Stand Against Rahm! The Chicago Teachers' Strike Is the Next Chapter in the Fight Against Plutocracy
http://www.alternet.org/education/stand-against-rahm-chicago-teachers-strike-next-chapter-fight-against-plutocracy
CHICAGO I was awoken by honking car horns yesterday morning, and couldnt have been happier for the fact. Chicagos public schoolteachers are on strike against the city government and Mayor Rahm Emanuel. And while no one likes the budget crisis that forms the strikes fiscal context, nor the fact that 350,000 students arent at school, much of Chicago is finding joy in the municipal impasse which is why, anywhere within earshot of the schools where the Chicago Teachers Unions 25,500 members are picketing in front of their workplaces, solidarity car horns are blasting away.
Since Rahm Emanuels election in the spring of 2011, Chicagos teachers have been asked to eat shit by a mayor obsessed with displaying to the universe his toughness toughness with the working-class people that make the city tick; toughness with the protesters standing up to say no; but never, ever toughness with the vested interests, including anti-union charter school advocates, who poured $12 million into his coffers to elect him mayor (his closet competitor raised $2.5 million). The roots of the strike began when Emanuel announced his signature education initiative: extending Chicagos school day. Overwhelmingly, Chicagos teachers support lengthening the day, which is the shortest of any major district in the country. Just not the way Rahm wanted to ram it down their throats: 20 percent more work; 2 percent more pay.
He had already canceled a previously negotiated 4 percent cost-of-living raise, and accused teachers who balked of not caring about their students. The teachers response to this abuse is something all of us should be paying attention to. If Chapter 1 of the American peoples modern grass-roots fight against the plutocracy was the demonstrations at the Wisconsin State Capitol in the spring of 2011, and Chapter 2 was the Occupy encampments of that summer, the Chicago Teachers Unions stand against Emanuel should go down as Chapter 3. Its been inspiration to anyone frustrated that people have forgotten how good it feels to stand up to bullies and how effective it can be.
The CTU lost the first skirmish last year when Emanuel trundled down to the state capitol in Springfield to wire a new statute sure to forestall accountability for his draconian plan: alone among Illinois municipal workers, teachers would need a 75 percent vote among their membership to authorize a strike. Then in June of this year, after a rally that overflowed a 3,929-capacity theater with red CTU T-shirts, almost 90 percent of members voted through that authorization, should their leaders choose to call a strike. Counting spoiled ballots, the number of teachers voting against the authorization amounted to little more than a handful.