Chicago Teachers Union & Supporters March and Occupy Bank of America for Fair Contract | The Chicago Monitor

Chicago Teachers Union & Supporters March and Occupy Bank of America for Fair Contract | The Chicago Monitor:

Chicago Teachers Union & Supporters March and Occupy Bank of America for Fair Contract

 

More than three thousand teachers, staff, parents, students, and their supporters marched in Chicago yesterday for a fair contract for the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU). The protest was in response to the threat of $100 million in cuts by CPS the day before. The protest centered on the Bank of America office on LaSalle Street to highlight the CTU demand for CPS to renegotiate toxic interest swap agreements with the bank. The day before members of the CTU visited the bank and withdrew $726 million of union funds deposited there. While protestors circled the building, sixteen union members sat down in the bank lobby and chanted. All were arrested and charged with misdemeanor trespassing and detained for six hours at CPD District One headquarters. One local media station suggested “The union is trying to broaden its contract argument by going after the banks, not just CPS” but then don’t explain why the CTU is “going after the banks.” At the very end of the Chicago Tribune coverage it said “At one point Thursday, demonstrators staged a sit-in at the Bank of America building to protest financial deals engineered by CPS administrators” without any further explanation. It’s the approach of the local media to suggest that this is just another union going after bankers. So why did CTU do a sit-in at the Bank of America?

In a CTU press release yesterday, the union explained its rational for the march and the sit-in of the Bank of America office.

The march came two days after Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s handpicked Chicago Public Schools (CPS) CEO Forrest Claypool declared war on public school educators by threatening $100 million in classroom cuts—roughly 1,000 layoffs—and just one day after the CTU withdrew nearly $1 million from Bank of America [BOA]. The CTU closed its BOA savings account in protest of that bank and other financial institutions that sold CPS toxic interest rate swaps, and are demanding a payout of at least $228 million—almost the exact same amount as cuts enacted by the Chicago Board of Education to schools and special education.

(Photo by Bill Chambers)

In response to the CTU’s rejection of the CPS proposed contract that would have insured continued instability for the Chicago Public School system and to the CTU’s concrete recommendations to improve CPS financials, CPS immediately ignored the recommendations and called for the elimination of up to 2200 positions – teachers and support staff – as well as cuts in funding used for anti-poverty and special education programs. What were the concrete recommendations President Karen Lewis and other union officers called for? For the mayor to put the surplus TIF funds into the public schools (Tax Increment Financing (TIF) is a special funding tool used by the City of Chicago to promote public and private investment across the city); support the TIF funds bill for public schools in Springfield; and renegotiate the toxic interest swap deals with the banks that are costing the district millions of dollars. So in response to the CTU Chicago Teachers Union & Supporters March and Occupy Bank of America for Fair Contract | The Chicago Monitor: