Karen Lewis, HS Chemistry Teacher Inspired A Generation of Teachers & Union Organizers
- 'Karen Lewis Lit the Spark That Inspired a Generation of Teachers and Union Organizers.' Common Dreams, Feb. 12, 2021. When you see fire in educators who are standing with students and community to demand justice, look in those flames for her unwavering determination—and her wide smile.
Karen Lewis, the Chicago Teachers Union president who led the landmark 2012 strike, died February 7. Her generosity, charisma, and indomitable strength of purpose were gifts to labor organizers across the country who watched, learned, listened, and stepped up themselves. She inspired a whole host of educators who had been looking for a way forward in the midst of orchestrated attacks on public schools and educators. Around the country teachers were facing weaponized high-stakes testing, defunding, charter schools, and privatization.
- Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis speaks during a protest in Chicago, March 27, 2013. Thousands of demonstrators rallied in downtown Chicago to protest the city's plan to close 54 public schools, primarily in Hispanic & African-American neighborhoods.
Lewis and the Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators (CORE) in CTU gave us a vision for the types of schools we were fighting for and a path to win those schools: rank-and-file, strike-ready, democratic unions. The 2018 red-state strike wave was lit by the sparks of Lewis’s leadership in Chicago. “When CTU went on strike in the fall of 2012,” recalled Labor Notes staffer Barbara Madeloni, “I was teaching a class to future teachers at UMass Amherst. We were talking about unions and why they mattered. When I posted a photo of CTU members sitting in the street, arms locked, ready to be arrested to win their strike demands, students sat up and leaned in. The energy in the room popped.
“Suddenly, joining a union wasn’t about insurance against lawsuits (yes, that is how many unions presented why you should join the union). Union fights weren’t only stories from generations ago. This was an active struggle today. This was teachers fighting for students, in the job that these students were about to enter.” LEADING FROM BELOW- Lewis, a high school chemistry teacher, was elected president of CTU in 2010 on the CORE slate. She had joined CORE in its earliest form: a study group of activists against a giant wave of school closings in Chicago. (The Labor Notes book, How to Jump-Start Your Union: Lessons from the Chicago Teachers tells this story.). The official union leaders had no plan to fight school closings.
“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard the ‘there’s nothing we can do’ mantra,” Lewis later recalled. “These teachers were talking about actually forming resistance.” The group read up on disaster capitalism, social justice unionism, reform caucuses, and their own union contract. “We went to every school closing hearing, every charter school opening, every board meeting, and we said ‘No. Stop now,’” said Lewis. Each time they announced themselves as CORE, more members joined, especially from schools under attack. Soon CORE was doing the work that union leaders should be doing—from challenging the district’s bogus deficit figures to organizing a 5,000-person march that union leaders were forced to endorse. Members could see that “CORE has been doing the work of the leadership already,” said Lewis. “So we felt they might as well elect us.” And they did...
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https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/02/12/karen-lewis-lit-spark-inspired-generation-teachers-and-union-organizers
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- 'Ex-Chicago Teachers Union leader Karen Lewis dies at age 67.' Feb. 8, 2021, ABC News. Karen Lewis, the former Chicago Teachers Union president and onetime mayoral hopeful, has died at age 67.
CHICAGO -- Karen Lewis, a former Chicago Teachers Union president and onetime mayoral hopeful, has died at age 67, a spokeswoman said Monday. Known for her fiery speaking style, Lewis seriously considered a challenge against then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel before she was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2014. She continued to face health problems, suffering a stroke in 2017 and undergoing brain surgery the following year.
.. She bowed to no one, and gave strength to tens of thousands of Chicago Teachers Union educators who followed her lead, and who live by her principles to this day,” the union said in a statement. “But Karen did not just lead our movement. Karen was our movement.” Lewis grew up on the city's South Side, the child of two public school teachers. She graduated from Dartmouth College, often noting she was the only Black woman in the 1974 graduating class. She taught chemistry for nearly two decades in Chicago and was active in union leadership. Lewis became union president in 2010 and stepped down in 2018 because of her health...
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/chicago-teachers-union-leader-karen-lewis-dies-age-75760744
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