“We are here to send a message of unity,” said Brian Campfield, vice-president of ICTU. “This is those of differing causes coming together to say, ‘a different world is possible.’” Campfield went to say that there is an alternative to “cut-throat capitalism,” and to the “selfish and dog eat dog world” upheld and policed by the G8 leaders.

Leaders of the G8 countries, the US, the UK, France, Russia, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Canada, are meeting at the Lough Erie golf resort in Fermanagh, a rural county located in Erne river basin.

Recently, Fermanagh has been the target of Tamboran Resources, an Australian energy exploration company that plans to build 60 fracking pads covering 40,000 acres of the county.

Among those at the Saturday G8 protest were local opponents of the fracking process, which has the potential for polluting groundwater.

“People across the UK, including Northern Ireland, are rightly concerned about the threat fracking poses to their communities, local environment and the global climate,” said James Orr, director of Friends of the Earth Northern Ireland speaking at the rally. “It’s time to put the long-term future of the planet first – and develop a clean energy future we can all afford.”

Anti-poverty activists made up a large contingent at the rally.

Pamela Dooley, chair of the Northern Committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, told the audience that G8 policies had done little to help those who live in extreme poverty around the world.

“As we meet here today over one billion people on the planet are living in extreme poverty and are facing starvation, malnutrition and early death,” said Dooley. ”Much of the responsibility for that crisis lies at door of the West and those meeting in Fermanagh. We have long worked in solidarity with our brothers and sisters facing oppression, poverty and starvation. We are today confronting real power with the demand for justice.”

G-8 meetings have for the last 15 years been the target of protests.

This year’s demonstration was smaller and more restrained from those in the past.

A heavy downpour saturated the route of the march that led up to rally and continued throughout the rally. Organizers said that the bad weather kept many away from the event.

They also said that the extremely tight security measures was the more important reason that many stayed away. The route of the march was lined with police in full battle dress, and the rally was surrounded by police. Helicopters patrolled overhead and police Land Rovers were stationed at strategic points near the march route. Local authorities set up 260 temporary holding cells and put 16 judges on standby to preside over special courts.

The tight security and heavy rain didn’t dampen the spirit or message of those at the rally.

“The eight people meeting in Fermanagh are leaders of some of the richest and most powerful countries on the planet,” said Dooley. “They do not have our consent to form a gang of eight, nine or 20 in order to force their damaging policies on the rest of us.”

“We are here to remind [the G8 leaders] that they are not all powerful,” said Kerry Fleck, chair of the Belfast Trades Council. “To remind them that the real power lies with us, the working class, the people of the world who are seven-billion strong. Without us they are nothing. They have no power and no influence when we unite.”

In May, a bankruptcy judge ruled that Patriot, which spun off from Peabody in 2007, could impose contract changes and cut health care benefits for 23,000 retired mine workers, most of whom never worked a day in their lives for Patriot.

UMWA President Cecil Roberts has called the Patriot bankruptcy the result of a spinoff designed to set Patriot up for failure, so that Peabody could significantly reduce its pension and health care obligation to retirees who had worked for Peabody subsidiaries.

Since the bankruptcy judge ruled that Patriot could impose contract changes and reduce retiree benefits, UMWA has been negotiating the terms of a new agreement with Patriot and holding rallies at Peabody headquarters in St. Louis.

Talks between the two sides broke down on June 11 when Patriot executives walked out of the negotiations and announced that they would impose the changes on July 1.

After the talks broke down, Roberts said that the union would hold a vote on whether union members would work under the imposed terms and whether members would authorize a strike.

After Roberts announcement, the St. Louis Post Dispatch on June 14 reported that Patriot executives said that they would return to the bargaining table.

UMWA has held Peabody responsible for Patriot’s bankruptcy. According to the UMWA, when the spinoff took place, Peabody transferred 43 percent of its retiree pension and health care obligations to Patriot but only 11 percent of its productive assets.

