Subscript: Marilyn Stewart's UPC is now terminally subservient to Mayor Daley
Subscript:…We’ll be reporting the details of the Chicago Teachers Union leadership split for months to come, but the events have posed certain journalistic challenges, including what to call whose which. We’ll begin at the beginning, which is the founding of the “United Progressive Caucus” back in 1970 by merging the pieces of three separate groups within the then militant Chicago Teachers Union. The birth of the UPC gave rise to two decades of serious labor militancy and some of the best contracts a big city union could hope for. Then came what leaves us in now.
Back in 2004, when they were running according to the Karl Rove rulebook against Deborah Lynch, the UPCers tried to deflect attention from the fact that they were part of the Tom Reece regime by calling themselves the “New UPC.”
Now that the “New UPC” has basically imploded, the question for editors is what to call each of the fragments so as to maintain some historical accuracy (and perhaps a sense of humor). Should it be the “Newer UPC” (the Ted Dallas faction, since they got the jump on Marilyn Stewart), and the “Newest UPC” (Marilyn’s group)? Which of the newer and newest will take credit for the fact that (a) Marilyn hired a scab — Traci Cobb Evans — to be one of CTU’s top Springfield people. Who paid the lawyers who went to court when Marilyn Stewart’s UPC faction sued the other faction in February trying to take control of the UPC treasury — which we hear is more than six figures. We also hear that the Newer UPC beat back the legal attack by the Newest UPC by simply pointing out that the official chairman and treasurer of what is still legally known as the United Progressive Caucus are Ted Dallas and Linda Porter Milton.
Maybe Marilyn should change the name of her group to the TSM (Terminal Sellout Mumblers) or the DFC (Daley Fan Club) and save us and the courts all this time, expense, and confusion…
This Subscript was originally published in the March 2008 print edition of Substance.
