Karen Lewis Joined a Book Club in 2008 and Now We Have a Yo! Guy As Mayor

Sometimes when I think too much about how things are *right now* in the world and in the news I get very despairing.

Maybe it’s the microplastics.

There’s nothing wrong with despair, of course. But sometimes I would like to feel something else, something slightly more action-inducing. Hope is a discipline, etc, etc, you get it.

So, this week, instead of a roundup, I figured I’d send something about Former Chicago Teacher’s Union President Karen Lewis — to fight the despair.

It doesn’t hurt that there’s an unusually clear line of Organizing Cause and Effect between Lewis’ time as the President of the Chicago Teacher’s Union during the 2012 Strike, and the election of Brandon Johnson as Chicago’s Mayor.

I’ve been thinking about this lately because it turns out Brandon Johnson is a “Yo!” guy.

What is a “Yo!” guy?

Remember how Lori Lightfoot kept releasing emails that said things like “My dick is bigger than all of the Italians?” That was fun, in a way.

In contrast, Johnson’s emails just say “Yo!” a lot. His emails are a more wholesome type of fun, the kind of fun I’m trying to embrace.

There are no troubling admissions in Johnson’s emails (yet) — but it’s more that the vibes are different.

This is good for a city.

Someone on the internet recently got mad when I said that vibes matter in government, and — Vibes > policy? Okay, no. But vibes are meaningful in government because so many of the issues in municipal government come from arcane siloed internal communication problems. I’ve talked to too many government people who are struggling with a coherent CRM to believe otherwise.

At any rate, Chicago having a Yo! Guy Mayor is connected to Karen Lewis joining a book club in 2008.

Johnson believes this too, considering the way he talked about her in his inauguration speech.

What Was Up With the Chicago Teacher’s Union Pre-Book Club?

Note: Most of this is cribbed from the chapter about the Chicago Teacher’s Union in Jane Macalevey’s “No Shortcuts” — you should read it if you want to better understand power, unions, and what WINS in organizing strategy, not to mention the conditions that led to Johnson’s win.

Pre-2008 in Chicago was the period of No Child Behind. It was also a time of general professionalization in NPIC-type unions everywhere — CTU leadership was conflict-averse. Well, in this era, most unions’ leadership was conflict-averse.

These forces meant CPS ‘leaders like Vallas (who you may remember from getting wrecked in the 2023 general) + Arne Duncan, who had only ever led a basketball team before CPS, easily gutted teachers’ power + CPS’ ability to serve its students, who at this time were 94% Black and brown.

The profound mismanagement from Vallas and Duncan, not to mention the ineffectiveness of CTU leadership’s response to that mismanagement, is the primary reason that CORE came into being.

What is CORE?

CORE is a caucus of “rank and file teachers” (or, “actual teachers”). I wrote a little bit about what “rank and file” organizing looks like a while back, but TLDR —

A caucus is an internal political party within a union — this probably sounds basic to many of you but it took me YEARS to understand lol. A caucus has a shared set of political positions they want implemented with the power of the union.

A Caucus does a lot of things to build internal political power. Building internal political power, though exhausting, can be simple — deceptively simple. For example: a caucus can have book clubs.

I will never talk shit about your socialist reading group again

In 2008, Karen was part of a study group on Naomi Klein’s book The Shock Doctrine, a study group that played a major role in building CORE + in part a response to conditions in CPS + CTU. Other members of this group included integral leaders in CORE.

Through intensive internal organizing, CORE created a docket for CTU leadership that was strong enough to replace CTU’s ineffective leadership.

After CORE won every seat in leadership in 2011’s CTU election, they had the power of CTU behind them to change Chicago Public Schools — and Chicago, with Lewis as CTU president.

To do that, Lewis and CORE had to upend decades of old bureaucracy while continuing to organize internally, fighting crisis legislation, and navigating many “business as usual” power plays from above including in Springfield.

Lewis v. Rahm

There was another election in Chicago around this time: Rahm Emanuel became Mayor. Though he has now fled to Japan, in 2011, Emanuel was a big freaking deal.

And Emanuel was gunning for the CTU before Lewis even got started: nominating anti-labor privatization leaders to CPS, getting rid of tenure, fighting for a longer school day, and implementing merit pay. His goal was to destroy the CTU entirely so that the privatization status quo could move forward unabated.

Though you wouldn’t guess this from the strategy of many Democratic institutions today, when your opponent’s goal is to eviscerate you, it’s not usually a good time to focus on incrementalism.

So, the Chicago Teacher’s Union had to do something different.

To make that change happen, they had to do something big. They had to demonstrate CTU’s power — and, you know. WIN.

Lewis and CORE defined the terms of their fight as one for the future of public schools and workers. They fought for major, systemic change considered impossible by corporate leadership (and old-school union leadership), rather than tiny incremental gains.

The stakes were very high, and the opposing force was not fucking around. The only rational solution was to fight back in a big way.

