Get Malik Out of Ad-Seg Keith "Malik" Washington is an incarcerated activist who has spoken out on conditions of confinement in Texas prison and beyond:  from issues of toxic water and extreme heat, to physical and sexual abuse of imprisoned people, to religious discrimination and more.  Malik has also been a tireless leader in the movement to #EndPrisonSlavery which gained visibility during nationwide prison strikes in 2016 and 2018.  View his work at comrademalik.com or write him at: Keith H. Washington TDC# 1487958 McConnell Unit 3001 S. Emily Drive Beeville, TX 78102 Friends, it's time to get Malik out of solitary confinement. Malik has experienced intense, targeted harassment ever since he dared to start speaking against brutal conditions faced by incarcerated people in Texas and nationwide--but over the past few months, prison officials have stepped up their retaliation even more. In Administrative Segregation (solitary confinement) at McConnell Unit, Malik has experienced frequent humiliating strip searches, medical neglect, mail tampering and censorship, confinement 23 hours a day to a cell that often reached 100+ degrees in the summer, and other daily abuses too numerous to name.  It could not be more clear that they are trying to make an example of him because he is a committed freedom fighter.  So we have to step up. Who to contact: TDCJ Executive Director Bryan Collier Phone: (936)295-6371 Email:  exec.director@tdcj.texas.gov Senior Warden Philip Sinfuentes (McConnell Unit) Phone: (361) 362-2300

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Major George Tillery

MAJOR TILLERY FILES NEW LEGAL PETITION SEX FOR LIES AND MANUFACTURED TESTIMONY

April 25, 2018-- The arrest of two young men in Starbucks for the crime of "sitting while black," and the four years prison sentence to rapper Meek Mill for a minor parole violation are racist outrages in Philadelphia, PA that made national news in the past weeks. Yesterday Meek Mills was released on bail after a high profile defense campaign and a Pa Supreme Court decision citing evidence his conviction was based solely on a cop's false testimony. These events underscore the racism, frame-up, corruption and brutality at the core of the criminal injustice system. Pennsylvania "lifer" Major Tillery's fight for freedom puts a spotlight on the conviction of innocent men with no evidence except the lying testimony of jailhouse snitches who have been coerced and given favors by cops and prosecutors. Sex for Lies and Manufactured Testimony For thirty-five years Major Tillery has fought against his 1983 arrest, then conviction and sentence of life imprisonment without parole for an unsolved 1976 pool hall murder and assault. Major Tillery's defense has always been his innocence. The police and prosecution knew Tillery did not commit these crimes. Jailhouse informant Emanuel Claitt gave lying testimony that Tillery was one of the shooters. In May and June 2016, Emanuel Claitt gave sworn statements that his testimony was a total lie, and that the homicide cops and the prosecutors told him what to say and coached him before trial. Not only was he coerced to lie that Major Tillery was a shooter, but to lie and claim there were no plea deals made in exchange for his testimony. He provided the information about the specific homicide detectives and prosecutors involved in manufacturing his testimony and details about being allowed "sex for lies". In August 2016, Claitt reaffirmed his sworn statements in a videotape, posted on YouTube and on JusticeforMajorTillery.org. Major Tillery has Fought his Conviction and Advocated for Other Prisoners for over 30 Years Major Tillery Needs Your Help: Major Tillery and family HOW YOU CAN HELP Financial Support—Tillery's investigation is ongoing. He badly needs funds to fight for his freedom. Go to JPay.com; code: Major Tillery AM9786 PADOC Tell Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner: The Conviction Review Unit should investigate Major Tillery's case. He is innocent. The only evidence at trial was from lying jail house informants who now admit it was false. Call: 215-686-8000 or Email: justice@phila.gov Write to: Security Processing Center Major Tillery AM 9786 268 Bricker Road Bellefonte, PA 16823 For More Information, Go To: JusticeForMajorTillery.org Call/Write: Kamilah Iddeen (717) 379-9009, Kamilah29@yahoo.com Rachel Wolkenstein (917) 689-4009, RachelWolkenstein@gmail.com Obtain Updates: www.justice4majortillery.info *---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* *---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* On Monday March 4th, 2019 Leonard Peltier was advised that his request for a transfer had been unceremoniously denied by the United States Bureau of Prisons. The International Leonard Peltier Defense Committee appreciates and thanks the large number of his supporters who took the time to write, call, email, or fax the BOP in support of Leonard's request for a transfer. Those of us who have been supporting Leonard's freedom for a number of years are disappointed but resolute to continue pushing for his freedom and until that day, to continue to push for his transfer to be closer to his relatives and the Indigenous Nations who support him. 44 years is too damn long for an innocent man to be locked up. How can his co-defendants be innocent on the grounds of self-defense but Leonard remains in prison? The time is now for all of us to dig deep and do what we can and what we must to secure freedom for Leonard Peltier before it's too late. We need the support of all of you now, more than ever. The ILPDC plans to appeal this denial of his transfer to be closer to his family. We plan to demand he receive appropriate medical care, and to continue to uncover and utilize every legal mechanism to secure his release. To do these things we need money to support the legal work. Please call the ILPDC National office or email us for a copy of the postcard you can send to the White House. We need your help to ask President Trump for Leonard's freedom. DONATE  ©2019 ILPDC | 116 W Osborne Avenue Tampa, FL 33603  Web Version  Preferences  Forward  Unsubscribe   Powered by GoDaddy Email Marketing ® Free Leonard Peltier!

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1) You're in a Police Lineup, Right Now

Face-recognition technology is the new norm. You may think, "I've got nothing to hide," but we all should be concerned.
By Clare Garvie, October 15, 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/15/opinion/facial-recognition-police.html


Face recognition technology is being used to unlock phones, clear customs, identify immigrants and solve crimes. In the Video Op-Ed above, Clare Garvie demands the United States government hit pause on face recognition. She argues that while this convenient technology may seem benign to those who feel they have nothing to hide, face recognition is something we should all fear. Police databases now feature the faces of nearly half of Americans — most of whom have no idea their image is there. The invasive technology violates citizens' constitutional rights and is subject to an alarming level of manipulation and bias.

Our privacy, our right to anonymity in public and our right to free speech are in danger. Congress must declare a national moratorium on the use of face-recognition technology until legal restrictions limiting its use and scope can be developed. Without restrictions on face recognition, America's future is closer to a Chinese-style surveillance state than we'd like to think.

[If you're online — and, well, you are — chances are someone is using your information. We'll tell you what you can do about it. Sign up for our limited-run newsletter.]

Clare Garvie (@ClareAngelyn) is a senior associate studying face-recognition technology at the Georgetown Center on Privacy and Technology.

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2) Why Some Young Voters Are Choosing Democratic Socialism Over the Democratic Party

As the presidential debate comes to Ohio, the students in a local chapter of the Young Democratic Socialists of America are defining their political identity.
By Isabella Grullón Paz, October 15, 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/15/us/politics/young-democratic-socialists.html

Daija Kidd, a junior, is co-chair of Ohio State University's chapter of the Young Democratic Socialists of America.CreditCreditAndrew Spear for The New York Times

COLUMBUS, Ohio — As Tuesday night's Democratic debate approached, members of the Young Democratic Socialists of America chapter at Ohio State University tried to figure out where to focus their energy.

At a meeting on campus last week designed to set their goals for the year, they talked about labor organizing, volunteering for Morgan Harper's congressional campaign and hosting a town hall-style event focused on climate change.

"It's all related, even though they look like separate issues, " said Daija Kidd, an African-American studies and sociology double major and co-chair of the Y.D.S.A. chapter, as she tried to get the other members to think about new campaigns for the year.

"We have these very specific events that we go to, like the climate strike," she said. "But I want to do something that is ongoing, because that is the purpose of democratic socialists. I don't want us to finish doing one big thing and have that be it — I want to keep it chugging along."

The group's effort to take on an aggressive and expansive agenda reflects the enormous energy on the far left heading into the 2020 election, and part of the appeal of democratic socialism in this cycle: setting an array of big goals to help deepen a movement that goes beyond one-off protest events and marches. 

For many young, liberal Americans, democratic socialism is a far better representation of their ambitions of far-reaching structural change across the economy and society than the agenda of the Democratic Party, which they see as overly influenced by corporate interests, big-money donors and moderate traditionalists.

The attempt at Ohio State to define objectives also comes as the Democratic presidential contenders are locked in a battle over what direction the party should take in order to win in 2020. Thatdynamic will be on display Tuesday night less than 15 miles from O.S.U., when the candidates gather for the fourth primary debate at Otterbein University in Westerville.

Two top candidates, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, have successfully pushed the primary conversation to the left. The D.S.A. saw drastic growth in its membership when Mr. Sanders, himself a democratic socialist, ran for president in 2016, and there are now nearly 60,000 members across the country. (Ms. Warren, who has pulled ahead of Mr. Sanders in polling and is a leading candidate for the nomination, backs many of the same progressive priorities as Mr. Sanders, but has also said she is "a capitalist to my bones.")

The national leaders of the Young Democratic Socialists of America have seized on Mr. Sanders's momentum with younger voters to expand their group's membership, too, growing from 25 registered chapters in 2016 to 84 in 2019, according to a Y.D.S.A organizer. Chapters have begun to spring up at high schools, as well. 

The chapter at O.S.U. was small for the past two years, with only 10 or 11 active members. Still, the group managed to create a campus campaign around Fight for $15, an effort to raise the minimum wage of university staff members to $15 an hour. They won that battle in August.

Now, each meeting draws 40 to 50 members, each one with a different reason for joining and something unique to fight for.

For many of them, Mr. Sanders was their introduction to the left. They see the D.S.A. as more than just a vehicle to advance the rights of workers — it is also a home for progressive policies and issues that they don't see being addressed by the major political parties in a way they agree with.

"I don't think they're totally abandoning capitalism per se, but certainly they're more likely to embrace policies tied to what we characterize as socialism," said Melissa Deckman, chair of the political science department at Washington College in Chestertown, Md., who is working on a book about the political engagement of Generation Z. "They're interested in free college tuition or in expanding health care."

As they grew up in the wake of a recession and watched the effects of climate change unfold, the Black Lives Matter movement form and gay marriage be legalized, the students were often just a click away from finding the next progressive policy to support.

Nathan Webster, a second-year electrical engineering major at Ohio State, learned about the Democratic Socialists of America through protests in his hometown, Painesville, Ohio, aimed at abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 

"I come from a largely Latino town — some of my friends lost their parents to Border Patrol," Mr. Webster said.

"Near the end of high school, I realized what politics were and where I fall on the political spectrum," he added. "Originally I told myself, 'O.K., I'm a Democrat,' because I didn't know any better. I didn't know that there was something that could be more left."

For Ricky Vehar, an environmental engineering major, coming out as gay and then coming out as trans moved her closer to the Young Democratic Socialists of America.

"From my background, you wouldn't really expect me to become super left. I grew up in a middle-class family, in a good suburb," she said, adding that watching "the discrimination that those communities face not just because they're gay or trans, but because the system incentivizes discrimination against them, moved me toward the left."

James Fisher, a second-year student and a co-chair of the O.S.U. chapter, joined the group for similar reasons: He supports giving trans teenagers and adults better access to health care through Medicare for All.

"Medicare for All can benefit the trans community in their ability to get good health care, and that's something that a lot of trans people struggle with," Mx. Fisher said. "It's embedded in the language of Medicare for All, that there's no exclusionary measures to it."

Others joined the Y.D.S.A. because they saw the benefits of nationalized health care firsthand. During a yearlong program in England, Johnny Amundson got very sick and was hospitalized for a month. His program enrolled him in the National Health Service, and he ended up paying just $200 in medical fees, he said.

"I saw that there's a difference between being able to have insurance, which my family has, and being able to have health care," Mr. Amundson said. He is now a fourth-year journalism and Russian double major at Ohio State, and he was one of the first members of the university's Young Democratic Socialists of America chapter.

