The totalitarian-minded education establishment and its extreme left-wing allies are starting to freak out as conservatives abandon futile efforts to “reform” government schools in favor of a mass-exodus strategy. Even powerful union bosses are starting to panic.

The trend has been building quietly for years. But it has accelerated rapidly in recent months as a trickle of families fleeing the system became a tidal wave amid face-mask edicts, vaccine mandates, Critical Race Theory, Marxist indoctrination, extreme “sex education,” and other controversies.

The first major shoe to drop in response came on September 30, when the fringe left-wing magazine New Republic released a major article claiming Republicans were now out to destroy the public-school system instead of “reform” it.

“Republicans Don’t Want to Reform Public Education. They Want to End It,” blared the headline in the far-left magazine, famous for lying about and even praising the mass-murdering Soviet dictatorship. “Florida’s recent struggles over masks in schools augur a terrifying shift in the right’s approach to education policy.”

According to the article, conservatives are increasingly abandoning the idea of “reforming” public schools. Instead, the article argues, the new approach is to get as many children as possible out of the system and into private schools or homeschooling.

The article begins by examining a speech by Florida Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran at Hillsdale College. Corcoran noted, correctly, that education will be the key to winning other issues, too. But Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, the article claims, is at the helm of pursuing the strategy to destroy government education.

“Trading in the decades-old, substantially bipartisan education reform agenda, a formula that was born in Florida, he is mustering a naked attack on the very existence of public schools,” the magazine claimed, arguing that this shift is taking place in the broader Republican Party in general as well.

And bigwigs of the trillion-dollar-per-year “education” regime are getting nervous. For instance, American Federation of Teachers (AFT) boss Randi Weingarten, who is quoted in the New Republic article, blurted out her concerns on Twitter.

“This isn’t just about masks or about Governor DeSantis’ political aspirations,” she said as state-level union bosses parroted her comments as well. “It’s about the complete destabilization of public education so that parents will choose private schools.”

And it is true: Conservative leaders nationwide are increasingly advocating an exit from government schools altogether. Just this weekend, conservative heavyweight Candace Owens urged parents to remove their children from government schools on Fox News.

“Pull your children out of public schools,” Owens told the cable network on Sunday. “The time is now, remove your children from these indoctrination camps, they’re not learning to be smart,  they’re not focused on hard academics, they are being brainwashed and and systematically controlled and what they want to produce, by the way, are failures.”

Before that, Evangelical leader Franklin Graham, conservative pundit Dennis Prager, talk-radio titan Rush Limbaugh, and many others also called for parents to remove their children in recent years.

Some have been sounding the alarm for decades. Exodus Mandate Director Lt. Col. Ray Moore (Ret.), the godfather of the exodus movement, was thrilled by the shift in the conversation. “After decades of futile efforts to reform government schools, conservatives and Christians are permanently opting out,” Moore told us by phone.

“The dam is about to break,” added Moore, who is also chairman of Public School Exit (where this writer serves as executive director) and the Christian Education Initiative (CEI). “When this happens, on a large scale, Christians and conservatives will become good neighbors again, by providing Christian education services for our nation. This is the great hope for renewal of our families, churches and our nation.”

Conservatives and Christians now have the momentum — the wind is in their sails when it comes to rescuing millions of children from the dumbing down, sexualization, and indoctrination in government schools. The exodus is already happening, and it will accelerate in the years ahead.

As the forces of liberty advance, the next challenge will be to keep the same “education” establishment from destroying homeschooling and private school by providing tax funding with strings attached or other subversive methods. The future of America depends on the outcome of this fight.

This article was originally published by FreedomProject Media.

Schools are filled with teachers that want the best for their students. However, in recent days schools have become a political bastion for the leftist agenda. Although some teachers and the teachers’ unions have become warriors for the leftist agenda, others are fighting, upholding standards as the last vestige of conservative Judeo-Christian values slips from the public school system. Many parents have become familiar with the idea of Critical Race Theory, also known as CRT, and recognize the harm it causes to their children. However, what is not recognized is that they are coming for the teachers next. Teachers refusing adherence to the policies of CRT, the NEA, and the teacher’s unions are soon targeted, not unlike the events that occurred during the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

Recently, Xi Van Fleet of Leesburg, Virginia, made several comments at a school board meeting for the Loudoun County school district, describing herself as a survivor of the Chinese Communist regime under the control of Mao Zedong. She expressed her concern over the grooming of children into social justice warriors and the rhetoric used in China now appearing in the public schools within the United States. Her concerns regarding the indoctrination of students are warranted. What is needed too is a thorough discussion of exactly how CRT will affect teachers that refuse to promote Marxism.

