Emma Tai is executive director of United Working Families of Chicago. She describes in Jacobin the powerful lesson that she learned from Karen Lewis.
She writes:
At a time of austerity and teacher demonization, Chicago Teachers Union president Karen Lewis — whose death at age sixty-seven was announced today — dared to believe that educators and the working class as a whole could fight back and win...
The 2012 strike put tens of thousands of people in the streets of Chicago. At a time of austerity and widespread demonization of teachers, both in Chicago and around the country, the CTU walked off the job insisting that we deserved, and could actually win, schools and a city that served Chicago’s working class. The strike put black, Latinx, and working-class people, and a workforce that is overwhelmingly women, in the streets by the tens of thousands against a neoliberal mayor, Rahm Emanuel, to say that the schools and city belonged to us. Astonishingly, they won.
That strike changed the political landscape of Chicago and the whole country, touching off a wave of teachers’ strikes that continue to this day and that have even put ideas like a general strike back on the table for the first time in generations.
Up to that point, I had been trained as an organizer to pick winnable fights. I had been to dozens of Board of Education meetings where community members and students waited in line for hours in order to compete for a lottery spot to have two minutes to speak to the school board — a board that, in a travesty of basic democracy, was and still is handpicked by the mayor rather than elected by Chicagoans, and thus has no form of accountability to the average parents, students, and residents of the city they serve. I had watched parents and students, crying, dragged out of those meetings by security guards, their voices going unheard by the board.
But seeing the streets filled with tens of thousands of teachers and supporters in red changed my whole conception of what I thought we could win and transformed what I let myself imagine. We didn’t have to fight for crumbs from the people who ran the city. We, the working class, could run the city ourselves...
Karen Lewis taught all of us a lesson: Not to settle. If you fight, you can win. If you capitulate early, you never win. If your cause is just, don’t give in.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“At a time of austerity and teacher demonization”
Ah, when ed reform was at its political height and cutting funding and bashing public schools became fashionable.
The Lost Decade for public schools- 2010 to 2020. When government, led by anti-public school activists at the federal level, turned on our schools.
Ohio still has anti public school state governance. Ohio public school students are still paying the price for the ideological agenda of “ed reform”. Our schools are completely and utterly neglected in favor of “choice”. The public still support public schools in Ohio! Our government does not.
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“Sara Garcia, Special Assistant, Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development
Sara Garcia is coming to this position from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. While there, she served as a program officer for the North America, Policy and Finance Team. Prior to joining the Gates Foundation, Garcia worked as a senior research and advocacy manager for the Postsecondary Education Team at the Center for American Progress (CAP). Her work at CAP focused on equity issues within higher education finance as well as higher education access and success. Garcia got her start in D.C. as a higher education fellow for Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) on the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee through the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute fellowship program.”
It seems we have a choice. Under Republicans, The Walton Foundation runs US public education. Under Democrats, the Gates Foundation runs US public education.
Neither group do anything for the 90% of students who attend the unfashionable public schools in this country, yet we continue to hire and pay them, to the absolute exclusion of anyone with a pro-public school view.
Ridiculous. What do we have to do to get one or two federal employees who support public school students? It’s NINETY PER CENT of students. Why doesn’t anyone do any actual work on their behalf?
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Here’s a lesson: YOU HAVE TO TAKE IT TO THE STREETS
That’s how we end the federal standardized testing mandate/nightmare/scam.
We need unions to organize people and put them into the streets to end this abuse of our children. Not someday. Now.
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Karen Lewis was able to shut down one of largest school systems in the country in order to draw attention to not only the needs of the CTU, but also the massive closure of fifty public schools mostly in minority neighborhoods. She drew a lot of attention to the strong arm tactics that were being used in Chicago against the city’s public schools with the closure of fifty schools in one day. She inspired a lot of teachers in “right to work” states to stand up for their rights. This movement later became known as the “Red for Ed” movement. She was a fearless defender of human rights, and she gave the skeevy Rahm Emanuel agita. Job well done, Ms Lewis! May your legacy of collectivism and support of the rights of the oppressed live on.
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Great article. Teachers strikes led to actual education reform. I am so thankful for Karen Lewis. Now I know, when we fight — peacefully, like sane people — we win.
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Extremely well-compensated ed reformers demanding that tutors work for free:
“As families nationwide fret about “COVID learning loss” due to months of remote instruction and uncertain class schedules, key educators are advocating an unusual remedy: a national volunteer tutoring force, a sort of digital Peace Corps meets Homework Helpers.
Three former U.S. education secretaries — Margaret Spellings, Arne Duncan, and John King — have endorsed the idea, and a proposal to fund it, alongside other COVID-related remedies, is kicking around Congress.”
They want 18 year olds who are headed to college, where they will rack up enormous debt before they’re 22 and have their first job, to spend their college years working for free.
Tuition at the University of Chicago is $60,500 a year. 18 year olds in the United States need to get paid for work – they have to cover college costs. They can’t afford to work for free at the behest of people who make half a million dollars a year.
Do Duncan, King and Spellings work for free? Why do they expect young people to work for free?
How are we going to get funding to pay tutors when ed reformers are pushing this “don’t pay your workers” model?
The cluelessness of these people is beyond belief. Just a profound misunderstanding or working and middle class people. Every single high school senior in my town is SCRAMBLING to cover college costs. This reality doesn’t even enter into the thought process of three former US Department of Education leaders.
https://www.the74million.org/article/now-recruiting-online-army-of-volunteer-tutors-to-fight-covid-slide/
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“What may set this effort apart most notably is that it’s free. Many well-off families, of course, have the resources to pay for one-on-one tutoring, and previous research has shown that it is effective but expensive. Tutoring is “among the most effective education interventions ever to be subjected to rigorous evaluation,” Kraft and a Brown colleague wrote last month. But their proposal to offer tutoring widely in K-8 Title I schools, which serve predominantly low-income students, estimated that it would cost between $5 and $15 billion annually.”
What sets this effort apart is they don’t pay the tutors, therefore making it “free”.
I know, right? Why didn’t the other models think of that? Eureka! Free labor!
VERY cost effective, when you only pay the managers.
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