LABOR BEAT: Rally for education justice... '... the working class needed to prepare for the long haul...' also, the new IVAW art video...
"Jump Your Butt In! Rally for Education Justice" is the latest Labor Beat video. Now that we know we've got Rahm 2.0 back at City Hall, we can take a look at some of the tools we we have to work with, going into a new CTU contract. "Jump Your Butt In!" will be aired on CAN TV (CAN TV Channel 19, Chicago, Thursday, April 23, 9:30 pm, Friday, April 24, 4:30 pm, Thursday, April 30, 9:30 pm, Friday, May 1, 4:30 pm.
CTU VP Jesse Sharkey. "The basis of our power is our union power." Photo: Labor BeatWhat's next? Some clues can be found in the public schools coalition rally that took place on March 26, 2015, which is the center o f this video. The rally was on the day the Chicago Teachers Union began its new contract talks with CPS, and it was just 12 days before the historic runoff election between mayor Emanuel and the CTU-endorsed underdog Chuy Garcia. Although the specific makeup of the next city government was then not known, speakers focused on what would still be certain, what would remain constant between now and the months following April 7, election day.
A common theme in all their messages was that the working class needed to prepare for the long haul. Jitu Brown (Kenwood-Oakland Community Organization) put it this way, and gave us our title: "If you just had your foot in the river of struggle, you better jump your butt in. If you just dipped it in a little bit... 'but it's too cold!' Jump you butt in the water and swim with us."
The rally at the Thompson Center then made a short march over to City Hall, where CTU Vice President Jesse Sharkey spoke. He stood before the door of the seat of city government and reminded us that the fight for public education will be arduous. "It's the beginning step of what will be a long journey...We know that the fight for justice in our schools is a long struggle...This might not be a journey that is over today, and frankly, when we move this mayor out of office [cheers], it might not be over then. I'm hopeful about political change, but I'm also a realistic person...the basis of our power is our union power, and the basis of our movement in the halls of power has to do with the basis of our movement in the streets."
Ed Hershey, a teacher at Lindblom Math & Science Academy and CTU-endorsed candidate for 25th Ward Alderman in the recent election, talked about political strategies following the election: "We're going to need to fight for [funding for public education] whomever gets elected for mayor...We know we'll have to fight Rahm. But Chuy has said he accepts the framework of politics as it's done. He accepts that we're not going to charge the corporations, we're not going to make them support the society that they make money off of."
Hershey said that the CTU should stop supporting and funding the Democratic Party. "The CTU is powerful enough. We've been active in the political arena, we should do it in our own name. I think Karen Lewis [considered] running is a start. I ran for alderman. Sue Garza, Tim Meegan, Tara Stamps, Zerlina Smith, I think those are the kind of people we need to be running. We need to run our own people on our own platform. Working people need our own organization. The Democrats are...an organization of the wealthy interests and they want to keep a hold over it. I think our union strategy keeps us within that framework."
Tawanna Simpson, elected member of the Detroit Public Schools Board, was one of the invited out-of-town speakers. She described the new corporate dictatorship imposed upon her city, and how it impacted the public schools. "I'm a school board member in exile. In Michigan we have a law, PA 436, which allows our governor to appoint an emergency manager to serve as a 'reformer' who's taken away our public schools...Where emergency managers are, it's where brown and black students are." She then reminded the audience that current Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett got her school-closing chops in Detroit. [Just weeks after the interview, we learned that Byrd-Bennett was under investigation by the FBI for possibly engineering a corrupt no-bid contract.] Video can also be viewed a: http://youtu.be/ptXdW76KNlE
CTU VP Jesse Sharkey. "The basis of our power is our union power." Photo: Labor Beat
Second Segment:
IVAW Spring Exhibition:
Celebrate People's History
Labor Beat visited the Spring Exhibition of posters presented by Iraq Veterans Against the War, titled "Celebrate People's History". It opened on March 20, 2015 (runs thru April 30) at Art In These Times, 2040 N. Milwaukee Ave., Chicago. We followed Aaron Hughes and Ryan Griffis as they made final adjustments to exhibit pieces, and as people began arriving for the opening. Aaron and Ryan told us about their work and about the ideas driving the portfolio project on the occasion of the tenth year anniversary of IVAW.
Aaron Hughes, IVAW organizer for many years, said: "This poster project is about people's history. It's not about elite's history, or the stories we're getting in the media about all these 'elite' soldiers...I think that presents a very distorted perspective of these occupations...
"As American Sniper and the special forces kind of narrative of the current wars overrides a lot of the anti-war work that's happened, I think there's a lot of work to be done in the cultural sphere to shift that narrative and put it back on all the service members that stood up and refused to fight, that spoke out against these wars."
According to the Art In These Times announcement, the exhibit featured "contributions from IVAW members, Justseeds Artists' Cooperative members, along with allied veterans, artists and writers." Can also be viewed at: http://youtu.be/D-FthDLMekA
Getting the exhibit ready. Photo: Labor Beat
Produced by Labor Beat. Labor Beat is a CAN TV Community Partner. Labor Beat is a non-profit 501(c)(3) member of IBEW 1220. Views are those of the producer Labor Beat. For info: mail@laborbeat.org , www.laborbeat.org . 312-226-3330. For other Labor Beat videos, visit YouTube and search "Labor Beat".
Labor Beat's facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/LABOR-BEAT/167503422257
