Karen Lewis, former president of the Chicago Teachers Union, dies at 67
On February 7, Karen Lewis, the former president of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), died at the age of 67. Lewis, who retained the title of CTU president emerita, had been diagnosed in October 2014 with glioblastoma, a type of aggressive brain cancer. She officially stepped down from her union role in 2018, turning the office over to CTU Vice President Jesse Sharkey, who had been named acting president after Lewis’ diagnosis.
Lewis’ death prompted an outpouring of sympathy and warm recollections from the corporate media, fellow union officials and others. Stacy Davis Gates, the current CTU vice president, referred to her as “the most transformative leader that the city has seen in this century.” Jacobin, the semi-official publication of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), has posted no less than four articles on Lewis as of this writing, while failing to post a single article on last week’s
âOur community depends on us to educate these children in a safe environment and to not get them sick, and vice versa,â said Johnson, who is also vice-president for paraprofessionals at AFT Local 420 union.
But keeping teachers safe is not easy â or consistent. Across the US the availability of vaccines to teachers and other workers in American schools has become something of a lottery, with it being available in some areas, and not in many others even as public schools are being reopened. For many American teachers, access to the vaccine seems to depend less on what you do as a frontline educator and more on where you do it.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot: Teachers Union ‘Akin to a Political Party’
15 Feb 2021
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot (D) criticized the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) for putting up obstacles to reopening schools for in-person learning, stating the union has “aspirations” that are “akin to a political party.”
“When you have unions that have other aspirations beyond being a union, and maybe being something akin to a political party, then there’s always going to be conflict,” Lightfoot said during an interview published Sunday in the
New York Times.
Lightfoot responded to a question about how she would describe the union.
“I think, ultimately, they’d like to take over not only Chicago Public Schools, but take over running the city government,” she stated. “That’ll play itself out over time. I don’t really spend time, and certainly not in the middle of a pandemic, worrying about the politics. But politics intrudes, always.”