On today’s show -activist journalists.

George Schmidt is a delegate to the Chicago Teachers’ Union, a paid union consultant, and he writes for Substance, a “pro-union” newspaper.  Joe Macare writes for truthout.com and for Occupied Chicago Tribune, which favors the Occupy Chicago movement.

We talk about efforts by the New York and Boston police departments to subpoena Twitter records from recent Occupy events, such as Occupy Wall Street. On the education front, does CPS really support Local School Councils, or have they been quietly withdrawing from promoting the upcoming LSC elections? And Merit Pay for teachers – can it ever be an effective tool for improving schools? For that matter, is differential pay for people in an essentially equivalent job description ever effective at all? Schmidt says no, never. It’s never worked for teachers, he says, but he’s confident that Mayor Emanuel and CEO Brizard are about to try once again to institute it.