Our Union, Our City: Teacher Rebellion and Urban Change in Chicago and New York City

This dissertation explores the relationship between education restructuring in the K-12 sector, urban transformation, and the remaking of contemporary capitalism in the wake of the 2008 Great Recession. Through the use of the Extended Case Method (Burawoy 2009), it examines how and why the remaking of two global citiesChicago and New Yorkhas both shaped and been transformed by struggles amongst rank-and-file teachers in their fight against the corporate-backed dismantling and commodification of public schools.

Exploring how teachers unions have been affected by changes in particular cities and how different institutional contexts have altered the ability of teacher unions to challenge the corporate-led reform of public schools, the dissertation also examines how and why the contentious struggles over public education have been a key facet of urban change over the past 40 years, during which neoliberalism has ascended as the structuring political and economic logic of the United States.

The focus of this dissertation is the relationship between urban transformation (understood through a framework of neoliberalization and global city development) and the struggle of dissident rank-and file-teachers organizing both in and outside of their unions. The goal of this study is to understand how neoliberalization and global city development both constrain and enable the possibilities for working-class organizations to transform the political and economic landscapes of contemporary capitalism. The contradictions and potentials in rank-and-file teachers efforts to transform their unions also help delineate possible routes for workers elsewhere looking to transform their unions, a necessary component of the creation of new forms of working-class power and politics and the construction of justice in the urban environment. Such transformation, it should be noted, is equally as necessary in order for teachers to improve both their work lives as professional educators and the learning environments of their students.