We were so inspired and uplifted by CTU - they were really the first major teachers' unions to bring back the strike, to expose the privatizers, to develop authentic parent-community coalitions to win the schools our students deserve, and to call out the racism of school closings in communities of color. [4] By 2012, mass job actions had all but disappeared in the United States - indeed, the year 2009 witnessed the fewest number of major strikes, five in total, since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began tracking labor conflicts.[5] In addition to bucking the trend, the Chicago teachers' strike was not just any other work stoppage. None of the education strikes from Chicago 2012 up through Minneapolis 2022 have entirely met the expectations of their participants - indeed, Emanuel's closures of fifty schools in 2013 was in part made possible by the inability of the CTU strike to win strong financial payouts to teachers whose schools were closed. [Extracted from the article]