PHOTO/BOB SIMPSON
CHICAGO, IL — In September, about 90% of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) voted, and of those, 96% approved a strike. On September 28, the CTU set a strike date of Tuesday, October 11. The teachers have been working without a current contract for over one year. As the quotes below show, both parents and teachers are angry at the conditions under which education is supposed to take place. While the cutbacks that are starving our schools are national, indeed global, in scope, all eyes are on Chicago and the CTU to see what can be accomplished in the battle for public education.
“We’re in the worst 5% of overcrowded classrooms in the entire state. . . Educators have had enough. . . the very basis of education and opportunity is being harmed and put at risk and they’re willing to go on strike to fight for those things.” CTU organizing director Jackson Potter, on the Wayne Besen WCPT radio program, 9/28/16.
“Democrats and Republicans, are they supporting public schools? No! They see our students as dollar signs. They’re selling off our schools and changing them into charter schools . . . Our students deserve fully funded schools. They deserve to have a nurse more than one day a week. They deserve a class size of twenty, not fifty! [Schools where] they can drink the water without being poisoned by the water . . . “ Sarah Chambers, member of the Chicago Teachers Union and of the Caucus Of Rank-and-file Educators, speaking at a campaign rally for Green Party Presidential candidate Jill Stein.
“[At] the end of the year . . . CPS was supposed to transfer the [pension] funds to the Chicago Teacher’s Pension Fund. Of course, we know that for over a decade, CPS never made those payments. We know that it squandered the money on things like SUPES, interest on bad loans, penalties on toxic financial deals, custodial and engineering privatization, and building nearly 40% more schools in a district that is losing students.” Troy LaRiviere, a CPS principal fired for opposing Mayor Emanuel’s education program, taken from his blog.
“There is a very intentional effort to not give our children what they deserve . . . We want an end to privatization. We will fight for 10,000 sustainable community schools. . .The fight for education justice is a Black Lives Matter issue.. . It’s not just about police violence. Miseducation is state violence.” Brotha Jitu Brown, from Chicago’s Kenwood Oakland Community Organization, at a Journey4Justice rally outside the first Presidential debate.
We live in an era in which jobs are evaporating. Teachers are rethinking what education is actually for if it is not to prepare students for jobs that will never return. It’s time to ask how the goals set in this strike can be achieved, short of turning the focus on the national government to actually be our government, meet our needs, guarantee the funding of our schools. Just being militant is no longer enough. How the unity of teachers, parents and students confront these questions is the context for the significance of this strike.
