DNH Coach

Do Not Hire List Unfairly Hits High School Football Star Coach

By Jim Vail

Freddie Lesser was coaching at Dunbar High School one of the state's top football teams when something completely crazy happened to him.

The crazy part was not that a man threw water on his car as he passed by on his way to practice in 2002. The crazy part was what happened after this incident that completely changed his life.

The award-winning graphic design high school teacher and offensive line coach did not think anything more of the incident until he arrived on the field and found the guy who hurled the water at him had showed up and was now threatening him.   

There was another person who would prefer to remain unnamed who was one of Lesser's fellow coaches for the Dunbar High School Football. This coach did not like his colleague and good friend being threatened by someone who appeared to be intoxicated. His co-coach told the offender you can't threaten coaches and then he knocked him out.

After that the police were called. Freddie told Second City Teachers in a phone interview that he and his fellow coach who defended his colleague looked very similar with bald heads. The victim who had threatened Lesser told the police that he was assaulted, so the cops took both Lesser and the other coach to the police station.

The police released both men within an hour.

Lesser returned to the school parking lot to discover that his car had been set on fire. He told the Dunbar Principal Barbara Hall who did nothing about it. A few weeks later Lesser got a letter from the Chicago Board of Education informing him he was no longer employed as a Chicago Public School teacher. He was placed on the Do Not Hire List. 

He would also go on trial for assault and battery.

The Criminal Circuit Court Trial lasted a couple of weeks and was also attended by the Hall of Fame Dunbar Head Football Coach Glen Johnson, who passed away a couple of years ago.

"I went to trial accused of battery or assault, and they said I beat up a guy 6'6" and 300 lbs. by a guy who is 5'10" and 200 lbs.," Lesser said.

Coach Johnson had to recuse himself during the hearing because he knew the Judge. So they got another judge, and within a few minutes the judge said this was all bull and he dismissed the case.

Once his criminal case was dismissed, Lesser's lawyer petitioned the court to expunge the arrest so that it would not be on his record. 

Lesser did not know that he was placed on the DNH list until he went to look at his personnel file when he wanted to teach in Arizona in 2003. His fellow coach who did not work as a teacher at Dunbar like Lesser called him after he left and told him they were having a hearing scheduled at the Board of Ed because the victim/water assailant had filed a lawsuit against the Chicago Public Schools.

"I never knew about this hearing," Lesser said. "I was in Arizona. The Board of Ed thought I was running away. They didn't know I had another job and was transferred to Arizona. I couldn't make it to the hearing."

His defender told the hearing officer that Lesser had nothing to do with the incident. His fellow coach said he was the one who knocked out the guy, but it seemed the Board of Ed did not want to hear this. He told Lesser after the hearing that their body language told him that they were nonchalant about what he had told them and the Board probably thought it would be easier to pin the blame on Lesser because he was absent from the hearing.

Lesser said he believed the only reason the police got involved was because the third coach on the field that day was also a Chicago cop - Larry Stewart.

"He tried to protect me," Lesser said. "At the time Dunbar was the best team in the state, and I was the key to their success. I was the line coach. We were the team of the decade. Dunbar was well-known in football. Dunbar was the hub for recruitment ... (CPS) couldn't do anything to Jonathan or (co-coach Larry) Stewart because they didn't work for CPS. I bore the brunt because I was working for CPS."

As the years went by, Lesser went on with his life. He petitioned the Board of Ed to remove his DNH. His file was not on the district's computer system, so he sent them his paperwork, but the Board of Ed said they needed more information. He sent a letter to former CPS Chief Arne Duncan informing him about what had happened and that it was not fair. He included a letter from an investigator exonerating him along with 50 witnesses present when the incident took place. However, the Board never called any of the witnesses. 

"They didn't do an in-depth investigation," Lesser said. "No one ever contacted me. They just wanted to sweep it under the rug because it would look bad for them."

Lesser just recently sent in his appeal to have his DNH removed. People can appeal once a year if they have been placed on the infamous Do Not Hire List. He got the following reply from the Office of Administrative Hearings (formerly Office of Employee Engagement): 

"We are in receipt of your petition and it is still in queue to be reviewed by the Committee. When a decision is made, you will be notified via email soon. We appreciate your patience with this matter."

At the time of the incident Lesser was about to become a tenured teacher. Unfortunately, at the time he was still a probationary assigned teacher and did not have full union rights which would have included the ability to appeal his dismissal. He ended up replacing Nate Dixon as the graphic design teacher, who left to become a Chicago Teachers Union Field Representative. 

"We knew the whole case was fabricated," he said. 

Lesser did not let this miscarriage of justice for him at the Chicago Public Schools deter his career. He continued to teach at schools outside the district. He knows a lot about computers and he is a product of the Chicago Public Schools. He attended South Shore High School and he inspired his niece to become a teacher at Hyde Park High School today.

