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AUSTINWEEKLY news ■
Vol. 33 No. 43
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The teachers are fighting for workers everywhere,
October 23, 2019
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austinweeklynews.com
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Also serving Garfield Park
@AustinWeeklyChi
PAGE 9
@AustinWeeklyNews
120 20 years ago, Chi Chicago annexed Austin, page 2
Dispatches from the 2019 strike
ALEX ROGALS/Staff Photographer
TAKING TO THE STREETS: Chicago Teachers Union and SEIU workers march downtown on Oct. 17, the first day of the strike. Teachers also picketed outside of schools across the city, including Michele Clark High School, below, in Austin.
At locations downtown and on West Side, striking CPS teachers demand resources By MICHAEL ROMAIN & IGOR STUDENKOV Editor & Contributing Reporter
When the Chicago Teachers Union announced that it would strike on Oct. 17—the first teachers’ strike in the city since 2012 — Austin Weekly News reporters spread out to different rallying points throughout the city on the first and second days of the strike (the two were before the paper’s Monday print deadline). These are our sights, smells and sounds. Day one (Thursday, Oct. 17, 10 a.m.), outside of DePriest Elementary School, 139 S. Parkside Ave.
When DePriest Elementary School was rebuilt in 2003, it featured 24 new classrooms and a library/media center. The school, relative to other Chicago Public Schools buildings, is still new. But peel back the school’s modern façade and a problem arises. “We have a big library, but no librarian,” said Ackisha Reynolds, a 41-year-old teacher at DePriest who has been in the profession for two decades. “How do you have a library with no librarian? It’s just a room.” Reynolds was among the roughly 32,000 educators who took to the picket lines on Oct. 17, the first day of the Chicago Teachers Union strike. Reynolds was on her way downtown to a rally convened by CTU in the Loop, at around 1:30 p.m. Before leaving Reynolds recalled the last time the teachers struck in 2012. That year, See STRIKE on page 6
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