Strike Update
Well, as my Fearless Readers undoubtedly know, unless you’re
just back from Siberia, the threatened Chicago Teachers’ Union (CTU) strike
became reality as of Monday morning.
It’s the first Chicago teachers’ strike in 25 years, and my first
ever. Thus far, four days into the
strike, I am advisedly hopeful, confident in my union’s leadership and
especially the three dynamic union reps and delegates at my school. Jerry, Eric and Jaime have proven to be
indefatigable leaders – with Jerry and Eric combining participation in
exhausting and frustrating negotiation sessions with inspiring the troops,
while Jaime is point-woman for organizing and managing the strike activities at
our school, doing everything from being the coordinator of our strike team
captains and setting up our pickets at 6:30 am, to supplying us with signs,
union garb, donuts & coffee, and generally keeping us enthusiastic.
I have discovered that, far from being a semi-break from
work, being on strike is at least a full-time job if you’re doing it
right. Here is how my days have
looked like thus far:
- At my school (or another school that needs support) for four hours’ of picketing starting at 6:30 in the morning.
- Usually a break in the middle of the day for a couple of hours. I have mostly spent the time grabbing a quick lunch, uploading my pics from the morning, and editing my on-line photo journal. (See my Chicago Teachers' Strike Photo Journal)
- Some sort of afternoon rally, starting at about 2:30 or 3:30 – from which I generally get home by about 6:00 or so. There have been three downtown, and one at a representative high school in my area (there were three of these rallies on Wednesday). Tomorrow I look forward to a neighborhood rally at Logan Square, with its soaring column commemorating the GAR,* sponsored by the Logan Square Neighborhood Association (LSNA).
- My evenings have been spent uploading the rest of my pics that day, updating my album, and sending emails to friends and family. I try to get to bed by 10:00 or so, with that 5:00 alarm looming; alas, more often than not, I have been too keyed up to get to sleep easily. In consequence, I am often running on caffeine and the contagious enthusiasm that prevails on the line.
- There will also be a mass rally this Saturday downtown. Come join us!
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| Group Photo at my school after the first day's picketing |
ON THE PICKET LINE
Picketing at my school and in the surrounding neighborhood
has given me renewed respect and fondness for my fellow teachers in general,
and a somewhat surprising and entirely gratifying regard for the residents –
including parents – of the neighborhood.
The generous and spontaneous support and, yes, love, that we have
received from these hard-working, often struggling, poor members of the
community has made my eyes misty, and my heart achy. The cars driving by the little intersection at my school
these past week have mostly honked in support, sometimes quite
enthusiastically. You glimpse
Hispanic moms and dads and working stiffs in these cars smiling and waving or
giving us the thumbs-up and your heart swells. We have had local ladies bring us water and home-made
cookies – how great is that?! And
these are people who are sometimes being put out by our walkout, struggling to
find daycare or begging more babysitting time from grandparents, uncles,
aunts. Furthermore, quite a few of
our more diligent and hard-working students are showing up to march alongside
their teachers. Warms the cockles
of my heart…
In contrast, a friend and former colleague who now teaches
at a magnet high school just north of downtown, in a pretty tony neighborhood, reports
that at best half the cars passing his picket show support. Moreover, the fancier the car, the more
likely the occupants will demonstrate outright hostility to the strike. These are folks who almost certainly
send their kids to parochial or private schools and, in any case, can easily
afford daycare if the need arises.
Makes me seriously reconsider my periodic thoughts of applying for a job
at one of these schools; give me my struggling Hispanic and Black parents, and
their kids, any day.
The other, immensely gratifying source of support on the
picket line or when we march up and down busy Fullerton Avenue comes from two groups. Firstly, fellow union workers,
especially those who work for the city.
We get lots of love and often really loud honks (and sirens) from city
buses, Streets and Sanitation vehicles, Fire Department trucks and ambulances,
and, best of all, cops. These
people – especially the police – know that they are next in the Mayor’s and the
corporate puke’s sights.
Everywhere we go, including on the huge rallies downtown, the police
have been unfailingly friendly, courteous and openly supportive. I have been joking that storming the
barricades would be anticlimactic; the cops would smilingly open them up for us
to pass.
Secondly, we get honks and thumbs-up from non-union workers
passing by. This is bit of a
surprise to me, as so often it seems that non-union workers resent us folks
with our fancy contracts and union backing. Perhaps that is a myth perpetuated by the lamestream,
corporatist media. After the way
they’ve been man-handling us in the papers and TV news, it makes sense.
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| Shutting down LaSalle Street, Chicago's financial district |
MASS RALLIES
The rallies have been huge – at least twice, if not three
times the afore-mentioned media’s predictably lowball figures of 10,000 or
so. Being one small part of a sea
of chanting, cheering, singing, hollering, noisemaker-ing, sign and banner
waving teachers and allies all garbed in red is an awe-inspiring, intensely
communal experience. I have often
found myself with a lump in my throat as I surveilled the mass of cheerfully
determined humanity taking over the wide LaSalle street downtown, or absolutely
packing Clark Street in front of the Board of Ed, or encircling City Hall on
all sides. We have twice shut down
most of the West Loop for two or three hours, and I imagine we have given Mayor
He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named a moment or two of pause, and perhaps just a little
worry.
