On February 4, thousands of teachers, students, parents and supporters gathered and took the streets in downtown Chicago to fight against regressive budget cuts and mass layoffs and to demand a fair contract for Chicago’s teachers.
Protesters marched through major streets and intersections in the heart of the city during rush hour, chanting “Hey hey, ho ho; Rahm Emanuel’s got to go!” and “They say cut back, we say fight back!”
The Chicago Teachers Union called the protest days after rejecting a proposed contract during their recent rounds of negotiation with the district. Emmanuel’s administration reacted swiftly and brazenly, with Chicago Public Schools CEO Forrest Claypool announcing that $100 million in retaliatory cuts to education along with the layoffs of 1,000 educators and a commitment to cease paying into the pensions of teachers who remained.
In response, the people came downtown to fight back. At 4:30pm a picket line was established outside Bank of America while CTU members occupied the bank building and demanded a meeting to negotiate the return of tens of millions of dollars in profit that the bank has accrued from selling “toxic swaps” to Chicago Public Schools.
In total, more than $500 million has been stolen from CPS by big banks in “interest rate swap” deals which were facilitated by the mayor and his cronies. This amount is far larger than the “budget shortfall” which City Hall is claiming justifies their slashing of education funding. In the end 16 people were arrested inside the bank, none of them, we are sad to report, bankers or executives.
The picket line continued to swell until after 5pm when the people took to the streets, marching for hours in a spirited demonstration that had many students chanting right alongside their teachers. Maritza Betancourt, a junior at Richard T. Crane Medical Preparatory High School said that she was marching “to support our teachers, because education is a right, and we want a better future for ourselves”.
The presence of so many students was a clear contradiction to the right-wing narrative, often peddled by unscrupulous people, that the teachers somehow want to enrich themselves at the expense of their students. The day showed that working and oppressed people in the city know that the best way to support students and education is by supporting teachers. Indeed, a recent poll by the Chicago Tribune found that “three times as many Chicagoans side with the teachers union as with Mayor Rahm Emanuel on how to improve public schools.”
By the day’s actions, a stark message was sent to the city’s administration that the people of Chicago will no longer allow Emmanuel’s regime to continue to place the profits of his banker friends above the needs of Chicago’s children. Otherwise it will only prompt a further fight back from teachers, students, and the entire city.
