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The Chicago Teachers Union has decided that educating children is less important than throwing a political tantrum, and they’d like the city’s blessing to do it. On Wednesday, the CTU approved a resolution designating May 1 — May Day, the international socialist holiday — as a day of “Civic Action and Defense of Public Education.” In plain English, they want schools shut down so teachers can march in the streets against President Trump. They’re calling for “No Work, No School, and No Shopping,” because apparently the best way to defend public education is to cancel it for a day.
CTU Vice President Jackson Potter didn’t even bother disguising the politics, calling Trump an “authoritarian billionaire in Washington” and framing the walkout as necessary to preserve democracy ahead of the midterm elections. The resolution itself reads like a progressive fever dream, accusing “MAGA politicians, billionaire donors, and corporate interests” of trying to “privatize our schools, censor educators, ban books, dismantle civil rights protections, criminalize and separate immigrant families, and weaken workers’ unions.” It’s the kind of language you’d expect from a campus activist group, not from the people entrusted with teaching a city’s children how to read.
Let’s talk about what the Chicago Teachers Union has actually delivered for those children. Chicago Public Schools have been a national embarrassment for decades. Barely a quarter of CPS students are proficient in reading. Math scores are even worse. The district spends over $29,000 per student annually — more than most private schools charge — and the results are catastrophic. These are the people lecturing the rest of us about “quality education” while their own students can’t perform at grade level. Maybe instead of planning a May Day march, the CTU could spend that energy figuring out why the kids in their care are falling further behind every year.
The resolution also threw in a demand to keep ICE out of Chicago and called for policies to “tax the rich,” because no progressive wishlist is complete without those particular chestnuts. Mayor Brandon Johnson, who was essentially installed by the CTU’s political machine, called May Day an “important demonstration of collective power.” Of course he did. Johnson owes his political career to the union, and he’s not about to bite the hand that organized his election. The CTU wants to use a state law allowing excused absences for “civic events” to give the whole thing a veneer of legitimacy, turning what is plainly a political protest into something that looks like an educational field trip on paper.
This is what happens when teachers unions become political organizations first and advocates for children never. The CTU doesn’t exist to serve students — it exists to serve itself, to accumulate power, and to funnel that power into progressive causes that have nothing to do with whether a third-grader in Englewood can do long division. Every parent in Chicago should be asking a simple question: if these teachers have enough free time to organize a citywide political shutdown, why are their students still failing?
The broader pattern here should trouble every American who cares about the next generation. From Minnesota schools closing over ICE operations to Virginia students staging walkouts encouraged by their own governor, public education is being weaponized as a tool of political resistance. The classroom is supposed to be a place where children learn to think, not a staging ground for adult grievances. When teachers abandon their posts to march against a duly elected president, they’re not defending democracy — they’re teaching children that the proper response to losing an election is to shut everything down until you get your way. That’s not civic education. That’s indoctrination, and parents across this country are watching.
Providence watches over the bold.
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