In Chicago, a group of public school parents, grandmothers and education activists are entering the third week of a hunger strike to save Dyett High School, the only remaining open-enrollment public high school left in the community of Bronzeville. Supporters say the city neglected the school for years before announcing plans to close it. Under Chicago mayor and former Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, the city has closed about 50 schools in predominantly African-American and Latino neighborhoods as part of what critics say is a push to privatize education. The hunger strikers have called for Chicago to reopen Dyett High School as a global leadership and green technology school, and have submitted a detailed proposal that has yet to be considered by officials. At least two of the hunger strikers have been hospitalized. On Monday, local clergy, including Rabbi Brant Rosen, voiced support for the hunger strikers.

Rabbi Brant Rosen: “We are here to say that in this day and age it is a shame, it is a shameful reality, that families in a community have to starve their bodies in order to have a decent school, open-enrollment school, public school for their families. This is what it has come to in this city, and this is what it has come to in this country, that our public institutions, our sacred public institutions, and in particular our public schools, are increasingly being treated as commodities that can be bought and sold to the highest bidder. We are here to stand with the Dyett hunger strikers because they are our moral role models, they are our teachers, they are showing us what it means to love your community.”