Lesser exemplifies the essence of a hard worker the Chicago Public Schools should be proud of. He used to work the night shift as a graphic designer at the old Chicago Tribune printing plant and then would come in the morning to coach at Dunbar. He would stay at the high school until 10 pm to review films as a championship coach.

Lesser was a linebacker at Illinois State University. He earlier worked as a graphic designer at the Chicago Park District, and his first supervisor was Arne Duncan. He also worked the night shift as security at the Hyatt Hotel at the McCormick Center and then head to nearby Dunbar at 3000 S. King Dr. to teach and coach.

Recently he earned his doctorate in educational leadership at North Central College. At the time of the incident he had been accepted into the prestigious program to be a National Board Certified Teacher. 

"I got accepted into the Board certification program that a lot of people can't get in," he said. "But they didn't care. So instead of the certification because of the incident I got my Masters and PhD."

"Even though I had some rough times in my life, I didn't let the setbacks in CPS curtail my education. I just used that as a motivation."

He is currently working as a case investigator at the Cook County Department of Health.

Lesser is also an exemplary model for how someone could escape the hard life of drugs and gangs and become a model for students in this rough city. His brother is Herman Williams, one of the original members of the Black Stone Rangers. Black Stone leader Jeff Forte was his next door neighbor when he was little and Lesser used to beat up his brother all the time.

"We used to go on all those marches," he said. "There were thousands of people wearing red cams and black outfits, marching for equal rights and against police brutality."

His mother who was a nurse moved further south to 79th Street to avoid the gangs.

His fiancee is a police officer and many of his former football players became police officers. He had earlier applied to teach at Tilden High School but was told they can't hire him because of the DNH. He has also worked as a tutor at Malcolm X College. 

Lesser was a star teacher at Dunbar. He was nominated for the Teacher of the Year Award for the best graphics class. His class went to the suburbs to compete at the Triton College graphics program contest and one person there told one of his students that it was the first time ever a Chicago public school student won. His student who won the design contest is currently working for Apple, and according to Lesser he still talks to this day about the contest he won back in 2001. 

"We had 1,000 students who wanted to take my graphics design class," Lesser said. "They couldn't find anyone to take my position so they had to cancel the position and no more graphic design."

Lesser is also a part of the Woodlawn Project, where they interviewed him first at age 6 and they follow his life as he grows up. They just recently re-interviewed him on the phone.

"Not a day goes by that I don't think about something that happened," he said. "I got all the memories. I kept a lot of my work and the students' work. Even though I moved on, I haven't moved on. Something in my mind won't let it go."

Let's hope CPS quickly rectifies this gross miscarriage of justice so that Coach Lesser can put this all to rest.

Peter Pay Paul

POOR PETER PAYING PAUL 

By Stephen Wilson                                     

 

Things are falling apart in Britain as school teachers are feeding pupils out of their own pockets. Child hunger has soared as austerity goes on and on.

 

More and more Scottish school teachers are witnessing the devastating impact of over a decade of uninterrupted austerity policies being ruthlessly enforced. And there is no reprieve for hungry school children. Teachers have reported seeing more hungry school students turning up at their lessons. They often can't afford a school meal so their dinner might be a bar of chocolate, a cheap hamburger or a tray of leftover rice. Teachers can often spot the look of hunger on children straight away. They have those bleak and listless eyes or sleepy look on their faces. They are less alert and attentive in the classroom. Then they have this dizziness that constantly accompanies hunger.

 

The  NASUWT {a union of school teachers} stated that they had received reports, from a survey, that their members were handing out money, food and clothes to many children and families who can't make ends meet. The survey of 360 teachers which was undertaken by the union found that as many as 65% had witnessed increased numbers of children coming into school hungry at the start of the day. As many as 58% teachers claimed that the students lacked the equipment they needed for lessons and 55% claimed that more families can't afford school uniforms. {So much for the argument on behalf of school uniforms that school uniforms obscure inequality and so conceal poverty. Families can't even buy the means of hiding their glaring poverty.}  

 

What does a teacher do when confronted with hungry school children? They often try to feed them. More than two thirds of teachers stated they had handed out food or clothing to pupils, while 27% had assisted a pupil's family to obtain aid from a food bank. As many as 23% said they had lent or given money to pupils.

It is not surprising that teachers not only feel embarrassed and awkward about all this. They are angry. A spokesperson of the Union Mike Corbett succinctly summed up the mood by saying "It's outrageous!" It is not only physical discomfort. Some school students can feel the indignity of humiliation, shame and possible teasing from a few insensitive students.  

