Urgent Action Alert: Chicago Hunger Strike

OLB & MTEA #StandForDyett
Members of the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association and the Overpass Light Brigade show their solidarity! Photo Credit: Joe Brusky

Rethinking Schools expresses solidarity with the 12 parents, grandparents, educators, and their supporters who are in the second week of a hunger strike for the Dyett High School of Global Leadership and Green Technology, an open enrollment public high school in Chicago’s historic African American Bronzeville neighborhood.

Our friends and colleagues with Chicago’s Teachers for Social Justice summarize the background of this struggle:
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“In 2012 CPS voted to phase out Dyett after years of disinvestment and sabotage. It closed this last spring despite years of protest, organizing, arrests, and pleas to the mayor-appointed Board of Education. Dyett was the LAST open enrollment public high school in Bronzeville, where gentrification is intense and charters proliferate. The plan for a revitalized Dyett (an academically rigorous, culturally relevant, community-grounded, critical, inquiry-based, social justice school focused on preparing young people to be community and global leaders and stewards of the earth) was developed through an intensive four-year process in collaboration with a coalition of community partners

“The fight for Dyett is the focal point of the racial justice, anti-neoliberal struggle to defend and transform public education in Chicago. It pits African American parents, students, teachers, and community residents and their Chicago Teachers Union and city-wide allies against Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his political and corporate allies. This is a critical battle. Twelve people are risking their health to fight for the right of African American children to have a high quality public education in 2015.”

Visit the Teachers for Social Justice website for updates and images.

Express your solidarity and help give this struggle as much visibility as possible. Teachers for Social Justice recommends:
Please use your web pages, organizational ties, media connections, and
creativity to:
    • Post solidarity messages to the hunger strikers on Facebook: Dyett High School of Global Leadership and Green Technology
    • Tweet about the hunger strike using #fightfordyett #wearedyett
    • Advocate for media coverage, op-eds, send to bloggers for posting, etc.
    • Use your webpages and education contacts, coalitions to organize solidarity actions/messages, etc.
    • Call/fax/send letters to:
Alderman Will Burns
435 East 35th Street
Chicago, IL 60616
Office: (773) 536-8103
Fax: (773) 536-7296
Mayor Rahm Emanuel
121 N LaSalle Street
Chicago City Hall 4th Floor
Chicago, IL 60602
Office: 312.744.5000
Seattle #StandForDyett
Jesse Hagopian (editor) with other educators & community members from Seattle showing their support.