Chicago paleta cart. Photo. Adam Heenan
This week’s Pension Vocabulary by John Dillon: Grasping at Straws. Nothing that Illinois’ political leaders have proposed will solve the pension issue. It’s time to start looking at a different tax structure.
AFT President Randi Weingarten will be joining Secretary of Education Arne Duncan on a bus tour of West Virginia next week. That all. I just thought you should know.
Some time today we will know if Chicago schools will be open tomorrow. The goal was always to preserve and strengthen collective bargaining for Chicago teachers and to get a good contract. The goal was not to strike. Strikes can be part of the bargaining process when a fair agreement can’t be achieved by other means. What the CTU has already done is created an excitement about what our unions can be. For that they are owed a great debt. Good luck today.
The entire country is now watching.
Life in Rahm’s Chicago: The death toll rises.
The Viking’s Chris Kluwe’s great letter gets the attention of the NY Times. They don’t actually reprint it, of course.
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The Chicago Teachers Union has been front and center in the struggle to defend a strong and socially just system of public education for all students. On September 10, 2012, thousands of Chicago teachers and their supports are planning to walk the picket lines. This strike is not just a stand against the mayor and his appointed administration, this is a struggle against the destructive corporate reforms being forced upon schools, teachers, and students across the country.Please join in this effort with a show of solidarity for the Chicago teachers. We are asking teachers and other supporters across the nation to wear red on Monday, September 10, 2012.
Encourage your colleagues and friends to do the same. Teachers, organize a union meeting in your school to discuss how you and your colleagues can work locally to both support the Chicago teachers and defend public education in your city. This is not just a struggle for Chicago public schools, this is a defense of all public schools.
“Their fight is our fight.”
Fred Klonsky 
I read a quote once about Germany prior to WWII. “They came for the intellectual, but I didn’t care. I wasn’t an intellectual. Then they came for the factory workers, but I didn’t work in a factory. Then they came for the farmers but I didn’t farm. Then I woke up one day and I was the only one left. Then they came for me.” Remember people, what they do to some, they will eventually do to all. Support the CTU. We all have a dog in this hunt!
The actual quote by the German theologian Martin Niemöller:
First they came for the communists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist.
Then they came for the socialists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.
Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak for me.
source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came…
When/If the strike commences, is there a place for donations to support the strikers? I did not see one on CTU website.
https://afl.salsalabs.com/o/4013/c/468/p/salsa/donation/common/public/?donate_page_KEY=7204