Karen Lewis is the inspiration for today’s teacher’s strikes.
She is one of a kind.
She is a hero, a woman of courage, character, integrity, intellect, and steel.
The Chicago Teachers Union just released this video tribute to Karen.
Karen is a product of the Chicago Public Schools. She went to elite Ivy League colleges, first to Mount Holyoke, then transferred to Dartmouth College, where she was the only African American female in the class of 1974.
Karen returned to Chicago and became a chemistry teacher in the Chicago Public Schools, where she taught for 22 years.
In 2010, an upstart group of unionists called the Caucus of Rank and File Educators (CORE) ousted the leadership of the Chicago Teachers Union and elected Karen Lewis as its president. The new leadership cut its own salaries and began building relationships with community organizations and parents.
The city’s political and financial elite rewrote state law in hopes of preventing the union from striking. Assisted by Jonah Edelman of the turncoat “Stand for Children,” the city’s financial elite hired the state’s top lobbyists (so that none would be available to help the union), raised millions of dollars (outspending the unions), and passed a state law saying that teachers could not strike unless they had the approval of 75% of their members. They thought this was an impossible threshold. Jonah Edelman, seated alongside James Schine Crown, one of Chicago’s wealthiest financiers, boasted of their feat at the Aspen Institute in 2011. Surrounded by their union-hating peers from other cities at the Aspen Ideas Festival, Edelman said “If It Could Happen Here, It Could Happen Anywhere,” meaning that with enough financial and political clout, unions could be crushed. (The event was transcribed by Parents Across America and blogger Fred Klonsky copied the video before the Aspen Institute took it down). Edelman subsequently apologized for his candid remarks, but Stand for Children has continued to act as a proxy for philanthrocapitalists. (The Aspen video and Edelman’s apology is here on Fred Klonsky’s blog).
Needless to say, the elites were shocked when Karen Lewis and her team called for authorization to strike and won the support of more than 90% of the union’s membership.
In 2012, the union struck for 10 days and won important concessions, including protections for teachers laid off when Rahm Emanuel closed schools, prevention of merit pay (which she knew has failed everywhere), and changes in the teacher evaluation system. The union had carefully built relationships with parents and communities, and the strike received broad public support.
In 2014, Karen Lewis was urged to challenge Rahm Emanuel in the 2015 mayoral election. She set up an exploratory committee, and early polls showed she was likely to win. But in the fall of 2014, Karen was afflicted with a cancerous brain tumor. She was 61 years old. She stepped down as president of the CTU. She is cared for by her devoted husband, John Lewis, who was a physical education teacher in the Chicago Public Schools.
Karen Lewis exemplified courage, fearlessness, Resistance, leadership, and concern for teachers and children.
Every teacher who took the bold step of striking to improve the conditions of teaching and learning in their school stands on the shoulders of Karen Lewis. Every teacher and parent who wears Red for Ed is in the debt of this great woman.
She is our hero. She should be the hero of everyone who cares about the rights of children and the eventual triumph of the common good.
Watch here to see Karen Lewis before her illness, speaking at the first annual conference of the Network for Public Education in Austin Texas on March 1, 2024. Her speech was preceded by that of John Kuhn, superintendent of a school district in Texas. Karen starts speaking about the 14-minute mark. Both are worth watching.
I interviewed Karen Lewis at the second annual conference of the Network for Public Education in Chicago in 2015. You can see it here.
And this is my account of how I met Karen for the first time and why I love her.
She inspires me every day. I miss her very much.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Dear Diane,
Thank you, thank you, thank you for being courageous, vigilant, and also for your stamina and intelligence. I cannot thank you enough for your blog.
THANK YOU, again and again.
Like Karen Lewis, you inspire us. Been sending people to NPE.
Thank you, Yvonne!
Thank you for sharing this post about the dynamic Karen Lewis. When a union faces troubled waters that results in job actions, it is important that it is led by people with a strong vision and convictions. Karen is an inspiring example of a leader that understands the issues, and she has the courage to take a stand even if it means taking the membership into the storm, which sometimes is necessary when all other avenues have been exhausted.
