In 2012, Chicago teachers lit the fuse of what has now become a national teachers’ revolt. And this Thursday, the strike wave is returning to ground zero.

In the midst of the largest educators’ strike upsurge in US history, it’s easy to forget how different things were only a few years ago. During the Great Recession, a decades-long offensive against the public sector and organized labor was ratcheted into high gear. Faced with a ferocious bi-partisan agenda of austerity and privatization, teachers were demoralized, unions giving up concession after concession, and K-12 strikes virtually non-existent.

It was in this bleak situation that a rank-and-file caucus named CORE won leadership over the moribund Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) in 2010. Leaning on the energy generated by Wisconsin and Occupy in 2011, CORE activists transformed their union into a militant organization oriented to bottom-up workplace empowerment and labor-community alliances. The goal, CTU now declared, was to win the “Schools Chicago Students Deserve.”