Parents and educators will only understand what is coming by understanding how Marxist and other totalitarian leaders treated educators in the past. In the Cultural Revolution that Xi Van Fleet survived, a movement known as the Red August of 1966 changed education dramatically. Chairman Mao Zedong, paranoid following the failures of the Great Leap and fearing members of his own party, called for the elimination of religion, traditions, and the educators teaching those traditions. He recruited youth starting in colleges but then extended the program to high school and middle school children. The student group was known as the Red Guard. The Red Guard, made up primarily of teenagers, quickly became the militant arm of the Maoist regime. Leaders told students to report any individual not following the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and their philosophies. Violators faced public humiliation and beatings by their students. Many were murdered.

Although physical violence is unlikely here in the United States, character assassinations started this spring. In New York City, private school teacher Paul Rossi was fired after expressing his concerns with CRT and the division of Zoom meetings by race. In Chicago, Palatine High School terminated teacher Jeanne Hedgepeth for comments she made on her personal social media accounts. She is now in the process of suing the school district for violating her First Amendment rights.

A Portland teacher, Katherine Watkins, who supports the teaching of CRT, recently claimed that teachers refusing to teach CRT are akin to pedophiles, actions warranting dismissal for abuse. So, we see the labeling and name-calling have already begun. Teachers are losing jobs and reputations as they oppose the leftist agenda of indoctrination. It will not end with name-calling and job loss. Cancel culture ensures every area of the individual’s life is annihilated simply for disagreeing with the regime.

The teacher’s unions jumped on the bandwagon as well. The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten has promised a fund of $2.5 million for the legal defense of any teacher that uses CRT in the classroom in states where the theory is banned. Will the teacher’s unions defend the rights of teachers who oppose CRT? That is highly unlikely. Weingarten has compared those opposed to CRT to Holocaust deniers.

Parents, conservative teachers, and Christian leaders must come together if there is any hope of defeating the leftist onslaught against our students and their teachers. Sacrifices must be made,  forcing teachers into leaving behind good paying public-school positions, teaching instead in the less lucrative private school setting. It may mean parents removing their children from government schools and paying tuition in private schools or transitioning to homeschooling. Some should give up their time, money, and privacy to run for a school board. It is time to be involved, attend school board meetings, join the PTA, and make your voices heard. Your teachers need your support and your resolve. Most importantly, teachers must resolutely teach the truth even as the new Red Guard of the NEA seeks to humiliate them and cancel their employment.

An old story tells of a big, successful store with a plaque in the employees’ lounge which read: “Rule #1. The customer’s always right. Rule #2. If you ever think the customer is wrong, reread Rule #1.”

I bring this up because the public school education establishment (to be distinguished from the rank and file teachers, many of whom are dedicated public servants), often treat their customers as if they’re wrong and as if the education elites know better than the dumb parents.

School choice is the ultimate answer to America’s education crisis, and there ought to be bipartisan agreement on it. School competition makes education better and gives all parents more options for their children. But the Left opposes it adamantly, though even a liberal newspaper surprisingly spoke out recently in favor of school choice.

Foxnews.com reports (7/9/2021):

“The liberal Washington Post editorial board on Thursday broke rank with the left and pondered why Democrats are so opposed to giving poor children a choice in schooling.”

The Washington Post opined,

“For 17 years, a federally funded K-12 scholarship program has given thousands of poor children in D.C. the opportunity to attend private schools and the chance to go on to college. And for many of those 17 years, the program has been in the crosshairs of unions and other opponents of private school vouchers…Their relentless efforts unfortunately may now finally succeed with House Democrats and the Biden administration quietly laying the groundwork to kill off this worthy program.”

What a tragedy. And who will suffer the most? Inner-city families.

The Left is all about power. But true public service is always about empowerment – empowering others, regardless of their socio-economic background – so that people can fulfill their God-given destiny.

The pandemic over the past year-and-a-half showed how the teacher’s unions held hostage many schools from re-opening in person.

During the shutdown, many parents discovered the option of homeschooling. In an interview for Christian television, Mike Donnelly of the Home School Legal Defense Association told me, “The U. S. census bureau issued a report recently that showed that homeschooling households doubled from about five and a half percent, before the virus, to over almost 12%.”

Homeschooling is not as radical as it sounds. Many of our founding fathers and key American leaders, like Abraham Lincoln, were home-taught.

