Today: Join hunger strike for community-based public schools #FightForDyett
Today is my first hunger strike— my first fast. I have the opportunity today to learn from the example of Jesus Christ, Ghandi and Cesar Chavez. I stand in solidarity with 12 parents and community member who are on hunger strike for community-based public schools. I challenge you to join the fast today August 25, 2015.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, popularly known as Mahatma Gandhi or The Father of the Nation in India, undertook 17 fasts during India’s freedom movement. His longest fasts lasted 21 days. Fasting was a weapon used by Gandhi as part of his philosophy of Ahimsa or Non Violence. (Via Wikipedia)
Jesus fasted for forty days and nights in the Judaean Desert. That long fast of Jesus strengthened Him to endure.
In February to March of 1968, Cesar Chavez started his first hunger strike— it lasted for 25 days in February and March to stop violence against farmworker strikers. During that strike Martin Luther King Jr. sent him the follow telegram.
In the telegram, MLK stated,
Our separate struggles are really one. A struggle for freedom, for dignity, and for humanity.
Years later, Cesar Chavez reflected,
During my first fast in 1968, Dr. King reminded me that our struggle was his struggle too. He sent me a telegram which said “Our separate struggles are really one. A struggle for freedom, for dignity, and for humanity.” I was profoundly moved that someone facing such a tremendous struggle himself would take the time to worry about a struggle taking place on the other side of the continent. Just as Dr. King was a disciple of Ghandi and Christ, we must now be Dr. King’s disciples.
On August 17, 2015, in this tradition of activism for freedom, for dignity, and for humanity, 12 parents from Bronzeville and allies from communities across Chicago launched a hunger strike on in front of Dyett High School to protest the continuing and persistent injustice suffered by communities of color at the hands of CPS and the appointed Board of Education.
We are willing to starve ourselves to bring justice to our children and our community!Jeanette Taylor-Ramann
In past I have written about Rahm’s reign of “educational reform” terror in the post Bloomberg and Rahmbo: Sleight of Hand Artists. The reality of Rahm sponsored school closures in School Closure and Race Infographic: Something fishy going on in Chicago? and Mouth agape: What the data tell us about school closure in Chicago.
Today I want to update you on the Dyett situation. I will begin by taking excerpts are from the document Dyett High School & The 3D’s Of Chicago School Reform: Destabilization Disinvestment Disenfranchisement written by Rhoda Rae Gutierrez and Pauline Lipman, University of Illinois at Chicago, Collaborative for Equity and Justice in Education.
Walter H. Dyett High School sits in leafy Washington Park on Chicago’s south side African AmericanToday: Join hunger strike for community-based public schools #FightForDyett | Cloaking Inequity: