Stacy Davis Gate is the president of the Chicago’s Teachers’ Union (CTU). Recently, she spoke at the City Club of Chicago, a public forum where government officials and influential figures on both sides of the political isle can speak.
According to the New York Post, she was citing James Baldwin, a prominent writer and civil rights activist, during her speech.
"Baldwin says the children are always ours. Every single one of them, all over the globe. And what comes next is ‘CTU thinks your children are its children.’ Yes, we do. We do. We do,” Gate says.
Gate goes on to paraphrase sayings against CTU, such as “thinks all children belong to it” and “they’re a socialist conspiracy ideology.”
“Well, I don't know about all that,” Gate defends, “but we like children. We educate them, we nurture them, we protect them, we support them, we negotiate for them, we create space for them. We even have them in our homes.”
Erika Sanzi, the Director of Outreach at Defending Education, shared her reaction with AFN. She described what Gate said as extremely unsettling in its content and delivery.
“So, there were two problems here, and again it's what she said, right? So, it's the content of what she said, suggesting that other people's children belong to this, not only the school system, but to the union, but also the way she said it, which is very obnoxious,” Sanzi says.

Sanzi, who is a former teacher, believes there is some nuance to this conversation. She remembers referring to her students as “my kids,” and schools sometimes referring to their students as “our kids.”
She believes that there is nothing really nefarious about that. Sometimes people overreact to that word choice because it really is just a shorthand, but in this case, she said this crosses a line.
"Well first of all, she's kind of a crazy person. Second of all, she's very rude in the way that she says it. Third of all, she implies that the children are not just our children in the school system, but she says CTU. CTU thinks your children are its children, and then she says, 'Yes, we do. We do. We do’,” Sanzi explains.
Sanzi draws attention to the hypocrisy of Gate listing reasons why CTU is so great for kids but opting out of that system for her own children.
She also pointed out recent numbers from a report in 2023 that found Chicago had fifty-five schools with zero students proficient in both math and reading. She notes that this is a terrifying aspect.
"A system that is putting up such terrible results for other people's children and then claiming that these children belong to us. Almost as if we don't want them to have an escape hatch, we don't want them to have other options, we don't want them to have the same options that, I, the president of this union, have chosen for my own family,” Sanzi states.
Sanzi referred to this as rhetoric. She said it isn't new, but she thinks it is alienating people now more than it ever has.