The Movement for educational justice in Chicago: two and a half decades of organizing lessons from activists, educators, and unionists

Group Submission Type: Workshop

Description of Session

Since the early 2000s, Chicago has been the center of several national movements for educational justice in response to market-based education reform policies focused on high stakes accountability and increasing parent “choice” through charter schools, coupled with closing neighborhood schools in Black and Latinx communities. Their organizing has been an inspiration to community activists, educators, students, and unionists around the world. In 2004, Chicago’s mayor announced Renaissance 2010, a plan devised by the Commercial Club of Chicago, to close 60 to 70 public schools and open 100 new schools—two thirds to be charter schools (Lipman, 2011, p. 42). The first stage was a plan to close 20 out of the 22 schools in the historic Black Midsouth area of the city. These education policies were integral to a larger neoliberal urban agenda resulting in the elimination of thousands of units of public housing and the displacement of mainly Black residents, the dispossession of working-class communities of color and gentrification throughout the city (Lipman, 2011, p. 43)

Communities have consistently responded by organizing against racist school closings and privatization and for flourishing neighborhood schools in historically disinvested areas (Lipman, 2017). Black and Latinx community organizations, parent groups, and critical anti-racist educators formed a city-wide coalition that eventually coalesced as the Grassroots Education Movement (GEM). The founding of the Chicago Teachers Union’s (CTU) Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators (CORE) in 2008 (Uetricht, 2014), which won CTU leadership in 2010, was possible due to teachers’ participation in this broader educational justice movement, investing in what activists and scholars now refer to as “social justice unionism” (Maton, 2022; NCEA, 1994; Stark, 2023). The history of community organizing in Chicago was also influential; as Todd-Breland (2018) writes, “Many of the people and neighborhood groups that the Caucus of Rank-and-file Educators partnered with had deep roots in earlier struggles against racial and educational inequities” (p. 229).

A combination of community organizing and social justice unionism created a context for educational and racial justice struggles to flourish. Some key moments were city-wide CTU strikes in 2012 and 2019, community/parent-led mobilizations against closing 50 schools in 2013, the 34-day Black community-led hunger strike that reversed the closing of Walter H. Dyett High School in 2015, a 15-year grassroots campaign for an Elected Representative School Board culminating in the first elections in 2024, the mayoral election of Black union organizer Brandon Johnson in 2023, and the winning of Sustainable Community Schools. Nonetheless, market-driven policies, extreme race and class disparities in public education in a racially segregated city, and the prevalence of public school “deserts” in Black communities continue, and winning a degree of power in Chicago has also created challenges for community and union organizing efforts.

In this CIES 2025 workshop, we center the knowledge and experience produced by Chicago community organizers, unionists, and activist teachers over the past two and half decades, including reflections on challenges. The workshop will be a roundtable discussion with organizers/leaders who have been collectively involved in the movement for educational justice in Chicago, including Jitu Brown, the National Director of Journey 4 Justice Alliance and current candidate for the Elected Representative School Board; Jackson Potter, the Vice President of the Chicago Teachers Union; Monique Redeaux Smith, the Chair of the Sustainable Community Schools Task Force; and Pauline Lipman, a founder of Teachers for Social Justice. These leaders will share first-hand accounts of educational justice struggles in Chicago, including traditional and digital organizing. Workshop organizers will lead a discussion with panelists and CIES participants about the lessons Chicago offers to organizers, activists, and educators who care about social justice and education globally.

Sub Unit

• Book launches and Workshops / Workshop

Chair

• Rebecca Tarlau, Stanford University

Workshop Organizers

• Sangeeta G. Kamat, Univ of Massachusetts Amherst

• Lauren EW Stark, Université de Sherbrooke

• Frank Adamson, California State University, Sacramento

Presenters

• pauline lipman, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Jitu Brown

• Jackson Potter

• Monique Redeaux Smith