Solidarity forum, featuring Skype connection to CTU teacher.
We will be taking a collection for CTU strike fund (or donate directly at the AFL.)
In Chicago 26,000 teachers and support workers enter their third day of strike over the fate of public education in that city.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel seeks to impose a model of urban education that has already been steamrollered into school systems in New Orleans, Philadelphia, Detroit, and Cleveland: shutting down and contracting the “public” school sector, but re-opening closed schools as charters: publicly funded but privately controlled. Many of the new charters come in as proprietary chains, including some for profit.
The business model for schools further requires constant, incessant testing, which allow test companies like Pearson to realize immense profits, and which provide the “metrics,” the raw material for comparing and ranking students, teachers, schools, you name it.
Teachers, like other public employees, have come under intense and unjustified attack simply for having benefits: health coverage and pensions, nothing extravagant (unlike, say, public officials). We say they are right to defend these gains, and we support their struggle to do so.
What happens with the teachers strike in Chicago is important for all of labor. What is the experience on the ground, and what are the lessons so far? Join us for a solidarity forum on Thursday.
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