One thousand members of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) and Service Employees International Union (SEIU) marched through the streets of downtown Chicago on Monday, demanding more money for teachers and other public employees who work for the Chicago Public Schools (CPS).
Those teachers and public employees are currently involved in a contract dispute with the city of Chicago that could result in a teachers and school support staff strike on Thursday if it is not resolved.
It was a colorful march, as many of the participating teachers were clad in red, indicating they are part of the union’s #RedforEd movement, and SEIU members wore their union’s purple shirts.
As WGN reported:
On Thursday, the 25,000 members of Chicago’s teachers union and 10,000 members of SEIU local 73, representing CPS support staff and park district employees plan to take the march the next step and walk the picket line. If a strike happens, it will be for the first time in seven years.
Negotiations continue with the city on Monday as well. Pay is only part of the issue. CTU wants guarantees on nurses, librarians and social workers, among others.
Last week, the city counter offered and Monday Mayor Lori Lightfoot sent a recorded message
“We offered additional support for overcrowded classrooms and committed an additional $400,000 for a pipeline for additional support staff,” she said.
Tourists visiting Chicago on Monday were not exactly sure what the march was about. Some thought it was a new form of a Columbus Day Parade, as this tweet from WGN’s Sean Lewis indicates:
As Breitbart News reported in February:
A well-funded and subversive leftist movement of teachers in the United States threatens to tilt the political balance nationwide in the direction of Democrats across the country as Republicans barely hang on in key states that they need to hold for President Donald Trump to win re-election and for Republicans to have a shot at retaking the House and holding onto their Senate majority.
This teachers union effort, called #RedforEd, has its roots in the very same socialism that President Trump vowed in his 2019 State of the Union address to stop, and it began in its current form in early 2018 in a far-flung corner of the country before spreading nationally. Its stated goals–higher teacher pay and better education conditions–are overshadowed by a more malevolent political agenda: a leftist Democrat uprising designed to flip purple or red states to blue, using the might of a significant part of the education system as its lever.
In July, a delegation of CTU members visited Venezuela to support the regime of socialist dictator Nicolas Maduro, as Breitbart News reported:
A four member delegation from the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), all active supporters of the #RedforEd movement, traveled to Venezuela earlier this month to provide support for the socialist regime of Nicolas Maduro.
The delegation consisted of Richard Berg, a former Teamsters Union official who currently works for the CTU, and “rank and file” CTU strike captains Sarah Chambers, Fabiana Mariel, and V Voeta Vargas, according to press reports.
Last month, Breitbart News reported that leaders of the two largest national teachers unions, the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) are “all-in” to impeach President Trump. CTU is affiliated with the AFT.
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