FRED: HITTING LEFT WITH THE KLONSKY BROTHERS. CTU PRESIDENT JESSE SHARKEY
Back from a holiday break with my family in Brooklyn, Hitting Left was back on the air live with a podcast now available.
As I left New York, hundreds of students from the most elite public schools in the city we continuing their weekly Monday walkouts demanding equity of resources and integration.
Beacon HS has a black box theater, dance & art studios, and a film lab
It has 3x more white students and 3x fewer students with low income than the city average
Today, Beacon's students are out in the cold to demand an end to this resource hoarding city wide#integrateNOW
Our guest Friday was Jesse Sharkey, president of the Chicago Teachers Union.
Both my brother and I were active supporters of teachers during the strike and I looked forward to a conversation with the union leader on the way it went.
Even as a president of a small teacher local that went on strike in 2003 I know there is CONTINUE READING: Hitting Left with the Klonsky Brothers. CTU President Jesse Sharkey. – Fred Klonsky
MIKE: On Hitting Left: CTU Pres. Jesse Sharkey on Mayor Lori Lightfoot
On yesterday's Hitting Left show, Fred and I interviewed CTU President Jesse Sharkey about the 2019 teachers' strike and found lots of common ground. As readers of this blog know, while we supported the teachers' demands and walked the picket line with the strikers, we've disagreed with current CTU leaders on some issues, including their equating the city's first black, gay, woman mayor, Lori Lightfoot, with her predecessor, Rahm Emanuel. Here's part of our interview where we ask Jesse about his own take on Mayor Lightfoot.
FK: But am I wrong in feeling that your argument made during the lead-up to the strike and the strike itself was that the new administration was fundamentally not different from Rahm Emanuel’s and that there was this characterization of Mayor Lightfoot as being “Rahm2.0”?
JS: Yeah, you’re wrong in the sense that we characterized Rahm as “Mayor 1%”, you know, as a “corporate shill”. We picketed his house…The thing about Rahm was that he was such a clear CONTINUE READING: On Hitting Left: CTU Pres. Jesse Sharkey on Mayor Lori Lightfoot
