Chicago: A Plan to Save Our Schools and Our City

The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) contract fight comes in the face of a near billion-dollar projected city budget deficit and Trump’s threat to eliminate federal funding of public education. All labor is in the crosshairs as the Democratic city rulers gear up to gut services and impose layoffs, while the incoming White House sharpens its anti-union knives. Trying to ride out the storm hand in hand with Mayor Brandon Johnson, as the CTU leadership proposes, will only leave the union underwater. Not only does he wield the budget ax against labor/black Chicago, but his brand of liberal politics paved the way for Trump. From the migrant crisis to the cop killing of Dexter Reed, none of Johnson’s promises to make Chicago work for working people have panned out. Instead, working people are more divided than ever, as living standards continue to worsen. Chicago is going to hell, and everybody knows it.

The fight to save our schools and our city goes well beyond a single contract fight. But teachers can be the catalyst for the struggle needed, which would also greatly strengthen their hand against the Chicago Public Schools (CPS). It’s time to take the bull by the horns and wage a union-based fight independent of and in opposition to the Democrats, who have run the city into the ground! Broadening out the struggle and drawing in union allies across the city is the surest way to defend the CTU and our common interests against both Trump and the Democrats. Such a fight could transform the CTU into a force to be reckoned with!

The union leadership, though, rejects this course in favor of maintaining close relations with Johnson. Teachers may feel that the one-time CTU organizer is on their side, especially after the trifecta of Daley, Emanuel and Lightfoot. But Johnson left the union to pursue his fortunes as a politician for the bosses’ Democratic Party, and he now answers to the city elite. The longer the CTU clings to the mayor, the longer its struggles will be held back. This was made abundantly clear last August when the CTU tops threw away an opportune time to strike in deference to Johnson and the Democratic National Convention. Teachers and staff are now nearing month six without a contract or much prospect for one.

But wait, some might say, teachers have had some wins while joined at the hip to Johnson—e.g., over a $1 million in arbitration settlements, expanded parental leave and extended COVID pay. But these are just drops in an ocean full of need and not worth the cost of chaining the union to City Hall. It is precisely those chains that restrain the CTU from mobilizing itself and its working-class allies to confront head-on the capitalist interests that view “sustainable schools,” quality, integrated education and the like as unnecessary and unwanted overhead.

Today, CTU president Stacy Davis Gates is encouraging the mayor to go through with a plan to have the city take out a sizable loan to fund teacher raises and pensions—and fire CPS CEO Pedro Martinez who opposes doing so. This might get teachers some extra money in the short term, but it will do far more harm than good. Such a loan, in the context of a massive budget shortfall, can only be financed by cuts elsewhere.

The bosses, with the mayor at the center, will use the loan as an excuse to close more schools, layoff more city workers and roll back more public services. Just this week, Johnson bemoaned but did nothing to stop the closure of seven Acero charter schools, which left the families of 2,000, mostly Latino, students scrambling and their teachers without a job. Rather than compete with one another over shrinking city funds, the CTU, transit workers and other trade unionists must join together to force the city rulers to meet their needs by taking the money out of the bosses’ pockets.

Some unions are already butting heads with City Hall. The firefighters, for one, are mired in a years-long contract battle for better compensation and a much-needed upgrade to their vehicle fleet. Many of them, fed up with liberal Democratic attacks, protested outside the DNC and voted Trump in the elections. The CTU hatching a deal with the Democratic mayor to get a few more crumbs for itself while other unions are left holding the bag would be like dousing working-class unity in gasoline and lighting the match. It also is the sort of thing that makes Trump stronger.

More broadly, the trail of broken promises by liberals like Johnson and their inability to provide any relief has driven working people, including black people and Latinos, into Trump’s arms in hopes of finding answers. This fuels reaction in Chicago too. Johnson’s handling of the migrant crisis is a graphic example of playing one group off against another where everyone loses! Black people and Latinos are pitted against migrants in a struggle for the city’s diminishing resources. Any effort to “resist Trump” that extends a hand to liberals like Johnson—who take away from one section of working-class Chicago in the name of giving to another and then blame those who object—is doomed to failure.

Teachers are keenly aware that they must fight not just for themselves, but also for the black and Latino masses whose children they teach. The CTU leadership regularly talks of fighting against racism and homelessness. There is a burning need to fight for black equality, and homelessness must be ended. However, neither can be achieved without disrupting business as usual for the Democratic Party. Black oppression is a pillar of capitalism in this country, and the forcible segregation of black people is used by the ruling class to drive down living standards for the whole working class. Taking this on requires going straight up against the interests of the U.S. ruling class, whose very success flows from keeping us divided along racial lines.

This is a fight that Johnson cannot wage because it threatens to carve major inroads against capitalist property and profits: seizing the best real estate and making it available for working people and homeless people, implementing massive union-run public works projects to build quality, affordable integrated housing and public schools. But such measures, combined with fighting to shorten working hours for everyone and put the unions in charge of hiring and job training, are concrete steps that can be taken to address racial oppression and will improve the position of all working people, undercutting divide-and-rule.

Teachers, no matter how militant, are not going to be able to improve their situation in isolation. They must demand immediate strike action and appeal to the rest of city labor and the black and brown masses to cement a fighting alliance against the budget-slashers and union-busters, against the masters of “Segregation City” and the new Commander-in-Chief. This working-class coalition would aim in the first instance not only to improve public education, but also to cancel the debt to the banks and open the books so that all working people can see the balance sheet for themselves. A unified fight stepping off from the CTU contract battle can advance conditions for all city workers—transit workers, AFSCME, SEIU, firefighters and more. CTU militants should organize with city workers to demand:

• No cuts to public services, no school closures!

• No to tiers! Equal pay for equal work!

• Open the city’s books to public scrutiny!

• Down with the bosses’ divide-and-rule! Fight for black liberation! For quality, integrated housing and schools!

• No reliance on the bosses’ politicians, Johnson or Trump! Build a workers party!