The CTU, which represents 20,000 educators in the nation’s third-largest school district, clearly wants to shape the national conversation. According to the Illinois Policy Institute, a conservative think tank, only 17 cents of every dollar is spent by the CTU to advocate for its members. And as the Economist recently put it, the CTU has become ‘one of the most powerful in the country’, despite its relatively small membership of 20,000 (the United Auto Workers boasts 400,000). It has done so by shaping, and adopting, the rhetoric of intersectionality and ‘liberation’ now common in progressive circles.

Gates said she was ‘radicalized’ by the CTU’s 2012 strike, the first in a quarter of a century. The strike in Chicago led to similar actions across the country and made the CTU one of the most visible progressive organizations during Barack Obama’s second term. But once Donald Trump came along, the CTU experienced the same mission creep as the American Civil Liberties Union, Planned Parenthood and other progressive institutions. If social pathologies were intersectional, the thinking went, the solutions had to be as well. But no organization can do everything well.

The CTU achieved a major victory in electing current Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson in 2023 with a massive organizing operation. Unfortunately, though, the progressive politician is desperately unpopular — if his approval rating hits 30%, it will be major news — and the CTU is (not unfairly) blamed for guiding his administration.

During Covid, the CTU truly came out of its shell. In late 2020, as schools that had been closed the previous spring tried to reopen for in-person instruction, it said in a tweet: ‘The push to reopen schools is rooted in sexism, racism and misogyny.’ As a result, schools stayed closed there longer than in most other places, with another reopening fight erupting at the end of 2021.

That same year, the CTU also called for the Government to ‘defund police and banks; support schools and a more just social order,’ per a 2020 blog post. And more recently, after the 7 October attack in Israel, it was one of several labor groups to call for a ceasefire. Moderates can ignore this sort of rhetoric, but only for so long. The streets of Chicago are currently filled with thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters demanding an end to the conflict.

The devastating argument against the CTU comes from its own work. According to results from the Illinois Assessment of Readiness, 31% of Chicago students in third through eighth grade are proficient in reading. Only 19% are proficient in math. What kind of liberation, what kind of solidarity, is that? Democrats should take note: the sooner it can move on from the CTU, the better.