CTU, CORE, ISO and its Agent for Acronym Happy Socialist Change Jesse Sharkey

The historical crisis of mankind is reduced to the crisis of the revolutionary leadership." 

-Leon Trotsky, or Jesse Sharkey?

Karen Lewis was elected on the CORE  ( Caucus of Rank/File Educators) slate of the Chicago Teachers Union.  CORE is the Caucus backed by the ISO -International Socialist Organization. Karen Lewis is CTU President and Jesse Sharkey is the Vice President

ISO is International - says so right in the title. Jesse Sharkey is an ISO big shot, as well as second in command of CTU. Jesse Sharkey is a Marxist/Trotskyite, which is nice for him; I am a Catholic Democrat, which is nice for me.  Free country. . .for now.

Anyway, Jesse Sharkey is another below the radar power-player in Chicago.  He is the power behind Karen Lewis and some power that be.

Let's look back in our Chicago CPS history. Bear in mind that Education Reform will not happen until Vouchers - Real Choice - is mandated. Let's return to those thrilling days of yester-year - The Dawn of CORE.

Marilyn Stewart, " whose smile would light up a room" as the our media icons always told Chicago readers, was once head of CTU and headed the United Progressive Caucus (UPC)  Ms. Stewart was a standard issue Progressive mediocrity and grifter who had tossed every pack of race cards available ( WBEZ, WTTW, Carol Marin, Mary Mitchell & etc) at Deb Lynch, the last effective CTU President, in order to grab power. Ms. Stewart looted the CTU six ways to Sunday once in power only be ousted by Karen Lewis with the full public relations might of ISO's plant in the CTU Jesse Sharkey.

Jesse Sharkey is a Brooks Brothers Bolshevik and a leader of the ISO - and international oragnization of retro-Communist Trotskeyites.  Jesse Sharkey is not unlike lawsuit lotto lawyers, G. Flint Taylor, Locke Bowman and Jon Loevy - all have the imprimatur of the Illinois Progressive guru Abner Mikva and the lesser lights like Dick Simpson. They are Google scrubbed and patient revolutionaries.

Last April, when America turned its eyes on Wisconsin and even Illinois pulled its noggin out of its rump for a peek, SB7 came to be.

Lewis’s betrayal of the union ranks caused some embarrassment for the International Socialist Organization, since CTU vice president Joel (sic) Sharkey, elected on the CORE slate, is a long-time prominent ISOer. For several days, the ISO  kept mum about this dirty deal behind the backs of the membership. But on April 21, the ISO’s main writer on labor and the Democrats, Lee Sustar, posted an article on the Socialist Worker web site, “A crisis for teachers union reformers?” saying that Lewis had “shocked” CORE members by her stab in the back. Sustar said that Lewis “acted alone,” and complained that she “withheld that information from the CTU House of Delegates,” which she addressed by Skype on April 13. He claimed “other CTU elected officers and members” only learned of the deal after the meeting. What Sustar didn’t tell readers is that the ISO is up to its neck in the CTU bureaucracy, whose paid staff includes a number of ISOers, and that the ISO’s CTU vice president Sharkey learned of Lewis’s sellout on the night of April 12, as he admitted to a CORE meeting two weeks later (according to a May 21 leaflet by the League for the Revolutionary Party). So Sustar’s April 21 article was a cover-up for the ISO’s own betrayal.
On the day that article appeared, Marjorie Stamberg of Class Struggle Education Workers posted a commentary, “Big ‘Surprise’ – Chicago Teachers Union Reform Leader Sells Out,” on several New York education activist blogs. A week later (April 27), an ISO supporter responded by posting a defense of CORE and arguing, “No one should have to apologize for supporting these genuine reform movements – warts, growing pains and all.” “We should see union leadership as merely a tool, not an end-all be-all” he intoned, denying that the Sustar article was “somehow hiding” the ISO’s role in CORE. But there was no mention that Lewis’s No. 2 in the CTU leadership, Sharkey, is a prominent ISOer, or of Sharkey’s April 25 admission before many witnesses that he knew of Lewis’ betrayal almost immediately and said nothing of it to union delegates at a meeting the next day. The writer piously hoped that the CTU ranks would reject Lewis’s “unilateral agreement,” and on May 4 the CTU House of Delegates did reject SB7. Yet this was just covering CORE’s ass, since the CTU tops did nothing to mobilize against the bill which was ultimately signed into law by Democratic governor Pat Quinn, whom the CTU had endorsed (along with other Democrats) in the November 2010 elections. Maybe that political support for capitalist politicians is one of the “warts” the reformists want us to overlook.

