By now, you have read many tributes to Karen Lewis. She was an icon who fought the powerful. Teachers and parents trusted her because they knew she would never sell them out.
This is a beautiful tribute to Karen by Sarah Karp, one of Chicago’s most experienced education journalists. It captures Karen’s brashness, her fearlessness, her passion.
Some of her colorful quotes:
Lewis’ message resonated because she was willing to stand up for teachers at a time when teachers were under attack and somewhat downtrodden. She unapologetically labeled people as villains and enemies if she thought they disrespected public school teachers and public education.
Chief among them was former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
Early on in her tenure as union president, she emerged from a meeting with Emanuel and revealed he had sworn at her. This came after she called the longer school day he was pushing a “babysitting” initiative.
“He jumped out of his chair and said, F-you Lewis,” she recalled. “And I jumped out of my chair and said, who the F do you think you are talking to? I don’t work for you.”
She called Rahm “the murder mayor.”
“Look at the murder rate in this city. He’s murdering schools. He’s murdering jobs. He’s murdering housing. I don’t know what else to call him. He’s the murder mayor,” she said during the school closing fight.
And she once told a group of community and business leaders that then-Gov. Bruce Rauner, who for years held up the passage of a state budget until his agenda was approved, was a new “ISIS recruit … because the things he’s doing look like acts of terror on poor and working-class people,” she said.
Just added to my bucket list: saying F you to Rahm Emmanuel.
Ha, ha…you should’ve the column (it was about 1/4th of the page) that was written about his reaction, stating they were “friends” in the end
(he’d brought her some chicken matzo ball soup), &, later, that they were on the same wave length on so many things.
He would not answer the question as to whether she would have beaten him had she run against him.
I am inspired by Karen’s throwing Rahm’s f words back at him. Anyone who stands up to Rahm like Karen Lewis is a hero of mine. I want to cuss out an enemy of public schools right now! Give me a Broadie! Give me a Gates Foundation head! Who wants some of ME.
Emanuel’s closure of so many public schools did cause the murder rate to spike as students had to cross rival gang areas to get to their new private charter school. Like so many mayors Emanuel used privatization to gentrify Chicago and move the poor to the outer limits. Emanuel is not only the “murder mayor,” he is also a community killer.
With the loss of such a brave and heroic person such as Karen Lewis while the noxious Emanuel troops on to do more damage to our society and public school systems one wonders about the inscrutability and capriciousness of the gods. Are The Fates right wing libertarians?
I like to think not, Joe. Especially given–in the name of Karen (o.b.m.) that, this time around, we’re going to emulate her, take no prisoners, follow the CTU example (look what they did w/the school re-openings: they’re not Iowa, they’re not the NEA–they kept CPS closed, whereby so many other school districts–all over the country–reopened w/o precautions) & **THIS—THIS has to be the year (in memory & in honor of Karen) that we STOP “standardized” testing. ALL. OVER. THE U.S.
We can do no less by our children & teachers.
My niece, a 1st Grade Teacher, has been suffering in the state of Iowa, all because of the politically ambitious, heartless dim/dumb reynolds (another it–no heart, no empathy, no brain). Guess who’s responsible for cleaning the room? She is–in addition to being in the room where at least one kid doesn’t wear a mask, one kid just moved in from the U.K. (not known if she was tested for the U.K. variant before admittance to the U.S./school)–responsible for cleaning/sanitizing the desks & whatever else the kids touch–every day after class. (Her own son is remote learning–she has scrambled to make arrangements on a weekly basis, but she will **not send him to school.)
Governor Reynolds of Iowa ran ads opposing the $15 an hour minimum wage. She paid a orrery actress to say it would hurt business in Iowa.
Please forgive grammatical/spelling errors above. This was typed with angry fingers & an impassioned heart.
Rest in power, Karen.
Here’s another tribute to Karen; Rest in Red!
Karen was by all accounts a renaissance woman: a thespian, comedian, scientist, aficionado of the Talmud, former doctor in training, chemistry teacher, pianist, linguist, a lover and a fighter. On more than one occasion she told the story of taking off her earrings and lathering on some Vaseline to brawl with our class enemies. Subtle, no. Inspiring, without a doubt.
Jesse lovingly called Karen “low down” for her blunt and unvarnished truth talk. At the House of Delegates meeting after her death, Jesse noted that she “taught us to see our own power and believed in the purpose of public education and the justice in it.” At the same meeting, Stacy Davis Gates, the CTU Vice President, celebrated Karen for “prioritizing the hearts and humanity of our members.”
Karen had an uncanny ability to fill a room with laughter and radical politics, and a manner that was initially vilified and later celebrated by the news media. Her aphoristic, bombastic and propagandistic way of painting our class enemies as out-of-touch corporate hacks was genius political theatre. Additionally, she possessed a tremendous ability to reverse the onslaught of negative press we faced upon taking union office and use the media as a tool for communicating to the broader public, parents and communities of color in particular. She called out Rahm Emanuel as the “murder Mayor” and Bruce Rauner, former Republican Governor of Illinois, as an adherent of ISIS for his dismantling of social services; she indicted the whole district for reifying “educational apartheid.” Her characterizations always cut deeply without apology while lambasting the racial and economic disparities in our city with laser-like precision.
https://www.organizingupgrade.com/karen-lewis-rest-in-red/