Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis said Friday she doesn’t care if Mayor Rahm Emanuel resigns in the wake of the city’s police scandal, despite a call by the union’s governing body for him to step down.
“I don’t care what he does,” Lewis told reporters at the CTU’s annual celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. “Somebody else, maybe worse, would take his place.”
The union’s House of Delegates last month voted in favor of a call for Emanuel and Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez to resign.
“I don’t really care about that,” Lewis said of the vote on Emanuel. “That was something that came from the membership and we respect our democratic process. Personally, I don’t care.”
While the often combative Lewis sounded conciliatory, the featured speaker Friday, the Rev. Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou, brought hundreds of attendees at an Armour Square union hall to their feet with his demand for Emanuel’s ouster.
“Mayor Emanuel, it’s time for you to step down!” said Sekou, who the union invited to speak after his involvement with civil rights demonstrations that followed the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.
“There are many stories in this room of people who’ve got their babies being shot down and being harassed in the schools and being harassed on their way home,” Sekou said. “It’s a different moment in America.”
“Stand down, have integrity,” Sekou said of the mayor. “You will be all right.”
Also during the event, Lewis presented awards to a group of young black activists that included Lamon Reccord and Charlene Carruthers, who have helped lead demonstrations following the release of a video showing the police shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald.
CTU distributed copies of its monthly magazine, the cover of which features a widely distributed image of McDonald in a cap and gown with 16 bullet holes superimposed on his torso.
The union is involved in tough negotiations with the Chicago Board of Education over a new contract. Leaders were asked about a recent offer from the board.
“We owe it to our members, to the public and to the process to see if there’s a deal here,” CTU Vice President Jesse Sharkey said. “We’re taking this seriously right now. Negotiations have increased in frequency, they’re more intense than they’ve been up to this point in the process. … We’re trying to see if there’s a deal here. So far, there isn’t.
“It’s a serious offer,” Sharkey said. “Where it stands right now, it’s not there.”
Both sides have agreed to move to a final, fact-finding phase of negotiations on Feb. 1.
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