Striking Chicago Teachers Union stooges are committing systemic racism: KIRA DAVIS 

Jesse Sharkey is a name you need to know. He is as a self-declared champion of the working class, and a prominent socialist activist.

Shockingly (or not so much) he is also the proud owner of a $1.4 million dollar property in Chicago, where he lives with his wife, socialist author Julie Fain.

Fain also just happens to be the daughter of wealthy capitalist Richard Fain, who up until mere days ago was the CEO of the Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines group.

These are all interesting qualities for a socialist, but perhaps the most important quality, in this context, is that Sharkey is the current President of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) and the lead cheerleader for unnecessarily shutting out Chicago’s 350,000 public school students, even as parents and the Mayor of Chicago beg them to return to school.

Chicago Public Schools (CPS) cancelled classes for the third-straight day on Friday, as the vast majority of staff refuses to report to work.

Happy New Year! 

Jesse Sharkey (above) is a name you need to know. He is as a self-declared champion of the working class, and a prominent socialist activist.

Jesse Sharkey (above) is a name you need to know. He is as a self-declared champion of the working class, and a prominent socialist activist.

Ninety percent of Chicago Public School students are racial minorities. They are depending on 'the system' to give them an equal footing in the educational arena and yet the system is currently unavailable to them. If that is not systemic racism, I don't know what is.

Ninety percent of Chicago Public School students are racial minorities. They are depending on ‘the system’ to give them an equal footing in the educational arena and yet the system is currently unavailable to them. If that is not systemic racism, I don’t know what is.

And there is currently no end in sight to the standoff as the union and public schools file dueling charges of unfair labor practices.

Sharkey said Wednesday that absent a new agreement over COVID safety protocols teachers won’t return to school until the latest COVID wave subsidies.

The biggest losers – as always – are the most innocent and vulnerable among us. Our kids.

On top of that, Chicago Public Schools host a minority population of 90%.

You read that right.

According to the district’s own numbers, only 10% of Chicago Public School students are white.

61% of public school students are on the free lunch program, which is the metric state and federal entities use to determine poverty rates among students.

How could only 10% of the public schools be made up of white students? Chicago itself has a much larger white population. Where are all their kids? Not in public school.

The majority of white parents seem to have options and people who have options very rarely voluntarily choose public schools in the Windy City.

You can see why in the case of Chicago.

With the resurgence of COVID, fueled by the Omicron variant, the union has seized this new excuse to make exorbitant demands, and hold the children, mostly minority children, hostage to do it.

According to the Cambridge Dictionary, ‘systemic racism’ is defined as: ‘policies and practices that exist throughout a whole society or organization, and that result in and support a continued unfair advantage to some people and unfair or harmful treatment of others based on race.’

It should infuriate every minority parent that this privileged white man is able to hold the education of their children hostage even as he enjoys the trappings of wealth and power. (Above) Author, Kira Davis

It should infuriate every minority parent that this privileged white man is able to hold the education of their children hostage even as he enjoys the trappings of wealth and power. (Above) Author, Kira Davis

Ninety percent of Chicago Public School students are racial minorities.

Nearly seventy percent are considered to live below the poverty line.

CPS students are depending on ‘the system’ to give them an equal footing in the educational arena and yet the system is currently unavailable to them.

If that is not systemic racism, I don’t know what is.

‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs’ is the slogan popularized by Karl Marx – that any good socialist, like Jesse Sharkey, must know by heart. That’s sure looking pretty anemic these days.

What’s worse – when kids are not in the school – many are not supervised, as their parents work to pay the bills.

As of September 2021, more children under the age of 17 had been shot in Chicago (261) than have died from COVID-19 nationwide (214), according to data from police and the CDC.

What the CTU is doing to public school students right now is unconscionable. It is repugnant.

Even worse, it is a repugnance aimed squarely at poor and minority children, and the union knows it and they don’t care.

It’s not as if Chicago public schools lack the funding to educate our kids.

President Biden’s American Rescue Plan earmarked $1.8 billion for the city’s schools.

The Chicago Public School District receives $27,000 for every single public school student every year.

It is time to end this pathetic charade. The Chicago Teachers Union has no interest in their students. (Above) Teacher Stuart Abram holds a sign in support of the Chicago Teachers Union on Jan. 5, 2022, the first day that classes were canceled amid the dispute over COVID-19 safety measures

It is time to end this pathetic charade. The Chicago Teachers Union has no interest in their students. (Above) Teacher Stuart Abram holds a sign in support of the Chicago Teachers Union on Jan. 5, 2022, the first day that classes were canceled amid the dispute over COVID-19 safety measures

What would you do if tomorrow someone walked up to you, handed you $27,000 dollars and told you the only caveat for keeping it is that you can only spend it on your child’s education?

What if that same person told you that this money is only for one year of education, and you’ll receive another $27,000 for your child for every year following?

What if that same person told you that you could receive $27,000 per year not just for your household, but for every single child in your family?

If Chicago decided to hand over that $27,000 per student to minority parents tomorrow, would we find a single one who would say, ‘I’ll just wait for the union to pull it together before I use this money to educate my child.’?

It’s hard to imagine so.

It should infuriate every minority parent that this privileged white man is able to hold the education of their children hostage even as he enjoys the trappings of wealth and power.

There are no more legs left to stand on for the CTU. The worst of the pandemic is over. The majority of Americans are vaccinated against COVID.

Both the Mayor of Chicago and the CDC have admitted that the Omicron variant is highly transmissible but significantly weaker than past variants, and poses a minimal threat to children.

The only people asking for this shutdown are the union stooges.

Parents have already been through the utter disaster of remote learning. They do not wish to see their children return to educational degradation. They do not wish to see the gap between the wealthy and poor continue to widen as their children are denied education, while the children of wealth simply avail themselves of other options.

Think about what the CTU is saying to parents. It isn’t just the hypocrisy of a wealthy white man like Sharkey that is insulting. It is also the intimation that they are smarter than the parents of Chicago — that they love and care for the students more than their own parents do.

The parents of Chicago have been home with their children throughout the holidays. They’ve seen up close the truth of this COVID variant, and they understand it isn’t much more than a winter cold at this point. They’ve done the math and they find the limited risks acceptable. School is just as safe for their children as home is at this point.

On Tuesday, Chicago’s public health commissioner, Dr. Allison Arwady, said she is ‘extremely comfortable’ with students learning in-person.

‘We’ve got to do risk-benefit analysis here,’ she said, ‘and at least among children, we have to think of this as similar to flu.’

It is time to end this pathetic charade.

The Chicago Teachers Union has no interest in their students.

It’s right there in the name – the ‘teachers’ union – and it’s right there in Jesse Sharkey’s extravagant lifestyle.

They have access to enough money per student to provide the highest quality of education imaginable, and it is still not enough for them to go to work.

Jesse Sharkey and the Chicago Teachers Union have betrayed our children, all the while wrapping themselves in a cheap cloak of social justice. They should be ashamed, and Chicago should defund them immediately.

source: dailymail.co.uk