Payne: Charlotte Democrats in Chicago's streets

Who are the angry, greedy, striking union teachers crowding Chicago’s streets this week? They are the same faces that crowded the floor of the Democratic Convention in Charlotte last week.

The American Federation of Teachers (of which the Chicago Teachers Union is a member) and the National Education Association were heavily represented among the Democratic Party delegates (the NEA alone had 200 members on the floor in Charlotte) that cheered a week of speeches promising more power and more money for Big Labor.

Who are the AFT members who welcomed Joe Biden to their July national convention in Detroit demanding more pay and less accountability in America’s worst school district?

They are the same unionistas that crowded the Charlotte floor, led by AFT President Randi Weingarten, a member of the New York delegation. Biden expressed solidarity with the AFT ” which marched through Detroit streets in protest of Detroit Public School reforms ” while ignoring the dozens of Detroit charter schools and their non-union teachers who are revolutionizing education for inner city children.

Who are the AFSCME and UAW members who provided the funding for Occupy Detroit and led its anti-capitalist protests last fall?

They are the voices of the Charlotte hall that cheered speakers wanting more taxpayer money for the cities and auto companies that they have forced into insolvency. Both AFSCME President Lee Saunders and UAW President Bob King (who gave a primetime speech) “ and dozens of their members - were delegates at the Democratic Convention.

While a middle-upper class, white-collar media paints a picture of a Democratic Party of gays, minorities, and civil liberties, the party’s core is the union entitlement class – made up increasingly of public employee unions that make daily headlines for bankrupting municipalities, states, and school districts even as their wages and benefits dwarf that of the taxpayers who pay them.

Who are the Charlotte Democrats?

They are union protestors who carried signs of Snyder as a Nazi in Lansing while wearing shirts spelling “F*** YOU SNYDER.” They are the army of protestors that occupied Wisconsin’s capital and tried to recall its governor. They are the Chicago teachers who claim to represent the middle class even as they pull down $71,000 a year in salary (plus $15k in benefits) ” well above the $47,000 average middle class income of Chicago families (who work twice the 1,039 instructional hours per year of CFT members) who they are inconveniencing by sending their children home while they go out on an illegal strike because they want a 16 percent pay hike and less performance accountability in a school system that graduates just 55 percent of its students.

Four more years?