Solidarity is real, and it is exactly what the donor class cannot afford to let you keep. Corporate propagandists just scammed Chicago’s rank-and-file into disarming their union, handing a quiet victory to the donor-class interests desperate to keep public schools starved and teachers underpaid. Last week, CTU members voted against a dues restructuring plan that would have shifted more of the financial load onto the union’s highest-paid colleagues and fortified the political war chest needed to defend those classrooms. A close vote in the middle of a coordinated harassment campaign. The donor class is calling it a mandate.
CTU president Stacy Davis Gates and vice president Jackson Potter told their colleagues that, while votes are still being counting, “the results seem clear—a majority of CTU members have elected not to implement the proposed dues restructuring at this time.” The memo, reported by the Chicago Policy Center, says that with some 80% of schools counted, 60% or so of members had rejected the plan. The anti-union cheerleaders are spinning the rejection as a grassroots uprising against greedy union bosses. But the groups pushing the “no” vote are not grassroots. They are the Illinois Policy Institute, the Liberty Justice Center, and the same professional disinformation apparatus that has spent decades trying to dismantle public-sector unions from the outside. They got exactly what they paid for: a free weakening of workers’ political power without spending a dime on an election.
The CTU had sought the restructuring to “make our dues more progressive and fair,” targeting a shift of up to $800 a year from higher earners to fund the fights that actually put money into classrooms. The union’s FAQs told members “we need resources to fund a statewide millionaires tax campaign” and “we must win a majority of the first 21-person fully elected school board.” That aligns with the union’s handbook, which states “our dues are not used for political purposes—so our PAC relies on extra contributions from our members to support progressive candidates.” That is a defensive fiction, and the plain answer is that the handbook is a liability shield, not a principle: political campaigns are how workers win the contracts, protections, and school funding that make the classroom function. Every gain Chicago teachers have won in the last decade came through political power. The union should say so plainly instead of hiding behind euphemism.
The Illinois Policy Institute—a think tank bankrolled by corporate donors who want public schools starved and teachers cheap—gleefully reported that the CTU spent $41.3 million in 2025 and only 17.7% was on representational activities like negotiating collective bargaining agreements. That is the number they want you to see, because it makes the union look like a political machine instead of a workers’ organization. What they leave out is that the other 82.3% covers grievance processing, legal defense, community organizing, school-board advocacy, and the political infrastructure that wins teachers better pay, smaller class sizes, and the right to bargain at all. In a state where the donor class has spent forty years trying to strip public-sector workers of every protection, calling that “wasted” money is the donor class telling you that your power doesn’t count. The month-long window for CTU members to opt out of the union opens in August. Teachers should reject that escape hatch.
The recent ballot also asked members to limit the ability to sue the union, requiring them to “first exhaust available procedures under the CTU Constitution before filing lawsuits against the CTU.” The union has not yet reported the results on that measure, but the attempt to narrow members’ legal avenues is indefensible. Workers must be able to hold their own institutions accountable, and a union that silences its critics has forgotten who it works for. The provision is a reaction to teacher Phil Weiss, who sued in 2024 with the Liberty Justice Center over the union’s multiyear failure to publish full financial audits. Still, the broader fight requires unity, not fragmentation. The union leadership compared the loss to a historic regular season that still means nothing if you forfeit the playoffs. Even with 72 wins, the ’96 Bulls still lost 10 games. You win championships by protecting your leverage, not surrendering it to a coordinated fear campaign.
The donors don’t need to buy an election when they can get you to hand them the result for free. When the August opt-out window opens, that is the extraction endpoint. Every signer hands the donor class a permanent deduction from collective leverage, walking straight into the trap they have been engineering toward. Stand with your colleagues. Keep your dues. Keep your power. Solidarity is real. Don’t let them take it.