In 2008, Karen Lewis was a chemistry teacher, one of eight Chicago teachers who formed the Caucus of Rank and File Educators, or CORE, to fight school closings. Lewis was elected president of the Chicago Teachers Union in 2010 along with a slate of CORE members. In 2012, as president of a transformed, democratic Chicago Teachers Union, she led the 30,000-member union in a successful strike in the city that has been a launchpad for opposition to neoliberal education strategies.
Lewis retired in 2018 and passed away on February 8, 2021. She was sixty-seven.
This interview is excerpted from one with Lewis that was conducted in 2012 by Jody Sokolower, the managing editor of Rethinking Schools at the time. An extended version of the interview was recently republished in the anthology Teacher Unions and Social Justice: Organizing for the Schools and Communities Our Students Deserve, edited by Michael Charney, Jesse Hagopian and Bob Peterson.
Q: Set the scene for us: What were the issues that led to the Chicago teachers’ strike this fall?
Karen Lewis: The strike was a result of fifteen to twenty-five years of anger about being blamed for conditions that are beyond our control. That’s part of it. The other part was a clear rebuke to the mayor and his friends about the top-down “reform” agenda and how it absolutely does not address the needs in the schools.
The strike was a result of fifteen to twenty-five years of anger about being blamed for conditions that are beyond our control.
As soon as Rahm Emanuel [President Obama’s former chief of staff] came to town to run for mayor . . . we knew from the very beginning this was going to be an ugly, bitter fight. Once Emanuel won the primary, before the general election, he was already heavily dabbling in Springfield and insisting that we not have the right to strike. [He] got legislation passed that meant we need 75 percent of our entire membership to authorize a strike.
My response was: “Brothers and sisters, if we don’t have 75 percent of our members in favor of a strike, we shouldn’t strike. A strike is not something you do lightly.” Then we spent more than a year talking to members about the contract, getting them involved in the contract fight, getting their wishes and desires as part of the proposal that we presented to the board.
Q: Because you wanted the extra time to organize?
Lewis: Absolutely. Had to have it. We were not mobilized, we were not organized, we were not ready. We needed the extra time to organize, but also to plan for the better day.
In the past, union leadership always said, “Save your money, we might go on strike.” But that’s not how you get people ready to strike.
We did not want to strike. I assumed that Emanuel would do everything he could to settle it before we had a strike. I was very wrong about that. We had a lot of pressure not to strike from politicians and advocacy organizations. But all along, we were very open about what we were going to do and how we were going to achieve it.
Q: How did you prepare for the strike?
Lewis: We had a timeline based on the new law and we backwards-mapped based on what we would need to do if we were going to strike in September. We wanted to be prepared for it. Most unions aren’t prepared for a strike. It’s more a threat than a reality.
We created contract action committees in every school. We created an organizing department; our union never had an organizing department. We created a research department that we never had before. Between organizing, research, and political action, we had the ability to go to schools and talk to people about what meant the most to them. One thing we did was get and use data. We asked people, “What do you think? What do you want?” We went on listening tours for a year before.
We started talking to our members, building by building, pointing out that the board had given us a list of proposals that basically gutted our contract. Then we started with simple things like showing solidarity—wearing red on Friday. That became a big campaign and, as we got close to the end of the school year, people were wearing red everywhere. So a principal would say, “You can’t wear red on Friday.” We told our members, “Look, if you all wear red on Friday, the principal can’t write you all up. So here is a way to address your principal and show that you are in solidarity with one another.”
Q: What are the most important things you won?
Lewis: You might be surprised. One of the things our members wanted was the ability to do their own lesson plans and not have lesson plans imposed on them. We got textbooks and materials on the first day of school. For clinicians, we got a room with privacy, access to locked doors.
But the most important thing we won is some respect we didn’t have before. The clear understanding that this union moves together. That was a very important win.
We got a paperwork reduction. If you add something you want us to do in terms of paperwork, you have to subtract something else. We have an anti-bullying clause because we have some principals who are out of control; they stand up in front of the entire faculty and staff, and belittle and humiliate people.
But the most important thing we won is some respect we didn’t have before. The clear understanding that this union moves together. That was a very important win.
Q: What are the most important issues on which you had to compromise or put off a fight until later?
Lewis: One would be money. Also, we couldn’t bargain class size without the board’s agreement to put it on the table, because it’s a permissive rather than mandatory subject of bargaining, and that means we couldn’t strike over it. It’s problematic that we could not lower class sizes.
