We speak to Ed Hershey, a fearsome fighter for teachers and workers’ rights for years. He is the associate delegate at Lindblom High School and a Working Class Party candidate for U.S. Congress (IL 4th District) on the Southwest Side of Chicago.
You can find out more about Ed and his Working Class Party at https://www.workingclassfight.com/blog/category/illinois-2024/
You can listen to our podcast interview or read a transcript below.
Interview
Hello Second City Teachers, listeners, readers, subscribers, to all of you out there.
We have a great guest today, an old friend and a union comrade fighting the fight over the years, Ed Hershey from Lindblum.
He's a delegate there.
He's been involved in the union fight from the beginning.
We go back a good 15-20 years and he's on the line.
He's here for an interview so we can learn a little bit more about
I think I should say I've been the associate delegate at Lindblom
SPEAKER 4
Ten years, a little more, since January 2013, though I've served as delegate for brief stints of that period.
I came to Chicago, I'm from Buffalo, is where I grew up, and I came here for college.
I went to the University of Chicago.
Partly, my background's in physics.
I knew they had a very good physics program.
and I also liked that it was in a big city and we'd also learned a little bit that like Chicago had a big labor movement history a big working class history and so I was drawn you know I was drawn by that also I was like I want to be you know I want to be around so that's what and then you and you came here to study for University of Chicago correct yes okay okay so you knew you wanted to be a teacher from the beginning or were you doing other stuff
I guess I sort of like, not right away, I guess when I went to college I thought I wanted to be a professor.
But I definitely, you know, I did like all of the extracurricular, a lot of the extracurricular work I did in college was like, I worked at, uh, Hales Franciscan Academy for several years.
And I, I did, uh, something called school partnership program, which was like theater instruction in CPS schools.
And we worked at
Macosh, I know that as it's an elementary school in Woodlawn that I know has a different name now and Ray Elementary So I kind of like I had in mind to maybe get into teaching but I didn't I didn't go to it right away.
I didn't I didn't start my teaching program and I graduated in 2001 and I didn't start my teaching program until 2004 and
SPEAKER 1
I'd done some work at Kenwood prior to that, but I didn't
SPEAKER 4
Well, once I got my certification, yeah, I've been at Lindblom ever since.
I got hired into Lindblom.
When Lindblom was a REN 2010 turnaround, I got hired in mid-year there.
Hortense Price was the department chair.
It's math and science academy, so they had two positions open, and they gave me the second one.
It was nice.
I didn't, like, they had all the classes covered.
SPEAKER 4
I was a teaching assistant.
effectively on a teacher's salary.
Like it was, I don't know, something like good old days.
Like we had, we definitely had money to do things like for several, for a couple of years, like teachers were all teaching four classes for a while.
Um, anyway, that, that changed.
It was only a couple of years like that, but it was, yeah.
SPEAKER 1
Okay, and you teach physics and you run the robotics club with the school?
SPEAKER 4
I've always taught physics.
Now, for a long time, I've basically only taught physics for the academic classes.
I was the main robotics coach, I would say, for about 10 years.
We had other engineers who started about the same time I did.
So I was the person who was the contact with the school and did a lot of the logistics work.
It's sort of more like the teacher role, keeping kids on task and that kind of thing.
But then actually one of the engineers
SPEAKER 1
He got hired in as a teacher and he's sort of taken on the program So I've pulled back in the last I still help out but I don't do as much with it as I used to Okay, now I'm trying to remember I can't remember the exact time when I first met you But we were involved you and I in the early days of core and the fight against 20 run 2010 privatization, correct?
SPEAKER 4
Correct.
Yes, and I remember I think I Ran into you on the CTA
If I remember right, we may have met in person on the CTA, and I was familiar with, I knew your, I subscribed to Substance as soon as I started teaching.
Actually, we used to get, like, Lindblom used to get, like, 30 copies of Substance every issue when I first started there, and I already had my own subscription, but I would pick one up, an extra one, and I remember reading your stuff.
Oh, okay.
And then, and then meeting you, and it's like, oh, you're Jim Vail.
SPEAKER 1
Right.
Okay, so now did you it took me a couple years because I come from Well, I've had a varied career as I've told I've written that, you know a journalist I was a journalist before and then I I was working in Russia came back here and then I was working at City Colleges and that's where Before we talked to Earl Silber who was a big political activist there in the City Colleges And he I got him involved with CORE
Did you, were you politically active at the University of Chicago before you came to CORE or were you like from the start when you started Chicago Public Schools, started getting involved with the union and the fight?
SPEAKER 4
Not right away.
So I was, I was political at the University of Chicago, but it was, I, I considered myself a socialist from high school.
and I like during grad school in particular I was involved in work against the Iraq war and the US war in Afghanistan also but um I didn't I didn't get I didn't jump into union work right away when I started teaching though I was around core when it started
Um, but I didn't, you know, I just went, I went to a founding meeting at Karen Lewis's house, where they set out some of the main program points they were doing.
And I went to some of the fundraisers, but I wasn't one of the I wasn't like, part of the core of core, I would I would say I was around, I got, I got more involved, I gradually got more and more involved, in particular, when
The, you know, Ron Huberman was making the attacks in 2009, 2010.
And then when CORE, which led partly to, and then Rahm Emanuel getting elected, but like CORE got elected the year before that, you know, there was this massive assault on public education.
And that is, those things are what got me more involved.
I was paying attention, but I wasn't, I wouldn't say I was active at the very beginning.
SPEAKER 1
If I could ask you, how did you first become a socialist or be interested in that back in high school?
Was it your parents or stuff you read?
SPEAKER 4
It was, I guess it was like, we didn't have a socialist teacher per se.
I had one English teacher who I know, she was a poet and she was against the Iraq war, but it wasn't, it was stuff we learned about, definitely some of the social studies teachers and the stuff we learned about there.
And I had the idea, I had, you know, a few ideas of like, the society has enough resources, it's the richest country in the history of history.
And yet, you have all this poverty, all this racial division.
And it doesn't have to be that way.
But it was kind of a, actually, I guess I was sometimes reading socialist authors, but I didn't even know it.
SPEAKER 1
And you were involved in the
movement or more socialism activity when you're at University of Chicago?
SPEAKER 4
Right, yeah, I met socialists when I got to the U of C and I, you know, started reading about Marx and reading about society and that's when I got political, yeah, that's right.
SPEAKER 1
Okay, okay, so now what do you remember, you mentioned first meeting at Karen Lewis's house, beginning days of CORE, we were fighting
You said like you got more involved in the fight with Huberman later and the Rahm Emanuel and all that privatization.
So you were at the marches, you were helping build up CORE, you were doing that stuff.
Anything you remember specifically or those beginning days?
SPEAKER 4
I mean, I remember
Yeah, I remember specifically, I mean I spoke at the board meeting in 2011 when Rahm announced he was taking our 4% raise and I remember basically speaking publicly and I even got in the news a little bit for like what he was doing to us in our schools.
and like the biggest single thing CORE was organizing around was the school closings and then the charter schools, you know, and that those were fights that needed to be made, which I definitely agreed with.
SPEAKER 1
Yeah, right.
Okay, so now were you, did you become a delegate at that time or how long have you been a delegate?
Not quite a way.
SPEAKER 4
I became a delegate after the 2012 strike.
So I was like the strike captain.
I wasn't the delegate at my school.
I've been part-time to do political work since 2009, and so I didn't want to take on the delegate role.
I was also kind of young.
But anyway, yeah, I did a lot of the organizing, like getting our union organized at the school in the run-up
SPEAKER 1
Okay, all right, so and you were not were you an AFT delegate when core first got elected or Okay now Since we're okay, there's different topics we can go to to branch off But let's let's stick at limb bloom now.
So you're a delegate you're a teacher and
You're involved there and they've been in the news with the whole principal problem there.
Can you shed some light or maybe talk a little bit about that?
What, what, what had happened at Lindblom or how the problems?
SPEAKER 4
We had a principal, you know, we didn't have a principal.
Our principal during the pandemic, Wayne Beavis took a job at another school.
And so we went a year, two years ago now, where we didn't have a principal.
where our assistant principal was running the school and we wanted her to become the principal but that didn't work out.
SPEAKER 1
What year was this?
SPEAKER 4
So that would be 21-22, the 21-22 school year, so like the year we came back where we had the full year back from the pandemic.
Okay, got it.
And then
Last year, we had at the end of that year, we got a new principal, but he was just not he wasn't really up for the job, I would say he wasn't doing what you needed to do.
I know like the big expose in the Sun Times was talking about
There was a whole thing of like what they removed him for didn't seem that drastic, but Lindblom is a really big school.
