LA Unionists Model Themselves After Chicago
Or are they modeling themselves after Saul Alinsky? While California teachers struggle to free themselves from mandatory monopoly bargaining and forced dues, the Los Angeles teacher union president looks to Karen Lewis, head of the notorious Chicago Teachers Union, as a role model in fighting education reform. His particular interest seems to be in fomenting strikes as a tool to control the public and education officials. So much for professionalism. The union president’s efforts come straight out of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, and parents are coming to believe a strike is good for the students. Beware, Los Angeles parents. Mario Vasquez has the story on inthesetimes.com.
In July 2014, two weeks after Alex Caputo-Pearl took over the presidency of United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), he spoke at a conference sponsored by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) on a panel titled “Social Movement Unionism vs. Corporate Reform.”
With Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) President Karen Lewis seated to his right, Caputo-Pearl said teachers unions needed to be explicit about “fighting for racial and social justice,” fighting “against privatization,” and “taking people on who need to be taken on, including a lot of Democrats.”