I will die! And my kids will know I died trying to save their school!” Jeanette Taylor shouted at Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel during a September 2 city budget hearing. But her pleas and rage fell on deaf ears — the mayor failed to react, let alone meaningfully engage.

Emanuel and his staff were fielding questions at the South Shore Cultural Center, where five hundred people had gathered to debate next year’s proposed city budget. The Dyett 12 — a group of twelve parents, teachers, and education justice activists who recently engaged in a thirty-four day hunger strike to save Dyett High School — had taken center stage, determined to protect the last remaining open-enrollment high school in Bronzeville, a historically African-American neighborhood on the South Side that has been hit hard by privatization and school closures.

Parents like Taylor, who is a member of the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization (KOCO), have been fighting to protect Dyett for years. Despite their efforts, the Chicago Board of Education voted in 2012 to phase out the school over three years. Parents and community organizers knew they’d have to escalate their tactics, and in the years that followed, they launched sit-ins, protests, and rallies. While their attempts failed to convince the board to reverse its decision, they did wrest one concession from the board: the community group was given the chance to draw up a counter-proposal for Dyett.