The Bulletin

Comrades,

The general election is one week away. Nationally, this election is a referendum on the Trump Administration. Locally, it’s a referendum on the future of our public schools. For the first time ever, Chicago voters will get to elect every seat on our School Board. And in most of the competitive races for School Board, there will be a candidate running who supports fully funded, fully public schools for all. Likewise, in most races there will be a billionaire backed candidate running who talks about putting “students over politics”, finding “common sense” solutions for CPS’ problems, and advocating for “fiscal responsibility”.

This is why we encourage all members to turn out to vote on or before Tuesday, November 3rd and to read through Chicago DSA’s new School Board Voter Guide. Our guide includes basic information on where every candidate stands on key issues along with sharp socialist political analysis. Share our guide with your friends, family and coworkers, and make a plan to vote on or before Tuesday November 3rd.

Chicago DSA has endorsed two candidates in the School Board election: Debby Pope in 2B and Karen Zaccor in 4A. Both campaigns have asked DSA members to sign up for Early Voting canvassing shifts. Sign up for Debby here and Karen here, and look for other canvassing opportunities at canvass.chicagodsa.org.

Finally, we also want to share some bittersweet news: our chapter Communications Coordinator Rachel Monk will be stepping away from her role with the chapter as she takes on a full-time job as DSA’s national Press Coordinator! We congratulate Rachel and are excited to see what she does in this role.

Recap: Fireside Conversation with Mayor Brandon Johnson

Mayor Brandon Johnson speaks to Chicago DSA members at New Mount Hope Missionary Baptist Church on Thursday, October 15th. Photos courtesy of Murphy Meador

Last Week, Chicago DSA members joined Mayor Brandon Johnson for a fireside conversation about this current mayoral term, political challenges, and visions for a future term in office. We thank everyone who joined us for this conversation, which included questions from our members about everything from labor, the Mayor’s relationship with City Council, supporting asylum seekers, and more. We will include a recap of this discussion at the December 12th General Chapter Meeting.

Save the date: we are scheduled to have one more Endorsement Forum (a “special” General Chapter Meeting) on November 14th and our final General Chapter Meeting of the year will be on December 12th. RSVP on the November 14th Special General Chapter Meeting here.

School Board Voter Guide

Our School Board Voter Guide is now live! Check out our guide, including our endorsement of Debby Pope and Karen Zaccor, our political analysis of the stakes of these elections, and a breakdown of candidates based on where they stand on fully funding schools, preventing cuts and layoffs, school closures, charter expansion, and AI in schools, at this link. Early Voting is happening now at 50 sites across Chicago. Polls are open 6AM to 7PM Tuesday, November 3rd. Help GOTV for our endorsed candidates at this link. If you have questions about the voter guide or press inquiries, contact our Communications Coordinator at communications@chicagodsa.org.

Socialist Night School Fall Semester Continues

Our Socialist Night School semester continues! Socialist Night School, our flagship political education program, is a recurring series of facilitated political discussions around a specific topic, set of readings, and discussion questions. We typically run SNS in “semesters” that consist of a series of three to five different sessions, with each session usually running about two hours. Socialist Night School is great for new members and long-timers alike, and even if you’re not able to complete the readings we encourage you to attend and join the discussion.

Thank you to everyone who joined us for our first two sessions. Please join us for the rest of our semester! Our upcoming sessions are listed below:

The Chicago DSA Executive Committee voted to draft and distribute this letter regarding the resignation of former Chapter Treasurer Rory Gilchrist, which we are sharing below:

In the interest of building a working class party capable of confronting capitalism and imperialism, Chicago DSA must hold its leadership to a high standard of conduct. Members count on our leaders to be reliable and communicative to ensure they can do the important work of building a mass party of and for the working class. While we are a volunteer organization, when members elect us to fill roles at the top of our Chapter we accept certain minimum responsibilities and duties that we must perform. We can and must meet those responsibilities and when we fail, we must be held accountable to the members who trusted us with these important roles.

Comrade Rory’s conduct over the past months has fallen well below acceptable standard for an important officer of the Chapter. Particularly when finances are concerned, when we fail to follow through, members are often left holding the bag for the costs of the work they do on behalf of the Chapter. Over the past months, the Treasurer has left several comrades awaiting reimbursements without communication for periods sometimes exceeding a month. At least one group of comrades was forced to move a meeting online after a venue was not paid in a timely manner. The Chapter has repeatedly failed to pay staff on time due to the Treasurer’s non-feasance. While not every incident was the direct fault of the Treasurer—some were issues with the bank, a general lack of communication elevated minor inconveniences into major issues.

Despite efforts of the Executive Committee to intervene by offering the assistance of our staff, the problems have persisted and increased. No member of the Executive Committee nor our staff has been able to establish a line of communication with Comrade Rory since October 6th, 2026 prior to his resignation and there has been no communication beyond the resignation itself. It is the opinion of the Executive Committee that this conduct was unacceptable and detrimental to the reputation and function of our Chapter and would have resulted in the removal of the officer had they not resigned. We are releasing this because we believe in transparent leadership that is accountable to the membership. You have a right to know what occurred.