Karen Lewis is an inspiration to workers and to women.
A few years ago CPS teacher, Ray Salazar (White Rhino blog), wrote a disparaging article about Karen Lewis. He wrote that she was the reason people hate CPS teachers. His view is narrow. Across America, people admire the Chicago Public Teachers for standing up to political bullies and their billionaire funders. (Ray writes at Chicago Now and has appeared on NPR.)
In an interview, Ray described a childhood lesson in feminism that he told his daughter. He said about a favorite Catholic saint of his, the Lady of Guadalupe, who represented feminism to him, “her power is her silence”.
How does the “worker dignity” Ray calls for, play out in the evangelical-Catholic push for tax money for their religious schools e.g. a Cristo Rey prototype school with 60 students per class, one teacher, one coach and one tutor? (The Cristo Rey Catholic school chain, which has expanded to about 1/2 of the states, received $12 mil. from billionaire privatizer, Bill Gates.) How many Catholic schools have unionized teachers and staff? Thank you Karen Lewis for strengthening unions.
I want my daughter to emulate Karen Lewis’ strength not, the silence of a female Catholic saint.
I want my daughter to have access to birth control not Obria clinics (received $2.5 mil. from US Catholic bishops) that don’t offer condoms preferring the Femm App of school privatizing Sean Fieler- the ovulation chart method. (Rewire.News and the National Catholic Reporter)
It’s past time that Americans understood where the threat to democracy is coming from.
The Paul Werich training manual at Theocracy Watch shows us. Weyrich founded the religious right, ALEC and the social Darwinist, Koch Heritage Foundation.
Mayo Clinic- ovulation charting is “one of the least effective forms of birth control… using the method, 24 out of 100 women became pregnant in the first year.”
“He said about a favorite Catholic saint of his, the Lady of Guadalupe, who represented feminism to him, ‘her power is her silence’.”
Having been raised Catholic, this is exactly what females are taught – shut up & sit down where you belong. Funny how that same rule seems to apply inside of ed-reform circles.
So true. Thank you, jcgrim.
Karen Lewis is a national treasure. I will never forget the first time I saw her on Democracy Now in 2010. It came just as I became cognizant of the devastating nature of in race to the top reforms taking hold in TN. Karen Lewis is the face of brilliance, female empowerment, and fearlessness – all qualities that, when confronting ed reformers, up- end the rationals for fear-based business models & privatization.
Her strength in building this powerful movement is in articulating to the community that we are all interconnected. She effectively broke the right-wing narrative that school choice = freedom; private is better than public & assistance = weakness &dependency. Her leadership shows that needing each other is a sign of strength.
Here’s her 2010 Democracy Now appearance with Lois Weiner:
https://www.democracynow.org/2010/9/3/educators_push_back_against_obamas_business
Thanks for the link, jcgrim … so sad and disgusting.
What a beautiful, moving tribute to a great leader!!! Thank you, Diane, and for all you do for kids, every day.
At yesterday’s enormous rally in Queens, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez introduced Sanders by saying that “…it wasn’t until I heard of a man named Bernie Sanders that I began to question and to assert and recognize my inherent value as a human being that deserves health care, housing, education and a living wage…”
The Chicago Teachers Union, under Karen Lewis’ leadership, has provided that sense of inherent worth for educators across the country, leading them to understand that deficits in our schools are systemic and not due to teachers themselves. She has expanded that understanding to the parents and community members of our public schools across the country, too. This is why the teacher strikes of the past year have garnered the support of the people they serve.
True leaders expand the perception of what is possible.
Here’s the clip of Ocasio-Cortez from yesterday:
Karen has been very encouraging to me even all through her illness. I am amazed that she had time to acknowledge my inquiries and even promote my work. She is a very giving and gracious person.
I think that Karen was speaking at the IFT Convention, yesterday or today, in Rosemont, IL.