About 90 percent of the retirees who currently receive their benefits from Patriot never worked for Patriot; instead, they worked for various subsidiaries of Peabody and Arch Coal.

Patriot is currently the second largest contributor to UMWA’s pension fund, which could be severely damaged if Patriot stops making contributions to the fund.

At an April rally for fairness at Patriot, Roberts described Peabody’s spinoff as fraudulent. ”This is a crime,” said Roberts. “We’ve been robbed, tricked, and lied to. This cannot stand.”

The State Journal, West Virginia’s only state business newspaper, reports that during the negotiations that took place after the bankruptcy judge’s ruling, UMWA and Patriot had made some progress toward reaching an agreement on a new contract, but that on June 11, Patriot executives walked out on the negotiations.

The UMWA said that when the executives walked out, between $30 million and $35 million separated the two sides and kept them from reaching an agreement. The union said that the company was not offering enough money to adequately fund the VEBA, which is being set up to administer retiree health care benefits.

While the executives negotiating the contract were unwilling to increase the company’s VEBA contribution, they insisted that $75 million more over the next three years be set aside for management bonuses.

“We have repeatedly said that we are willing to make the sacrifices needed to keep this company operating,” Roberts said to the State Journal. “We are working to preserve these jobs and preserve retiree health care. We also believe that those sacrifices should be shared by all, and that once the company gets through the short-term cash problem it has and begins to make money again in a few years, our sacrifices should be recognized.”

Wednesday’s action was called Witness Wednesday, an extension of the Moral Monday demonstrations that have been taking place at the North Carolina statehouse every Monday since April. Moral Mondays are aimed at exposing and protesting proposed legislation that according to William Barber, President of the North Carolina NAACP, is part of the extreme right’s regressive agenda aimed at “(lining) the pockets of the super-rich” at the expense of the rest of us.

The Moral Monday demonstration on June 10 drew thousands of supporters; 84 were arrested as they protested a decision to not seek federal funds that would allow the state to expand its Medicaid program to 500,000 low-income working and disabled people who cannot afford health insurance.

So far, about 350 people have been arrested for acts of civil disobedience since Moral Mondays began.

The Moral Monday actions have been organized by Historic Thousands on Jones Street (where the state capitol is located), or HK on J, a progressive coalition organized by the North Carolina NAACP that includes 140 partner organizations fighting for a 14-point People’s Agenda.

“We are building a movement, not just a moment,” writes North Carolina NAACP President William Barber as he described the purpose of the Moral Monday demonstrations for Guardian readers. “As our coalition and supporters grow, we will continue to shine a spotlight on injustice and go back home to our respective communities and organize against the regressive agenda of North Carolina’s legislative leadership.”

The Witness Wednesday demonstration fell on the 50th anniversary of the murder of Civil Rights leader Medgar Evers and honored his sacrifice and those of others who died fighting for civil, labor, and human rights.

Among other things, Moral Monday demonstrators have protested against cutting the payroll tax credit for 900,000 poor and working families, slashing unemployment benefits, expanding private school vouchers, repealing the Racial Justice Act, tightening eligibility for the state’s pre-kindergarten program, and the expansion of fracking.

“The North Carolina general assembly is making it harder for those who are sick to get healthcare; for children to get an education; for the incarcerated to be redeemed; for people to vote,” writes Barber.  ”At the same time, they make it easier for the rich to get richer; for the sick to get sicker; for private schools to profit while cutting funds for public schools; to implement the flawed death penalty; and to get guns.”

Each week the demonstrations have grown in size. About 300 attended the first Moral Monday in April. On June 3 an estimated 4,000 people participated, and that number was matched at the June 10 Moral Monday.

“The appeal for each Moral Monday has been the same: urging legislators to govern for the good of the whole, rather than for the wealthy,” writes Barber.

