Mayor Rahm Emanuel and other officials eye the proposed site of DePauls publicly subsidized basketball arena.

In honor of Independence Day, I urge everyone to sign the online petition calling on the city and DePaul University to stop their $55 million nonsense.

That’s the nonsense where Mayor Emanuel wants to take tens of millions of property tax dollars from our cash-starved schools and use them to buy land on which DePaul will build a basketball arena. And some as-yet-unnamed developer will build a hotel.

Thus, in one fell $55 million swoop, the mayor will bring the schools—already firing teachers, cutting art programs, and holding fund-raisers to pay for toilet paper—closer to bankruptcy.

While contributing to the corruption of a fine Catholic university, whose mission emphasizes a need to serve the most “deprived members of society,” and says nothing about taking money from public school children and spending it on basketball arenas.

Here’s a link to everything you need to know about that crummy deal. And here’s a link to the petition.