In August 2020, Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, observed,

“If there was one positive outcome I could point to from the Coronavirus Pandemic…was the fact that public schools were shut down and kids were at home. Parents were to a larger degree, involved in what their kids were learning… And I’ve heard from a number of parents, who are now rethinking education in terms of how they’re going to go about it post Coronavirus Pandemic.”

Fast forward to the present time and we see many parents revolting against some of what the education establishment is trying to cram down their throats, such as Critical Race Theory (CRT), a racist set of doctrines disguised in anti-racist garb.

CRT is a Marxist attempt to destroy America from within by teaching that white people always oppress minorities. Always.

When parents learn about CRT-type curricula in their schools, they have spoken out against it. Even many minority parents and parents in heavily Democratic areas have opposed it. It certainly flies in the face of the goals of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., that America become color-blind and judge people according to the content of their character not the color of their skin.

But the major teachers’ unions have not backed down from the teaching of CRT. With the unions’ blessing, about 5000 teachers recently pledged to teach CRT, even if it’s illegal.

For example, President Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, promises to “legally defend” members of their union who teach CRT, even if in that particular school district it is illegal.

CRT has different manifestations in our schools. Gary Bauer notes in his End of Day (7/9/2021):

“For example, at least 25 school districts around the country are using a book called ‘Not My Idea.’ Here’s how Amazon describes the book: ‘Not My Idea’ is the only children’s picture book that roots the problem of racism in whiteness and empowers white children and families to see and dismantle white supremacy.”

School choice seems to be the best answer to our education crisis, of which CRT is just the latest manifestation. And yet the Democrats are trying to shut it down, as in the poor sections of the District of Columbia.

Ironically, those who claim to champion “choice,” by which they mean killing preborn babies, want a one-size-fits-all approach to education in a diverse country like America.

I think the teacher’s unions need to re-read Rule #1.

This article was originally published at

When examining the hydra that is the collectivist “education” establishment that dominates public schools in the United States, among the most important tentacles have been the teachers’ unions—especially the National Education Association (NEA).

Along with other leading unions, the NEA and its affiliates at the state and local level played a leading role in transforming American education into the dangerous disaster that it has become. The extremism has been getting progressively more extreme for more than a century now. But it’s not new by any means.

The destructive role played by the NEA is so serious, and so widely understood, that in 2004, even then-U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige described the union as a “terrorist organization.” But in reality, the NEA has done far more damage to the United States than a simple terrorist organization ever could.

Consider that terrorists merely kill individuals, even if sometimes in large numbers. But the NEA and its allied unions have helped to practically kill a nation—the greatest, freest nation that ever existed. While terrorists destroy human bodies, the NEA has worked to destroy human minds and human freedoms.

For at least a century, the NEA, founded in 1857 as a professional association, has barely bothered to conceal its leadership’s affinity for communism, collectivism, socialism, humanism, globalism, and other dangerous “isms” that threaten individual liberty. Nor has the union shied away from vitriolic attacks on the United States, the free-market system, Christianity, the family, or educational freedom.

Perhaps the most important exposé ever written on the NEA was the 1984 book “NEA: Trojan Horse in American Education” by Dr. Samuel Blumenfeld. Packed with examples and references, Blumenfeld’s book proved that, contrary to popular mythology, which holds that the NEA’s extremism is a more recent phenomenon, the union’s leaders have been radicalizing teachers against America for a century or more.

Since being overtly taken over by progressives early in the 20th century, “the NEA has subjected its members to an unrelenting hatred of capitalism and an unceasing, uncritical benevolence toward socialism,” wrote Blumenfeld.

But even before that, it was bad. “From 1857 to the present, the NEA has worshiped two gods: Horace Mann, a statist, and John Dewey, a socialist,” Blumenfeld continued, referring to the two most important figures in the hostile takeover of “education” by government. This series on education has dealt with both of these subversives extensively.

By 1900, the NEA, which was lobbying for federal involvement in education, was largely insignificant. Even though there were an estimated half a million public school teachers in the United States at that time, the NEA had well under 2,500 members. Once the “progressives” took firm control, though, it became a sort of “ministry of education” seeking to dictate and control education policy nationwide.

Replacing Liberty With Collectivism

Once progressives were totally in control of the NEA leadership, a story detailed in Blumenfeld’s book, there was no longer any inhibitions in openly promoting the triumph of collectivism over liberty using the school system.

