Leave the Kids Alone
On Friday, May 1st, thousands gathered in Chicago to listen to the Marxist rants of Mayor Brandon Johnson, Chicago Teachers Union(CTU) leaders, other labor union officials, teens with no idea what they are talking about, and activist political organizers.
Chicago Public Schools (CPS) made it a Civic Day of Action for schoolchildren, and many of them marched with the rallygoers or were given a sack lunch and bused to the 1:00 pm rally point at Union Park. The day was full of political indoctrination, including in-school activities focused on women’s rights, racism, the LGBTQ community, bashing billionaires, and the labor movement.
May Day, also known as International Workers’ Day, traces its roots to the Haymarket Affair of 1886, which took place in Chicago. A workers’ rally to demand an 8-hour workday ended with an anarchist throwing a stick of dynamite into the crowd, and the police responding by shooting back. Seven police officers and one civilian died, and many others were injured. Three years later, socialist and labor leaders commemorated the Haymarket Affair on May 1, 1889.
The labor movement has always been rooted in socialist ideology. History.com records that August Spies, a German immigrant and editor of the anarchist newspaper Arbiter-Zeitung, opened the rally, and “he was followed by Albert Parsons, a former Confederate soldier turned radical anarchist.”
To separate from its socialist roots, President Grover Cleveland, five years after the first “Labor Day,” signed a law making the first Monday in September a day to celebrate workers in America.
But, in the era of the Soviet Union, May Day was much better known as a day celebrating communism and the “workers’ rights” their system represented. Communism, however, mocks the rights of workers, and for many in Chicago’s immigrant community who fled Soviet-controlled Eastern Europe, the CPS May Day celebration is an outrage.
“If you’re a parent in Chicago, you should be outraged that this communist day of May 1st is being celebrated by your kids.
I come from a communist country. This is what they used to do to us forcibly on May 1st. The communist leaders would take us, round us up, and take us to rallies with flags and banners and all kinds of crap.
You would have to listen for hours to these morons drone on about how the socialist system is so wonderful and everything. Americans Wake Up.”
The above comments are those of Peter, one of the callers to our radio show on Friday. Peter came to America from communist Poland.
Peter and so many others who have escaped truly despotic countries run by dictators know the truth about what May Day represents – oppression by the dictators.
No one should think the CTU was simply commemorating the fight for an 8-hour workday either on this day of civic action.
Their letter to families about May Day begins like this:
Dear CTU Family:
Today’s the day we take to the streets.
The attacks aren’t slowing down, they’re speeding up.
Today, 120,000 Illinoisans will lose their SNAP benefits, a vital lifeline to provide nutrition for families and their children. This week, Trump’s Supreme Court, hoping to solidify the right wing’s hold on power across the country, gutted the Voting Rights Act. That historic law paved the way for Black representation at all levels of government. And ICE agents are still snatching our neighbors off the streets, though, thanks to Chicago’s push back, not in the numbers we saw this fall, when our students and their families faced ICE assaults and human rights violations on a daily basis during Operation Midway Blitz.
Our students have something to say, and we as educators have a responsibility to speak up and support them in finding their voice, their vision, their agency, and their place in the community.
This isn’t education, it’s indoctrination.
CTU President Stacy Davis Gates, who sends her own child to a private school, said in her speech at the rally:
“In this moment, I am a history teacher that negotiated a civic day of education for all of Chicago’s children to understand the power of workers in solidarity.”
The protest signs made it clear, though, what the rally was really about.
- Protect Workers, Not Profits
- Abolish ICE
- No Human is Illegal
- Immigrants Make USA Strong, Legalization for All
- Fund Communities, Not War
- No One is Illegal on Stolen Land
- Stop Trump’s Racist Agenda
- Workers Over Billionaires – SEIU Poster
A man-on-the-street report from Vince Langman verifies student participation in the march, even showing them mouthing off “F*** Trump” for the camera.
Listen to the interview here https://x.com/LangmanVince/status/2050713721341636919
This day was nothing more than another protest day against President Trump and his administration. Add it to the list of protest marches, e.g., Hands-Off, Takedown Tesla, No Kings. It was an indoctrination day to develop future activists, and it was done using taxpayer money.
The Illinois Coalition of Immigrant and Refugee Rights received over $42 million from state taxpayers last year and has led nearly all the anti-ICE, anti-Trump protest marches over the last year. They were represented at the march.
Enlace Chicago has taxpayer grants exceeding $3 million this year and since FY2023 a total of $17 million has flowed to them. They marched on May Day.
The unions at the march are supported, generously, by taxpayers forced to pay prevailing wages and generous benefits far greater than the private sector. The mandated base pay rate for a laborer in Cook County is $51.40/hour. Add on $36.94/hour for other mandated benefits for a total cost of $88.34/hour.
CTU teacher base compensation for a beginning teacher on a 208-day schedule is $68,982. Generous sick leave accumulation, pensions, days off, and little accountability for performance are other perks to the job.
The protest day costs students a day of, presumably, real education, even if we doubt the effectiveness of that, and added additional expenses for taxpayers as teachers cut class and substitutes had to be hired.
Reporting from Chalkbeat:
Districtwide, CPS officials said about 13% of its teachers were absent amid a national “day of no school, no work, no shopping” — about 3,320 absences in all, compared with 2,615 per day on average for this week, including Friday. Most requested the day in advance as the district had asked. CPS, which employs about 43,000 people, enlisted more than 2,600 substitute teachers and about 940 support staff subs to fill in for absent employees. Central office staff deployed to help out at 76 schools.
The district approved about 40 May Day field trips for 2,200 of the district’s 315,000 students, including some to a Union Park pro-labor, anti-Trump rally, where protestors also called for more school funding.
Also from Chalkbeat, “On Friday, U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon criticized the district’s handling of May Day on X, calling it “a dereliction of duty…There’s never an excuse for diverting taxpayer dollars away from students and into political agendas,” she posted.”
This is not America’s labor situation circa 1886, especially in Illinois.
Oppressed labor in Illinois is fiction. It is Illinois taxpayers who are oppressed in this state.
Just four years ago, the voters foolishly approved an amendment to the Illinois constitution that gives union members superior rights to employers in the state. Section 25 – Workers’ Rights was added to the Bill of Rights, giving employees a “fundamental right to organize and bargain,” and “protect their economic welfare,” and “no law shall be passed that interferes with, negates, or diminishes the right of employees to organize…,”
Public-sector unions control the legislature. They are the predominant funders of the Democrat party and its candidates. The May Day march was more about them exhibiting their power than about gaining power, because they already have extraordinary power.
Elsewhere, Chicagoans largely ignored the May Day socialist rants. The Cubs beat the Arizona Diamondbacks on Friday, and the beer began flowing well before noon. NOBODY cared what was happening at Union Park in Chicago. Wrigley is where the normal people were.
And in the suburbs, people running errands quickly drove past the 70-year-old protesters occupying street corners, ignoring the hand-made signs. Here are the protesters in Glen Ellyn at the intersection of Roosevelt Rd and Park Ave.
But, voters should take note of the out-of-touch radicals running the public school system in Illinois. As more states move to universal school vouchers, opening up education to competition, Illinois students will be left behind by union-controlled schools that lack accountability and innovation. If our future depends on an education, then we must demand better from our schools. Parents should shut down these protest days.