It's 1,400 students.
It takes a lot of work to make the place run and he wasn't doing it and he didn't have other people who were like doing enough and so midway we got through three quarters three quarters of the way through the school year and then he was removed and
and there were teachers who blew the whistle saying like look this this guy's not doing what he has to do including there's certain things with sped law that you know is not happening and uh and then the president of the principals association started going after the people that blew the whistle that's where he left it right yeah
And so he's been trying, he's been trying to make a case that black principals are discriminated against in the district.
That may be true, but our, but this principal we had was just not doing, he just would not do enough to run the school.
SPEAKER 2
Right.
SPEAKER 1
Right.
Okay.
Yeah.
And it's, um, right.
So how are things now with Lindblom?
Have they settled down since then or?
SPEAKER 4
Yeah, it's been like, we had a couple of very capable, uh, retired administrators who
And are you going to go through the same principal selection process?
How was it at Lindblom?
Because I know it's different at different schools.
We have an ALSC
SPEAKER 1
What is that?
Can you explain what the ALSC is?
SPEAKER 4
Okay, so the LSC is, I mean, it's one of the more democratic institutions in the country where every school elects a little board for the school.
And an LSC, a local school council, has the right to hire the principal and has final say over the budget of that school.
Renaissance 2010 schools have an ALSC, or Advisory Local School Council.
So it works like an LSC, but they don't have the final power.
They make a recommendation and then the network and the district has the final call on choice of the principal.
But in practice, it often works similarly, like the positions are similar, the term is similar, the power
SPEAKER 1
So, so CPS would have the final say.
Let's say you guys are stuck on who to choose and you want somebody and it's controversial.
CPS could overrule it and say, you're going to get this guy.
Yes, that could happen.
Yeah, that's correct.
They're right.
Okay.
Yeah.
I think that, that was the beginnings of, well, I mean that whole time of privatization and taking over the schools, mayoral control was to have more control like the, you know, charter schools don't have the local school councils.
Right.
And, um,
I think they even changed the rules as far as schools like mine, where a lot of people teach that are so-called on probation or whatever they call that for test scores and there are other goofy metrics they use to label a school that needs support and so they could choose who the principal is.
I think that was very important in their whole selection matter.
But you guys are a little bit different in that, I mean, well, you were Red Tent School and now you're
Yeah, but you are under that, coming back from those days, so that's kind of interesting how they try to control the whole democratic process, if you will, on that.
Okay, so and then are you, so you're going through the process again for the principal selection for the new one?
Yes.
Okay, okay.
And you guys have meetings you guys like do you just choose from a different pool?
SPEAKER 4
They give you like candidates or you know, yeah There's a principal pool that the district sets and we've had we are in the process they've selected candidate the like the ALSC is I've selected candidates to interview and I believe those interviews are supposed to be ongoing this week even Okay
SPEAKER 1
Alright, so, well let me, now, let me peel this back to a few years prior.
I remember you being active in the political sphere.
In addition to being an elected associate delegate, you ran for alderman, correct?
SPEAKER 4
That's correct, yeah.
After the strike, and then it was partly, like Karen Lewis
You know, Karen Lewis led the big strike.
It was like the first teacher strike in 25 years.
It was the first big, like big strike that affected the whole city on a citywide level.
And so Karen Lewis represented a working class fight.
And she was proposing a run for mayor, which I definitely agreed with.
And I, several teachers, I
I was one of six teachers that ended up running for Alderman in that campaign saying working people need to organize independently of the major parties and we need to fight for the resources that, you know, we have in the society for our students.
SPEAKER 1
Right.
Right.
Okay.
Yeah.
And I remember because it was, we had to get the, get your endorsement because they didn't, the union didn't consider you a serious candidate or they were looking for people who could actually win.
SPEAKER 4
Part of it.
I mean, yeah part of the calculation is always they're interested in who can win You know Okay, and I didn't win I got I got I did much better I got 8% of the vote.
I got 600 some votes So there were definitely people responded to that message And having a broader one but
Jim Vail, Second City Teachers Podcast.
Every person's door in the ward like three times, you know, we have about 15 people who worked on that campaign and You learn like, you know, we talked about it, you know, you do the Union we know about ALSCs, but we found out that like oh they had a they had a police district that met and they had like some of the bigger parks have
So they all had different issues with what was going on, like you said.
