How can teachers unions grow stronger? This right here is the plan. Essentially, don't just fight for contracts, but fight for the children, their families and better public education as well. Work with community organizations. Be vocal and public against standardized testing, austerity, privitization and poverty. Do it by becoming an activist union rather than a service or "business" union.

The book details how the Chicago teachers did it. The writing is occasionally repetative—it could have used another edit before publishing. It's dig into what austerity means can be a little heavy, too, but running study groups on that very subject was part of coalescing the teachers' reform movement. Plus, austerity is in the title.

I'm thankful this is out here. ( )

Teachers as activists

Strike for America: Chicago Teachers Against Austerity by Micah Uetricht (Verso, $14.95).

For neocons and neolibs who think that teachers’ unions are in the pockets of the Democratic Party, a little remedial reading is in order and this book is a good place to start.

One of the takeaways in Micah Uetricht’s insider account of the re-activism of the Chicago Teachers’ Union is that the Dems are definitely not friends of unionized educators.

Like all too many unions, the leadership of the CTU had settled into a sort of inertia by the time the recession of 2008 hit. That’s when the re-igniting of the teachers’ union began, as activists stepped up and began working from the grassroots for a more involved and engaged membership. Calling themselves the Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators (CORE), this group took over the union at a time when austerity demands for schools were making it even harder for unions to deal with management.

Instead of a reactive union leadership, CORE had given CTU the people and skills necessary to directly confront school closures and charters. Working with a similar parents’ group, the Grassroots Education Movement (GEM), the union was ready to deal with Rahm Emmanuel, Chicago’s new mayor.

And this is where Uetricht’s book is the antidote to traditional wisdom about Democrats and unions. He makes clear what a disaster Emmanuel had planned for the union and how clearly that plan followed the sort of “crisis management” that Naomi Klein details so clearly in The Shock Doctrine.

Not only is this a comprehensive work on the Chicago experience, it should be on the shelf of every teachers’ union member, because Strike for America offers a playbook for defeating the the charter school, test-evaluation movement to gut American public education. ( )