 

The world is also watching Britain. The United Nations Human Rights Council demanded that action be taken by the British government to prevent homelessness and provide better food security and equal rights for disabled people. Countries such as Brazil, Angola and Romania all called upon the British government to take firm action. Brazil stated, 'The United Kingdom must improve food security, in particular for young children and adolescents and persons with disabilities.' The proportion of consumers who cannot afford to eat a healthy and balanced diet rose by 36% last month. The United Nations rapporteur on extreme poverty, Olivier De Schutter, warned the British prime minister that prolonged austerity policies will increase hunger and malnutrition in Britain. You'd think that the British state would be concerned about how the international reputation of the United Kingdom had sunk to a new low. How humiliating that Angola has to remind an affluent United Kingdom to take steps to fight poverty. But they seem oblivious. If I tell Russians those facts some don't believe me. They think it must be old Russian state propaganda that tends to run down the West. 

"You don't need to believe me," I retort, "just consult the Reports of the United Nations, charity groups such as Oxfam and academic research readily available on the Internet." 

It is true that the Scottish government itself has made an effort to extend school meals and that free school meals have been extended to primary school children in years one to five and that some councils have taken the special steps of providing all children with free school meals in some schools. But it is evidently not enough! Free school meals should be available to all school students and any attempts to cut welfare benefits must cease. Cutting benefits for the poor is as crude as the blood letting treatment used to treat patients during the plague. The cure is worse than the disease. You end up killing the patients. 

Unfortunately the government is out of touch and remote from the ordinary day lives of people. Imagination is not their strong point. Some can't even imagine why a person from a working class background might actually enjoy a visit to the opera. They think that the opera and the theater is something reserved for the rich and well to do.

 

And how does it feel to be hungry? After just two days you can feel slightly dizzy and then feel amazingly  light. At the beginning you feel more lucid and aware of things around you. You can have the sensation that you are not walking but floating on the streets. But after that you begin to feel dense, tired and can easily succumb to sleep. You start dreaming of food more and more. 

That was my experience of living in Dublin during the early 1980's. I'd often drop into a shelter in Church Street that fed poor people. Once I made a mistake of walking in with a brief case. The guy who handed out sandwiches noticed this and asked, "What are you doing? " as if I was pretending to be hungry. After some persuasion I got two sandwiches. Another two Irish guys with a fellow Scot also noticed me and asked me 'Why are you here?" The Scotsman answered on my behalf: "Well the man has to eat." I think it's great how fellow Scots stick together abroad! 

Then another strange incident happened in Dublin which sounded like a miracle. I had not eaten for some time and was very hungry. While in the city center I spotted a twenty pound note floating down like an autumn leaf on to the road. I quickly walked out and grabbed it. A lorry driver noticing it told me, "It looks like your lucky day." I immediately went to my favorite cafe to get a decent meal. Who ever said that Guardian angels don't exist? If only the current government could be guardian angels to British school children!

 

AFT & CIA

The American Federation of Teachers and the CIA 

by George Schmidt

Book Review

Almost all the books we read have been censored in some way by the US government via the publishing industry.

You cannot go to a book store and find The American Federation of Teachers and the CIA written by George Schmidt in 1978. These type of books that expose the lies of our government have to be self-published.

George Schmidt who founded Substance News in 1975 to fight for substitute rights and exposed the corruption and lies of not only the Chicago Board of Education and the Chicago Mayor but also the Chicago Teachers Union and its collaboration at times with the power structure.

His book The AFT and the CIA exposes this lie that the union is just there to protect workers' rights. The American Federation of Teachers has in fact been used to help install right-wing dictatorships around the world via its collaboration with the Central Intelligence Agency which is focused on protecting US corporate power at the expense of the people.

This was the time of the Cold War and the battle with the Soviet Union to control the world. It is no different today.

"These same leaders generally neglect to mention that their own "free" labor movement has been similarly by the American Secret Police, the CIA."

The collaboration with Irving Brown from the CIA with the American Federation of Teachers reminded me of CORE's fight with the AFT when they invited Bill Gates to the AFT Convention in Seattle. Both entities represent corporate power that opposes unions and worker organizing.

George's book is a fascinating narrative of the different groups that work with the unions and the intelligence services to subvert governments across the world. He connects the U.S. Agency for International Development or USAID as another CIA front. I worked with USAID when I reported in Russia in the 1990s to promote the free market. Little did I know!

The American labor groups with CIA money would work with a particular worker organization tied to dictator's like Pinochet in Chile or Bautista in Cuba.

"Chile is a good example. In 1973, Chile lost its democratically-elected president and regained its "free trade union movement" with the help of AIFLD, the Pentagon, the Chilean oligarchy, the right wing of the Catholic Church and a group of freedom loving generals who proceeded to execute at least 30,000 people, most of them trade unionists."

George writes further when the horrors of Chile were exposed that the AFT passed a resolution condemning the coup, but an amendment asking the AFT to investigate its relationship to the 1973 coup was defeated. 

