Chicago's Hunger Strike for Dyett High Passes Day 22
By Michelle Gunderson.
We sit under the trees at Dyett High School yet again on Sunday night. The Dyett 12 hunger strikers sit in a tight circle while a crowd of over a hundred of Chicago’s activists listen in. I know almost every face in this crowd. They are people who understand struggle and know what the word solidarity truly means.
It is day 22 of a hunger strike to re-open Dyett High School as an open enrollment school that is community supported and community sustained.
The activists are here to see what the hunger strikers are asking and to have their guidance in how to support them.
Last Thursday Rahm Emanuel, the mayor of Chicago, held a press conference to announce that a compromise had been made. Dyett High School would open as an open enrollment high school with an arts focus and a technology component. To many people this seemed as if the struggle was over. No one wants anyone hurt in this process, and many were hoping that the hunger strike had come to a victorious conclusion.
This was a decision, though, that was made without the hunger strikers or anyone affiliated with the Coalition for the Revitalization of Dyett High School.
As Dr. Robert Jones, one of the hunger strikers stated, “A group of folk I had never seen before were standing up at the Chicago Public Schools office telling us what our children’s school would be like.”
To be fair, no one has ever had a school closing reversed in Chicago. In addition, the hunger strikers were able to ward off the opening of a charter school or a contract school. These are tremendous wins.
But as Jitu Brown, one of the hunger strikers said, “Don’t give us crumbs and tell us it’s a cake.”
The hunger strikers make their decisions collectively, and they are continuing the hunger strike based on Chicago's Hunger Strike for Dyett High Passes Day 22 - Living in Dialogue: