In 1991, Tom Geoghegan subtitled his memoir of life as a labor lawyer “trying to be for labor when it’s flat on its back.” Two decades later, the image needs some updating. It’s only accurate if you picture labor flat on its back on, say, a stainless steel emergency room operating table, its heartbeat heard only occasionally and faintly. Future prospects appear grim, but the doctor doesn’t have the heart to tell the family. They’re still in denial.

At least, that picture seems fairly accurate on bad days working in the labor movement, which come more often than the good. But there’s some hope now in Chicago. The teachers are on strike, kicking ass, and taking names — specifically Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s, frequently in vain.

At a time when the unspiring labor movement has become weakened almost into irrelevance and the Democratic Party continues its rightward drift into an open party of austerity, the CTU is taking militant action through a tightly-organized membership and a rank-and-file-led leadership in the face of legal barriers previously deemed insurmountable against a Democratic mayor pushing neoliberal education reform.