An historic moment at Connie's Pizza. CORE's Presidential Candidate Karen Lewis met with caucus leaders Deborah Lynch (PACT), Linda Porter (CSDU), and Ted Hajiharis (SEA) about going forward with bringing UNITY back to the Chicago Teachers Union. All three of those caucuses endorsed CORE in the June 11th Run-Off Election.
Karen Lewis’ speech to the House of Delegates (6/2/2010):
Good afternoon. I would like to thank PACT, CSDU and SEA for running honest campaigns, based on the issues; and for their support.
I am honored … and exhilarated. Those of you who are unaligned and voted for CORE, thank you.
Last week’s rally was incredible. All of us in this room turned out thousands of people to tell Huberman and Daley “No” — stop destroying our neighborhood schools and trying to bust our union.
We should have done this every year for the past six years.
Because for years there has been a well-funded national smear campaign against public school teachers. Gains we won over 70 years of struggle are being stripped away. I have taught in this system for over 20 years and I have never seen this level of attack – scapegoating educators for all that ails urban schools.
But on June 11th we have a chance to end this business as usual, top-down unionism.
The most important thing Union leaders do is build consensus and organize members to speak and act as ONE. But who has heard our voice in the past 6 years? Who has seen a real fight against privatizing Chicago’s schools? Big business sees K-12 public education as 350 billion dollars they weren’t getting a piece of. Why haven’t we heard our leadership attack that profit motive – and PROVE IT? Why has our Union seemed complicit in its silence?
My opponent charges that we aren’t experienced despite the fact that we worked to stop 12 school closing and saved a thousand jobs. We had to sue the Board for budget and TIF details so we DON’T have to reopen the contract. You can’t talk numbers if you don’t have real information. We have the former vice-president of CTU, Howard Heath, who has not only negotiated a contract, he’s a mathematician who can crunch the numbers with the best of them. We’ve got lawyers and old contracts so we’re ready!
Let me share something with you. You already know that I’m the wife and daughter of CTU members and I went to Chicago Public Schools. But I am the only Black woman in the class of 1974 at Dartmouth College and I got that degree when I was 20 years old. I know how to stand strong in the face of adversity and win. I am not afraid. Never have been.
The current leadership claims that the safe bet now is to stay the course.
Clearly members didn’t buy that.
Two-thirds voted against the very candidate Huberman has backed in secret meetings over the last couple months.
On May 25 we said NO to repeating “the Marilyn experience” that cost 6,000 members their jobs. We said NO to pension raids. We said NO to the unchecked powers of abusive principals. We said No to rising class sizes.
We’re going to bring real technology to this union so our members have access to relevant information. We’re going to have real delegate training so everyone knows how to run an election smoothly, help the members in our schools and provide professional development that makes us more effective educators and unionists.
We will have a political strategy that is based on our ability to initiate and take the lead on legislation, not wait until the hammer drops – especially after the beating we just took in Springfield with the pension raid, the diabetes fiasco and a voucher bill that just won’t die. We’re ready.
So, I ask you today, will we stand united? Will we stop the attacks on our members? An injury to one is an injury to all. CORE represents what called us to the teaching profession in the first place. That commitment must be fused in out Union’s work every day. Let’s rebuild our spirit, our public image and harness the power of 30,000 members. Reclaim the joy of teaching and learning.