George's research is quite extensive. He noted that Sec. of State Henry Kissinger had planned a NATO intervention of Southern Africa to prevent a radical takeover. The CTU and other labor unions tied to the Democratic Party today have not criticized NATO intervention in Ukraine that has provoke the Russian attack.

He also noted that the war in Vietnam began before US soldiers were sent to die when the CIA worked with French trade unions to make sure no strikes stopped the arms shipments in the early 1950s.

George's acerbic wit matched by his brilliant pen puts a literary spin on some of our more darker moments in trade unionism: "The massacre of half a million Indonesians has opened the door to successful 'free trade union' activity in another country."

But it was not only the AFT but also the NEA or National Education Association that worked extensively with the CIA to kill labor activists around the world on behalf of big business.

His last chapter entitled The New York Road to Power noted that after the NY's United Federation of Teachers established themselves as a liberal union that supported civil rights and desegregation in the 1950s then later purged all their activists as a cold hard business unionism took hold.

This book has more than enough to prove that history repeats!

You can access The American Federation of Teachers and the CIA by George Schmidt at -

https://www.scribd.com/doc/106238989/The-American-Federation-of-Teachers-and-the-CIA-by-George-N-Schmidt 

Media

What the Media Wants You to Believe

By George Schmidt

George Schmidt's words of wisdom live on.

Substance is reprinting my short book “The American Federation of Teachers and the C.I.A.” in its original form (save for an increase in page size and an increase in price) after several years of renewed interest in it.

I was at first pleased—but surprised—to find that intelligent and committed people were still interested in this brief study nearly a quarter century after it was researched and written. Looking back on the 26 years we have been publishing the teachers’ newspaper Substance in Chicago, however, it should not have been as surprising as it first seemed to me. There is the same connection across generations now as there was when my generation struggled to locate and learn the history of American radicalism during the Orwellian brainwash of the early 1960s.

Those who grew up, as I did, in the working class towns of industrial America during the 1950s were cut off from our past, often by our own parents. We were denied access to the legacies of protest and militancy that had a long and honorable tradition in the United States of America. The unions had been built by others. Civil rights was for rich college kids and black preachers. Feminism was not for our mothers or sisters. And woe betide our brothers (or sisters) if their sexual preferences deviated from the “Leave it to Beaver” orthodoxies of the mass media—or the even more viciously policed barriers to love erected by the Archbishop of Newark.

Our histories were not our own. Born in places like Elizabeth, New Jersey, and raised in Linden, New Jersey, we were supposed to view militant labor radicalism, the anti-war movement, civil rights activism, feminism and the vast poetries and potentials of human affection as something alien and subversive. The outsiders who practiced such things were not welcome on our block, or on Broad Street in Elizabeth, or on Wood Avenue in Linden. The people who wrote books about us were not our neighbors.

The children of American workers were not supposed to think subversively about the reign of American capital, either at home or abroad. The propagandists who brought that world view to the minds of children like myself 50 years ago are still working today. This little book is about some of them, and how they do their work among teachers. The people who tell America how to think about itself today are telling us that those industrial places where most of us live are rendered realistically in the media. They tell us that “The Sopranos” is a better way to understand white working class people from Elizabeth, New Jersey, than other methods. Certainly no one is to go to the area and walk through downtown Linden, Rahway, Elizabeth, or Freehold and visit our high school classrooms, gyms and sports fields. Brainwashing is a long discussion for a different time, but it is quite relevant to why we are reprinting this little book about one union at one moment in history.

In order to make people do what they want, any ruling class first has to make people think that a certain way of viewing the world is the only way. Conversely, in order to act more clearly and liberate ourselves, we have to develop critical thinking skills quite different from the ones presently sanctioned in our schools. We have to counter many of the official lies. As one character says in the movie Platoon—“Free your mind and your ass will follow.”

Maintaining the slavery of people’s minds is one of the main jobs of every ruling class. This involves a twofold dialectical process of suppressing (or distorting) the truth and of elevating banal fictions about persistent facts. Together today, these activities are called “Public Relations,” in politics, “Spin.” They are always lies in the service of power. There have been some changes in the tactics used to suppress the truth since this little book was first published, but not in fundamentals.

Propaganda still parades everywhere as “news.” The law is still invoked to suppress dissent. It’s still expensive (albeit perhaps not as physically dangerous) to publish and speak the truth about those who run the world. One of the things accomplished by the end of the Cold War was the unleashing of thousands of trained propagandists on the rest of the world. No longer in the employ of the governments that fought the Cold War, these men and women offered themselves for employment to the highest bidder.