The good of the whole, according to Barber, includes not only stopping reactionary legislation, but advancing the HK on J’s 14-point People’s Agenda, a wide-ranging progressive agenda that seeks racial justice, political equality, worker rights, environmental justice, and a more just and equitable society where money doesn’t buy special privileges.

After Monday’s demonstration, Barber said that HK on J would add another layer of resistance by mobilizing supporters to register voters and increase voter turnout in the 2014 elections. “We intend to have a turnout in 2014 like no other midyear election this state has ever seen,” said Barber.

Most economists while not overly impressed with the monthly job growth figures seemed to think that it was a sign of slow but steady improvement in the economy . “The May report was decent but not fabulous,” said Jennifer Lee, senior economist with BMO Capital Markets to CNN.

But the fact is that most new jobs created during May were in low-paying occupations, continuing a trend that began with the recovery from the Great Recession, and as low-wage work expands the chances of a robust economic recovery decline.

 ”Low wages affect (low-wage) workers,” said Christine Owens, executive director of the National Employment Law Project. “But they affect the rest of us too. In an economy still driven largely by consumer demand and consumption, if jobs don’t pay enough for working families to afford the basics, workers can’t spend enough to drive a faster pace of economic growth. But when low-wage workers get a raise, we all benefit.

Bloomberg reports that the bulk of the new jobs created in May were in occupations whose median wage is well below the US median hourly wage of $23.89.

According to the Labor Department, 97,200 of May’s new jobs were in low paying occupations. The hospitality industry (hotels, restaurants, etc), whose median wage is $13.45 added 43,000 new jobs. The hospitality median wage is the lowest of any of the ten major employment categories.

Retail, whose median wage is $16.63, added 27,700 jobs, and temporary help, whose median wage is $15.74, added 26,500.

Other low-wage sectors such as ambulatory and home health care services added jobs while the manufacturing sector lost about 8,000 jobs.

The May numbers are part of an ongoing trend.

A study by the National Employment Law Project found that since the recovery to the Great Recession began, 58 percent of the job growth has taken place in low-wage occupations.

Even more troubling is the fact while 60 percent of the job losses during the Great Recession were in mid-wage occupations, only 22 percent of the new jobs created are in mid-wage occupations.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that half the workers who found new jobs between 2009 and 2011 after losing a job at which they worked three years or more made less money in their new job. About one-third took jobs that paid at least 20 percent less than their previous job.

Add to this the 7.9 million workers who are working part-time but would prefer to work full-time, and it becomes clear that for many workers, the Great Recession hasn’t come to an end.

With so many workers working for wages that can barely pay for the essentials, it’s no wonder that unemployment, which ticked up slightly in May to 7.6 percent, remains high. Low wages mean that many potential consumers can’t afford purchases, which in turn has lowered demand.

“The jobs crisis stems from a broad-based lack of demand,” writes Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute. “In particular, unemployment is not high because workers lack adequate education or skills; rather, a lack of demand for goods and services makes it unnecessary for employers to significantly ramp up hiring.”

The conventional wisdom is that low wages promote hiring and job growth, but that’s not happening now. In fact, the rise of the low-wage economy seems to be stifling a strong economic rebound.

The demonstrations began on May 26 when a small group of protestors set up camp in Gezi Park to protest the park’s impending destruction and replacement by a high-end shopping mall and a museum dedicated to the defunct Ottoman Empire.

Gezi Park is part of Taksim Square, a large swath of public space in the heart of Istanbul where Turks from all walks of life gather to eat, drink, shop, conduct business, work, play, and enjoy camaraderie on common ground.

The destruction of Gezi Park and the eventual conversion of Taksim Square into an upscale retail and residential district has been an ongoing project conceived and championed by Erdogan. It fits in nicely with his wider economic plan of privatizing public spaces and resources and allowing capital a free rein.

