Oct. 31--Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis sat with House Speaker Michael Madigan at the union's annual fundraiser Friday and in a speech took several shots at Gov. Bruce Rauner.
Senate President John Cullerton also was at the event, which benefits the CTU's political action committee. He and Madigan looked on as Lewis and other union officials and allies called on legislators to intervene in the financial problems at Chicago Public Schools.
"There's so many areas that we have been able to influence legislatively, but we couldn't do it without some of the people in this room," Lewis said.
CPS is operating on a budget that counts on nearly $500 million in help from Springfield, and district CEO Forrest Claypool has warned of Thanksgiving-season layoffs absent help from a deadlocked state Capitol.
The theme of CTU's Friday fundraiser at Plumbers Local 130 Hall on the Near West Side was "Changing What We Cannot Accept." The union is marshaling its forces amid stalled contract negotiations, with a downtown rally planned for the last week in November.
The union and the Chicago Board of Education weeks ago enlisted the help of a mediator to step into the contract talks, one step in a long process required before teachers can go on strike. Negotiations have reached a point where the union may call for that process to move to one of its final stages, known as "fact-finding."
A malignant brain tumor kept Lewis from attending the event last year. Instead she appeared in a recorded message in which she directed supporters to back the mayoral candidacy of Jesus "Chuy" Garcia. Garcia was last year's keynote speaker instead, and eventually he forced Mayor Rahm Emanuel into a runoff election.
Earlier this month, Lewis, 62, announced she will run for re-election as union president next year after two terms that have brought fresh vigor to the roughly 30,000-member union.
"I do want to say something about that sociopath governor," Lewis said during her talk Friday before launching into a long story about an encounter with Rauner.
"He told me what he believed in, and then he told me what he didn't believe in," she said. "He said, 'I don't believe in collective anything. I don't believe in communal anything.'"
"But then he told me we had something in common," Lewis said. Rauner noted that they both attended Dartmouth College.
"Worst two years of my life," Lewis said.
"And he's younger than I am," she said later. "He's like four, five classes behind me. I couldn't even believe that. And I was like, 'You must get old and look old by doing really horrible things to people,'" Lewis said to applause.
"Guess he didn't get invited to this party."
jjperez@tribpub.com
