Day 11: Civics Class Held at City Hall

“…Students Are Urged to Go to Class on Schedule”
– City Colleges of Chicago web site

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[Class comes to the Mayor's Office 10/28/04]

“You have the right to put a paper crown on your head and pretend you’re the ruler of '__________' (your make-believe kingdom here).”
– BURGER KING BILL of RIGHTS



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[outside City Hall 10/28/04]


It’s taken me a while to clear my ears of yesterday’s shrill echoes downtown. By 11am at least a few hundred teachers, students, and others started a raucous picket on LaSalle Street from end to end of the block. The line became a stop-start slouch but was kept going by intensely zealous strikers zipping up and down the sidewalk to inflict an almost frantic urgency on those marching in the Loop’s caverns.

The war continued, via flyers, displays, screeching PAs, window-length posterboard, mailouts, broadsides, picket-folk-song rhymes straining credulity like a loud suit, and screaming-bold-all-caps-typefaced slogans, chants to choke an Animal Farm horse, clip-art woodprint-faux fists and solidarity vanguards, cheap newsprint inking fingerprints, wall-of-text exhortations issued from machines badly in need of toner.

An especially rowdy yet sincerely plaintive group of maybe 50 students stood directly outside the Mayor’s door on the fifth floor of City Hall and pounded on marble from behind a plush cordon and nervous guard. I hear they stayed through late afternoon despite threats of arrest, and ABC7 News at 5pm had video of a busy street picket and students upstairs. Some students seemed maybe too ready for an arrest or confrontation, and one from Truman asked me to calm them down, but in the end everyone was gone by 4:30.

Despite the Channel 7 report of possible impending negotiations and Mayoral intercession, skepticism about yesterday seems confirmed by the silence at this morning’s picket through tonight’s fitful sleep, a suspicion that no matter what happened downtown, we’re bound to stay on strike longer, still, with rumors of cancelled summer classes and adjunct firings over non-attendance circulating, bad press hanging from every tree.

The Union reports today that negotiations won’t resume until Monday at 10am, but CCCTU President Perry Buckley says: "Our negotiating team is prepared to meet at any time before Monday if the Board has a substantially improved offer. If the Board has such an offer, we have told them to give it to us in writing beforehand so we can decide whether it is worthwhile to meet earlier" (Union release).

Hold on to Halloween and wait for Day of the Dead. Will negotiators pack Jack-o-Lanterns or Mexican candy skulls?

A few students have asked me now what the Union’s PR strategy is, and I am not exactly tired but more like defeated at having also asked more than once to no effect. Short answer: I don’t think there is a strategy much farther than what comes out of the bullhorn bell.

And as I left the downtown picket, sputtering static and appeals to solidarity coated a film of hope over hard gray angles, concrete absorbing all commotion in roaring, lurching distortion pushing people along into the subway.

“You have the right to laugh until soda explodes from your nose. You have the right to stand up and fight for what you believe in. You have the right to do nothing.”

Posted by Benjamin at October 29, 2004 10:23 PM
Comments

I was informed today by National Louis University that my place in the master's program will not be available to me unless I receive my current fall semester grades by the start of NLU's spring semester - mid-january. big time drag for me and my life, but clearly nothing compared to what others are suffering. anyhow, i then called truman college to see what they are saying to students. i was told that the college is planning to not have a summer session in order to accomodate "catching up" before the fall 2005 semester. administration is apparently ready to call the summer off. seems to me this likely means that the union has lost leverage until the strike goes on long enough to put the timely beginning of the fall 2005 schedule in jeopardy. do the math, and you can figure out when union leverage will be re-generated. that is unless a contract gets negotiated by monday. in solidarity, erica.

