Englewood Students Satirize Mayor Emanuel's School Closings With 'Wreck-it Rahm' Poem

By Jon Graef in News on Mar 23, 2014 9:00PM

The Team Englewood Spoken Word poetry group recently performed at the 2014 Louder Than A Bomb Youth Poetry Slam, the annual poetry festival run by Young Chicago Authors.

Each team must perform a four member group poem, and Team Englewood, comprised of Dallas Battle, Kenyatta Tolbert, Alicia Hincon and David Holmes, used the opportunity to hand Mayor Rahm Emanuel his ass on the issue of school closings, and so much more.

The poem the students performed is called "Hide Your Schools, Hide Your Homes, Hide Your Children, Cause He's Wrecking it All." The poem calls out "Mr. Wreck-it Rahm" for pretty much everything.

Here's the opener: "Hammer in one hand, paintbrush in the other, Rahm Emanuel is single-handedly destroying our city, Mr. Wreck-It Rahm."

From there, Team Englewood airs their grievances against the mayor with a bullhorn's sense of urgency.

What are those grievances? Well...

[S]hutting down mental health clinics in poor black neighborhoods, diverting money from schools to fund the South Loop B-ball arena/hotel, the Englewood rail yard expansion and, of course, school closings.

Just to name a few.

Team Englewood concludes the poem on a scathing note, and no doubt couplets like this helped the group prize for group poetry at Louder Than a Bomb.

"See, Rahm, we are mathematicians, your lies are adding up, and this new Chicago is just another one of them," is the poem's scathing concluding line.

But text only tells so much. Watch the video below: