CTU President Stacy Davis Gates Lashes Out at Legacy Media

Ben Joravsky Show

Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates

I listened to an interesting interview with Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates on the Ben Joravsky Show.

I recently wrote an article in which I lamented the demise of The Chicago Reader where Ben Joravsky once did some memorable reporting on exposing Chicago Machine corruption within the Democratic Party.

Surprisingly for me, Joravsky continued his veracious questioning of power via his podcast. He interviews Stacy Davis Gates every month. This show aired on April 2, 2024.

CTU President Gates is not an easy person to interview. She is what some would call pugnacious and combative. She talks to you. Those characteristics are crucial in a racist world that looks down on strong black female leadership. But they also infuriate her opponents.

I was censored by this union for reporting on House of Delegates meetings which Substance News and I had been reporting on for years. Gates has yelled at me for my past reporting. Journalism is not objective. My bias is to hold authority accountable.

Ben began his interview by asking Stacy what she thinks about the Chicago Tribune calling the Chicago Teachers Union the new machine. Stacy said the CTU practices democracy; they need to first debate a topic and then get their members to vote for it. The old Richard Daley Machine had city workers go out and campaign for machine candidates. 

“What if I showed up at a House of Delegates meeting with my I Love Paul Vallas shirt,” Ben asked. “Would I be kicked out of the union?”

Stacy stated no, you would move to take a vote and then you would lose the vote. (She makes big speeches at HOD meetings that denounce and ridicule their opponents.) 

“Listen, Paul Vallas didn’t lie when he said he had friends at the union,” Gates said. “(Former CTU President Karen Lewis) had to open up even to those who oppose progressive candidates and open bargaining. Karen had to win the argument with the members of our union and she won that argument. Every election within our union is a feature of it.” 

I will agree one of the most powerful aspects of the House of Delegates meetings is our long-standing commitment to democratic votes. That tradition carries on today.

“The people who get to editorialize should retire, because their way of interpreting the world is really becoming more and more of a dinosaur everyday,” Davis Gates said. 

“Let me follow up, she doesn’t want me to retire,” Joravsky said. “I’ll keep on editorializing.”

Stacy swung hard at the mainstream media. The word she used to classify the press was ‘legacy media.’ The legacy media are the old media companies like Fox or ABC News and the Chicago Tribune. Stacy did not agree with me when I lambasted the ‘corporate media’ at an HOD meeting, because they see some of these corporate-owned media entities as being on their side - the Chicago Sun-Times, Wbez and Chicago Reader (who are also dinosaurs.) 

The CTU is heavily invested in the new social media - they are very active on X (former Twitter), and the CTU Members Facebook Page.

Stacy was at her best calling out the right wing and the hold it has on the media. She asked why the Illinois Policy Institute (IPI) - a very pro-business, anti-union, anti-pension think tank - became reputable enough that she had to field questions from the media about topics generated by the IPI.

“If you google them, you can see that Paul Vallas has a really cushy job there,” Gates said. “That Bruce Rauner is a bankroller of the institution. Then you have all these legacy media spaces asking a question that they get from IPI.”

The CTU President is upset, and rightly so, that an organization like IPI that services wealthy donors, has any legitimacy at all. 

“I’m ashamed of the press inquiries we get from the right wing demigods,” Gates said. “It was embarrassing to even have to address it to be perfectly honest with you.” 

Stacy said that if she were a reporter, which she once wanted to be, and she were assigned a story generated by the IPI, she would first google this group to find out how unabashedly anti-worker and pro-rich this organization is and tell the reader. 

“Remember Malcolm X said the legacy media will have you thinking your friend is your enemy and your enemy is your friend. We don’t have the research we need.” 

Stacy expanded on the theme of bias in the media. While Mayor Brandon Johnson is constantly referred to in the Chicago Tribune as the former paid staffer of the Chicago Teachers Union, the Trib failed to constantly mention Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s ties to hedge funds and wealthy donors. She then told the story about when her kids played basketball and because they were black they were told to expect some biased officiating and she said the problem is you start to tolerate unfair treatment.

Joravsky has railed against the public funding of stadiums, which is what the Brandon Johnson administration is seriously considering. The Chicago Bears and White Sox are asking for a taxpayer handout of roughly $1 billion even though the city is still paying for their old stadiums.

Joravsky pointed out that there is little discussion of how much it is going to cost to subsidize billionaire-owned stadiums.

“Brandon’s legacy with legacy media will probably be about the Bears and the White Sox, it won’t be about public education or the expansion of public good,” Gates said. “It would be about something like that. It’s really pathetic.”

“So the right wing says the government should not be giving out handouts,” she continued. “Now I didn’t say that these people with businesses don’t need help. I didn’t make it an either or. I believe the government needs to protect the fullness of its sectors if that’s what government is supposed to do. If that’s how the people have situated the government. Believing in democracy is not marginalizing another sector. Democracy is having a debate. Once (you) win the debate (you) let government accommodate those decisions.”

Joravsky then pointed out that the Bears are looking for a handout and probably from a TIFF or Tax Increment Financing District - where tax money is set aside to pay for private development. 

“Meanwhile the elected school board told the Bears we (want) to limit the amount of money the Bears get, and guess what Stacy, the Bears blinked. So there’s democracy in Arlington Heights. I don’t know what we have here in the City of Chicago.”

Stacy told Ben to wait until Chicago has its first elected school board with elections beginning in the fall. Ben then asked would the Chicago elected school board stand up to the Bears? 

“I don’t know. But that’s democracy. First the Bears and Sox live in the city and they live in the democracy and they have a right to put forth an idea about what it is, (and how it’s) supposed to work.”

Stacy Davis Gates defended the union against those demanding an elected school board immediately. She said they were the ones who made the elected school board possible in Chicago and then were treated ‘irreverently.’ 

“These reporters are under pressure to bash the Chicago Teachers Union,” Joravsky said. “And some will do it more than others. Some are more liberal and some more conservative. They have to prove they’re not pro-union. Their bosses, the ones who own the papers are members of groups that are against the Chicago Teachers Union. So that’s an inherent bias that will always be there. Elected school board - corporate, charter and union members of board. I want to see how those corporate board members vote on the Chicago Bears handout. So if it’s a TIFF deal it will come before them. And the Board of Education has been a rubber stamp on every single dumb TIFF deal. I can’t wait to see how that coverage goes down.”

“I want to see how the coverage goes on the Mayor’s new investment plan,” Stacy responded. “Creates a new way in which it engages with capital and invests inside the city.”

“It’s already too late now on that topic,” Ben said. “It’s at least an hour of me going off. I haven’t taken the deep dive on that.”

Kudos to Ben Joravsky and a very entertaining and honest interview with Stacy Davis Gates. He held his position against public subsidies for the Bears private stadium which is against the Brandon Johnson administration position. And kudos to Stacy Davis Gates, a strong CTU President who can rap with the finest.

And cheers to Ben Joravsky (old media) for not engaging on X (new media)! As bad as the legacy media is, today’s social media is owned by the same business titans who value profits over people.