At the annual NEA meeting in 1934, Willard Givens, who would soon be appointed executive secretary over the union, laid out the agenda.

“Many drastic changes must be made,” Givens declared. “A dying ‘laissez-faire’ must be completely destroyed and all of us, including the ‘owners’, must be subjected to a large degree of social control. … The major function of the school is the social orientation of the individual. It must seek to give him understanding of the transition to a new social order.”

He also called for nationalization of all sorts of industries, to be operated for the benefit of “the people.”

Of course, socialist and humanist “education reformer” John Dewey had been advocating the emergence of a “new social order,” socialist in orientation, since at least the early years of the 20th century. And in 1932, Dewey, almost universally regarded as the founding father of America’s public education system, became the “honorary life president” of the NEA.

The very next year, Dewey and some of his cohorts would draft and sign the first Humanist Manifesto, a bizarre religious document brazenly rejecting God while shamelessly embracing collectivism and socialism. This totalitarian religion would eventually be advanced throughout America in de-Christianized public schools.

Dewey, who visited the Soviet Union and wrote articles extolling the brutal tyranny’s supposed virtues, was interested in education primarily to promote his totalitarian “ideology” and his pseudo-theology. And even though he was adamant that Christianity must not be taught in schools, he was totally fine with religion—his religion—in the classroom. In fact, he believed it was essential to creating the “new social order.”

“Our schools … are performing an infinitely significant religious work,” he wrote in his 1907 essay “Religion and Our Schools.”

“They are promoting the social unity out of which in the end genuine religious unity must grow. … [D]ogmatic beliefs … we see … disappearing. … It is the part of men to … work for the transformation of all practical instrumentalities of education till they are in harmony with these ideas.”

From the 1920s onward, this sort of quack religious, political, and educational nonsense and propaganda from Dewey filled the pages of the “NEA Journal.” Among other ideas, Dewey’s writing in the NEA’s flagship publication, which reached more teachers than any other, constantly extolled the virtues of collectivism and the mass-murdering Soviet system while demonizing the United States and traditional American education.

Dewey was especially warm to the Soviet indoctrination program masquerading as an “education” system, his essays in the NEA Journal and other publications such as the New Republic revealed. And yet, because of clever word games, many Americans remained oblivious to the danger. One of the ways Dewey’s propaganda on behalf of tyranny was so effective was that he deceived readers by using the words “democracy” and “socialism” interchangeably.

Dewey was so wrapped up in Soviet intrigue that, before becoming honorary president of the NEA, he served as vice president and one of the original directors of the American Society for Cultural Relations with Russia. This Soviet dictatorship-created organization in the United States founded in 1927 was primarily involved in sending students, professors, and teachers to the Soviet Union for communist indoctrination, and bringing Soviet “experts” to the United States to train American educators.

Unsurprisingly, the NEA was always willing and eager to work with “unions” in slave states of Eastern Europe and Latin America, including the phony unions created by the Soviet regime. That was despite harsh criticism from Soviet dissidents and even the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), another major teachers’ union that differed in important ways from the NEA.

The most frequent writer in the NEA Journal throughout the 1930s and 1940s was socialist Stuart Chase. “It is no longer a question of collectivism versus individualism, but of what kind of collectivism,” Chase wrote in the NEA’s official propaganda organ after calling for the U.S. government to take over agriculture, banking, credit, and more.

In a 1956 interview with the Los Angeles Tidings, former teacher and Communist Party defector Bella Dodd dropped a bombshell. “The Communist party whenever possible wanted to use the Teacher’s Union for political purposes,” she said, adding that the communists in the union were all in favor of Dewey-inspired “progressive” education. “Most of the programs we advocated, the NEA followed the next year or so.”

Taking Collectivism Global

In addition to spreading its collectivist poison in the minds of children across the United States through public schools, the NEA also waged an effective campaign to spread the indoctrination system worldwide. Indeed, the union was among the first organizations to openly promote the idea of a global “board of education” to control every school on the planet.

As far back as 1920, the NEA created its so-called International Relations Committee. The ostensible purpose was to help build “world understanding.” But the real agenda soon become crystal clear to anyone who was paying attention.

Responding to the formation of a formal U.S. government alliance with the ruthless Communist Party dictatorship enslaving the Soviet Union, NEA Journal chief J. Elmer Morgan wrote an editorial for the publication called “The United Peoples of the World.”

Among other demands, supposedly to “keep the peace and insure justice and opportunity,” Morgan said “we need certain world agencies of administration.” Those planetary governing agencies should include a global “police force” and a world “board of education,” Morgan opined.

