Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis called a press conference yesterday to go on the offensive and attempt to blame our organization, Education Action Group, for the ugly words she recently uttered at a conference for union activists.
On Monday, EAG released a video of three extended excerpts from her October speech, which included her ridicule of U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan over his speech impediment. It created a media firestorm.
In an attempt to do damage control, Lewis said, “…I implore you to look at the entire 35-minute video and to listen to the entire speech so you can make a decision for yourself without the filter of right-wing pundits and anti-public education, media-savvy operatives.”
We did and it’s just as ugly as what has already been highlighted.
At the 12:31 mark of the original video, she attempts to smear Chicago school board members Henry Bienen and Penny Pritzker. She said Bienen, a former president of Northwestern University, was on the board of Bear Stearns “when it crashed.” She said Pritzker owns Hyatt hotels, a chain she claims “won’t pay her cleaning ladies a living wage.”
“These are the people we’re dealing with,” Lewis said about the board members.
It’s unclear what relevance those accusations have to the goal of increasing student performance and the 56% graduation rate in Chicago Public Schools. And we fail to see how her insulting comments will make things any easier in a few months when the CTU begins collective bargaining negotiations with the school board.
At the 18:57 mark of the video, Lewis ridicules her predecessor, former CTU President Marilyn Stewart. Calling Stewart “completely inarticulate, the poster child for ‘bad teacher’ – she had a speech impediment,” Lewis said Stewarts’ drawbacks “worked against” the union.
We think it’s pretty clear that Lewis’ comments are also working against her union. It’s amazing that rank-and-file members don’t understand this and show her the door.
It is clear Karen Lewis will personally attack anyone who disagrees with her or crosses her. At what point are her members going to hold her accountable, and determine that her nasty comments about various individuals reflect poorly on teachers and cripple the efforts of serious people who want to improve Chicago’s public schools?