Truth, again, was to be the first casualty. A dozen examples could be offered on any single day. In July 2001, anyone who paid careful attention to the media could read that the deceased owner of Newsweek was a heroine of free speech and a free press. We could then turn to the pages of Newsweek and read that protesters who threw things at police should be shot dead with a bullet in the head. This “They are only getting what they deserve” version of reality has its roots as old as history itself. Less than a week after dozens of peaceful activists from around the world were hospitalized by the brutality of Italian security forces (now led by fans of Benito Mussolini), most of us were supposed to believe that the dissidents got what they deserved.

Those who confronted official lies have long known that the liars usually are better funded and more polished than those who try to bring out unpleasant truths. Gone with the Wind is still more widely read and profitable today than The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. How does all this relate to the republication of a little book written a few years after the last American C.I.A. operative was pulled out of Vietnam (or disgracefully left behind to the not-so-tender mercies of the victors in that terrible conflict)? Our monthly teachers’ newspaper Substance bridges a few generations in the annals of critical reporting. Founded the year Saigon was liberated and Vietnam reunited, Substance has continued publishing continuously since. We have been around from the days of the Killing Fields to the years of the Battle of Seattle, the insanity of the “anti-drug” war on the poor in Colombia, the vicious official brutality of Genoa, and the daily attacks on the poor in all of the largest cities in the United States of America. And we came under attack, too, from the same people.

As readers of Substance know, in January 1999 the “Testocracy” sued me for $1 million and suspended me from my 30-year teaching job in Chicago’s inner city. Officially, the “Chicago School Reform Board of Trustees” sued us for a million dollars for “copyright infringement.” In January 1999, Chicago public schools CEO Paul Vallas (praised nationally for his fictitious “miracle” in the city’s public school system), with the full support of Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley (the man whose brother ran Al Gore’s election campaign) began the process of legal maneuvering against us. That maneuvering led to my termination as a public school teacher at the August 2000 meeting of the Chicago Board of Education. Still pending is the claim that our act of publishing facts entitles the Chicago Board of Education to get $1 million from us.

What was our crime? Publishing a handful of dumb tests that Chicago had just forced its high school students to take. Our crime was publishing facts that didn’t jive with the official version of The Truth. It’s been difficult to face off once again against the thugs who rule Chicago today. The assault on my career and the newspaper I edit has also provided me with an opportunity. It has given me the chance to meet a new generation of activists and to have some time away from the daily demands of classroom teaching to study and understand the movements that are growing today.

One of the strange highlights of the past three years was arriving in June 1999 at a conference of the Rouge Forum and Whole Schooling Institute at Wayne State University in Detroit. We had been invited there by people in Detroit who had heard about our struggle in Chicago over the Internet. My wife Sharon and I had driven from Chicago to Detroit and were late. As we walked up to the sign-in table, I was asked, “Who are you?” “I’m the guy who wrote that little book,” I said. Displayed among the literature near the registration table were a number of photocopies of “The American Federation of Teachers and the C.I.A.” I was told that people in Detroit had been reading the book as part of their study of the forces once again arrayed against the rights of the majority of people. Many, I was told, had thought the person who wrote the book was dead or out of political life. In fact, we had remained in the politics of Chicago and its schools, while others had gone elsewhere. We had stayed at the grass roots while others found that their “movement” pasts could be brokered into quite comfortable presents and futures.

Rereading “The American Federation of Teachers and the C.I.A.” 23 years after we first sold it at the 1978 convention of the American Federation of Teachers, I am glad for several things. Reading the accounts of the C.I.A. speaker Irving Brown at the 1977 AFT convention still gives me chills. I am glad that the facts we reported then still stand up now. I am glad to have worked with thousands of men and women who had the courage to oppose U.S. imperialism—both abroad and in our own cities—during those decades of the 1960s and 1970s—and beyond. I am proud that I can tell my sons what I did to halt the terrors of white supremacy during the century when it was at its most vicious.

It has been an honor to work with those who continued to oppose the atrocities of the “system”—even in the sugarcoated forms that were being prepared then (and which would be unleashed after the Reagan presidency began in 1981) and the cloying, trendy seductiveness of the “New Democrats” who ascended to power under Bill Clinton.

A great deal has happened since 1977 and 1978, when this book was researched and written. Most notably, for those interested in the topic covered in this book, was the collapse of Soviet-style Communism and its replacement by a brand of rapacious capitalism, often led by criminals and former intelligence operatives, throughout the former Soviet Union and across what was once called the “Eastern Bloc.” There have been attempts by the U.S. business press to present the nastiness of privatization and the “free market” in Russia as something unique, as if it stems from a Slavic gene.

Even a brief but honest history of capitalism in its various national inceptions shows that the abstract “market” preached by professors is really closer to the drive-by version practiced in places as diverse as Moscow, Manila, Los Angeles, Chicago, Santiago or Mexico City. 

Who are they kidding?

