Subject: [SocialistWorker.org] As long as it takes to win a good contract
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======== AS LONG AS IT TAKES TO WIN A GOOD CONTRACT ==========================
Elizabeth Schulte and Alan Maass report on the latest in the Chicago teachers
strike.
September 14, 2012
/UPDATE: On Friday afternoon, at a meeting of the Chicago Teachers Union
(CTU) House of Delegates, CTU leaders said they had reached an agreement on
what they called the "outlines" of a new contract. The details need to be
finalized, they said, but they hope to have a proposal ready for delegates to
vote on at a meeting on Sunday. If approved then, the contract would go to
the entire membership for ratification, though classes could resume on
Monday/.
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STRIKING TEACHERS in Chicago walked the picket line for a fourth day on
Thursday with raised hopes after leaders of their union said they thought
they were closer to an agreement on a new contract.
But as Chicago teachers know full well, you can't trust Mayor Rahm Emanuel or
his personally anointed millionaire school board to follow through on any
promise unless they're forced to. Negotiations won't be over--or the strike
either--until Chicago Teachers Union officials have an agreement in hand that
they can share with the union's 26,000 members.
Emanuel has been gunning for the CTU since before his election as mayor in
2011. He thought he could intimidate and abuse the teachers into submission,
and then flaunt their concessions to prove he was the new boss in Chicago.
But the teachers stood up to this bully. Last June, nearly 90 percent of all
CTU members--and an incredible 98 percent of those who cast a ballot--voted
to authorize a strike. When the time to walk came on September 10, teachers
hit the picket line and haven't looked back. If union leaders are making
headway at the negotiating table, it's because of this determined
mobilization.
The CTU's House of Delegates was due to meet for an update on negotiations at
2 p.m. on Friday, and as talks broke up after midnight, there was no news of
a deal. So teachers and their supporters will continue with daily
pickets--and prepare for a mass rally on Saturday that they hope will show
the full scope of support for the union. The demonstration will begin at noon
at Union Park, at Ashland and Lake, west of downtown--the site of the very
first of the mega-marches for immigrant rights in 2006 that shook American
politics.
As one teacher said on a West Side picket line Thursday: "We've achieved more
in four days of striking than in 10 months of negotiations. But it ain't over
'til it's over. We're standing strong until we see what's being offered--and
not from the anti-union /Chicago Tribune/, but from our union. It's only by
staying strong, continuing to mobilize support, and exposing the injustices
in our educational system that we will win."
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THE STRIKE continued Thursday with energetic pickets lines in the morning at
schools across the city--and then a demonstration of tens of thousands at a
downtown Hyatt hotel.
Protesters focused on the Hyatt because Penny Pritzker, heiress to the Hyatt
family fortune, sits on Emanuel's appointed school board--and her company has
taken millions in funds from the city's Tax Increment Financing (TIF) system,
basically a slush fund for the mayor to funnel taxpayer dollars to his
developer pals, rather than give them to schools and poor communities, where
the money is desperately needed.
All eyes are on this battle for Chicago's future--here in the city, and
around the country--because it is so clearly about more than teachers' wages
and benefits, as important as they are, but the future of public education.
Speaking on behalf of big business and the political establishment, the
/Chicago Tribune/ published the latest in a series of editorial rants
Thursday arguing that Emanuel's war on the teachers was of historic
importance: "Chicago Teachers Union officials aren't merely fighting City
Hall. They're fighting the inevitability of education reform. They are
denying the arc of history."
But teachers know a little something about history, too--and the high stakes
in this struggle. On every picket line, they talk about the importance of
their fight for themselves, their families and their students, but also for
other educators. Donielle Lawson, who teaches special education at York
Alternative High School, located inside Cook County Jail, told the /Chicago
Tribune/: "Other schools and strikers around the country can realize we
should no longer be bullied."
Lawson said she was looking forward to discussing the lessons of the CTU's
struggle with her students inside Cook County. "They're all too familiar with
bullying and societal injustices, so it would be a very easy conversation
with them," she said. "They're all fighting cases right now."
The city has been cranking up its anti-teacher propaganda machine to full
volume--and they have plenty of allies to call on among those connected to
the Democratic Party political machine.
For example, a group of religious leaders published an open letter in the
/Chicago Sun-Times/ urging teachers to go back to work. "We do not side with
the Mayor, the Chicago Public Schools, or your organization," the letter
claimed. "We side with the 350,000 students who will be placed in harm's way
if you lead Chicago teachers into a strike."
As the /Chicago Reader/'s Ben Joravsky pointed out, "Of course, by writing
this letter, they're very much siding with the mayor. Because if the union
calls off the strike, they lose what little leverage they have to force the
tough and powerful people who run this city to give them even a fraction of
what they want."
This is the new favorite mantra for Emanuel and his supporters on the City
Council: The teachers should go back to the classroom while union leaders
meet with CPS officials to work everything out.
Only none of the 33 City Council alder-sheep who demanded a return to work in
a letter to CTU President Karen Lewis have had anything to say about
negotiations between teachers and the city since they began /10 months ago/.
Their first signs of interest date from the day the teachers went on strike.
That's yet more evidence of the importance of this courageous strike by
Chicago teachers. In the last few days, they've done much more to focus
attention, not only their own cause, but on the struggle to defend public
education in general--for people around Chicago and the country.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
THE SAME goes for the chorus of voices suddently talking about failing
schools in Chicago, and expressing concern about the students who attend
them. But only now--after the teachers have gone on strike.
If these schools are failing, it's not because of the teachers, but because
they've been starved of resources--right under the noses of city officials.
As a direct result of supposed "reform" schemes, schools in poor
neighborhoods have been underfunded until they are deemed "failing." Then,
they are closed or "turned around"--or replaced by a charter or
selective-enrollment school.
Last winter, the Board of Education unanimously voted to close or turn around
17 neighborhood schools rather than devote greater resources to them. Six of
the schools were slated for takeover by the politically connected charter
operator Academy for Urban School Leadership. In other words, they were
slated to make a profit.
The schools left to die on the vine are in poor and disproportionately Black
and Latino neighborhoods, of course. As thousands of protesters chanted at
Wednesday's march at Marshall High School [1] on the West Side, "Hey, Rahm,
we're not fools--we won't let you ruin our schools!" Earlean Green, a member
of the local school council at Marshall, described the twisted priorities of
Emanuel and friends:
>Why are the public schools paying for private schools? When our students go
>to charter schools, and they don't come up to par, the first thing they do
>is put them out. They send them back to the public schools, but they don't
>send the money with them. They keep the money. When they come back to the
>public schools, and they don't come up to par...they put the teachers out.
>
Rahm Emanuel and his friends aren't fighting for the schools our children
deserve. They're fighting for an agenda of privatization, charter schools,
high-stakes testing and busting teachers' unions, where the ultimate aim is
to destroy public education.
Working-class Chicago is showing what side they're on. The latest in a series
of polls, conducted by a generally Republican pollster no less, shows the CTU
with far greater support than Emanuel and CPS--55.5 percent of people said
they generally supported the decision of the CTU to go on strike.
Teachers--not politicians and for-profit schools pushers--are the best
equipped to decide what public education needs to thrive. And in Chicago,
teachers are taking a stand to make that a reality.
They need all the support we can give them--on the picket lines for as long
as the strike continues, at the Saturday mass rally in Union Park, and in the
weeks and months to come.
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[1] http://www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=3602§ion=Article
