PHOTO/SARAH JANE RHEE
CHICAGO, IL — On April 1, Chicago teachers, along with parents, students, and other workers—20,000 strong in downtown Chicago—sent a message to Governor Bruce Rauner and Mayor Rahm Emanuel. If Rauner and Emanuel were listening, they couldn’t mistake the meaning. Chicagoans are holding their political leaders and the corporations they represent responsible for robbing the people of what it takes to survive.
The day of activities began with pickets at every school in the city. Teachers were joined by supporters from their community. Throughout the day, actions were held at Chicago State University and Northeastern Illinois University, both severely curtailed by lack of funding; by “Fight for $15” workers who struck several McDonald’s restaurants; at police stations and courts, where teachers and Black Lives Matter activists held the city accountable for police murders of unarmed youth; by an alliance of human service workers protesting cuts in necessary programs; and finally multitudes of organized and unorganized workers filling the streets of Chicago’s downtown during the rush hour.
Led by those involved in the education struggle, these combatants have learned they cannot attain their goals in school-by-school battles and even on the school district level. Also, some members of unions and organizations recognize that they can’t succeed by traditional narrow approaches—protecting their own turf exclusively. The Chicago Teachers Union has sought a coalition with other groups on a common agenda, organizations that they might not have allied with in the past. But the Chicago Teachers Union has gone out of their way to support and to find the links that bring them together. While it looks like old-time coalition building, an impulse is arising for workers to come together around basic needs.
The planners of the April 1 “Day of Action” demanded funding sources that can only be gained from the State of Illinois. The consequence of this is a transition from scattered economic struggles toward political activity. Corporate giants like Pearson, Bill Gates and charter school corporations are merging with the government, demonstrating how this “privatization” is a merger in the interest of the corporations and making the government the target. Governor Rauner has threatened to take government intervention further, to impose an emergency manager dictatorship to strip union workers of their pensions and rights while taking over the public schools. From Michigan through Puerto Rico to Illinois and California: expanding emergency managers has a stark vision in education—eliminate education for those it no longer needs.
The 20,000 people in downtown Chicago are developing a vision of their own. Their path leads to demanding that the federal government live up to its responsibility to feed, clothe and educate the people. Many of the demonstrators are fighting for their basic needs to survive, at a level of equality of poverty. They can begin to recognize the common reality that they face. Their unity is necessary in the battle for the power to end handing over public services to the corporations. Instead, the government needs to nationalize the education-corporations in the people’s, not the corporation’s interest. That’s the only way to carry out a thorough fight for equitable funding for all.
