Education Apartheid

Occupied Chicago Tribune

Dyett High School students are not allowed to enter the front door of their school. Instead, the more than 170 students at the Southside high school enter through the back. From there, they must spend their day pushing through other students in the one open hallway, after half of the building was placed off limits. -- Education Apartheid: The Racism Behind Chicago’s School “Reform”

Reuters

A Wisconsin judge struck down on Friday the state's controversial collective bargaining law pressed by Republican Governor Scott Walker, ruling that it unconstitutionally limits the rights of many public sector union workers. Dane County Circuit Court Judge Juan Colas ruled that the law passed by Wisconsin lawmakers in a contentious session in 2011 violated the union members' free speech, association and equal protection rights in the state and U.S. constitutions. -- "Wisconsin state judge strikes down collective bargaining law"

Alan Singer

The strike, if successful, will benefit teachers, students and parents, not only in Chicago but across the entire country, as well as both unionized workers and non-unionized workers. This strike has the potential to go down in history along with other labor actions, such as those in Homestead, Lawrence, Paterson, Ludlow and Flint that ultimately built the union movement in the United States and transformed life for what used to be known as the working-class but what politicians today euphemistically refer to as the middle class. -- "Chicago Teachers Strike for Us All"

Reuters

Those realities in Chicago include children walking to school through neighborhoods full of gang violence, poverty and parents just trying to survive day-to-day. Lewis champions giving more resources to such schools to lift them up rather than closing them and opening new non-union charter schools. -- "The Firebrand Leading Chicago's Striking Teachers