To bring about that global “board of education,” the NEA set up the “War and Peace Fund” to collect donations in 1943. Similar schemes took place in Europe among the education establishment. Eventually, these efforts culminated in the creation of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 1946, an organization that will be addressed in an upcoming article in this series.

In a 1946 editorial in the NEA Journal headlined “The Teacher and World Government,” Morgan was again shilling for global government, and again advocating that these subversive ideologies be forced on captive school children through indoctrination.

“In the struggle to establish an adequate world government, the teacher has many parts to play,” Morgan wrote, calling on teachers to “prepare the hearts and minds of children” for the looming global collectivist regime. “At the very top of all the agencies which will assure the coming of world government must stand the school, the teacher, and the organized profession.”

Later that same year, Morgan boasted of the “achievements” toward world government that the “organized teaching profession” had already made. And to this day, the NEA continues to play a key role in the ongoing globalization and internationalization of progressive indoctrination posing as an educational system.

More Federal Power, War on Competition

Even before it was peddling the idea of a global education system to bring about global government, the NEA led the battle to get the federal government involved in education—and then to constantly expand that power under whatever pretext might be effective. Indeed, from the very beginning, the NEA worked to empower Washington over the nation’s schools, in clear violation of the U.S. Constitution and its 10th Amendment.

More than a century ago, the NEA also began lobbying Congress for federal funding of education. NEA bosses knew that with federal aid comes federal control. They finally succeeded in 1965 with the passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. From there, the next stop was the creation of a cabinet-level Department of Education, an NEA wish that President Jimmy Carter granted the union in exchange for its critical support.

NEA bosses often get their way in government, even if it takes a while. That is because the NEA has been a well-oiled lobbying machine for decades. For one, by collecting dues from millions of members, the NEA and its state affiliates are able to pour endless resources into the campaign coffers of politicians. And by prodding its members to vote a certain way, write letters, and even protest, it can keep the politicians it gets elected in line indefinitely.

With almost 3 million members today, the NEA is the largest labor union in the United States. It has pumped well over $100 million into federal political campaigns since the early 1990s alone. And data from the Center for Responsive Politics show that more than 97 percent of that money went to Democrats. The tiny donations to Republicans virtually all went to the most liberal among them. Similar trends exist at the state and local level among NEA affiliates.

Today, the NEA is still trying to quash competition, seeking onerous restrictions on private schools and even waging a war on homeschooling families. In 1988 and the years following (amended in 2006 to the current version), the NEA adopted a resolution that formalized its hatred of families operating outside the government system.

“The National Education Association believes that home schooling programs based on parental choice cannot provide the student with a comprehensive education experience,” the union declared.

Of course, not all of the millions of NEA members agree with the totalitarian ideologies and ideas peddled by the union’s leadership. But until recently, at least, in many states, they were required to be members, forced to fund political campaigns and extremist views that they may have vehemently disagreed with. Thankfully, Illinois child support specialist Mark Janus sued and won, ending compulsory union dues. But many teachers still don’t realize they don’t have to fund the extremism of the NEA and its affiliates.

There may be more bad news yet to come for the NEA, which is becoming increasingly radical with every year that passes. This writer has it on good authority that some significant scandals involving NEA leadership may be revealed in the months ahead.

Either way, an objective look at the history of these tentacles on the education-establishment hydra reveals a monster that is interested in gaining power and smashing freedom—not educating children. It’s time for teachers, parents, and the taxpayers who fund it to speak out loudly.

This article was originally published by The Epoch Times, and is one report in a series of articles examining the origins of government education in the United States.

He’s a well-known socialist. Not the chic, hipster socialist making a comeback these days who hangs with the cool kids. No, he’s a dyed-in-the-wool, cherry-red socialist.

His first job out of college was as an organizer with the United Steelworkers in North Carolina. After moving to Chicago, he became a teacher and his wife worked for Haymarket Books, an independent publisher run by socialists.

Over the last several years, he was a leading member of the International Socialist Organization prior to its dissolution in April 2019. In July, he chaired a plenary session (“Welcome to Red Chicago”) at Socialism 2019, which brought together “hundreds of socialists and radical activists from around the country to take part in discussions about Marxism, working-class history, and the debates and strategies for organizing today.”

Most remarkable, though, is that he’s now the current president of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU). Meet Jesse Sharkey.