Nikki Velamakanni, a political science major, joined Y.D.S.A. when she realized that she didn't want to join the College Democrats chapter on campus because of the stigma around it. 

"It's known to be more centrist, it's known to be more compromise-y," Ms. Velamakanni said. "Whereas the left is more, 'We stand for this and we're going to fight for it.'"

Dr. Deckman attributes the rise of the Y.D.S.A. to the changing perceptions that younger voters and soon-to-be voters have about government and democratic socialism, and the idea that younger people tend to be more liberal with each passing generation.

"They're more willing to have a bigger role for government to play in our lives," she said. "This younger generation is growing up seeing what deregulation is doing to the Earth, is doing to their ability to afford college, among other things. I think that's why they're finding democratic socialist ideas appealing."

Some of their parents were introduced to socialism during the Cold War, giving the word an entirely different meaning.

"Older Americans who lived during the Cold War, they link socialism strongly to communism. So there's this idea that if we raise socialism, our freedoms, especially religion, are going to be compromised," Dr. Deckman said. "And I don't think that sort of baggage matters to younger Americans."

For Evan Schmidt, a second-year economics major, "socialism is a word only. It doesn't necessarily have a direct correlation to any sort of regime or empire, which allows for that reconstruction around it."

He grew up in Manchester, Vt., where the idea of democratic socialism was less taboo thanks to Mr. Sanders. When he moved away, out of what he describes as a "sheltered neighborhood," he had his first experiences with people who grew up with less than he did. 

It ignited his passion for democratizing the workplace and helping others to achieve the same class mobility his family enjoyed. He joined the Young Democratic Socialists of America, he said, because he thinks "it's what the Democratic Party should be."

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3) For 'Erin Brockovich' Fans, a David vs. Goliath Tale With a Twist
By Gary Rivlin, October 14, 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/14/books/review/exposure-dupont-robert-bilott.html

Robert Bilott represented a West Virginia cattle farmer in his long battle against corporate pollution. He writes about the case in "Exposure."CreditCreditTaft Stettinius & Hollister LP

 EXPOSURE
Poisoned Water, Corporate Greed, and One Lawyer's Twenty-Year Battle Against DuPont
By Robert Bilott with Tom Shroder

Robert Bilott never set out to be anyone's hero. He made his living defending chemical companies at an old-line corporate law firm based in Cincinnati when, just a few months shy of making partner, he received a call from a West Virginia farmer who was convinced that the runoff from a nearby DuPont plant was killing his cows. The man had heard Bilott was an environmental lawyer, apparently not understanding that he wasn't the kind of attorney who brought cases on behalf of aggrieved individuals; instead, Bilott defended companies against such complaints. The caller, however, dropped a magic name: that of Bilott's grandmother, a beloved figure in his life. The farmer's case, filed in 1999, and a second, larger class action suit that grew out of it, would dominate the next 20 years of Bilott's life.

Bilott skillfully tells the story of his epic battle with DuPont and its lawyers in "Exposure," which lands in bookstores just ahead of a new movie, "Dark Waters," starring Mark Ruffalo as Bilott and Anne Hathaway as his put-upon wife. The screenplay is based on a 2016 article in The New York Times Magazine ("The Lawyer Who Became DuPont's Worst Nightmare"), not Bilott's manuscript. But as you read "Exposure," it's easy to imagine scenes in the film version of Bilott's life. You see the time he was unable to reach his office phone because of the small skyscrapers of boxes and documents that blocked his way, and the time he was rushed to the hospital because of the physical toll the case was taking on his life. In a made-for-Hollywood twist, DuPont bests Bilott by exploiting his pre-existing relationship with a DuPont lawyer and then he bests DuPont's attorneys through clever legal maneuvers of his own.