Police attacked the Gezi Park squatters and hoped that their show of excessive force would end the protest. Instead, the protests have grown, spread, and galvanized Turks unhappy with Erdogan’s attempts to impose fundamentalist Islamic social policies on a modern society and his economic policies that have created new wealth for a select few but left many struggling to survive.

So far, three demonstrators have died in clashes with police, who have used water cannons, tear gas, flash grenades, and other modern crowd control weapons against peaceful demonstrators. Hundreds have been arrested and thousands have been injured, but the demonstrations persist and are winning the support of many Turks who had previously been thought of as apolitical.

Among those who have joined the demonstrators are the so-called ultras, soccer fans who belong to clubs that support Turkey’s various professional soccer teams. The ultras, who have been compared to Europe’s soccer hooligans, are avid–some might say fanatical–in their support for their particular teams. The intense rivalry between ultra clubs matches the rivalry on the pitch between the teams they support.

Writing in Al Monitor, Fehim Tastekin reports that to the surprise of many, ultras from rival clubs marched arm-in-arm in support of the Gezi Park encampment.

The ultra’s excessive enthusiasm has led to confrontations with police and has given them some experience in dealing with police crowd control weapons such as pepper spray and the crowd control vehicles known as TOMAs. This experience, according to Tastekin, played a crucial role in “shielding inexperienced protestors” from police violence during the demonstrations.

The protests have also been supported by more traditional opponents of Erdogan such as the trade unions. DISK, the largest confederation of private sector workers, belongs to the Taskim Solidarity Platform, the coalition that has led the fight to save Gezi Park and other public space from privatization.

TaksimSolidarity recently issued a list of demands that included an end to the redevelopment of Gezi Park and Taksim Square, the prosecution of those responsible for the deaths and injuries to demonstrators, the release of imprisoned demonstrators, an end to all bans on demonstrations in public areas, and an end to development projects that threaten the environment and public space.

In a statement about their demands, Taksim Solidarity said that it opposes Erdogan’s war policies, demands regional peace, and urges respect for “our Alawite citizens,” supports the rightful demands of the victims of urban transformation, opposes oppression in the universities and courts, and of artists, supports the demand for workers rights, especially those of the striking workers at Turkish Airlines, opposes discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, supports the removal of all barriers between citizens and their right to education and health service, and opposes the rising voice of conservative male politics establishing control over women’s bodies.

In addition to DISK, KESK, the largest confederation of public workers, has come out in support of the demonstrations. KESK called a two-day general strike on June 5 and 6 in support of the demonstrations and to protest government plans to impose further restrictions on their right to bargain collectively.

The two labor confederation on June 6 held a joint rally and march to support the demonstrators.

The trade union opposition to Erdogan’s policies reflects a growing discontent with his economic policies, which have led to impressive economic growth, but at the same time have left much of the population behind. Despite an economy that has tripled in size over the last decade, 40 percent of Turkey’s population lives at or below the official poverty line. At the same time, 63 percent of the country’s bank deposits belong to one-half of one percent of all account holders.

Economic growth has led to a spike in prices, but wages have been kept in check by anti-labor government policies.

While economic factors have led trade union members and others to support the demonstrators, discontent with Erdogan goes well beyond economic issues.

Demonstrators, most of whom are young people, come from a cross section of Turkey’s urban population, who want to protect the freedoms of a secular society. “They are united in defense of their park, their right to assemble, and their opposition to the state’s authoritarianism,” reports rabble.

Demonstrations have extended well beyond Taksim Square and Istanbul. On Sunday June 3, there were more than 200 demonstrations in 67 Turkish cities in support of the Taksim Square protests.

“We have the momentum, with people like me going to work every day and coming back to attend the protests,” said Cetin a 29-year-old civil engineer who declined to give is surname to The Guardian. “We should keep coming here to protest until we really feel we’ve achieved something.”

“The Board of Education is pathetic,” said Wendy Katten, executive director of Raise Your Hand, a pro-public education group of parents, students, and education activists to Progress Illinois. “They’re going to have to reap the consequences of this; this will go down in history as a bad decision.”