SPEAKER 1
We ran as an independent.
I'm involved with work for
SPEAKER 4
Working-class party.
Mm-hmm that didn't that working-class party formed in Michigan in 2016 But it didn't exist yet here.
It was like a step towards doing that work But I ran as an independent.
This is an independent teacher in that race.
SPEAKER 1
Mm-hmm.
Okay, right So and that's what you believe is necessary in our country is to build up the working-class party outside the two
main Republican and Democrat parties.
SPEAKER 4
That's right.
I think the, the Democratic and Republican parties both represent the ruling class.
I think there is money to provide a decent education.
Every student say just to take education because that's dear to my heart, but we're not, that would mean funding enough, you know, getting enough funding, like what they get at the better off suburbs for every student in Chicago.
And you aren't going to be able to, who has the money to do that?
It's the big companies and the very wealthy have the money to do that.
And the democratic party works for them and is not going to be willing to, to carry out a policy of doing that.
I think in order to solve our problems, the working class will ultimately have to take control in the society ourselves.
SPEAKER 1
Right.
Cause you're, cause you're, it's an interesting situation here where you're, you're like you say, an independent party workers party for us, the workers for all.
But you've got this problem with politics today when it's the big corporations putting money into both parties, especially the Democrats who say they're for the workers and they have strong ties to the unions like our Chicago Teachers Union, but they have to make these sort of deals with the devil, right?
Where they're not giving us- Well, you see it.
SPEAKER 4
I mean, you saw it last, if you remember last year with the rail workers were threatening to go on strike because they want more than one sick day, right?
and you had this process that took, they have this whole convoluted legal process.
We have a convoluted legal process to go through as teachers too for striking, but they have this convoluted legal process which basically says the president can tell them they can't strike and that's what Biden did.
Biden, you know, Biden is supposed to be friend of the working man.
And he told railroad workers, no, you can't go on strike.
And two, no, we're not going to force the rail companies who are owned by these big hedge funds.
We're not going to force the rail companies to give you even a couple sick days.
And you see when it comes to something like that, you see that the Democrats do not work for us, that they work, they work for the companies.
SPEAKER 1
Yeah.
Yeah.
So it's, it's a big fight.
That's, that's the thing that I remember that was sort of the dilemma that we were in when in the beginnings of CORE was our allegiance to the Democratic Party.
And of course, the CTU is, is trying to develop itself as a big power.
Yes, I totally agree.
SPEAKER 4
You know, when CORE formed, it was proposing to make the Democrats were reigning, were, you know, hand in hand with the Republicans on this education reform.
And Karen Lewis read, you know, that strike we led in 2012.
SPEAKER 2
That was like during Obama's election campaign.
So I respect that.
SPEAKER 4
But then they rapidly after that, they've pivoted.
And the reason I've become less involved is that they've pivoted towards just becoming
a section of the local Democratic Party and to the point where like we have Brandon Johnson who was a union organizer who's now the mayor of Chicago and running the mayor you know running the city but again yes I like Brandon like Paul Vallis his training was in attack like he was Daley's attack dog against the school system and you know Brandon's not going to do that but
It's sort of the mayor's office does not have the power To solve the working classes problems in this city by itself, right?
To do that you would need to take Resources away from the blue jersey and they aren't gonna they're not about to give that up right without a fight.
SPEAKER 2
Absolutely Absolutely.
SPEAKER 1
Yeah.
Okay, and um
The elected school board, what do you think of that?
I mean, the CTU has some very powerful victories.
It's done.
What about?
SPEAKER 4
Yes, you can say like, yeah, we got the elected school board right.
You know, the CTU has been successful in what they set out to do.
And I'm glad we got like, certainly an elected school board means people can vote.
But we've also seen in LA, it's, it's better than having sort of the mayor's dictatorship, which is what we which we saw in Iran.
But then
You know in LA they have an elected school board and you have these money interests that you talked about before That like pour money into like the school board races.
So we'll have to contend with that.
But yes, certainly like We waged a long fight to get an elected school board and it took 10 years, but they won right and as far as in the world
SPEAKER 1
sphere Important for people to understand it's always been you know, we've talked about this for years about what what does it mean?
Like you have the United States you have China Russia.
You got all these wars going on We talked about what is imperialism and how do we fight that and what what do you think of this state on that?
SPEAKER 4
the world stage I mean I guess just to name the
You know, Israel's invasion of Gaza as an example that's on people's minds.
