Today’s Chicago Teachers Union Resolution creates a secret police to spy on other members, wants to raise taxes on the middle class, attacks free speech, attacks free association, and makes every member part of one political party without their consent … all this and the Union has not housed one migrant in their 3 story one-block long building and the union president sending her kid to a private catholic school … the pivot … HiHo
PROTECTING PUBLIC EDUCATION FROM RIGHT WING EXTREMISM
- WHEREAS our communities, schools, and Union are under attack by strategically funded extreme right and
- MAGA political factions who seek to dismantle public education as a public good through disinvestment,
- disenfranchisement, and direct attacks on individual and community efforts to increase equity and
- transparency in school funding, and
- WHEREAS at the same time, these bad actors recharacterize their efforts and claim to be in service of low-
- income BIPOC children and families, despite their long collective record of attacking and destroying
- neighborhood schools and other community-based support systems in the very same Black and Brown
- communities, and
- WHEREAS efforts by these entities have included the Illinois voucher scheme, cooked up by Illinois Policy
- Institute Chairman John Tillman and former Governor Bruce Rauner, costs up to $75 million annually from
- Illinois public school funding sources, for a total of $450 million to date, and
- WHEREAS Groups like the Illinois Policy Institute, Moms for Liberty, Awake Illinois, and school privatizers like
- Paul Vallas seek to silence authentic curriculum to further obscure and exclude Black history (an effort
- gaining ground across 36 states), ban books as part of a radical anti-Black and anti-LGBTQ+ agenda, and
- exploit legal asylum seekers as political props, enlisting support and engagement from documented hate
- groups, and
- WHEREAS attempts to ban books and tax schemes to rob public schools of funding come from the same
- people, the same groups, the same bank accounts; and they are connected with similar efforts nationwide,
- and
- WHEREAS conservative megadonors and their dark money organizations seek to influence elections
- ranging from local library and school boards to congress and the presidency, often explicitly campaigning
- on their plans to further attack, censor, and dismantle public education nationwide. The goal of Illinois Policy
- Institute, Awake Illinois and their allies is to elect radical extremists like Ron DeSantis and bring back the
- likes of Betsy DeVos, and
- WHEREAS all of these efforts aim to erode public trust in the rights and benefits of public education as a
- public good and advance a radical overhaul of our nation’s commitment to public education to inform our
- citizenry and strengthen our democracy, and
- WHEREAS the Illinois Policy Institute (IPI) and related organizations have also funded campaigns to
- eradicate the pension protection clause of the Illinois Constitution, called for the elimination of employer paid
- pension pickups, and promoted the drastic reduction of retirement benefits for educators state-wide, and
- WHEREAS our Union democracy has faced and defeated threats from right-wing campaigns, lawsuits,
- social media attacks, and other interference with our democratic processes, and
- WHEREAS our own members, from classroom teachers and support staff to Union leadership, have
- experienced targeted threats and harassment from extremist groups and their supporters because of our
- work supporting schools as institutions of inclusive democracy, therefore, be it
- RESOLVED that the Chicago Teachers Union stands in solidarity against well-funded forces that want to
- destroy our Union and public education, as we know it, and we will fight these entities in order to protect our
- students, our schools, our members, our profession, and public education as a public good; and
-OVER-
- RESOLVED that we speak in one voice as a Union when we condemn their attacks on libraries, LGBTQ+
- students and their families, and our ability to teach an accurate and more complete history of our nation,
- including teaching about the insidious nature of white supremacy, Black resistance, and the contributions of
- other historically excluded populations such as the Asian American & Pacific Islander diaspora, Native
- nations, migrants and refugees, and others; and
- RESOLVED that we will continue to support and advocate for policies and state laws requiring honest and
- inclusive curriculum such as Black History, the TEAACH Act, Genocide and Holocaust Study, Reparations
- Won, and Native American history, among others; and
- RESOLVED that we refuse to ignore the connections among the inflammatory, anti-inclusion rhetoric of
- right-wing politicians, their funders, and their supporters alongside the ongoing threats and attacks on
- schools, libraries, and other educational spaces, as well as the students and workers endangered each time
- such rhetoric incites action ranging from personal attacks to system-wide bomb threats; and
- RESOLVED that we recommit to educating ourselves as members of the Chicago Teachers Union through
- workshops, webinars, resource groups, and other professional development to better understand the
- history, role, and threat of these groups attacking public education as a public good. We will work to better
- understand their goals, how they operate and exploit our political and nonprofit systems to dismantle public
- education, how they seek to make educational spaces less inclusive and democratic for our students and
- families, and what we can do to protect our schools, communities, and our Union from their attacks; and
- RESOLVED that as delegates, we commit to engaging and supporting new educators in this work, sharing
- additional information with members at our committee and building level meetings, and participating in Union
- efforts to organize against these attacks; and
- RESOLVED that we will engage in a local and national Walk In on October 19th to educate our school
- communities on the true cost and nature of vouchers and the aims of their right wing discriminatory backers;
- and organize as delegates to demand our state legislators not to revive the Illinois voucher program and
- invest equitably in public schools instead; and
- RESOLVED that we support progressive revenue campaigns that force the same wealthy elite who fund
- attacks on our schools to pay their fair share so that we can fund schools and other community needs, and
- we will endorse and support candidates and elected officials who share our priority to protect public
- education as an institution of inclusive democracy; and
- RESOLVED that we will increase our strength to defend against these attacks in partnership with our allies
- and coalitions, including United Working Families, Grassroots Collaborative, and Black Lives Matter at
- School; and be it finally
- RESOLVED that we remain committed to Bargaining for the Common Good as a central value of the
- Chicago Teachers Union.
Adopted o Adopted as Amended o Defeated o Tabled o Other
AI:NF:oteg-743-gpc
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