“Today is a day of mourning for the children of Chicago,” said Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union. “Their education has been hijacked by an unrepresentative, unelected corporate school board, acting at the behest of a mayor who has no vision for improving the education of our children.”

Lewis said that the board’s decision will have a “horrible domino effect” and that ”more than 40,000 students will lose at least three to six months of learning because of the board’s actions.”

“Because many of them will now have to travel into new neighborhoods to continue their schooling, some will be victims of bullying, physical assault and other forms of violence,” said Lewis. “Board members are wishing for a world that does not exist and have ignored the reality of the world we live in today. Who on the board will be held responsible? Who at City Hall will be held responsible?”

Lewis said that the board’s decision did not mean that the fight to keep the schools open is over; it only means that the battleground has shifted.

“Our fight for education justice has now moved to the courts, but it must eventually move to the ballot box,” said Lewis.

The day after the board’s ruling, a federal judge set July 16 as the date that he will start hearing evidence from plaintiffs who have filed suit charging that the closures discriminate against African-American and special needs students.

Two days after the board’s decision. CTU held the first of a series of voter registration and education workshops. At the workshops, 150 rank and file CTU members, community activists, and other public education supporters received training to become volunteer voter registrars.

“Brothers and sisters, mayoral control is a disaster,”said Lewis to those at the workshop. “We must change the conversation, so we must change the political landscape.”

In one sense, Lewis was talking about the need to build a grassroots movement capable of defeating Mayor Rahm Emmanuel, who appointed all six members of board, at the polls, but the movement envisioned by Lewis goes beyond that.

“We must resist this neoliberal savagery masquerading as school reform, ” said Lewis in response to board’s decision. “We must resist racism in all of its forms as well as the escalating attacks on the working class and the poor. Our movement will continue.”

For more than a decade now, Chicago’s business elite have seen the problems in Chicago’s public schools as an opportunity to privatize public education. Groups such as the Chicago Public Education Fund, which is chaired by Hyatt heiress and recent US Secretary of Commerce nominee Penny Pritzker, have sought to make Chicago “the epicenter of for-profit, technology-enabled education entrepreneurship and investment.”

In the past they have succeeded in closing schools and replacing them with privately operated charter schools. The results have been under whelming.

One of the charter school systems that has been supported by the Chicago Public Education Fund is the Academy for Urban School Learning, which operates 12 charter schools that were supposed to turn around public schools that were labeled as underperforming.

According to Curtis Black, “ten of them are on academic probation today. Only one of them is rated as Level 1 — “high performing” — by CPS (Chicago Public Schools).”

“Members of the Board of Education, the school CEO, the mayor, and their corporate backers are on the wrong side of history,” said Lewis. “History will judge them for the tragedy they have inflicted upon our students; and it will not be kind.”

“Since 2004, Ms. Pritzker has served on the board of directors at Hyatt, a company that her family founded and controls,” reads UNITE HERE’s statement. “Under her leadership, Hyatt has exhibited a broad pattern of labor abuses, including aggressive outsourcing, low wages, and mistreatment of housekeepers. Together, these practices single Hyatt out as the worst hotel employer in the US.”

Earlier this month, the Chicago Teachers Union voiced its opposition to the nomination of Pritzker, who until March served on Chicago Public School Board of Education.

“Penny Pritzker has a long and storied history as being an anti-labor, anti-worker kind of boss,” said Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union after Pritzker’s nomination was announced. “She has supported policies that have had an adverse  impact on working-class families and their children. As a member of the Board of Education, she has worked to close schools, destabilize neighborhoods, and disrupt the economic lives of thousands of public school employees.”

Since Pritzker joined the hotel’s board, Hyatt, which this year announced that it would buy back $200 million worth of shares from investors, has aggressively sought to lower labor costs.