Posted by: erica thompson at November 4, 2004 09:13 PM

Thank you Mr. Ortiz, for the valuable updates.
I have some important news for students:
Yesterday, I received a post card from Truman College in what I call an "intimidation tactic" by the administration. They printed my class schedule on the back part of it as well; the post card read as follows:

YOUR CLASS SCHEDULE IS LISTED BELOW
PLEASE ATTEND CLASSES THAT ARE MEETING
(FOR CLASSES THAT ARE MEETING,
NO MAKEUP SESSIONS HAVE BEEN SCHEDULED)

MATH-0121-PQRY Will NOT Meet (full time class)
SPANISH-0103-WAB Will Meet (part time class)
POL SCI-0201-WD Will Meet (part time class)

STUDENTS, READ THE CARD CLEARLY, IT DOES NOT SAY TAHT THEY WILL NOT SCHEDULE MAKE UP SESSIONS, IT ONLY SAYS THAT NO MAKE UP SESSIONS HAVE BEEN SCHEDULED UP UNTIL NOW -
WHAT THEY WANT IS FOR YOU TO BE INTIMIDATED AND TO THINK YOU WILL FAIL YOUR CLASSES, WHILE IN TURN, THEY ARE ONLY TRYING TO MAKE YOU CROSS THE PICKET LINE.
SUPPORT YOUR TEACHERS BY NOT GOING TO YOUR CLASSES.

They provided a number for me to call on the bottom of the post-card and when I called regarding the message, my call was treated as if they did not know what I was talking about.
This is the reason I am saying that it is an itimidation tactic. Please ignore them, support your teachers. Don't cross the picket line.

Respect,
Carlos

Posted by: Carlos at November 3, 2004 08:06 AM

i like r. harless' comments, but feel the need to add one thing: the union battle MUST focus on the need to trim the fat from administration in order to BENEFIT THE STUDENT POPULATION. the teachers are fighting for a quality education for inner city students - a group that the city college administration cares nothing about, assumes in disempowered, and intends to keep that way. erica

Posted by: erica at November 2, 2004 11:01 AM

Erica, you put it better than I could have.

I'm tired of picketing and hearing that the more this goes on the better position teachers are in. I don't believe in just letting things go until crisis point, but I hear no other line than this one batted at me.

OK, time to go vote, by the way.

Posted by: ORTIZ at November 2, 2004 08:53 AM

I fail to understand the union's strategy which appears to be so comfortable with getting killed in the press and therefore, the public's eye. Don't let the honking fool you. Even if such a meek strategy yields an acceptable contract, which I sincerely doubt that it will, doesn't the union brass recognize the damage being done? The bottom line lesson here is that the union has to play public hard ball (and spend the money necessary to do so), or, one way of the other, the strikers lose (students have, quite frankly, lost already). It's not what anybody wants to hear, but it's damn sure reality. The bad guys apparently have the union convinced that they'll get even more intractable if the union fights back, but query: what exactly does more intractable look like?

Posted by: erica at November 2, 2004 08:25 AM

My U-Pass worked today (Monday) for the first time in a week. I got a letter in the mail on Sunday stating that the cancellation of my U-Pass was a mistake and that it should be fixed within the next couple of days. All students should go see the cashier in Rm 2400 to fix the problem.

Posted by: Aaron at November 1, 2004 09:18 PM

Partial update: Day 14, November 1, 2004
Negotiations today went nowhere. I found this out by checking the CCC site, because the Union site doesn't have anything new. CCC reports that there will be no more negotiations until Friday.
If anyone else knows what's going on, post away.
Also, the U-Pass thing won't go away, as I continue to hear about targeted cancellation of student CTA passes by admin.

Things feel totally out of human control at this point. The CCC and Truman web sites are timely in updates and seem much more user friendly for students than anything the Union has produced, and they spell out a fairly damning story about striking faculty. Even if it's skewed, their info looks lots better and is more readily available than our side.

I even noticed the latest Wright College student paper for November carries an anti-strike editorial. And so I'm asked to continue picketing, rallying, handing out the same flyers, while my position appears less and less defensible to the naked eye.

What is going on?

--B

Posted by: ORTIZ at November 1, 2004 08:56 PM