Stephanie Ratanas

It's Friday night, and sixty-seventy college professors, students and high-school teachers sit patiently in folding chairs in UE Hall near Ashland and Ogden for the first screening of "Renaissance 2010: On the Frontlines." The film is an amateur documentary, made by teachers Jackson Potter of Englewood High School and Al Ramirez of Ruiz Elementary, who are also Chicago Teachers Union delegates.

"We're on a shoestring budget, there's some glitches--the editing's not that good--[but] I think we did an alright job!" Potter says as he stands in front of a viewing screen made of PVC pipes and a large piece of white fabric. Potter and Ramirez created the film in response to the Chicago Public Schools Renaissance 2010 plan, which involves the closings of dozens of public schools, and replacing them with non-union charter, contract or performance schools. The opposition to the plan has been strong since it was introduced in 2004, and continues to grow as more and more community schools are shut down.

The film begins. It is a mix of interviews, TV footage and clips from old black-and-white-horror movies, which Potter and Ramirez have doctored in "Renaissance 2010" for the title. The audience laughs at the odd humor, but when the film is over, the attitude is anything but comical. A discussion follows the screening, and several community members stand and voice their concerns about the Renaissance 2010 plan.

Pauline Lipman, a UIC professor and a member of the coordination committee for Teachers for Social Justice, stands up in the back of the room and the crowd turns to face her. "This is not an education plan, this is about corporate domination of the city," she says. "We really need to act on this and we need to act on this with a sense of urgency."

Another concern raised in the discussion is the frustration with the current state of the teachers union, and the need to revive it in order to unite against the plan. "Anytime there's a successful organizing drive, there's more of an incentive to join if they think [the union] is going to win," a voice says from the back. "What does it mean to build a union?"

"The union is important, we need to fight with it," says Jesse Sharkey, a teacher at Senn High School and an active member of the fight against the plan. "You can't fight Renaissance 2010 with half a staffer and a fax machine."

(2007-05-01)

Also by Stephanie Ratanas

Spit Take
On the first warm day in weeks, dozens of people crowd into the small Andersonville bookstore for "Sister Spit: The Next Generation," an event (originally conceived in the 1990s) that features a group of eight lesbian writers touring the country together in one van to share their stories of spontaneity, lust, resentment and humor
(2007-04-24)

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