Like, okay, the bombs that Israel is dropping on Gaza and murdering tens of thousands of people there are paid for by our tax dollars.
We ship them.
We, you know, we pay billions of dollars a year to fund Israel's military.
Why?
It's because obviously like the Middle East has all this oil, which is a strategic resource that the ruling class needs to control.
And then there's the Suez Canal, which has more than 10% of world trade goes through.
So there's this big trade route.
So they want to have, they want to be able to control the region.
So imperialism is the policy of the companies and of capital to, you know, go abroad.
and exploit resources abroad and the reason Israel is supported by the U.S.
is because it's useful to have a military camp in that region for those reasons and we see that there and we see a consequence of this policy is
Society is in you see there's this big war in Ukraine.
It's more, you know coming on second coming on the third year this spring.
Yeah You know, you have big tensions with China The military budgets keep going up.
That's only going in one direction, you know, you see the war the war in Gaza metastasizing and
and spreading to Lebanon to the U.S.
is bombing Yemen, the U.S.
is bombing Iraq, you know.
You see this spreading and we, this is not the last, not last war we've seen and it's not the last one we will see.
SPEAKER 1
We are lurching inevitably towards war.
Right, when you say war, another world war because of... A wider, I mean a wider war for sure.
SPEAKER 4
And it's... They aren't spending hundreds of billions of dollars extra on weapons just to like put them in the garage, right?
SPEAKER 1
Right, right.
And again, it's competition, basically imperialist competition with China and others over control of strategic, you know, natural resources and the money inflow for corporations.
It's all boils down to that, basically.
Yes.
Yeah.
Okay, because
Right, because we did get, well, you know, we had the ceasefire resolution that we got passed at the House of Delegates meeting.
So that was something good as far as, you know, the C2 is cognizant and you have the, I mean, it's still a very important part.
Israel still plays a very important role, of course, like you said, with all these wars and strategic, but you have younger people opening this up as far as having a discussion about Israel and what's going on.
But it's still going to be,
Yeah, go ahead.
SPEAKER 4
No, we did a teach-in at Lindblom because there was a question of like, why does the U.S.
back Israel so strongly?
And this is why, you know, this is part of why.
And so yeah, and yes, I supported that.
I voted for that resolution, though obviously a ceasefire just returns the situation to the
It hasn't stopped it completely.
SPEAKER 1
Yeah, we go to the root cause and stop it completely and that you're up against the big business interests with the military and Like we say more money for killing and less money for educating and doing what we need for the people Right, but that's also so it's also difficult.
We're dealing with it with a huge beast here.
So I
For us as working people, you're also dealing with your workers' party.
You're not getting really support from unions, are you?
Because they are tied to the Democratic Party?
And that's a problem there?
SPEAKER 4
That's partly true.
I mean, we're small.
We do the work we can.
We get hundreds, we get thousands of votes.
Because there are people who think and agree that you need to have a working class party.
But yes, it's also true that in general, the overwhelming majority of the unions are, you know, their politics is to support the Democratic Party, which chains us to the people who exploit us.
SPEAKER 1
Okay, so you're here in a working class party, have you got any, you run in different elections, and in Michigan, maybe for school boards or for state legislators, have any gotten elected?
SPEAKER 4
We had a young man got elected to a community college board as an independent candidate in 2014.
But that was a special case where the Democrat who was running in that race messed up their paperwork.
And so we won because no other candidate, we ended up running unopposed even.
So, no, not really.
We have not elected any candidates yet, but that's up to the working class to do.
If the working class moves, I would expect we may get candidates elected.
SPEAKER 1
To get elected, you need to be known.
SPEAKER 4
You know, we don't have a lot of money.
So, okay, it's hot.
You like partly by doing the campaigns over and over again, you get known, you get a little bit better known.
But for the time being, we don't have access to the big media.
SPEAKER 2
Right.
SPEAKER 4
But, you know, um, but yeah, I mean, that's the thing of like, getting known under this system means getting big money donations.
And that's part of
the problem and what we I guess that's the thing is we don't yeah I don't think uh when we go campaigning in the neighborhoods in Chicago or in Berwyn what we see is people don't see that politics is for them and so the resistance is more on the like the game is rigged why participate right
It's more that I, you know, I heard a commentator saying, it's like, you got the candidates versus the couch.
And that's what we're, what we're trying, you know, a lot of workers don't vote.
