* From a letter ostensibly to Michael Sacks that was apparently only sent to CTU leaders by President Stacy Davis Gates …

Dear Michael:

I’m writing to you because the events in the South show we are in a full-blown crisis of democracy. And while the disenfranchisement in Tennessee and elsewhere is the clearest face of the authoritarian power grab, it is not the only one.

I am hopeful we can agree that we should not have Jim Crow decide elections in the South and also that we should not have billionaires decide them in the North.

When I read your March op-ed in the Chicago Tribune, I noted your remarks: your invocation of Karen Lewis, your opposition to school closures, your support for progressive revenue, and your call for an independent, student-centered Chicago Board of Education. On these points, we agree. And, at this moment, that agreement matters more than any of our disagreements.

For those objectives to come to be, we must get outside interests and the outsized influence out of what is supposed to be a democratic process among Chicagoans to elect a school board to reflect their interests and deliver quality public education for their children.

At CTU, we recently partnered with the district for the May 1st day of civic engagement where students learned voting rights from Operation Push, imagined their dream communities at BUILD on the West side, and studied the constitution and bill of rights in multiple classrooms. Nowhere in their civic education does it discuss the outsized role of billionaires in democracy today.

Yet, the Illinois Network of Charter Schools Action PAC has reported more than $3.2 million in cash on hand. By public reporting, you are the single largest funder of the Common Ground Collective which opposed the corporate head tax. And in 2024, out-of-state promoters of school privatization flooded Chicago’s first-ever elected school board races with no accountability to a single CPS family. Jim Walton, the Arkansas-based Walmart heir, and Reed Hastings, co-founder of Netflix wrote $400,000 and $100,000 checks to the INCS PAC in one sitting.

These are not Chicagoans investing in Chicago’s children. They are national actors with an ideological agenda. This spring’s congressional primaries showed us what happens when that model scales: roughly $21 million flowed through pop-up super PACS that registered with the FEC weeks before voting began, deliberately concealing who was paying for them until after the votes were counted.

Michael, we owe it to Chicago’s children and their families to protect democracy and do elections differently in the upcoming school board races.

Democracy works when we have more people in the process, not more money. With all 21 seats of the Chicago Board of Education on the ballot for the first time in this city’s history, we have to work together for Chicagoans to have their say.

Especially as we see what is happening in the South and at a moment when the President is forecasting that he will end free and fair elections, send armed agents to the polls, and candidates who outright support the end of public education and the rise of fascism will be on the ballot everywhere, there are larger and more urgent places to contribute to defend democracy and democratic norms, not overtake the will of Chicagoans.

I am writing to ask you to demonstrate your commitment to an independent, student-centered board by not contributing to the fly-by-night operators we witnessed in the primary and suspending any further contributions to empower Chicago’s parents, educators, and families to vote their preferences.

If Chicago’s civic, labor, and philanthropic leadership can find the discipline to set the standard and keep this election in the hands of the people, the collective attention and resources of this city can remain available for the fights that follow — fights that, based on your public statements, I hope that you and I may find ourselves on the same side of.

Chicago’s voters deserve a level playing field to make their choice for school board, not an uphill battle in an arena where investment capital and out-of-state interest tip the scales.

We owe Chicago’s voters a school board election that belongs to Chicago’s voters. Not to Wall Street. Not to Silicon Valley. Not to a constellation of shell committees that will move on to the next race the day after ours is decided.

I would welcome a private conversation to discuss this further and would look forward to jointly spreading this message together.

In service of our shared city,
Stacy Davis Gates
President, Chicago Teachers Union President, Illinois Federation of Teachers

* Sacks’ reply…

Dear Stacy,

A copy of a letter you purportedly sent to me was shared with me after you distributed that letter to your entire 800-person House of Delegates. I have yet to actually receive the letter.

Let me be direct, your letter may be the most transparently disingenuous outreach I have seen. Therefore please forgive the blunt nature of this reply.

You and your lieutenants, including Brandon Johnson and his senior staff, who all come from organizations or political campaigns you led, lead or funded, have defamed me with limited breaks since December. You have done this on air, in print, on social media, and from the podiums and bully pulpit available to all of you.