Capital bares its fangs behind the apologetics of those who abstractly preach about “free markets” and a “free world.”

This little book is about what one American trade union did during one period in its history. Why is it relevant today? I would argue that the international corporate capitalism practiced by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency during its Cold War heyday is the predecessor to the “globalism” that is generating a new generation of protest today.

Similarly, the class collaborationism of many trade union leaders is part of that process of subordinating people across the planet to the global reign of unbridled capital.

The saga of the American Federation of Teachers and its subordination to the agendas of America’s corporate leaders continues today in the union’s reluctance to support militant trade union organizing throughout the United States and, especially, in those nations were working people are most clearly the victims of globalization.

The American Federation of Teachers today is also the main union supporting the corporate drive—led by those we call the “Testocracy”—to subordinate the desires of the majority of people for democratic public schools to the agenda of the ruling class.

Just as during the Cold War, we are presented with “accountability” for the majority of people while those who run things are only accountable to themselves.

The growing international protest movements against “globalization” and the vicious attacks on these movements—and especially on their leaders—are nothing new in the ongoing struggle between capital and the majority of humanity. Hopefully, the republication of this small book will help to put some of the less visible portions of the history of our struggles into perspective. During the coming years, much more will need to be published about these issues. The republication of “The American Federation of Teachers and the C.I.A.” is meant to provide people with one additional tool for understanding the facts of history, rather than the glib generalizations which serve only those who wish to abuse humanity and the history we are all creating.

Pension Committees

Despite Harsh Rhetoric MF & CORE Join Forces on Pension Board

By Jim Vail

MF Pension Trustee Victor Ochoa

There is rhetoric, and then there is reality.

The war of words between Members First and CORE have heated up lately after Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates accused MF of being a part of the Illinois Policy Institute. The IPI helped lead an attack on the CTU by trying to get members to opt out of the union.

Gates even called MF Teachers Pension Trustee Phil Weiss the campaign manager for failed Republican Governor candidate Darren Bailey.

But despite these incendiary words - CORE, who controls the number of seats on the Chicago Teachers Pension Board, voted in favor of Phil Weiss to continue as Chairman of the Fund's Investment Committee and voted for MF Pension Trustee Victor Ochoa to chair the Technology Committee.

In fact, Trustee Weiss endorsed CORE Trustee Jeffery Blackwell during the campaign before his re-election.

The public fight between the two union caucuses apparently turned into a love fest.

And independents be damned! Retired Teacher Pension Trustee Maria J. Rodriguez and Teacher Pension Trustee Tina Padilla who is not affiliated with either CORE or MF will not chair any committees. 

Recently elected Teacher Pension Trustees Jeffery Blackwell will continue to be the President of the Pension Board, and Jaqueline Price Ward will be the new Vice President.

The new Committee heads were named at the Chicago Teachers Pension Board meeting on Thursday, Nov. 17, 2022.  

The Financial Secretary will be Retired Teacher Trustee Mary Sharon Reilly and Recording Secretary will be Retired Teacher Trustee Lois Nelson.

The Finance and Audit Committee chair will be (CORE) Mary Sharon Reilly. This Committee is powerful because it provides oversight of management's administration of the Fund's annual budget and financial operations.

The Pension Laws and Administrative Rules Committee will be chaired by (CORE) Jacqueline Price Ward. It establishes CTPF's legislative agenda.

It recommends or proposes pension legislation.

Claims and Service Credits Committee will be headed by (CORE) Quentin Washington. This committee recommends action by the Board on applications for pensions, including disability and refunds.

The Personnel Committee will be headed by (CORE) Mary Sharon Reilly who will review, evaluate and make recommendations regarding staff compensations, and hiring and firing. 

MF Teacher Trustee Victor Ochoa will be the chair of the Technology Committee.

The Elections Committee Chair will be (CORE) Quentin Washington and the other members will be (MF) Victor Ochoa and (CORE) Jaqueline Price Ward.

The Policy Committee chair will be (CORE) Jeffery Blackwell, and include (CORE) Jaqueline Price Ward and (CORE) Mary Sharon Reilly. This Committee makes recommendations to write new policies and amend them.

The Executive Committee consists of (CORE) Jeffery Blackwell President, Financial Secretary (CORE) Mary Sharon Reilly, Price-Ward (CORE) Vice President and one elected trustee (CORE) Lois Nelson.

CORE controls the Chicago Teachers Pension Board, and they are playing ball with the caucus they claim to disparage.

Book Review

A Fight for the Soul of Public Education:  The Story of the Chicago Teachers Strike

Book Review

by Jim Vail

You know you're good when you have a book written about you.

Celebrities, famous leaders, world events, etc. have plenty of books written about them. So it should be no surprise that the powerful Chicago Teachers Union and its CORE leadership have a book written about their exploits in leading the first teachers strike in 25 years.