The Executive Committee has already appointed a new Treasurer, Gordon G, who will serve the remainder of the term unless our decision is reversed at the December General Chapter Meeting. Gordon has served on the North Side Blue Line Steering Committee since July, has operated the successful NSBL book club, and has years of relevant professional experience. He will join ongoing efforts to catch up on any outstanding issues in the treasurer’s domain as soon as we possibly can. You can contact our new Treasurer Gordon at treasurer@chicagodsa.org. Feel free to contact the chairs with any questions at chairs@chicagodsa.org.

Rory Gilchrist resignation email:

“comrades,
I am resigning as Chapter Treasurer, effective immediately. Separately but concurrently I am also resigning as PAC Chair. I will not be able to attend the EC meeting if it proceeds as scheduled.”

In every month of The Bulletin we’ll be featuring a dispatch from Chicago DSA organizers about their organizing efforts: what worked well, what could have worked better, and lessons that all members can learn from. This month we have a dispatch from members of the School Board Voter Guide Committee on what they learned producing our first ever Voter Guide.

20 Districts, Three President Candidates, No Shortage of Billionaires: Producing the School Board Voter Guide

By Elena Gormley, Sean Duffy, Sanjay Venugopal, Sunjay Kumar, Murphy Meador and Mary U

Chicago DSA members voted to create an issue-based School Board Voter Guide at our September General Chapter Meeting. We were appointed as the committee tasked with producing this guide at the end of September, and we worked quickly and rigorously to produce the chapter’s first-ever Voter Guide. We learned a great deal along the way. Here are a few key insights from our work.

The Privatizers Try to Hide Their Politics

Candidates backed by Common Ground Collective/Charter schools PACS and other anti-democracy interests are not loud and proud about their politics. They try to hide under generalities like “improving schools” and their platforms offer very few specifics. Some even claim to oppose charter school expansions (but we don’t buy that). They know, on some level, that their actual politics are unpopular and that being backed by charter schools is a liability.

Nonprofit Journalism is a Load-Bearing Component of Democracy

We would not have been able to produce our guide without the incredible journalists and web designers at Chalkbeat and WBEZ. Their candidate guides and questionnaires provided key information on where candidates stand on school closures, charter school expansion, preventing layoffs, and basic district data. We need more newsrooms doing this kind of reporting, not less, and unfortunately the sector is facing widespread cuts and layoffs.

“Independent” and “Progressive” are Mirages

Multiple candidates for School Board describe themselves as “Independent” or “Progressive” without explaining what those terms mean. This became such an issue that “Independent” became an entry in our glossary, with our critical definition of the term. You simply cannot claim to be either “independent” or “progressive” while playing ball with the lobbies attempting to destroy public schools.

Labor Conflicts are Best Understood by Talking to Rank and File Workers

The division between CTU and SEIU, and resulting differences in their endorsements, is one of the hottest topics this election. We opted to confront these divides head-on in our “Elephant In The Room” section of the guide. Instead of trying to litigate this dispute, we decided to ask rank and file CTU and SEIU73 members for their own perspectives, and in doing so we learned about significant differences in how CTU and SEIU73 conduct candidate endorsements and involve rank and file members in their decisionmaking. A lot of commentators, influencers and journalists would benefit from listening to and centering rank and file workers in discussions about divisions between labor unions and municipal elections.

Cash Rules Everything All Around Us

Michael Sacks has poured more than 5 million dollars into the school board elections. He will spend even more before polls close at 7PM on Tuesday November 3rd. This money could go a long way towards funding after-school programs, hiring tutors, buying new books for classrooms and libraries, hiring more social workers and clinicians, renovating playgrounds and so many other things that would improve our public schools. But that’s the thing: Michael Sacks and his cronies don’t want to make our public schools better. He wants to destroy our public schools and sell them for scrap.

Help us create a bad night for Michael Sacks. Share our Voter Guide with your friends, family and coworkers and make a plan to vote on or before Tuesday, November 3rd!

In every issue of The Bulletin we’ll be sharing member submitted responses to a discussion prompt shared in the last issue. Make your voice heard by submitting a response to this month’s prompt or by submitting a reply to another member’s submission!

Have thoughts on one of this month’s Member Submissions?
Submit a reply using the form here.

Member Replies

None submitted for our September Bulletin, share your thoughts to either issue at this link.

No new articles in Midwest Socialist this month.

Midwest Socialist welcomes submissions from members of DSA. Midwest Socialist prefers that authors submit a pitch summarizing their idea for a piece before sending their full draft. Please include your full name in your submission so the Editors can verify that you are a member; if Midwest Socialist publishes your piece, you can ask for your byline to use a last initial or pseudonym if preferred. Send your pitches through this submission form. Expect an initial response within a week from submission. See Midwest Socialist’s Editorial Policy for more details.

Be sure to read “Why You Should Write For Midwest Socialist” by Midwest Socialist Editorial Board member Matt Wehmeier.

All event info: Chicagodsa.org/events.

All of our events are new member friendly. We are socialist after all, not anti-socialist.