Why Chicago Teachers Union lionized a terrorist

When I first saw the Chicago Teachers Union’s post honoring Assata Shakur, I thought it was a headline from the Babylon Bee. But no, this one was real, and beyond parody.

The union, entrusted with educating Chicago’s children, used its official social media account to mourn the death of a convicted cop killer, calling her a “revolutionary fighter” and “leader of freedom.”

Shakur was found guilty of murdering New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster in 1973 and later escaped prison, landing on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists List with a $2 million bounty. To make matters worse, CTU Vice President Jackson Potter doubled down, declaring on X that “Assata was a freedom fighter!”

The tone-deaf post is a glaring sign that the CTU can’t be trusted to educate children. While the union wastes time lionizing a terrorist, Chicago Public Schools are failing spectacularly. In 55 schools, not a single child is proficient in math. Taxpayers shell out about $30,000 per student annually, yet the system squanders that money on everything but effective teaching. It’s almost as if the CTU is competing for the title of most unhinged organization on Earth, alienating reasonable members in the process.

This post should serve as a wake-up call for Chicago teachers who don’t share these extreme views. If your values aren’t reflected in honoring a murderer, why keep funding the radicals at the top?

Thanks to the Supreme Court’s Janus decision, unions can no longer force public school teachers to pay dues, as it violates their First Amendment rights. Rational educators who simply want to teach can opt out and stop handing over their hard-earned paychecks to bosses like CTU President Stacy Davis Gates.

Teachers can now get free personal liability insurance through the Teacher Freedom Alliance. That way, they keep more of their own money, stay protected, and cut off support for this insanity.

Their post isn’t a one-off mistake. Stacy Davis Gates declared earlier this year at the City Club of Chicago that children in public schools belong to her union. Her X bio even proclaims, “The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe.” But if kids truly belonged to the union, their leadership would be in jail for child abuse, given the horrifying academic outcomes.

Remember 2022, when the CTU voted to strike and keep schools closed long after it was clear reopenings were safe? Those closures harmed children academically and emotionally. The union deleted a post claiming the push to reopen was “rooted in sexism, racism and misogyny.” Meanwhile, CTU board member Sarah Chambers was caught vacationing in Puerto Rico, thousands of miles away, while railing against returning to work.

Stacy Davis Gates labeled school choice “racist,” yet she sends her own son to a private school. The CTU also reposted a video of a mock guillotine outside Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’s house, stating they were “completely frightened by, completely impressed by and completely in support of wherever this is headed.”

As an affiliate of Randi Weingarten’s American Federation of Teachers, the CTU mirrors national union extremism. Chicago Public Schools have morphed into a jobs program for adults rather than an education system for kids. Staffing has ballooned 20 percent since 2019, even as enrollment dropped 10 percent.

The CTU operates more like a political machine than an educational advocate. It poured $2.4 million into electing former organizer Brandon Johnson as mayor. Now, Johnson holds the highest unfavorable rating in Chicago mayoral history, with nearly 80 percent viewing him negatively.

Teachers deserve better representation. Parents deserve schools that prioritize learning over ideology. And children deserve a chance to succeed, not a union that honors killers while failing them in the classroom. It’s time for teachers to hold the union cartel accountable by opting out and starving the beast from the inside.