You see Karen Lewis endorsed Illinois SB7 which required a 75% strike vote by the rank and file and has worn a big target on her back ever since.  Karen Lewis must prove that she is 'all that' and go strike happy, even though she is committing the political Dutch Act.

Here's why -

Class-struggle unionists are not opposed to using every legal means to thwart the attacks on the public schools, the students, the teachers and staff. But we underline that the courts are not neutral, they are part of the bourgeois state just as the police and legislature are, and they exist in order to enforce the interests of the exploiters against the exploited. We hold that to defend the workers’ interests it’s necessary to mobilize the ranks of labor at the head of all the oppressed independently of and against the courts, the cops and all the capitalist parties and politicians. Reformist leftists, in contrast, pretend that if enough pressure is brought to bear in the streets, or otherwise, the courts can be induced to come down on the side of “the people.” So what happened in this case? For starters, the CTU suit said nothing about the over 500 “provisional” teachers who were dumped, and did not challenge the CPS’s “right” to lay off the 749 tenured teachers, only the way it was done. In October, a sympathetic judge ruled against the CPS and ordered that these teachers be put on a recall list and given priority when hiring resumes. Lewis hailed the “stunning court victory” – yet almost 1,300 teachers were still out of a job. ISO -International Group

Karen Lewis is finished no matter what happens, or however long this strike will last.  Jesse Sharkey will see to that.

Jesse Sharkey, it seems to me, is the architect of the current CPS Strike.  While media follows Karen Lewis like goslings, Jesse Sharkey appears strategically.  He's the Veep.  Personally, I do not believe that Karen Lewis can make change, much less effect educational reform at any level.

CPS and CTU are gobs of stinky  cheese cut from the same John Dewey wheel and things are playing out according to plan - Jesse Sharkey's plan:

  

http://sync.democraticunderground.com/101756875
http://www.dailykos.com/news/Marilyn%20Stewart
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/ct-oped-0910-byrne-20120911,0,6394835.column
 http://www.internationalist.org/index.html
http://www.wbez.org/episode-segments/ctu-candidate-deborah-lynch

SEIU Stands WITH CTU While Scabbing Every Day

SEIU is a Marxist PAC.  It is responsible for not only the decline of American Labor, but also the murder of the American Middle Class that organized labor helped to make a wonder of the world after WWII.

SEIU is led by Reds in purple costumes armed with social work degrees from University of Pennsylvannia with a modest sprinkling of nurses.

SEIU own most Democratic legislators in Illinois, the Mayor of Chicago ( that is why they are allowed to sit this one out)  as well as the President of the United States who have no comment on this strike whatsoever!

SEIU is as phony as every Progressive I have ever encountered.

SEIU will cross the picket-lines.

I wonder if Bruce Springsteen will warble out a ballad about that.

Service Employees International Union Stands in Solidarity with 26,000 public school teachers, clinicians and paraprofessionals of Chicago Public Schools.The Chicago Teachers Union is calling for a better school day and adequate resources for students, as well as fair compensation and improved job security for teachers. SEIU supports the CTU if they are forced to strike; however, many of our members are contractually obligated to work in the event of a strike. SEIU members will continue to work at the schools to ensure the safety and health of Chicago’s schoolchildren as their teachers fight for their education.
Strong public schools are critical for working families in Chicago. SEIU Illinois calls on Chicago Public Schools to prevent a strike by giving our students, schools and teachers the resources they need to succeed.

