On the heels of the controversial California Federation of Teachers “Tax the Rich” video, the Chicago Teachers Union has produced its own class warfare-stoking cartoon, “Stand Up to the Fat Cats.”
The CTU is again attempting to slam Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the advocates of school reform as the “fat cats” who are simply looking to get rich off the government education system.
The CTU apparently doesn’t want the billionaires and “profiteers” horning in on their very lucrative territory.
Fashioned as a children’s book – likely for an audience of students – the CTU video claims several groups from around the country converged on the city to “force the educators to work longer hours, take pay cuts and move their students into unsafe buildings. These actions hurt the educators but the fats cats promised it was best for the students.”
Read in a sinister voice, the video explains in children’s terms how unions were formed and how they fought back in 2012 “when a new evil fat cat landed in Chicago.” At that moment, a mugshot of Emanuel, portrayed as an overfed feline, appears holding a jail identification sign.
It goes even more downhill from there.
This is the latest salvo from a union that is more interested in radical social revolution than pay and benefits for its members or improved student learning. And, sadly, this sort of student-focused propaganda is unsurprising, given the CTU’s leadership.
EAGnews previously reported on CTU Vice President Jesse Sharkey’s radical ties to the International Socialist Organization and his recent appearance at a Marxist convention. And let’s not forget that CTU President Karen Lewis and other leaders of the union were “front-and-center with Occupy Chicago.”
Big Labor is fixated on ginning up class-based strife. Unions like the CTU are bent on forcing higher taxes for the “rich” just to continue a government spending spree that directly benefits the unions themselves, their millionaire leaders and to some degree their members.
Like the cartoon produced by the California union, this video in all likelihood will be shown in Chicago classrooms to unsuspecting children.
Wake up, parents of Chicago, unless you really don’t care about having your children converted into Young Socialists of America. Your kids will be filled with knowledge about the evils of capitalism and unfairness of American society, but they still probably won’t be able to read or do simple math.
That’s the type of “education” the CTU is delivering.