In Chicago, UNITE HERE and Hyatt after four years have been unable to negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement because Hyatt has balked at implementing new safety measures and limiting it outsourcing. As a result, the wages of Hyatt workers in Chicago have been frozen.

“Our wages have been frozen since 2009, and our families are suffering,” said Cristian Toro, a banquet server at the Hyatt Regency McCormick. “Hyatt has set a bad example for the rest of the hotel industry, and we’re taking a stand.”

Throughout the US, Hyatt has sought to lower labor costs by replacing full-time housekeepers with temporary staff.

In Boston, Hyatt fired its entire housekeeping staff at its three hotels without giving them notice. The hotel giant then replaced these career housekeepers with temporary workers hired through an outsourcing company. The temps were paid the minimum wage.

“In cities like Indianapolis and Baltimore, over 70 percent of the hotel’s housekeepers are outsourced earning minimum wages with no benefits,” reads UNITE HERE’s statement of opposition to Pritzker’s nomination. ”Subcontracted Hyatt housekeepers clean as many as 30 rooms a day, getting paid as little as $2 per room.”

Housekeeping at hotels like Hyatt is hard work that exposes staff to a number of safety risks. Heavy mattresses must be lifted, carts containing clean linen and cleaning tools are heavy, and workers’ arms are constantly being extended and contorted during cleaning procedures.

These unsafe conditions, according to the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration, can cause severe and painful injuries. According to a recent study published in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine, Hyatt housekeepers have the highest rate of injury among all of the hotel chains examined in the study.

Unsafe work and low wages have led some Hyatt non-union workers to try to organize a union. In San Antonio, Hyatt has fired some workers active in the union organizing campaign.

Citing these abuses, D. Taylor, president of UNITE HERE, said that the Pritzker nomination was a bad idea. “In order to get our nation on the road to recovery, the Commerce Department needs leadership far different from what Ms. Pritzker has demonstrated at Hyatt Hotels,” said Taylor.

Before UNITE HERE announced its opposition to Pritzker, the Chicago Teachers Union took issue with the nomination.

“We cannot imagine that someone who has a long history of  bludgeoning Chicago’s working families and destroying public schools would be  given a platform to continue these sorts of business practices on a national  level,” said Lewis after Pritzker’s nomination was announced.

Pritzker has long been an advocate of replacing public schools with privately operated charter schools. Before being appointed to the Chicago’s Board of Education by Mayor Rahm Emmanuel, Pritzker’s foundation, the Pritzker-Traubert Foundation, was a major source of funding for Chicago area charter schools.

She donated money to Stand for the Children, a lobbying group that supports closing public schools and replacing them with privately operated charter schools.

Pritzker also served as the chair of the Chicago Public Education Fund, which according to the White House biography of Pritzker is a “venture philanthropy.” One of the things that this venture philanthropy does is to raise private equity for investments in charter schools.

“(Pritzker) has been the subject of countless protests because of her business practices and for her support of policies that are harmful to students in Chicago Public Schools,” said Lewis. “The Chicago Teachers Union has certainly been quite vocal and visible in those demonstrations.”

The solidarity actions are part of a multi-pronged campaign to save good-paying union jobs in Erie. The campaign will include work floor actions, grievances, legal actions, media and community outreach, and a petition that will give supporters all over the globe a chance to protest the job cuts in Erie. UE Local 506, which represents production workers in Erie, has named the campaign, “Keep It Made in Erie.”

GE Transportation makes locomotives and wheel motors for large mining trucks at its Erie factory. The Erie plant also serves as the global headquarters for GE Transportation.

The work done by members of Local 506 have helped make GE Transportation quite profitable. In 2011, GE Transportation’s reported a profit of $757 million, double what it reported in 2010. In 2012, profits rose another 36 percent to $1 billion.

That trend continued through the first quarter of 2012 when GE Transportation reported a 12 percent increase in revenue and a 15 percent increase in profit over the previous year’s first quarter.