When Rahm fires the membership of CTU, SEIU will welcome their dues!

Teach, mop, dust it's all good!

 Now, that's Solidarity!

 http://www.seiu1.org/2012/09/08/seiu-local-1-stands-with-chicagos-teachers/

The CPS/CTU Raccoon & Skunk Fight is On! Catholic Schools Open for Business

“We have failed to reach an agreement that will prevent a labor strike,” Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis said. “No CTU members will be inside of our schools Monday.” - Tribune

I am here at the Eight Seven Years Young Leo High School, a college preparatory school for young men of the Archdiocese of Chicago.  Proco Joe Moreno and Mayor Rahm noted this summer that Catholics share not their Chicago Values.

The CTU is Chicago Values 2012.  CPS is Chicago Values 2012.  Together, Chicago Values 2012 have given parents and their children the fruits of Chicago Values.

Leo is a four story brick and mortar facility with more re-bar than Fortress Europe.  It is a solid building built upon a deep and thick foundation and the Gospels of Christ.  There is no central air-conditioning and the old structure retains heat like sponge.  In Chicago's winters, the Sangamon Wind whips the The Hawk through the portals and keeps the 1921 twin Kewanee Boilers working like Poblano with two shovels.

Our students receive a quality education and learn to be competitive and caring men.  It costs money - their families, our teachers, our Alumni and our partners work to pay the bills.  More so, the school, like all Catholic schools, is rooted in Catholic Values, not Chicago Values 2012,

These are the fruits of Chicago Values, 

At a raucous House of Delegates meeting last month, teachers yelled “strike!” and “hell no!” as union leaders discussed the district's latest contract offer. Days later, the union filed its legally required 10-day strike notice and set the date for a walkout on Sept. 10, the beginning of the second week of school for the majority of CPS students. Over the course of negotiations, Lewis emerged as a powerful voice for teachers' rights and a lighting rod for criticism. A veteran science teacher and activist, Lewis took over the union's leadership in 2010 amid uncertain times.
 With little movement in contract talks heading into summer, Lewis was credited with channeling teacher angst with a historic strike vote. The June vote strengthened the union's position at the bargaining table and ratcheted up opposition to Emanuel's reform agenda.
 As contract talks pushed into their final days, Lewis was front and center, calling Emanuel a “bully” and “a liar” in front of thousands at a massive rally at Daley Plaza on Labor Day.
 And on Sunday, Lewis led the teachers in a strike.

The mask is off this being a Labor Issue, as Karen Lewis and CTU's  public salaried brothers and sisters of SEIU will scab, cross their picket-lines and draw pay.  Those are Chicago Values 2012. " Condoms for Kids and Abortion for when the condoms fail". Kids, stay away from Chick Fil A and school for the next few days!"

Public education is a mess. This strike is being portrayed in the Chicago Tribune as " well it is about time we had a strike."  They are running a swell retrospective on Teacher Strike's past.  There is a "Teachers are Swell" sympathy piece by a parent in full solidarity with CTU, while SEIU comrades cross picket lines without losing a wink of sleep.

Chicago Values 2012?

Not if my life depended upon it.

Up Date:

7:55 AM. - I passed scores of Red T-shirted CTU members at Bronzeville Academy on 35th; Hendricks Math and Science Academy at 43rd & Princeton and Graham Elementary at 44th & Union -  I picked up Joe S at 35th & Kind Drive; then Nick, AJ, White Chocolate, Ryan & Sean at Pizza Nova on 43rd and then
Mitch, Sal, Tommy and BK at Graham.

We did not honk, but smiled and waved.  Faces dropped when they saw the Leo High School Logo and van full of Bronze and Canaryvillains off to school . . .A Catholic School.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-chicago-public-schools-chicago-teachers-union-contract-talks-strike,0,1578458,full.story