SOLIDARITY FOREVER: Why have a UPC Website when Marilyn Stewart can use the CTU to self-promote
Try and find the UPC website. We dare you. Marilyn Stewart is not only using every bit of union time and money to promote her candidacy for CTU president, but she hasn't even bothered to try and build a website on behalf of her United Progressive Caucus. Every day, Stewart has the union's field representatives calling delegates, demanding that they schedule "informational" meetings about "union business." Then the meetings turn out to be pep rallies for Stewart's candidacy. We also note that the cost for all this political posturing isn't only being born by the CTU budget. Stewart also has a campaign assistant supplied by the American Federation of Teachers Randi Weingarten. In any other place, this would be called corruption. But when it's Marilyn Stewart and the UPC, it's simply business as usual.
Speaking in praise of the merit pay program which now has become another Chicago "model" for the USA, Marilyn Stewart took the podium at Chicago's Westcott Elementary School with Mayor Richard M. Daley (center), Chicago's (then) Chief Executive Officer Arne Duncan (second from right), and (then) U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings (right) to continue promoting merit pay for teachers. Once Arne Duncan was appointed by President Barack Obama to be Obama's Secretary of Education, Duncan immediately promoted the plan for the entire USA as part of the conditions under which states could qualify to "Race To The Top" money. As she seeks re-election, Stewart is now trying to distance herself from the unpopular Chicago corporate school reforms that she once helped launch and promote. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt. Substance will give a prize (a one year subscription to the print edition of Substance) to anyone who can tell us, step by step, how to get to the UPC website now that we're a month until the May 21, 2010 CTU election. Stewart's brazen abuse of all the resources of the union is unprecedented in the more than 75 years the CTU has been in existence. How many union members are willing to stand up to this is another question, that will only be answered on May 21 at the ballot box. One thing is for sure, if members try to complain, it's sort of fruitless. After all, if you complain to the IFT, Stewart's the secretary treasurer. And if you complain to the AFT, Randi will tell you Stewart is great....