Despite the company’s profitability, GE is seeking to lower its labor costs by moving some of the work done in Erie to Fort Worth where the average pay for a GE production worker is about $10 an hour less than in Erie.

When GE and UE agreed to a new collective bargaining agreement in 2011, the company told the union that its new Fort Worth plant was only intended to handle overflow work at the Erie plant and that the work in Erie would not be affected.

But on April 9, GE Transportation announced its plan to move work from Erie to Fort Worth.

UE responded a week later with a rally of more than 2,000 workers at the Erie plant’s main gate.

“I see a lot of people here who have dedicated their whole lives to GE,” said Wayne Burnett, Local 506 business agent, as he spoke at the rally. “I see children in strollers who might have a job here someday. I see people who have made this plant the most successful in the GE chain. Is this our reward?” GE needs to learn “that we are the ones who put you where you are today.” He added that the loss of jobs affects more than just 950 people, “but thousands of people in Pennsylvania and the tri-state area.” He concluded, “This cannot happen!”

Scott Duke, newly elected Local 506 president, urged members to resist GE’s attack on their jobs and wages and reminded workers that their good jobs and good wages were the result of union struggles that spanned generations of workers. “Your paycheck may say GE on it,” said Duke. “But never forget that those are union wages.”

Local 506 and representatives of GE Transportation have held negotiations about the work transfer.

According to reports made to Local 506 members, GE representatives told Local 506 negotiators that the company wants the union to propose wage concessions to keep the work in Erie. Union bargainers responded that the union will not propose any wage cuts, freezes, or reductions.

The negotiation deadline has been extended from June 8 to June 22.

Those arrested were union members and staff, parents, and community activists.

The Chicago Public School board on Wednesday, May 22 is scheduled to vote on the proposed closures. Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), told demonstrators that however the board, votes the movement to halt the closures will continue.

“Brothers and sisters, this is not over,” said Lewis to the protestors, who included teachers, parents, students, and other opponents of closures. “It is just the beginning. This is a movement through the neighborhoods. This is a movement through the city. This is a movement through the nation. . . .  School closures not only do not work, they can be harmful. They are child abuse.”

Later in her speech, Lewis reminded the audience that the movement will continue. ”No matter what happens on Wednesday, (the movement) is not over,” said Lewis.

The CTU president, who received 80 percent of the vote in the union’s recent officer elections, ended her speech by calling for education justice that will happen when all children reap the benefits of true education reform that includes a broad-based, high-quality curriculum for all students, and not mind-numbing teaching to standardized tests for the majority.

During her speech, Lewis pointed out that Chicago has experimented with school closure to improve education. “School closures have been going on for ten years,” Lewis said. “The policy clearly does not work.”

Lewis also said that the Chicago Public School (CPS) administration was not up to the task of managing the closures. “You haven’t managed closing seven or eight schools very well,” said Lewis “How do you think you can manage 54?”

“CPS will mess up a one-car funeral,” she added.

As demonstrators marched around City Hall, they chanted, “Hey Rahm, let’s face it. School closures are racist.”

A fact sheet prepared by researchers at the Chicago Teachers Union, shows that the closings are indeed racist. “Schools with a majority black student population and majority black teaching staff are ten times more likely to be closed or turned around than schools with a minority black student population and teaching staff,” reads the fact sheet.

It also says that 90 percent of schools affected by the current closure proposal have a majority black student population and 71 percent have a black student and teacher majority.

Mayor Emanuel and the CPS board have justified the proposed closures by saying that the schools on the closure list are under utilized and that the city needs the money saved from the closures because it has a budget deficit.

But a recent report by the Chicago Tribune shows that the justification for the closures was based on selective data and that the estimated savings are questionable.