If Bilott makes for an unlikely warrior in the battle for safe drinking water, DuPont plays to type as the faceless behemoth that seems to care more about its bottom line than the health of its employees or the tens of thousands of people who lived near the giant plant it operates outside of Parkersburg, W.Va. Because, of course, it wasn't just the cows that were suffering. Scientists inside the company were concerned enough about a particularly noxious chemical called PFOA — used to manufacture Teflon, among other products — that they began testing DuPont's workers for exposure. But when the results suggested potential health problems, corporate's answer was to stop the testing. The ever-thorough Bilott discovers old laboratory animal studies that DuPont and 3M, which manufactured PFOA, had conducted decades earlier. The results showed dogs and monkeys dying from exposure to PFOA, cancer in rats along with birth defects in its unborn. Yet Bilott found no follow-up investigations. At least within the pages of "Exposure," plausible denial seems to be DuPont's corporate motto. Ultimately, Bilott discovers dangerously high concentrations of PFOA leaching into the surrounding community's drinking water.

Bilott is an engaging narrator who breaks our hearts with tales of clients suffering excruciating ailments and amazes us with endless 14-hour days scouring technical reports in search of that one clue that might help him make his case. The naïve corporate defense attorney we meet at the book's start is gone by the end, and he seems no longer surprised when he realizes that regulators, including the Environmental Protection Agency, are in DuPont's pocket. By the time he learns PFOA and its chemical cousins are in the blood of virtually all of us, he knows it's fallen to him to do the E.P.A.'s job. The book ends with him filing a federal class action suit against eight chemical companies on behalf of every American. His education is complete.

Gary Rivlin is the author of "Katrina: After the Flood."

EXPOSURE
Poisoned Water, Corporate Greed, and One Lawyer's Twenty-Year Battle Against DuPont
By Robert Bilott with Tom Shroder
400 pp. Atria Books. $28.

 

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4) We Need More Government Whistle-Blowers

New York City requires its employees to report corruption. It has worked.

By Margaret Garnett and Preet Bharara, October 17, 2019

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/17/opinion/whistle-blower-trump.html

CreditCreditErin Schaff/The New York Times

Over the past few weeks, the country has been riveted by the news of a whistle-blower within the intelligence community who filed a formal complaint alleging wrongdoing by President Trump. In turn, we have watched the whistle-blower defamed by the president and his allies, even accused of treason, despite meticulously following the lawful process to report possible criminal conduct. This took remarkable courage. There was no legal obligation to report it, and serious risks to career, reputation and even personal safety for doing so. 

We know from the work we did as prosecutors and investigators that whistle-blowers are essential to exposing corruption and holding the corrupt accountable. But with few exceptions, the law imposes no general obligation on citizens to report criminal activity to authorities. A “duty to report” is rare in American law. Mostly you may simply avert your eyes, keep your mouth shut and suffer no consequence. The rare exceptions concern particularly vulnerable populations like children, which is why teachers, doctors and other caregivers have a legal obligation to report credible evidence of child abuse.

As with child abuse, public corruption happens in the shadows and is notoriously difficult to uncover, investigate and prosecute. In our experience, uncovering such behavior and holding public officials accountable depends on fellow public servants blowing the whistle. The broader culture can encourage this. But as we have seen in the past three years, norms and unwritten rules about conduct in public life — even those that once seemed immutable — are only as durable as the people who choose to live, or not live, by them. That’s a weak foundation for guarding against breaches of the public trust.

Now consider a system in which there is an obligation to report corruption, to point a finger at waste, fraud and abuse. You don’t have to imagine it, because New York City government imposes an uncommon obligation on public servants, requiring them to report wrongdoing or jeopardize their jobs and professional advancement if they do not.

The city has a long and storied history of public corruption scandals. But out of that history grew this unusual and effective rule for combating corruption. An executive order, first issued by Mayor Ed Koch in 1978 and ratified by every mayor since, directs that all New York City employees have an obligation to report to the city’s independent Department of Investigation any instance of corruption, waste, fraud or abuse by public officials or city contractors. Failure to report can be cause for discipline or termination. The law arose after scandals within city government went unchecked, despite city employees’ having knowledge of the corruption that fueled them. All city employees now receive regular anti-corruption training from the D.O.I., which underscores the obligation to report wrongdoing as well as the legal protections they have when they do report.