That’s probably why, by the way, Lewis kept a Halloween mask of Emanuel on her desk.

That meant using Workers’ Most Powerful Weapon (Mcalevey’s words), one that hadn’t been used by a Teacher’s Union in 25 years: a strike.

How do you prepare for a strike?

To prepare, CTU took small-scale action to “structure test” their power. They charted the entire union. They held a mock strike vote internally for 800 teachers. They held a rally to support contract negotiators where 7000 teachers showed up in red, overwhelming the capacity of the Auditorium Theater downtown.

The key was to, in the lead-up to the strike, make sure that “members could own the union, take responsibility for it, to see themselves as the leaders of the union.”

That’s exactly what happened — 76% of the CTU voted to strike, and on the first day of the strike, over 35,000 teachers marched downtown, shutting down everything.

Far better recaps of the CTU strike are linked — but Lewis was a transformative figure in that moment.

She used the media to “turn the entirety of Chicago into her classroom, teaching the ABCs of what was happening in the school system to the city.” (“No Shortcuts,” again), paid close attention to media framing, and had an email list (back when nobody had an email list).

After 8 days of intense negotiations, including Lewis’ choosing to extend the strike so teachers on the picket line were able to participate in major decisions, the CTU won the strike and stopped Emanuel from destroying the union.

The strike showed that a fighting, rank-and-file-led union could win major victories against entrenched power. Lewis and CORE’s leadership paved the way for a more militant and effective CTU, one that could win major gains for teachers and students alike.

Right now, Johnson + grassroots groups + worker-led organizing have real power in Chicago. So much of that power is rooted in the organizing done by CORE (a rank-and-file caucus in the Chicago Teacher’s Union) that started over a decade ago — even before the 2012 Chicago Teacher’s Union strike.

As Stacy Davis Gates says: Karen Lewis figured out in 2013 how to redirect our energy after a huge disappointment. Fifty school closings. Fifty. It still hurts, ten years later. But Karen got up the next day, and she gave our movement direction. It is so hard to give people something in a loss because you ain’t even got it. She said, ​“We’ve tried at the negotiating table. We’ve gone to your board of education meetings.” And she said, ​“Look, you keep telling me to hold you accountable for everything. So she said we’re going to hold you accountable. We’re going to talk to voters.” 

Why Karen Lewis and CORE Matter for Chicago

Karen Lewis and the CORE caucus were instrumental in transforming the Chicago Teachers Union into a powerful, rank-and-file-led force for change. Through intense internal organizing, they were able to take control of the CTU and win major gains for teachers and students, including a major victory against corporate interests. All of this demonstrated a militant, autonomous union — both its power and how to build one after years of union inaction.

Labor fights are never about one person. But! As Keith Kelleher (former SEIU) said in a CTU obit after Lewis passed, “It’s rare that you can say one person changed things in our city, state, and country. Karen did.”

You can see Lewis’ work (CORE’s work) everywhere — not just in Chicago, but in the resurgence of the labor movement overall.

At this moment, there’s a lot to learn from Lewis —not just about power and how it works in Chicago — but about what it takes to be hopeful in very despairing moments.

At any rate: thanks, Brandon Johnson! Thank you for being a Yo! guy.

Remember when I was going to do weekly roundups about Chicago news in August? Whoops.

In August these roundups were waylaid by me getting: COVID, an ill-advised liquor store job (Sauvignon Blancs are dry, right?), existential climate malaise, and a crush. We’re all very busy!

But if you’ve ever watched a wellness masculinity YouTube video, you know that BUSY is just another 4 letter word for FEAR.

IMO, my BUSY disguised as FEAR is showing up because there’s something still a little off about this weekly roundup format.

Part of the issue: I’m just re-inventing the wheel on roundups, copying the great ones from Axios Chicago, Newswire, and City Club.

Another issue: Roundups bring up the usual questions re: impact v. scale that comes with newsletters.

Is it better to have a consistent routine structure that’s succinct for talking about what matters in niche Chicago politics?

Or is it better to dive deeper by writing more erratic, extremely niche takes involving queer reality shows?

You don’t have to answer these questions, of course. As astrologer Alice Sparkly Kat says, “Your clients, your friends and community, the people you have a crush on — none of them can tell you what you deserve.” Horrifying!

That said, you’re all very smart and tend to be fellow freelance rise and grinders, so I am curious and excited to read anything you want to send back via “reply”).

So as I try to plow through turning the 30 + interviews/essays I have backlogged into something *content-y*, I will keep sharing weird little content diary side notes like this.

Other Things To Read While I Stare Into The Content Void:

"Self-described neopagan dirtbags" raised $17,000, which purchased more than $1.6 million in medical debt, that they then burned. Beautiful.

Workers at Loretto won their strike!

I tweeted this while seething with imposter syndrome. I share this only because we should all do more things while seething with imposter syndrome — tbh, the whole Arwady deal demonstrates that whenever you’re seething, others are *narrative building*

What’s new with you guys?