Union teachers from Chicago, Reynolds and Portland school districts explain how to wage a contract battle that involves teachers, parents, classified, students and the community and winning.  Beginning with Sarah Chambers, a leader in the successful 2012 Chicago Teachers Union strike, followed by Evan Selby, Emily Crum, and Jesse Reschke, leaders of the Reynolds district 2012 strike, and ending with Gwen Sullivan, president of the Portland Association of Teachers, who may face a strike this fall.

Mark Brenner, director of Labor Notes, a national organizing center and sponsor of Troublemakers' Schools throughout the country, speaks to the 200+ labor activists at Portland's TMS on April 13, 2013

Ben Katchor, the first cartoonist to receive a MacArthur Fellowship grant, is also a writer, teacher, and performer of TED Talk recitations.  His familiar-seeming yet skewed urban vignettes, such as Julius Knipl: Real Estate Photographer and The Cardboard Valise, have been appearing in magazines and alternative newspapers for over a quarter century.  More recently, he's been collaborating with musician Mark Mulcahy on an absurdist musical play, The Slug Bearers of Kayrol Island, and a comic-book opera, The Carbon Copy Building, both of which won Obie Awards.  Seemingly unable to successfully arrive in Portland, Katchor joins host S.W. Conser on the phone from Seattle to discuss his latest book, Hand-Drying in America and Other Stories, a collection of architecture-related comics from Metropolis magazine.