New York City is far from perfect, but this distinctive rule has borne extraordinary fruit. Many of the most significant criminal cases that the D.O.I. has investigated began with, or were greatly enhanced by, information reported by city employees or contractors — including cases prosecuted by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York during our time there. These include the CityTime scandal, in which executives at Science Applications International Corporation bilked New York City out of half a billion dollars, and the sweeping investigation into day care providers known as Operation Pay Care, which exposed a million-dollar fraud and resulted in the convictions of 15 people, including seven city employees. New York City’s duty to report has helped law enforcement expose corrupt public officials and those who seek to corrupt them.

A duty to report may at first seem to only add to the dilemma facing a would-be whistle-blower, but that duty, combined with protections for those who act on it, creates a kind of virtuous cycle. A statutory duty normalizes the reporting of wrongdoing and lessens the stigma of doing so. Rules can operate to shape culture, not just punish, and a culture in which the rules are well known supports their efficacy and makes compliance easier. It would be ideal if all government employees had the courage to voluntarily report wrongdoing. And an ethical culture can certainly help make such reporting more likely. But New York City’s experience shows that we need not rely solely on personal bravery, or on changing people’s hearts, to have effective systems that can alert us to public corruption and fraud.

Just in the past month, the D.O.I. began two criminal investigations based on calls from city employees who were each offered a bribe. One of the calls emphasized the power behind the mandatory reporting rule. In making the report, the employee noted that he thought the bribe offer might be an “integrity test” by his employer, and he knew that if it was, it would not be enough to save his job to simply decline the bribe, as he did, but that to pass the test, he was also required to notify D.O.I. of the attempted bribe. One might hope that all public employees would be offended by the offer of a bribe and would report such conduct. But moral impulses are not always enough to combat corruption, and the calculus becomes markedly harder when the wrongdoing is not as stark as a bribe and the wrongdoer is not a stranger but a trusted colleague or an influential supervisor or a powerful elected official.

Insiders willing to report wrongdoing are vital to the fight against public corruption. It takes fortitude to come forward, even when you are required to do so. Those of us who believe in the promise and ideal of honest self-government have an obligation to support a process for whistle-blowers that helps diminish the amount of bravery and self-sacrifice required. The lesson of New York City’s experience is that mandated reporting can work. It has contributed tremendously to changing the culture on child abuse, and in New York City it has exposed public corruption while making investigating and prosecuting it easier. Whatever the outcome of the current impeachment inquiry, it should begin a conversation about how to encourage government whistle-blowers to come forward, just as the aftermath of the Watergate scandal was the impetus for institutional reforms and safeguards. A duty to report deserves a place in that conversation.

My NYT Comment:

This article makes no mention of Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning or Edward Snowden—all three criminalized for exposing illegal and criminal practices by the U.S. Government. We don’t need laws to demand whistleblowing. We need laws to protect whistleblowers when they disclose the truth.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/17/opinion/whistle-blower-trump.html#commentsContainer&permid=103148454:103148454

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5) Chicago Teachers’ Strike: Citywide Scramble as Classes Come to Halt

A walkout in the nation’s third-largest school district canceled instruction across Chicago. It was uncertain how long the strike might last.

By Mitch Smith and Monica Davey, October 17, 2019

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/17/us/chicago-schools-strike.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=US%20News

Students and teachers on the picket line outside Maria Saucedo Scholastic Academy in Chicago on Thursday.CreditCreditJoshua Lott for The New York Times

CHICAGO — Tens of thousands of public school teachers took to picket lines on Thursday morning as a strike in the nation’s third-largest school district canceled classes across the city, sent parents racing to find child care and left Chicago’s new mayor, Lori Lightfoot, grappling with her most significant crisis to date. 

City officials said schools remained open to students, who would be fed three meals and were being supervised by nonunion workers like principals. But some parents were skeptical of that option, signing up for last-minute camps at community centers and local parks. Others said they were staying home from work or hiring babysitters. School bus service was suspended. 