Q: When we talked shortly after your election as the Chicago Teachers Union president in 2010, you explained that one of the results of privatization and layoffs in Chicago (like elsewhere) has been the disproportionate firing of teachers of color, particularly African American teachers. Did the strike address that as an issue?
Lewis: I had to fight to get language in our contract that says that the district will actively recruit racially diverse staff. I had to fight to get the word racial put in our contract. The essence of the problem is so-called “color blindness.” This man who has a lot of power on the other side of the table said, “I don’t care what a teacher’s color is, I just want good teachers.”
I said: “But you are recruiting nothing but young white teachers. There’s a problem with that. There’s something wrong with your measurement of ‘good’ if the only people you’re hiring to work in Chicago are young white teachers who don’t stay here.”
I promised him, “I’m going to have a conversation with you about white privilege.” There’s a whole field of academia on white studies.
But now we have language in our contract that includes the board being obligated to consult with us on a “systematic plan designed to search for and recruit a racially diverse pool of candidates to fill positions,” specific training for principals and head administrators on how to implement the plan, and union access to data and periodic meetings to assess progress. And we’re going to enforce that.
Q: How do you think the 2012 strike changed the situation in Chicago?
Lewis: It has awakened a lot of labor unions to what solidarity looks like, what it means. We had so much support from police, from fire, from laborers, from all kinds of different places you wouldn’t necessarily expect. It says a lot about working people in Chicago, what kind of pressure we’ve been under. The strike has changed the conversation about education in Chicago. It made clear that we are the experts on education, not these consulting firms, not these millionaire dilettantes. They have a lot of money to throw around, but they’re not educators. We have taken them to task for that.
It also brought to light that people actually like teachers. You do the polling and it turns out that people like teachers. They don’t like the union, but they like teachers. What we tried to show is that the union and teachers are one, we’re not separate entities.
Q: There was such a strong presence of women at every level in the strike. Obviously part of that is because most teachers are women, but do you think there were specific ways that women’s leadership and women’s strength played a role in the Chicago events?
Lewis: I do. It’s part of the clash between myself and the mayor. I don’t think he’s used to anyone like me who can tell him no. I said, “Look, I want to work with you, but we have to have some modicum of respect here.”
I am a woman, so I don’t know what’s it’s like to be a man. I’m Black. I don’t know what it’s like to be white, and being Black is infinitely more problematic than being female; that’s my experience. But I’m looking at an assault on social services.
Who provides those? This mayor closed down mental health clinics, curtailed library hours. How are you picking out social workers, librarians, and teachers? By and large, these are occupations that are done by women.
Q: Every city is different, but are there things you have learned that could be helpful to teacher activists in other districts?
Lewis: I think a democratic, rank and file-driven union doesn’t hurt anywhere—a union leadership that is not only responsive but actively seeks input and advice from a variety of members, including people who you don’t necessarily share the same politics with.
Some people think you elect a president and the president makes all the decisions for the union. No, that’s not it, that’s not how it works. In the past, what we saw in Chicago was leadership that tried to stifle opposition. I think that opposition deserves to be heard and deserves to be part of the process.
We had a very large rank-and-file bargaining team, thirty-five people. And they included people from all the different caucuses. Because we’re a large local, we have a lot of different factions. We felt that going into the negotiations, we needed to be on the same page with one another because this affects everybody. We went across the political divides and reached out to make that happen.
In a lot of locals, leadership is a little wary of trusting rank-and-file membership with the responsibility of negotiations, but I think it helps so much and informs the process.
It all comes down to how you teach people to fight with the tools they have. We have been fighting with the bosses’ tools. We can spend a lot of time doing legislation. I think that’s fine—have a legislative approach. But understand that you don’t control that process.
We can talk about electing the right people, but ultimately, unless we have a statehouse full of teachers and paraprofessionals and clinicians, I don’t think we’ll get what we want coming out of state legislatures. You need to have good relationships with legislators; you need to have members get in touch and let them know what’s important to you. That’s one tool. But it’s not the only tool.
Our best tool is our ability to put 20,000 people in the street. I don’t care if one rich guy buys up all the ad space. The tool that we have is a mass movement. We have the pressure of mass mobilization and organizing.
Our best tool is our ability to put 20,000 people in the street. I don’t care if one rich guy buys up all the ad space. The tool that we have is a mass movement. We have the pressure of mass mobilization and organizing.
And you need to be honest. You need to say, “This is what we did get, this is what we’re going to try to get next time.” Because a contract is not the solution to all your problems. A contract will, by necessity, be a compromise. The key is to keep people engaged in the process of movement building.