With Dr. Angel Velez announcing he is being kicked off the ballot, union decries billionaire dirty tricks in their pursuit to close schools
Chicago, IL. After the Callais Supreme Court decision that has led to a resurgence of Jim Crow policies erasing Black voter representation throughout the South, the Chicago Teachers Union stated that preserving ballot access is a question of preserving democracy at this moment.
The union refused to challenge the petition signatures of candidates for school board and called on Michael Sacks, the billionaire donor who backed Rahm Emanuel’s school closings in 2013 and who bankrolled the campaign against the corporate head tax that would have funded youth jobs and public safety, to withhold his individual contributions to allow voters to decide.
Instead, Sacks enlisted Rahm’s former attorney and Rahm’s former communications staff alongside the Urban Center which is backing candidates on an explicitly “anti-CTU” agenda to reduce voters’ choices for the first-ever fully elected school board and challenge up to 28 current candidates.
Dr. Angel Velez, an incumbent in district 9a, is one of the first candidates to announce he has officially been knocked off the ballot based on technicalities, leaving voters with only one candidate to choose from.
President Stacy Davis Gates responded, “We can’t have Jim Crow controlling elections in the South and billionaires undermining them in the North. Chicagoans fought for decades to expand democracy. And now that they finally have a say in how their schools will be run, the same billionaires who opposed an elected school board are using their resources to corrupt the process. The Chicago Teachers Union applauds those who stepped forward to run even knowing the scrutiny they’d face and will back candidates who are committed to creating a school district that provides the education our students deserve. The fact that Sacks and Paul Vallas’ Urban Center are stopping at nothing to oppose a pro-public school agenda should be a red line for every person in the city of Chicago who cares about the city’s children or the well-being of our neighborhoods.”
The other candidates who have faced attempts to remove them from the ballot include:
School Board President
Hilario Dominguez
Jessica Biggs
Sendhil Revuluri
Victor Henderson
1a:
Ed Bannon
1b:
Claudia Peralta
2a:
Hector Morales
2b:
Daniel Basco
Deborah “Debby” Pope
3a:
Norma Rios Sierra
3b:
Jason Dónes
4a:
Karen Zaccor
5a:
Aaron “Jitu” Brown
5b:
Michilla “Kyla” Blaise
6a:
Brenda Lee Anderson
Anusha Thotakura
6b:
Michael L. Neal
7a:
Emma Lozano
7b:
Yesenia Lopez
8b:
Cydney Wallace
9a:
Angel Luis Velez Rodriguez
9b:
Katherine S. Dunneback
10a:
Krista Nichols Alston
Tameka Walton
10b:
Connie Anderson
Rosita Chatonda
Unspecified subdistrict:
Marlo Barnett
Kernetha Jones
