By Jeremy Segal
RebelPundit

CHICAGO – The Socialism 2013 Conference agenda is out! And look who made the cover of the program? Not Che, not Mao, not Lenin, Stalin or Marx.

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The honor went to the Chicago Teachers Union!

Since the early days of the Occupy movement in October 2011, the ties between radical revolutionary organizations and the CTU have become very clear. EAGnews documented the relationship between the CTU and radical anarchist organizer Lisa Fithian, who trained the teachers in “non-violent direct action” and showed the how to stage and coordinate phony arrests with the Chicago Police Department.

In 2012, the CTU began to set the stage for the its now infamous strike by conducting several massive protests, shutting down Chicago’s loop on several occasions.

I captured  union Vice President Jesse Sharkey on film, leading the teachers in actions that directly emulated those of the Occupy Movement.

For days in the fall of 2012, during the strike, the educators of Chicago’s youth marched side by side with members of revolutionary Marxist organizations, black bloc anarchists, and open communist organizations. One thing missing through it all, however, was any coverage of these facts in the Chicago media.

In fact, after I informed NBC Chicago’s Charlie Wojciechowski that CTU Vice President Jesse Sharkey participated in the Midwest Marxism Conference at Northwestern University, and asked him if he would ask Sharkey “why,” he refused. The conference was loaded with Chicago teachers, and break out sessions featured discussions on the successful collaboration between the CTU and ISO in coordinating the CTU strike.

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A few weeks later, another NBC “reporter,” Christian Farr, behaved in similar fashion when I asked him why he would not cover International Socialist Organization members right in front of him, playing an organizational roll for a CTU demonstration. Farr snapped at me, “No! I’m not going to cover that! That’s a judgement.” Farr claimed to be “objective” but refused to cover the involvement of the ISO in the protest, and accused me of being opinionated for stating that there were indeed active socialists running the protest.

The Chicago Teachers Union presence on the cover of the Socialism 2013 program does not mean all Chicago teachers are socialists, and it would be next to impossible to figure how many actually are.

However, this yet again highlights the close relationship between the CTU and the ISO. It also illustrates the lack of respect the Chicago media has for its audience. Parents might be interested to know that many of their children’s teachers work arm-in-arm with avowed socialists, but they won’t learn about it from the supposedly objective journalists of their city.