And we're trying because they, and it's, there's a logic there of people don't see that they have something to vote for.
And that's what we're trying to push against and say, Hey, no, there is a different way.
And we could put forward our own interests.
SPEAKER 1
Right, right.
A choice for the people, not just the corporate interests who control both parties.
When you ran for alderman, what was your, did you have like a platform, like certain things you were going to do that you promised to do in the ward?
Or was it just more of a bigger picture type idea?
SPEAKER 4
I mean, we're saying like, we would open the office up.
If anybody's making a fight, we would open the office up and use our what resources we have available to anybody who's trying to organize Okay, you know and yeah, if there are Certainly, I mean that was a thing Lincoln Alderman does have like, you know, you can get up If there's a dark street you can put a light up and there's certain things that that's part of the job and certainly we would do that to the best of our ability, but the main thing is
you know if people like you've seen like you've had workers in Chicago go up you have the El Nilagro uh tortilla workers go out on strike a couple years ago if there are people making a strike making a fight you can use the office to support those okay okay so now you okay the the working class party socialist you have the DSA who are the Democratic Socialist America
SPEAKER 1
The difference there is can they be real socialists tied to the Democratic Party or what would you say about that?
SPEAKER 4
I think that the Democratic Party is really serves to hold the working class back and so I think that's why that's that's the difference that we think the working class needs its own party.
SPEAKER 1
Could you give like an example of that or anything specific maybe with regards to following the Democratic line perhaps on the
SPEAKER 4
What about DSA?
Do they take up some positions that are anathema to what the workers really need because they need to toe the line with the Democrats?
There's some Democrats who voted against that deal, but you're still doing it from inside that party.
And that party serves the interests of, say, the rail companies or the oil companies.
And so that's why I think you need, if you're going to like
Ed Hershey
and directs working class people to fight amongst ourselves.
And so the Republicans are not like, yes, you know, the Republicans are not an alternative by any means.
SPEAKER 1
Right.
Any predictions or feelings on the upcoming presidential election?
SPEAKER 4
It's sort of early, we don't know.
We do know, but we don't know who's running, that the working class will not have a candidate in the race.
I'll say that.
I will be petitioning starting in March to get Working Class Party on the ballot in the 4th Congressional District in Illinois, which is the southwest side of Chicago, some of the west suburbs like Berwyn and Cicero.
But we are not on the ballot as of now.
We got 3.5% of the vote in 2022, but we have to collect
Several thousand signatures in order to get back on the ballot.
So Hopefully we will we plan to collect those signatures and be on the ballot, but we haven't done it yet Okay, you need how many signatures did you say you need?
We need 6,500 6,500.
SPEAKER 1
Okay, that's a lot.
So you have You need a lot of you know groundwork as far as Yes, it will be that work of
SPEAKER 4
Going, you know going to the festivals, going to the farmers markets, going door-to-door, finding people on the L platforms who agree that we should have working class parties on the ballot.
SPEAKER 1
Right, for sure.
Now, and you're going up against, again, I guess, C2 Darling or past Darling, Chuy Garcia.
True.
Okay, what would different, you know, we kind of covered this, but
You're running against Chuy and the Working Class Party because he's not doing enough for the workers?
SPEAKER 4
We're running saying the Working Class needs its own party.
And so we are trying to put up an alternative to the Democrats.
That's our project.
SPEAKER 1
Okay.
And are you seeking any endorsements or have you gotten endorsed in the past from any big groups?
SPEAKER 4
You know, last, I guess I did, we got, we got endorsed by independent voters of Illinois in the past election.
So we did get one kind of endorsement that people may have heard of.
SPEAKER 1
Tell me about that.
Cause that's interesting.
You feel everybody's like, you know, connect to the democratic party if they're on that side.
SPEAKER 4
We were surprised.
I did not.
I, I went in, I gave my presentation.
and it did not expect independent voters of Illinois.
I understand that these kind of traditionally to vote for left or reform Democrats you know they were sort of a anti-machine outfit um and so I didn't think they would be interested in somebody who wasn't in the Democratic Party but but we got their endorsement.
SPEAKER 1
Do you remember anything that persuaded them, or was it just straight talk?
SPEAKER 4
I couldn't tell you what it was, though.
I don't know that... I hesitate to say.
I don't know.
Like, we were there.
I gave my spiel, and yeah, I guess they did it.
