A future for teachers unions, but only with a fight
“Things are the way they are” in urban schools, Michelle Rhee professes in Waiting for Superman, because “it all becomes about the adults.”
While teachers unions generally scoff at this sort of sloganeering, most lack any effective strategy of resistance to the “student”-focused, union-busting, scorched-earth privatization pushed by Rhee and her billionaire colleagues. Chicago’s teachers union, the third largest in the country, is a light forward. On Friday, teachers surpassed the 75% quota necessary to authorize a strike, which would take place come the fall if the union decides to move forward with it. More impressive than this figure is the work that made it possible.
Under the Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators (CORE), the CTU boasts an organizing model that cracks into Chicago’s teaching workforce and neighborhoods as doggedly as the city’s Democratic machine. While the city shutters, charterizes, segregates, gentrifies, intimidates, and fires, the union has created a member organizing department where one didn’t exist