03/12/2025
In the lead-up to our joint 10-year anniversary fundraiser on May 1, we will be sharing stories about key moments in our organizing history.
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About a decade ago Tim Meegan ran for 33rd Ward Alderman. His campaign became the nucleus for 33rd Ward Working Families. Here are some reflections on the campaign and some lessons learned.
Tim was a social studies teacher at Roosevelt High School. His passion for creatively conveying his deep-rooted love of ideas to students, and his respect towards them, made him a beloved teacher. His commitment to the well-being of their families and community earned him the respect of many in the ward.
Budget cuts and privatization efforts made it increasingly difficult for Tim to fulfill his holistic approach to teaching. As time passed, enriching classes at Roosevelt High School like Archeology were cut, teacher positions dwindled, and the student population shrank.
This compelled Tim to become a militant rank-and-file union activist in the Caucus of Rank and File Educators (CORE) in the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU).
This is where Tim learned what politics is and how to do it.
Politics is a power struggle over resources. To provide an enriching environment for his students Tim learned that we have to organize and fight for the resources we need to learn, live, and thrive.
Tim cut his political teeth as a strike captain at Roosevelt High School during the 2012 CTU strike. He spoke at rallies to open up TIF surplus money to schools. In the workplace, he was a dedicated advocate for his fellow teachers and staffers, and, in the neighborhood, he participated in the fight for education equity and funding.
This approach to politics made Tim an organic leader in the ward. He earned the respect and following of many. He was able to speak with conviction and authenticity about progressive politics in a way that appealed to residents of various political beliefs and backgrounds.
Despite the successes of CORE, CTU, and the education justice movement in general, Tim and many others felt a lack of support from elected officials. This was especially true of electeds’ failure to fight back against the 2013 school closures – the single largest round of public school closures in US history. Tim often said, “We tried write-ins, call-ins, sit-ins, and sleep-ins, but elected officials did not listen.” They weren’t from the movement.
At the time, the dominant progressive approach to elected office was governing from the outside: pressuring electeds. Tim saw a different path: governing from the inside, leveraging our movement power, knowledge, and methods to take office and re-shape the political agenda.
This is why Tim ran for alderman of the 33rd Ward.
It was time for rank-and-file labor and social movement activists to directly govern. Tim’s core campaign team reflected this idea. Most of us had no experience with electoral politics. Many of us were critical of it. But we were all socialist organizers with experience in various activist campaigns and movement work – anti-eviction and anti-foreclosure work, labor organizing, Occupy Chicago, No Games Chicago, reproductive rights, environmental campaigns, the anti-war movement, etc.
Just as CORE applied a left-leaning organizing model to the labor movement, we applied a left-leaning organizing model to electoral politics.
No one thought Tim’s campaign would go anywhere. We were told that we would get 10% of the vote due to lack of name recognition and were advised to run again.
What happened bucked this conventional wisdom. Towards the end of the campaign, we had a sizable and committed volunteer base, including a self-organized group of students officially called Students for Meegan but, among those youth, known as the “Red Core” — to our amusement, this was not a reference to the revolutionary Red Guards but to the Green Lantern comic book!
Ultimately, we were 17 votes away from a runoff election against a candidate with an established family name and backing: Deb Mell.
We can boil down the recipe of our success to two things. First, we promoted a bold pro-working class, left-leaning message and platform. We took on issues that others didn’t, such as a 15-dollar minimum wage (at the time that was a far-left demand) and abolishing TIF. We believed a bold left-wing message was the winning message. It spoke to many.
Second, we applied our movement organizing methods to activate and grow our base. We knew how to do the nuts-and-bolts work: knocking doors and making calls, hosting rallies and making speeches, and meeting with potential supporters, and getting them involved.
The success of the campaign, our politics, and our method of organizing led to the creation of 33rd Ward Working Families.
We were promoting a moral and political vision, organizing a cadre to promote this vision, which was pulling together a broader base of supporters. We were doing party politics.
Tim’s campaign needed to mature into a political organization, beyond a single candidate. What we were doing extended beyond a single election. We needed to unite movement organizing and electoral organizing in the form of a political organization – a party-like formation that could provide a winning vision and program, and realize it through the methods of movement organizing.
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We hope you'll join us on Thursday, May 1, 6-10pm, at Rockwell On The River (3057 N Rockwell St) for our 10 Year Anniversary fundraiser with United Neighbors of the 35th Ward!
Tickets: https://bit.ly/peoplepower10
