In the last four decades, leaders of the Chicago Teachers Union have been at war with one another more often than not. But now they say they’ve decided to come together to fight for their jobs.
The first is Marilyn Stewart, the two-term incumbent. She’s the latest in a long line of union accommodationists. “You don’t have to be aggressive with people—you don’t have to call them names,” she says. “You need to know how to be a professional.”
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“Anyway you look at it our profession is under siege,” says Lewis. “People are scared—we’re facing thousands of job cuts. This is not an abstraction—this is very real. These are tough times to be a teacher.”
Stewart was elected in 2004 as part of the so-called United Progressive Caucus, whose roots go back to Robert Healey, Jacqueline Vaughn, Thomas Reece, and other union powerhouses of the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s.
Anyway, in 2004 the old Reece crowd got its revenge, drafting Stewart, a special-ed teacher from Kinzie Elementary, to challenge Lynch. The year before Lynch had negotiated a contract that wasn’t that different from what had been in place, but she touted it as a great deal, and Stewart’s caucus did a masterful job of winning over teachers annoyed that it locked them in for five years.
In the last year or so CORE has also joined forces with community groups like the Pilsen Alliance and Blocks Together to protest school closings, which, of course, cost teachers their jobs.
There were five candidates running for president in the May 28 election, including Lynch. Stewart, the top vote-getter, drew only 35 percent, short of the majority she needed to win. Lewis finished second with about 34 percent.
