(Part One, Part Two below)
Teachers in Chicago are heading back to school Friday, marking the end of a historic eleven-day strike that had shut down the nation’s third-largest school district. After weeks of tense negotiations, the city agreed to reduce class sizes, increase salaries by 16 percent over the next 5 years and bring on hundreds more social workers, nurses and librarians. The union demanded that teachers be able to make up the full eleven days of school before agreeing to return to work and eventually settled with the city on five days. Earlier this week, 7,500 public school workers with the Service Employees International Union, who had been striking also settled with the city earlier. I joined Democracy Now alongside Stacy Davis Gates, the Executive Vice President of the Chicago Teacher Union.
Subject: International Politics
Novara Media: The Organised Left is Back!
At The World Transformed in September I sat down with James Butler to compare the current situation of left movements in the US and the UK and the links between organised labour and party politics both here and in the US.
TWT.FM: Sarah Jaffe and Ajay Singh Chaudhary on patronising the working class
I sat down, along with comrade Ajay Chaudhary, with the good folks at TWT.FM at The World Transformed conference, and we talked about how far too many people think that The Workers are always some Other over there, and often project their worst traits onto them.