city could talk about.
Where was the atmosphere of hatred for teachers that the free marketers had worked so hard to encourage over the lasthalf-decade or so? Where were the enraged Chicagoans contemptuous of the cushy jobs bankrolled by the hard-earned money sucked out of their checks every other week, publicly confronting teachers on the picket line, or at least flipping them the bird from their cars as they drove by? They were nowhere to be found.
There was a generalized sense throughout the city, whether on picket lines or public transit or on the street, that this group of workers was right to go on strike; that struggle and militant action were justified and to be supported.
The city felt like it belonged to the teachers.
The effects of cadre development within the union soon became clear during the strike: Teachers began organizing actions themselves, largely independent of the CTU leadership.
Kim Walls, a science teacher who had never been active in the union before becoming involved in CORE, attended the union’s summer organizing program. It was there that she first heard about TIF and the program’s effects on public schools. She was appalled at what appeared to be deliberate starvation of the city’s public schools of resources in favor of redistributing wealth upward to some of the city’s richest corporations.
On September 14, the union and the Grassroots Collaborative coalition planned a rally against TIF downtown, focusing on billionaire hotel heiress Penny Pritzker, appointed by President Obama to Secretary of Commerce in 2013 and a former appointed member of the Board of Education. Her company,Hyatt Hotels, had received $5.2 million in TIF funds to build a new hotel in Hyde Park, where Walls lives.
Walls received a call from union staffer Matthew Luskin days prior to the action. “I said, ‘Matthew, I’m not going downtown. There’s a Hyatt right here.’ ” She told Luskin she would organize her own protest against Hyatt in Hyde Park. “He just said, ‘Go for it.’ ”
Walls called Hyde Park–area teachers and told them to “call their people” to come out to the action. When the day came, 300 teachers and supporters marched on the hotel—with little to no support needed from union staff.
Teachers throughout the city organized similar actions without the aid of union staffers. No union staffers planned the small marches on the mayor’s house during the strike; teachers planned those themselves. After thirty-three of the fifty city council members (all but one of whom were Democrats) signed a letter to Karen Lewis at the strike’s beginning, begging the union not to strike, rank-and-file teachers, livid at their aldermen for publicly chastising them and siding with the mayor, independently organized protests in their neighborhoods against them. All were Democrats and several self-identified as progressives, but the teachers didn’t care—they had been insulted and were unafraid to organize their own actions to call out those aldermen publicly through street actions. 14
Mayor Emanuel, the Board of Education, and corporate reform groups like Stand for Children and Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) had worked to try to turn Chicagoans against the teachers union long before the strike began. DFER funded a number of radio ads in the months before the strike, targeting African American and Latino neighborhoods in particular, attempting to preemptively turn parents against the strike. And nationally, of course, the mainstream media had been pushing against teachers unions for years.
But during the strike, polls showed that the public—and parents of color in particular—supported the teachers union by overwhelming numbers. The first poll released showed that among registered voters in Chicago, 47 percent supported the strike while 39 percent did not. By the fourth day, another poll showed similar numbers but noted that 63 percent of African Americans and 65 percent of
Where was the atmosphere of hatred for teachers that the free marketers had worked so hard to encourage over the lasthalf-decade or so? Where were the enraged Chicagoans contemptuous of the cushy jobs bankrolled by the hard-earned money sucked out of their checks every other week, publicly confronting teachers on the picket line, or at least flipping them the bird from their cars as they drove by? They were nowhere to be found.
There was a generalized sense throughout the city, whether on picket lines or public transit or on the street, that this group of workers was right to go on strike; that struggle and militant action were justified and to be supported.
The city felt like it belonged to the teachers.
The effects of cadre development within the union soon became clear during the strike: Teachers began organizing actions themselves, largely independent of the CTU leadership.
Kim Walls, a science teacher who had never been active in the union before becoming involved in CORE, attended the union’s summer organizing program. It was there that she first heard about TIF and the program’s effects on public schools. She was appalled at what appeared to be deliberate starvation of the city’s public schools of resources in favor of redistributing wealth upward to some of the city’s richest corporations.
On September 14, the union and the Grassroots Collaborative coalition planned a rally against TIF downtown, focusing on billionaire hotel heiress Penny Pritzker, appointed by President Obama to Secretary of Commerce in 2013 and a former appointed member of the Board of Education. Her company,Hyatt Hotels, had received $5.2 million in TIF funds to build a new hotel in Hyde Park, where Walls lives.
Walls received a call from union staffer Matthew Luskin days prior to the action. “I said, ‘Matthew, I’m not going downtown. There’s a Hyatt right here.’ ” She told Luskin she would organize her own protest against Hyatt in Hyde Park. “He just said, ‘Go for it.’ ”
Walls called Hyde Park–area teachers and told them to “call their people” to come out to the action. When the day came, 300 teachers and supporters marched on the hotel—with little to no support needed from union staff.
Teachers throughout the city organized similar actions without the aid of union staffers. No union staffers planned the small marches on the mayor’s house during the strike; teachers planned those themselves. After thirty-three of the fifty city council members (all but one of whom were Democrats) signed a letter to Karen Lewis at the strike’s beginning, begging the union not to strike, rank-and-file teachers, livid at their aldermen for publicly chastising them and siding with the mayor, independently organized protests in their neighborhoods against them. All were Democrats and several self-identified as progressives, but the teachers didn’t care—they had been insulted and were unafraid to organize their own actions to call out those aldermen publicly through street actions. 14
Mayor Emanuel, the Board of Education, and corporate reform groups like Stand for Children and Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) had worked to try to turn Chicagoans against the teachers union long before the strike began. DFER funded a number of radio ads in the months before the strike, targeting African American and Latino neighborhoods in particular, attempting to preemptively turn parents against the strike. And nationally, of course, the mainstream media had been pushing against teachers unions for years.
But during the strike, polls showed that the public—and parents of color in particular—supported the teachers union by overwhelming numbers. The first poll released showed that among registered voters in Chicago, 47 percent supported the strike while 39 percent did not. By the fourth day, another poll showed similar numbers but noted that 63 percent of African Americans and 65 percent of
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