Another big story we’ve been following is the Chicago teacher strike. 350,000 students in America’s largest school district are not back in class today. The earliest that could happen is Wednesday, and the standoff between the Chicago Teachers Union and the school board has not been resolved. School officials took legal action on Monday trying to force teachers off the picket lines and in the classrooms. The city calls the dispute dangerous and says it’s against the law while the Teachers Union accused Chicago Mayor Rahm Emaneul of trying to bully teachers into accepting a deal. Now, there is a deal. It’s a tentative one, but many members of the Chicago Teachers Union aren’t happy with it, and they want more time to look it over before they sign on. The big issue is here, how long the school day is, how teachers are valuated, and how secure their jobs are. 

 

 

One of the biggest U.S. news stories of the year hasn’t happened yet. Election day is November 6th when Americans will choose their leader for the next four years. Yesterday, out reporter Tom Foreman explored the history of the United States Republican Party. You can see that report at cnnstudentnews.com. Look in our archives. Today, we are looking at the Democratic Party, so once again, Tom Foreman. 

 

 

 

The Democratic Party is a fair bit older than the Republican Party, but just where the heck did it come from? The Democrats can trace their history back to the lights of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, who really didn’t want the federal government getting too power hungry. In the 1820s, Jackson became the first president known as a Democrat. He was a fierce, cane-swinging, dueling war hero type of president who fiercely defended the rights of slave owners out across the country, farmers, by and large, saying if they wanted to have slaves, that was effectively none of Washington’s business. In the still young country, it was a popular and powerful idea, and the Democrats quickly became known as the Party of the People. Jackson’s foes, by the way, said he was as stubborn as a jackass in defending his position and ever since the donkey has been the symbol of the Democratic Party. 

 

 

As the years moved on, and the slavery issue was settled by the Civil War, the Democratic sense of supporting regular working class people evolved into and aggressive agenda of supporting security and individual rights and freedoms. For example, Democrats championed the idea of women being allowed to vote. In the 1930s, during the Great Depression and afterward, President Franklin Roosevelt launched many of the programs that Democrats are still most proud of, Social Security assured old people they would not go broke. Rural electrification took power lines out into the countryside. The G.I. bill guaranteed education for those who served in our military, and there was much more. In modern times, Democrats have championed civil rights, labor reform laws, and most recently health care reform. 

 

The Republicans, in recent decades, have proven more adept at winning the White House, but the Democrats still produced plenty of chief executives with landmark legacies, the moon programs, the Civil Rights Act and Medicare, the Departments of Education and Energy and on and on. And of course, the current occupant of the Oval Office, Barack Obama, he is a Democrat.