I am a third-year Phd student in Anthropology at Chicago University. My research is on the politics of education reform in New Orleans after Katrina. While that is my overall dissertation research interest, focusing on Chicago and New Orleans I specifically look at the teachers unions, including examining a class action court case brought by some of the 7,000 unionized teachers and school employees who were effectively fired after the state took over the the vast majority of the city's schools and turned them into mostly non-union charter schools. I am interested in how race, class and gender play out in the memories and narratives of education reform in the city and how the contestation over unions, charter schools and privatization can be a critical site for reflection on neoliberalisms, the state and capital.