to-dot with all of these people who've never heard of Fethullah Gulen and don't know each other haven't the foggiest idea what you're talking about, and you must be crazy! [NOTE: sarcasm]

I also recommend this excellent backgrounder, written by Sharon Higgins, back when this network had only 135 American public schools, but still highly relevant and informative. 

An Addendum To The Concept Story

I'm still absorbing the details of Dan Mihalopolous's riveting expose of Concept. More reaction later. However, I did want to add a detail here to one of the photographs on the photos in the story: this one, and I apologize in advance for borrowing it.

Here Speaker Madigan is shaking hands with a Turkish mayor during Madigan's Gulenist-arranged handling in Turkey.

This mayor, Mustafa Demir, was arrested a few days ago. 

Basically there's a power struggle going on between the Turkish Prime Minister and the Gulenist forces throughout the country, particularly those forces inside the Turkish justice department. This mayor is a casualty of the conflict, as are dozens and dozens of others arrested lately, including journalists.

I'm pointing this out because people need to know that this thing is heating up overseas, and we're funding one side of it whether we like it or not. Mike Madigan's Turkish handlers have used him badly, but predictably, and in my opinion the Speaker needs to chime in on where he stands in the matter of Mayor Demir's civil and human rights. And from there we could just go down a list of people arrested.

More later-- we've had a little vandalism here; I have to go meet with the local gendarmes. Life in Rogers Park...