Those of you who have been following my photo journal will
have seen these crowds, and the alternately funny and serious and often clever
signs and banners they carry. As I
wander the crowds taking pictures, I also often single out kids carrying signs
calling for fair treatment of their teacher and for school reform (smaller
class sizes, more enrichment education, etc). I do this not simply because they are cute, but because
their support – the support these children and young people are lending their
teachers – is heartening and humbling and bodes well for the future.
DIRTY TRICKS
We know the Mayor and his corporate buddies are worried,
because their dirty tricks have escalated as the week has worn on. They have mountains of money – mostly
from outside the city or even the state – to spend on media and various shenanigans,
and they are starting to show just how cynical, hypocritical and mendacious
they really are. Also, scared.
Some examples the Mayor's chicanery:
- Disinformation campaign in the media. Don’t accept at face value the periodic reports that the negotiations are all but over, that teachers will be back at school tomorrow, etc. There is generally no truth to such reporting and it mostly serves as an opening for further stories that make the Union and teachers look bad when they don’t come true. Other obvious examples are the way they twist everything the union leadership does or says – like accusing CTU President Karen Lewis of ’walking out of’ talks when she was actually just taking a half hour off to address the rallying teachers downtown. This is ironic, since she has been at almost every negotiating sessions these past many months, while the Mayor and the CEO of CPS, Jean-Claude Brizard, have attended exactly none. Furthermore, when she responded to a reporter’s pointed question about her ‘walk out’ that the idea was “just silly” the Board pukes turned that comment into ‘Lewis Calls Contract Negotiations “Silly”.’
- Greedy Bastard Teachers. The media loves to reduce our negotiating points down to our supposedly outrageous salary raise demands. You will hear and read that we are demanding, in the middle of a recession, a huge raise of 16%, 20%, 25%. In fact, like all negotiators worth their salt, our initial proposals were rather high; that’s what you do – you start with a somewhat exaggerated position, fully expecting to negotiate and compromise downwards. So, while the media is still quoting ridiculous figures, the negotiations on salary have for the moment been settled and the negotiations have moved on to other issues like teacher evaluations, re-hiring priorities, and school closures. The latest figure I got from one of my union reps, who has been in most of the important negotiating sessions, is the following four-year plan: 3%-2%-2%-2%. Feel free to check my math (not my strongest suit), but I’m pretty sure that amounts to 9% over four years. Considering that the Mayor unilaterally revoked the last 4% contractual salary increase we were due in our last contract, plus the fact that he is increasing the school day and lengthening the school year, this is an eminently reasonable, in fact modest salary raise.
- Ridiculous rumors spread – especially on talk radio. There was one call-in show where the host opened up with the accusation that teachers were taking advantage of their new ‘free time’ to go on drunken pub crawls, laughing and joking about screwing CPS and the parents and students. Another involved supposed shopping sprees – as if teachers on strike and not receiving pay for the duration of the walkout would go off plunking hundreds of dollars on shoes and the like.
- The union leadership and the more active members are being ‘investigated’ in an effort to dig up dirt from their pasts to use against them. Family and friends are being asked probing questions by mysterious, official sounding people. That is sheer intimidation and an old trick.
- People with union garb are showing up at picket lines with bullhorns, spreading misinformation to confuse teachers and, presumably, trick them into missing the next day’s events or even going back to work prematurely.
- Remember those snotty young Repubs led by James O’Keefe, who produced those ‘gotcha’ videos – in reality heavily edited misrepresentations of what unsuspecting people said – that brought down ACORN and other liberal community groups?** Well, they’re apparently lurking in the shadows here. There are reports of odd phone calls to CTU headquarters from so-called ‘reporters,’ and mysterious young videographers posing as legitimate media asking pointed questions of rank-and-file members at strike events. So we can expect some bilge from these creeps to show up on your televisions some time soon.
I and my fellow teachers truly do want to get back to
work. Nobody in their right mind
would do this often frustrating, exhausting, and increasingly micro-managed job
unless they loved teaching and cherished the young people in their charge. But we will not end the walkout until
the powers-that-be acknowledge our legitimate grievances and treat us with
dignity and respect.
ONE BIG UNION!
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*The Grand Army of the Republic, founded by Illinois
politician and former Union General John Logan, was the veteran’s organization
for Union Veterans of the Civil War.
**In a much less publicized follow-up to the devastating
ACORN videos, the California Attorney General granted O’Keefe and his partner
in dirty tricks, Hannah Giles (the ‘prostitute’), immunity in exchange for the
raw tapes of the ‘interviews.’ The
AG found that the videos actually aired were heavily edited misrepresentations;
a subsequent US Government Accountability Office report cleared ACORN and its
workers of any criminal activities or misuse of government funds. Too late for ACORN, which was
effectively destroyed by the controversy.
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