A Fight for the Soul of Public Education: The Story of the Chicago Teachers Strike was written by labor professors Steven Ashby and Robert Bruno who followed the strike closely and had access to union communications.

That means first and foremost that the book published in 2016 is a glowing report about the strike and how CORE organized an amazing fight back against the corporate forces hell bent on privatizing public education, closing schools and destroying the teachers union.

I joined CORE when it first formed around 2006 because our Chicago Teachers Union was a total and pathetic sell out. It was no coincident that Mayor Richard Daley announced the Renaissance 2010 plan to close 100 public schools and open mostly privately managed charter and contract schools with no unionized teachers the day after PACT President Debbie Lynch lost her re-election to the UPC Marilyn Stewart. 

CTU President Stewart stayed silent after Daley announced this massive attack on the union. The UPC in fact worked with the Mayor to help destroy our public schools. They organized no resistance to the massive school closings, and said nothing about the new sweatshop labor of charter schools (Marilyn kept saying charter schools are our friends!).

That was why CORE formed and captured the imagination of not only the city, but the nation.

CORE's 2012 strike was very symbolic. It was the first fightback against the powers that wanted to destroy public education - from Republican President George Bush's No Child Left Behind (that union darling Diane Ravitch first supported when she worked in his education dept.) to Democrat President Barack Obama's Race to the Top. 

CORE and the teachers and public school parents, students and communities fought back! We said no to charter schools, no to attacking public schools and no to mind-numbing standardized tests.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Mr. 1%, was the epitome of corporate greed and the billionaire attack on the people. He was an agent of capital and wealth and greed that forced working people out of their jobs, homes and health care in order to preserve the billionaire portfolios.

The book focuses a lot on the organizing tool that CORE brought in order to lead this successful strike in 2012. A lot of nuts and bolts and teacher and union staff comments about how it went down. That is not terribly interesting to me, but nonetheless good stuff for especially our new teachers and staff and others who may not know what the 2012 Teachers Strike was all about. 

I voted against ending the strike. The reason was teacher evaluations. We could not end the destructive attack on our teaching forces when the Chicago Board of Education implemented the ugly Reach Evaluation that stated 2 developing or fair ratings turned into an unsatisfactory rating and the end of many teachers' careers.

I can speak personally how this attack went down on our teachers. Our physical education teacher did everything for our school - he coached many after school sports, the kids loved him, he fund raised and sponsored many events, he organized teacher outings and he even got a sponsor to pay for the insignia painted on the middle of our gymnasium floor. But because he was a veteran of many years, he was attacked for any little weakness and got the 2 developing ratings that turned into an unsatisfactory rating and now he is gone. We have not been able to secure a regular PE teacher ever since.

That was a big part of the corporate attack on the public schools. Destroy the family, destroy the beloved teachers who gave everything for the kids and put in a cold, hard, corporate culture that focused on fear and firing teachers. 

Mayor Emanuel got his revenge after the strike by closing 50 schools in the city, the most in history. The rich loved that he destroyed so many city public schools that served as anchors for low-income children. He was rewarded for his anti-people work with an ambassador post for President Biden (who I remember emphatically defending the rich on stage at the American Federation of Teachers Convention in Detroit after CORE was elected).

What was an eye-opener to me was how the ruling class worked with our union to set up this horror show. The CTU used to be one of the most fearsome unions when it went on many strikes throughout the 1970s and 1980s under the fearsome leadership of Jackie Vaughn. She rightfully has a public school named after her and the hall in CTU headquarters is named after her.

Mayor Harold Washington and public school reformers had passed the Local School Council law that gave the communities control over their schools while Vaughn headed the CTU.

But then all that was erased with the election of Tom Reece in 1994 who sold us down the river. He partnered with CPS CEO Paul Vallas to keep the union silent. He infamously said the only strike he wanted to see was in a bowling alley.

The corporate attack on us first began in 1991 when Vaughn was still the CTU President (she died of cancer in 1994). Mayor Richard Daley decided to take a big interest in the public schools and offered the union a 21 percent raise over 3 years to not only avoid a strike, but set up his diabolical plan with union support. In 1995 Daley again gave the teachers a nice raise in exchange for more control over the school operations after the Republicans took control of the state legislature the year before and wanted to ban Chicago teachers from going on strike. 

(I actually was hired at this time in Russia to work on behalf of President Clinton and his Russian aid program that similarly wanted to privatize the Russian economy on behalf of wealthy American investors at the expense of the people because the Republicans took control of the Congress and wanted to cut aid to Russia. I guess I was as stupid as Reece to work for the enemy!) 

In Illinois the Republicans wanted school reform and Daley wanted to take control of the public schools!