“A Tribune review of documents related to the closings raises questions about how CPS used information to promote and defend its plan. In many cases, the district appears to have selectively highlighted data to stress shortcomings at schools to be closed, while not pointing out what was lacking at the receiving schools,” reads the report by Bob Secter and Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah. “In fact, total renovations to several of the schools slated to take in students would cost millions of dollars more than the estimated cost of fixing up the buildings where those children are currently enrolled, records show.”

Another report by Ben Joravsky in the Chicago Reader questions the Mayor’s priorities. According to Joravsky, even though the Mayor says that the closures are needed to help the city make up a budget deficit, “there’s still $55 million (of the city’s money) lying around to buy up some land and hand it over to private entities that don’t need it” to build a hotel and basketball arena near DePaul University.

No matter what the school board decides on Wednesday, the final decision may rest with the courts. CTU and parents affected by the closures have filed two federal lawsuits charging that the closures discriminate against special needs and African-American children and that the justification for the closures is false.

“We are not underutilized,” said Rebecca Nguyen, a teacher at a school proposed for closure in a predominately African-American neighborhood. ”We use every classroom in this building.”

Because the federal courts ruled that President Obama’s two recess NLRB appointments were unconstitutional, there is only one active NLRB board member, which means that the board cannot have a quorum, and therefore can’t make any decisions on pending cases, said Cohen at the union hall meeting. To function again, the NLRB needs a full contingent of five board members, Cohen added

Republicans have intentionally obstructed the NLRB from doing its business of enforcing labor law and protecting 80 million workers, said Sen. Tom Harkin at the union hall meeting. Their goal is to eliminate the National Labor Relations Act, but they can’t do that directly, so they’re making it impossible for the NLRB to function by blocking the appointment of people who have been nominated to serve on the board.

CWA members and other union activists visited Capitol Hill on May 16 to urge Senators to allow an up or down vote on the five nominees, three of whom are Democrats and the other two Republicans.

“We’re not going to just be hopeful that Senate Democrats do the right thing,” said Cohen. “Progressives of all types understand the system is broken and that many nominations cannot get through the Senate despite majority support. Working people know that a full-strength NLRB is the first step to justice on the job. And they’re fed up. They’re fed up with gridlock, and they want their senators to make a difference.”

The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, chaired by Sen. Harkin, subsequently approved and sent the nominations to the full Senate for final approval. In the past, Sen. Republicans have used the rules of the Senate to block the Senate from taking an up or down vote on NLRB nominations, which has created the current void at the board.

Cohen, during the union hall meeting, urged members who live in states with Democratic senators to contact those senators and make sure they understand how important it is to overcome Republican obstructionism and force a vote on all five nominees even if that means changing the Senate rules so that the majority can decide whether the nominees receive their appointment.

Cohen said that the union is even supporting a vote on two of the nominees who received their nomination from Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader. I don’t agree with some of the positions that these nominees have taken, said Cohen. But they are qualified and should at least be given the courtesy of an up or down vote. Furthermore, the only way that the board can become truly functional again is for the board to have its full complement of board members.

Sometimes the NLRB can be slow to act, and businesses have been able to take advantage of this slowness to prevent workers from exercising their rights under the National Labor Relations Act, but NLRB has in the past made decisions that saved workers’ jobs.

One of those workers is Jennifer Travis, a CWA member from Pittsburg, who was unlawfully fired during a two-week strike by Verizon workers on the East Coast. Travis, a CWA steward, was a vocal and active supporter of the strike, who was illegally targeted for firing by Verizon.

CWA filed a charge against Verizon with the NLRB on behalf of Travis and dozens of other union activists who were illegally fired during the strike. The NLRB subsequently filed a complaint against Verizon, and that complaint was an important reason that Verizon agreed to rehire Travis and nearly all of the other union activists who were fired during the strike.

In addition to urging CWA members to contact their senators to urge them to support a vote on all five NLRB nominations, Cohen said that members should also sign the Give Me Five NLRB Members petition at http://action.cwa-union.org/c/1693/p/salsa/web/tellafriend/public/?tell_a_friend_KEY=9096.