Dyett hunger strike enters third week

Dyett hunger strike enters third week
Dyett hunger strike enters third week

Dyett hunger strike enters third week

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Community activists are entering their third week of a hunger strike outside of Walter Dyett High School in Chicago’s Washington Park…and it doesn’t look like it’ll be ending soon. They and their supporters want the closed school to re-open as a neighborhood high school with a curriculum focused on green technology. But their proposal is one of three that are on the the table for consideration by the school board. The group of about a dozen hunger strikers have also camped out in front of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s office in hopes of speaking directly with him about why the school should be in their hands. A meeting by the school board to address the three proposals is scheduled for mid-September. Reverend Robert Jones of Mount Carmel Missionary Baptist Church, one of the strikers, gives us the latest on the hunger strike. And Eve Ewing, a Harvard University grad student who’s writing her dissertation on school closings, and Peter Cunningham, the Executive Director of the non-profit group Education Post, join to share more on the issue and what it says about the future of the neighborhood school model. (WBEZ/Yolanda Perdomo)