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Chicago Students Rally After Walkouts Over In-Person Learning

Chicago Public Schools (CPS) students organized a district-wide walkout on Friday, January 14, to protest in-person instruction amid a COVID-19 surge.

Footage filmed by non-profit organization Asian Americans Advancing Justice Chicago shows large crowds of students chanting and holding signs reading “Let’s lock Lori out” at a rally and press conference outside the CPS headquarters.

Local youth organization Chicago Public Schools Radical Youth Alliance (Chi-Rads) announced the walkout after citing a list of demands to Mayor Lori Lightfoot and other city officials.

“We as young people of the Chicago Public Schooling system have officially allied ourselves across a multitude of this city’s public high schools,” Chi-Rads wrote in a tweet. “We have established a coalition that will organize, execute, and define the re-imagination of our education.”

On Wednesday, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) accepted a “tentative” agreement with the CPS bargaining team that addresses “chronically inadequate COVID-19 testing and contact tracing,” and provides students with masks, according to a CTU press release. Credit: AAAJ_Chicago/advancingjusticechicago via Storyful