The Amendatory Act of 1995 was passed that destroyed the union's collective bargaining rights. Now Daley on behalf of big money interests had a free ride to privatize the public schools, destroy the union by naming his own board trustees and school's chief and no longer pay into the teachers pension fund (Daley receives today a fat quarter million city pension while he made his name destroying city workers pensions. That's what you call a big City Politician!)

"Inexplicably, the CTU leadership was not only quiescent about its own hobbling, but never mobilized against the law's passing and actually applauded parts of the legislation. CTU President Thomas Reece, who had assumed office in 1994 when incumbent president Jacqueline Vaughn died of breast cancer, pledged that the union would eventually repeal the law. He failed, however, even to criticize the Chicago-area Democrats, including Mayor Daley, who lobbied for the bill."

This new law took all power from the union and gave it to the bosses. now the CTU could no longer negotiate over class size, layoff procedures and school closures. Daley did this by buying union peace (bribing). 

"We paid to control the schools," CPS lawyer and union bargaining chief Jim Franzek said. 

Throughout the 1990s, union leadership preferred higher pay in exchange for ignoring the effects of school reforms dictated by the business class and their puppet mayor. Strikes had ended and peace brought us total corporate misery. People no longer wanted to be teachers!

Who needs enemies when your own union sells you out. 

The book's authors wrote that only State Rep Monique Davis spoke out against this attack on the teachers union, equating the new law to treating the teachers like a slave! When I first started helping CORE do political outreach, Rep. Davis told me that the UPC union in 2007 told her charters were their friends. When I said no, we are the real union, and charters are not our friends, they merely destroy our jobs by outsourcing them for cheaper wages, she agreed and added she didn't like that charters did not do any finger printing for criminal background checks. 

Rep. Miguel Santiago said, "You are putting the school system into the hands of individuals that are going to be corporate executives that do not have any idea of the educational system ... There is nothing in here that improves the educational system."

Today we see the effect of all these corporate decisions to fire teachers resulting in massive turnover in schools that further hurts children and their communities. 

Finally the CTU fought back 17 years later with the strike. 

The Amendatory Act has been repealed to restore our collective bargaining rights. The CTU restored the pension levy so that the city makes its required $500 million payment each year rather than using the money to destroy teacher union jobs. The AUSL private management group that Pres. Obama and his education sidekick Arne Duncan touted to turnaround public schools everywhere and fire everyone in the school is gone! The union put in school closings charter bans. That's called Fighting Back!

The book, however, fails to mention the biggest fight the CTU is engaged in. That is in political arena. They pour a lot of money into political races. It's an ugly game. But why must only the very rich play the political game to keep their taxes low and impose austerity on the rest of us? The CTU plows a lot of money into democrats to protect our pensions, stop privatization of the schools and have an elected school board.

The one glaring omission in this book is not talking to George Schmidt, the fearless teacher union fighter who edited Substance News for 40 years. That is like writing a book about organized crime in Chicago in the Twenties and failing to write about Al Capone. Schmidt was the expert on teacher contracts and the official historian of Chicago Teachers Union history. No one knew school union politics more than George Schmidt. However, I could see that CORE leaders most likely forbade the authors from interviewing a critical voice to rain on their book parade. The book certainly has the feel that CORE thoroughly edited it.

It was a kind of amusing to see the authors first refer to Substance as the pro-PACT newspaper, then later the pro-teacher newspaper. A quick look at their many, many references to Substance in their bibliography must have made the profs feel a little guilty not interviewing George.

The CORE fight is impressive and a great story. But CORE won in 2010 not just because they were organized, but even more so because the CTU President Marilyn Stewart decided to not take a No vote on the 2007 contract that further eroded union rights resulted in the UPC Party split. VP Ted Dallas allegedly called her a "f$% b*tch" right after we delegates chanted "NO, NO Vote" and the media picked up on this. She then fired Dallas. The splintered groups then backed CORE in the runoff.

Also, passing a teachers contract is very political. Mayor Daley fired Paul Vallas because UPC President Tom Reece lost in 2001 to Debbie Lynch. No more push over union to give the rulers everything they wanted without a wimper. But the UPC was still organized and continued to fight Debbie in the House of Delegates and were able to organize against passing her first contract. When a union has no opposition, they then need only to sell their contract to their members who vote on it. CORE had no opposition, and even though the members initially wanted to continue to strike, the last day that the delegates voted to end the strike reminded me of something out of spectacular tent revival event. Even the news media that started to bash the CTU strike in the second week were already set up in the parking lot interviewing delegates and congratulating them on the end of the strike. Who could say no? 

This is not to take away the amazing work CORE did. The contract did not stop the rulers from implementing harmful reforms and closing more schools, but it certainly turned the tide. Now people finally had a reason to be proud of their union! 

But the fight never ends. This book is a reminder of what we face and what a union must do for the working people - Fight Back!