You made a claim in a TV interview that you know I am endorsing “a platform to close Chicago Public Schools on the south side and west side,” and you made this claim knowing it is false. After I responded to the report that your claim was false, you again claimed I support a list “circulated by former CPS CEO Pedro Martinez” that puts “dozens of schools on the southwest, south, and west sides on the chopping block.” For the record again, that is false. Further I do not believe I have ever met or spoken with Pedro Martinez.

You also falsely claim that I, through an organization I support, opposed Mayor Johnson’s corporate head tax proposal. I have stated that I support progressive revenue, and neither I nor the organization (Common Ground Collective) spent one penny opposing the proposed tax. What Common Ground Collective did do is reveal that the Mayor, while divisively seeking to raise $100 million for a so-called “Community Safety Fund,” was not using any of that funding to increase resources for public safety and youth in 2026, and was in some cases providing less funding. The goal of Common Ground was to see the Mayor increase public safety funding with the new revenue.

The worst of your letter is your questioning whether I support the very people and policies in Washington you know perfectly well I oppose. You know that I oppose the assault on the Voting Rights Act and public education, as well as the use of ICE that we have all been horrified by, and the rollback of DEI. And you know my record of fighting for choice and marriage equality, and as a pro-union advocate who consistently supports labor unions and working people and has been aligned with labor in numerous fights, including the fight for evidence-based school funding for Illinois and Chicago. As a lifelong Democrat who has fought for equality and for increased funding for public education, my opposition to those deleterious wrong-minded efforts is easily verifiable and beyond question by anyone even loosely acquainted with the truth or anyone who cares to be acquainted with the truth.

Setting the false claims and defamation aside for now, the letter itself is farcical. No one in this city is focused more on spending big money on politics, or deploys that money more forcefully or creatively, than you do. You have fully embraced funneling CTU money through ”shell committees,” friendly sounding PACs like “Our Schools PAC” and “Grassroots PAC.” And you are raising dues on CPS teachers now precisely to be able to spend more money on politics.

Now you suggest that Chicagoans who believe your outsized influence over the district has failed CPS students and families (and by extension your own teachers) ought to simply stand down? My grandmother would have called that chutzpah.

You are putting forward Hilario Dominguez, a paid deputy on your political staff, for the citywide role of CPS Board President, despite his being entirely unqualified to lead a system the size of CPS, the largest unit of government in Cook County. Previously you welcomed Brandon Johnson’s appointment to CPS Board President of a disbarred lawyer who entertains 9/11 conspiracy theories and appears to regard women’s economic independence as a problem. And you think others should step aside and cede the field to you?

For an experienced political operative, the cynicism, transparency and weakness of your gambit with the letter genuinely escapes me. Who exactly is buying it?

If you were serious about wanting to speak with me privately, then you would have simply picked up the phone and called me as you have in the past, and not routed your overture through a House of Delegates deck that was quickly leaked.

To be clear, if you ever want a real conversation, you know how to find me. But please know that so long as you are pouring ever more money into politics while championing candidates like Hilario Dominguez, I intend to continue supporting Democratic and progressive candidates and causes and engaging along with the large percentage of Chicagoans and CPS families who want a truly independent student-centered school board.

I am sure you understood that when you distributed your “letter” to 800 people before there was a reasonable chance I would see it.

Regards,
Michael J. Sacks

* An Equal Opportunity Compliance Office complaint filed against Hilario Dominguez, the CTU’s preferred board president candidate, is making the rounds. Click here and scroll down to H.D_EOCO_Complaint_Redacted. Whew.

* From that link posted above about Mitchell Ikenna Johnson…

Mayor Brandon Johnson’s newly appointed school board president is facing new criticism for Facebook posts that appear to show him agreeing that the September 11th terrorist attacks were an inside job.

WGN Investigates found a Facebook post in January from an account that appears to belong to Rev. Mitchell Ikenna Johnson. The post said “facts!!!” above a shared video titled “3,000+ experts agree: 9/11 really was an inside job.”

Rev. Johnson was already facing calls to step-down from 40 of Chicago’s 50 alderpersons over social media posts involving the Israel-Hamas war. One post after the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack in Israel that said, “People have an absolute right to attack their oppressors by any means necessary.” In another post, Johnson wrote, “My Jewish colleagues appear drunk with the Israeli power and will live to see their payment.”

More…

Role model?

The head of CPS School Board posted this too: pic.twitter.com/Tm0Y1OYSJX

— Mary Ann Ahern (@MaryAnnAhernNBC) October 31, 2024