Lois Weiner talked strategy at CTU delegate training... 'Confidence, creativity, and critique...'
Historian and union activist Lois Weiner speaking from the stage of the Chicago Teachers Union headquarters during the March 2018 delegate and "school leaders" training workshops. Substance photo by Jean Schwab.The following is part of the speech given to Chicago Teachers Union delegates during the Delegates Training March 18, 2017 at the CTU headquarters by Lois Weiner, author, historian, and education activist. The speech was titled "Triple C Topple the Triple Whammy... Confidence, Creativity and Critique..."
“I care about the school clerks because it is an elimination of jobs in our society, especially people of color in cities. We have to name that and organize about that plus it is the” de professionalization of the teaching profession.” It is making teachers into clerks.
While I value clerical work, I’m not very good at it, and that’s why I need someone to help me with clerical work. I need someone skilled at clerical work to do that for me to support me in my teaching. It doesn’t mean teaching is more important, it means I need someone to support me in my teaching while clerks need me to help clerks in their work.
“I ask my friends, “How are you doing,” and they say, ”I’m ok.” Really? That’s your triple whammy. Trump, Rauner, Emanuel. Well, I’m not ok, I’m not ok because we have a Neo Nazi in the White house. There is a Neo Nazi in the White house who is setting policy. And this administration is about Trump and GOP and Democrats that won’t stand up.
When Betsy DeVos says that HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) were the pioneers of school choice and Ben Carson says slaves were immigrants, what they are telling us is they want to turn back the clock before Reconstruction, not back to the civil rights movement, but before to Reconstruction. They want to normalize segregation and ideology of racial inferiority. They want to normalize it. Let’s understand that it has been around a long time. They want to turn back the clock on everything the progressive social movement has made, every victory we’ve had that has made life better for working people. Including child labor, if you don’t think they are going after child labor; you are sadly mistaken.
“What’s happened is that they have stripped away this rhetoric that they care about poor kids of color. They stripped it away because they feel strong enough and empowered enough now to just go after us with their gloves off. Now that is scary and it’s very demoralizing. I feel that’s partly what your members are feeling in the schools right? So, I want to name it that triple whammy from Trump we all are wheeling from it. Now I want to talk about opposition, you have Rauner and Emanuel. Let’s talk about their agenda.
"They want to make money off of us and our kids and everything that they can possibly get a hold of. They want to loot the government -- that’s what this is about, looting the government for the well-being of a small powerful elite. To do this they want to privatize, eliminate jobs, defund schools.
The research I do is to read microeconomics stuff about global economics and what’s happening. The jobs at Amazon, Google and Costco are for a very small number of highly educated people, and everyone else is working for peanuts. Low wage non-union -- all middle jobs -- very few middle jobs are being created. This is called Bifurcation. Highly Stratification economy (condition within a society where social classes are separated, or stratified, along economic lines). What’s the place for most kids in the Chicago Public Schools in that kind of economy? Jail, prison labor, or one of those low- paying jobs, maybe a couple of kids who made it through one of the magnets, maybe they will get one of those high- paying jobs. Most of them, there is no place for them in this new economy.
That means that they don’t need highly qualified teachers. That’s why you are being attacked. This is global -a big project that is global. Now, to do that, they have to destroy the free press, democracy, right? That’s why they go after the courts, all the fake news stuff, that’s why when something about your job actions are discussed in corporate media, it’s as if you are all greedy and you don’t care about kids and you are breaking the city and you’re bankrupting working people blah-blah. All this is propaganda, that’s what it is, propaganda,
“But that is part of the project to destroy democracy and to do this, they have to destroy the union. Understand that this is a project to destroy kids, the schools, the profession and to do this, they have to destroy the union. There you go! That’s what it is about! Who would not be overwhelmed by that? But to fight we have to face it, squarely name it, and help our members to name it.”
Weiner further stated that the CTU is a leader with “Triple C”- Confidence, Creativity and Critique” in democracy (which you have), militant (which you have), and is a socially conscious (which you have) union….”. People all over the world are looking at you. This makes us stronger and more confident. Understanding you are the experts. It is not the union leadership that tells you what to do, it is you and the members telling the leadership what to do. Having that deep, deep confidence with your eyes on the prize.
The prize is human dignity and human liberation, the more immediate prize is the defense of public education, defense of kids in schools and defense of communities that we serve, that’s the prize. We have to have the deep, deep confidence that we can do it and that comes from being confident. I was just talking with my cab driver who was telling me that he is very religious and I told him that I’m not, I’m a militant atheist. You know what, we came together in that the vision and values that he was firmly grounded in and what is right and moral. Deep confidence in our ourselves and our vision is what has caused progressive social change over the last one hundred and fifty years. There is no such thing as an idea whose time has come. People made it change. We’re going to make it come and we need confidence.
Creativity is the second triple C word according to Weiner, “We are not going to do things like we’ve always done them.” Weiner suggested getting ideas from members in the schools about how to become active. Weiner emphasized the importance of creativity by stating that since Trump was elected, “There are hundreds of thousands of people in this country who have had a vail stripped from their eyes. They know now, they see the slime. Especially the young people, young people are ready to resist, not afraid... How are we going to connect with these young people? “
Critique is the third C. “We have to be ruthlessly honest about our situation, about mistakes we made, and also our victories. We have to put them on the table and we have to learn from them, right? We have to be supportive but we have to critique. One thing for me involved in this critique is the political education of members in your school. There has to be a frank discussion with our members feel about Trump’s victory. Twenty percent of AFT members voted for Donald Trump. Why did that happen? It happened because our national union never had a discussion about who should be endorsed with our members. Hilary Clinton was endorsed by the Executive Council and the discussion was never brought back to our members. No endorsing candidates by a small group of people without a buy in from the members. We never had a political action strategy plan... I wanted to say that I feel that our union made a big mistake by not endorsing Bernie Sanders... “ Weiner