Like a bad case of déjà vu, Sharkey and the CTU have voted to authorize a strike for the third time this decade. Some 25,000 teachers have said they will walk off the job on October 17 if their demands for more money, more staffing and lower class sizes aren’t met.

In addition, the unions representing bus monitors, special education assistants, lunchroom workers and Chicago Park District employees (who cared for students during the 2012 strike) are threatening to strike at the same time. That would make it tough for mayor Lightfoot to keep the schools open for some 360,000 displaced students.

As a result, parents will be under pressure to arrange care for their children. And because strikes are open-ended, there’s no telling how long the kids (and parents) will be forced to wait for their education to resume.

The CTU wants a three-year contract with annual pay raises of 5 percent and a decrease in employee health care contributions. In addition, they are demanding a nurse and librarian at every school, more social workers and class size limits.

In response, CPS has offered teachers a 16 percent pay raise over 5 years, including 3 percent raises in each of the first three years and 3.5 percent in the last two. There would be no increase in employee health care contributions for the first two years but increases totaling 1 percent over the last three years. CPS claims the average teacher would see a 24 percent raise over the life of the contract.

What’s not to like? But the union flatly rejected the offer, with Sharkey declaring, “We’re about more than just money. We’re trying to get an agreement that is both fair to people in the schools and people who go to the schools.”

While that may sound noble, there’s more going on here than meets the eye. The CTU is making its demands at a time when CPS has a junk status credit rating. While financially better off due to a 2015 tax increase, CPS deferred much of its required annual pension payments and is now about $11 billion in the red. A pay increase and hiring more staff will only dig a deeper hole.

Add to that the underachievement of CPS students (only 28 percent met or exceeded the PARCC assessments), a substantial shortage of teachers, the elimination of a requirement to pass a basic skills test to be a licensed teacher, and fifteen years of declining enrollment—and the union’s demands begin to seem unreasonable.

That’s not to say there’s no merit to what they’re asking for. Adequate numbers of school nurses, librarians, social workers and manageable class room sizes can all contribute to a better experience for students. (You can see some of how some of the big questions are progressing here.)

Given the current financial condition of CPS, though, the union’s call for increased pay, teachers and staff plus reduced classroom size (requiring more teachers), is disturbing. Why make demands that will only drive up taxes or push a financially-troubled district further into debt?

In case you slept through your social studies class, socialism is a political and economic system in which the means of production (i.e., businesses) are owned by the laborers. In a capitalist society like the U.S., socialists pit laborers—the working class—against business owners—the capitalists—because capitalists take for themselves the profit the workers produce instead of the workers owning it themselves.

Socialists believe such an arrangement is unjust. Therefore, socialists engage in a “class struggle” for equality: the proletariat versus the bourgeoisie. To do this, they organize. And the largest, most organized sector in the United States is education.

The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA) have nearly 4 million members between them. Public schools dot every county, city, town and village in the country. By virtue of the role they play in society, educators are connected directly to the working class: students and their families.

That brings us back to Sharkey. In addition to classroom demands, the CTU is also making “social demands,” including sanctuary status for illegal alien students and increased affordable housing. While those issues have nothing to do with collective bargaining, they have everything to do with galvanizing the working class’s support.

If you listen closely, you can hear the socialist undercurrents.

“Sharkey has warned that if teachers strike, it could end up being a ‘massive labor movement’ that could have ripple effects throughout the city. The CTU is timing the possible walkout with two other unions, one representing other school staff, such as security guards and custodians, and another representing Chicago Park District workers. Both of those unions already have voted to authorize a strike.” (Emphasis mine.)

Sharkey is pitting the laborers, i.e., teachers and support staff, against the owners, i.e., the city and school administration. It’s a power struggle and a strike is the most effective weapon the union has.

That’s why Sharkey and the CTU rejected the city’s five-year deal, even though it offers more money. Five years is too long to wait until they’re able to use a strike again to advance their interests.

The most effective lies dress up as truth. “For Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising, then, if his servants also masquerade as servants of righteousness” (2 Corinthians 11:14-15).

On the surface, Sharkey’s claim that “we’re about more than just money” is true. But don’t be fooled. Under the surface, he and the CTU are masquerading as “servants of righteousness” using Chicago’s unwitting children and their families as pawns in a class struggle.

A Night With Rev. Franklin Graham!
At this year’s annual IFI banquet, our keynote speaker will be none other than Rev. Franklin Graham, President & CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Christian evangelist & missionary. This year’s event will be at the Tinley Park Convention Center on Nov. 1st. You don’t want to miss this special evening!

Learn more HERE.