SPEAKER 3
Hmm.
SPEAKER 1
Hmm.
Okay.
Wow, okay, so you're seeking, you're going to be gathering petitions, you're going to try to get on the ballot again, and the election is, you said in the spring, or when?
SPEAKER 4
No, the petition drive, we have three months starting in the last week of March.
We have the last week of March to the last week of June to collect those 6,500 signatures.
And then the election will be in November, assuming we collect them.
SPEAKER 1
Okay.
And then aside from the general stuff about a workers party and being separate from the Democrats, is there any, is there a certain platform again, like I asked you about the aldermen that you're running on, like certain points as far as what you want to see in our society that you will, you know, do as a congressman?
SPEAKER 4
Jim Vail, Second City Teachers Podcast
would be able to do that.
What I want to see is the working class remake the society in its own image and really provide the help.
We have the means, we have the technical means, we have the resources to provide good health care to everyone in this country, to provide an excellent education to everyone in this country, to provide good job opportunities to everyone that can work.
We have, but the working class will have to do that and I want to be part of that.
SPEAKER 2
Right.
Right.
SPEAKER 1
Huh.
Okay.
All right.
Well, that, that sounds great.
Let's see.
I think I've asked you most about your whole political aspirations, what you're trying to do.
And maybe how about one last thing about the current situation?
Chicago Teachers Union now is very powerful.
We have the mayor, Johnson, and, um, you know, core, very strong.
Do you, um, think like, okay, well, I think you said it before we, we pretty much, we, we stopped Paul Vallis, which is important.
Um, but still there's only so much we can do in the system, as you say, because it's still heavily controlled by corporate power.
That's contrary to what we need as people.
So, um,
I don't know, having Johnson now as the mayor, what do you see as far as our upcoming contract?
Any ideas there?
SPEAKER 4
I mean, we need much, much, much more resources in CPS in general.
In specific, we had a big fight around having elementary teachers have extra prep time in the last contract, and I want to see that in terms of
Right.
Right.
And, um, yeah, for, for the schools.
So the big thing is stuff like that.
Anything else as far as in the contract that you feel is necessary as a teacher now at Lindblom?
SPEAKER 1
Yes, yes it is.
I mean, I hear that and I understand that.
And I think, again, I think like
SPEAKER 4
I mean, ROM, like extended this, I think ROM extending the school day 20% without providing the commensurate resources for it.
That is a big piece of like, you know, we just stretched the whole school system.
SPEAKER 2
Right.
SPEAKER 4
Um, you know, we could if we had a longer day, but you were going to add 20% more resources to like, fill up that day.
okay but that is that's not at all what he proposed to do yeah he under the pressure we exerted on him they hired like one art teacher for every elementary school for one year and at the end of that year you know he like did that in order to try to get us not to strike and we still struck and then at the end of the year he laid all those people off right so anyway
SPEAKER 1
Huh, okay.
Well, listen, it's been great talking to you.
Do you have anything you want to add or talk about?
Maybe I didn't ask you or any, I don't know, any other insight or highlights of what's going on?
SPEAKER 4
I'll just repeat, like, you know, I'm glad our union took the position it did, you know, against the war on Gaza, but that it won't, it's not ending there.
We are, you know,
SPEAKER 1
this this world is lurching the ruling class is taking us to war and if we don't stop it that's where we're going to end up yeah right we don't stop it yeah that's the thing that's a huge thing okay so now um for our subscribers and people listening
Ed Hershey, Second City Teachers Podcast
We talked a lot about in the beginning days of CORE as far as having our ideals to make a better world and we attracted a lot of people from all different political persuasions, socialists and communists and you know people that are thinking in terms of
revolutionary ways of looking at the world that is just going like we're going off a cliff here.
Things seems to be getting worse, not better.
Even though we have some, you know, good local victories here, which is, which is good, but overall, the big picture looks kind of dire.
And it's so important to see somebody like yourselves who are independent and a worker working class party that that's, that's a good thing.
and yes there were like definitely people with politics uh socialists and communist politics definitely helped get core off the ground at the beginning that's definitely true right right exactly um okay all right well listen thank you so much for joining us and uh we will continue to be in touch with you and you know let us know how things are going and whatever help uh you know i can give you
SPEAKER 2
Absolutely.
Okay.
Bye.
Bye
Interview with Lindblom Teacher & US Congress Candidate Ed Hershey