Outside schools across the city, clusters of teachers and supporters — many of them dressed in red — held signs and handed out apple cider and coffee, waving to passing cars and answering questions for parents who walked up. 

“We want to be in our classrooms with our babies, but we need to get them the class sizes and counselors and support that they need,” said Shemeka Elam, a third-grade teacher who stood outside Anna R. Langford Community Academy on the city’s South Side. Many passing cars honked in support as they passed Ms. Elam and other teachers beside the school.

The standoff between city officials and more than 20,000 Chicago teachers and thousands more school support workers had been brewing for months, but many residents had believed a strike would be averted. Now, with one landing weeks into the school year, they were worried about what it might mean for their families — for college applications, for sports seasons, for daily routines.

On the city’s Far North Side, Eric Ndedi, the father of two boys — age 14 and 9 — said he had kept his children home with their mother even though school buildings were open. 

“It’s more safe than going when there is no teacher,” said Mr. Ndedi, 42, a ride-hailing driver who said he had been accustomed to teacher strikes while growing up in the Democratic Republic of Congo, but had not previously experienced one in the United States. “It’s better to stay at home.”

Mr. Ndedi, who moved to Chicago three years ago, said he did not know enough to say who was to blame for the strike, but that “it’s totally not good.” He said he expected his sons to spend the day watching television, and hoped they would be back in class on Friday.

It was uncertain how long the walkout would last. Jesse Sharkey, the president of the Chicago Teachers Union, has said that he hoped for a short strike and saw a path for an agreement, but that next steps were up to Ms. Lightfoot.

Outside Peirce International Studies School on the North Side on Thursday morning, Mr. Sharkey said, “It’s up to the mayor to get a fast contract settlement, she has the power to do that. But we are going to hold fast to a just contract settlement.”

The strike in Chicago follows a wave of teacher protests and work stoppages nationwide, including in conservative states like West Virginia and Oklahoma, as well as in large, liberal cities including Los Angeles and Denver. 

Across the country, teacher unions have demanded bigger budgets not just for salaries, but also for classroom supplies, smaller class sizes and additional support personnel, such as nurses and guidance counselors — the issues at the heart of the current conflict in Chicago. Along the protest lines on Thursday, teachers stressed that their biggest complaints were not about their own salaries, but concerns about equity for all of the city’s public school students, including those on the West and South Sides, parts of the city that have often been overlooked and where schools have been closed in recent years.

Ms. Lightfoot said that there had been progress in recent days in negotiations on the issues of staffing and class size, but that other topics kept the two sides apart.

“They gave us a number of issues in the last 24 hours that we could not bridge those divides — and some of which, we’re just not going to be able to get there,” said Ms. Lightfoot, who took office this year after an overwhelming electoral victory and pledged to improve life in neighborhoods on the city’s South and West Sides. About 47 percent of the Chicago public school system’s students are Hispanic, 37 percent are African-American and 10 percent are white. Some 76 percent are economically disadvantaged. 

Ms. Lightfoot, who said she would be going door to door on Thursday in parts of the city to check on students, said, “this work stoppage will put a significant strain on working families.”

The strike is the first for Chicago’s school system since 2012, when teachers walked out for seven days.

The city said it had offered teachers a 16 percent raise over five years, while union leaders called for increases of 15 percent over a shorter three-year term. But union leaders also wanted written into their contracts the promise of smaller classes, more paid time to prepare lessons and the hiring of more school nurses, social workers, librarians and counselors. Other demands include affordable housing provisions and protections for immigrant students.

Mental health supports are crucial in a city where some public students are traumatized by exposure to gun violence, said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, the Chicago teachers’ parent union.

She accused Ms. Lightfoot of “dangling money” in front of teachers for salaries instead of supporting broader investments in schools.

“Why do we have to make an argument for a nurse in school every day?” Ms. Weingarten asked before the strike. She said she believed most of the money the union was asking for could be available without new taxes.

Kerry Kasper contributed reporting from Chicago, and Dana Goldstein from New York.

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*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* *---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* Working people are helping to feed the poor hungry corporations!  Charity for the Wealthy!