The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) hosted a Marxist, virulently anti-Israel conference last weekend which openly celebrated terrorism, introduced fledgling activists to “the growing BDS movement,” and called on its members to support Iran’s “axis of resistance” and prepare for violence against the United States and Israel.
“We are all here to toughen our knuckles,” Ryan Delaney, chair of communications for Jacksonville Palestine Solidarity Network, told attendees at the conclusion of events Saturday.
“I hope that everybody leaves here ready to fight when they get home,” he told roughly 200 cheering attendees.
Sara Flounders, a member of the Secretariat of the Marxist-Leninist Workers World Party, thundered to the crowd that “the enemy is at home. … Change doesn’t ask for permission. It’ll be violent. It’ll be stormy. It’ll be unpredictable.”
Flounders praised attendees as “a really militant, determined group.”
The conference, where activists went so far as to discuss how to shut down a major U.S. port to force out an Israeli company, was the second annual gathering of Anti-War Action Network (AWAN), an agglomeration of dozens of local activist groups around the country united by their hatred of Israel and mission to obstruct American “imperialism.”
The Washington Free Beacon purchased a ticket online and was able to seamlessly mingle with attendees for two days without incident.
Though the teachers’ union was not manning a booth, the gathering was held at its headquarters at 1901 W Carroll Ave in the city’s West Town neighborhood. Teachers’ union signage, and even a headless mannequin wearing “Chicago Teachers Union” t-shirts, were present throughout the venue.
Conference-goers were a motley crew of aspiring revolutionaries. About 20 percent wore masks, many attendees were noticeably obese, and there was also a large contingent of openly transgender participants. Breakfast included gluten-free empanadas and vegan fare while a gender-neutral bathroom did brisk business.
One speaker named Sarah talked about a die-in she helped organize as a sparkling Pellegrino sat nestled in her chair.
Outside the main hall, books like Wage Labour and Capital by Karl Marx and The Revolutionary Science of Marxism-Leninism, a 2023 book aimed at inducting “a renewed and resurgent communist movement in the U.S.,” were available for purchase, alongside literature on the marvels of Chinese communism.
AWAN Steering Committee member Tom Burke told the Free Beacon that his organization had only rented the space and the CTU had no other involvement in the event, though the extensive teachers’ union signage and branded t-shirts suggested otherwise. The CTU Foundation, which owns the building, says it “welcomes the public use of its meeting facilities in keeping with the CTUF’s mission to the advancement, enhancement, and support of public education.”
The teachers’ union has long faced criticism for its support for terrorism and condoning antisemitism in its ranks. The CTU vice president, Jackson Potter, has in the past been an apologist for Hamas violence and headlined an event called “Palestine and Union Power” in March 2025. In May, the union staged a walkout in honor of May Day, a celebration of the worker that’s popular with communists.
In October 2024, the president of the Chicago Board of Education, Mitchell Johnson—who was appointed to the board by far-left mayor Brandon Johnson (no relation), himself a former CTU organizer—was forced to resign after his social media posts defending Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre resurfaced.
“My Jewish colleagues appear drunk with the Israeli power and will live to see their payment,” Mitchell Johnson said in one post.
The CTU did not respond to a request for comment.
While AWAN’s agenda focused on Israel, Lebanon, Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, China, Yemen, the Philippines, and more, most topics had a way of coming back to Israel. Throughout the entire proceedings, a large Palestinian flag hung over the main lectern.
Rooms inside the teachers’ union building were rechristened by AWAN to honor a rogue’s gallery of personages. One breakout session was held in the “Rasmea” room—named in honor of Rasmea Odeh, a Palestinian terrorist turned Chicago community organizer, who was convicted of bombing a supermarket in Israel in 1969 and killing two people. She now lives in exile in Jordan.
Odeh’s name is back in vogue of late, in part because one of her strongest supporters is Darializa Avila Chevalier, the anti-Israel sociology graduate student who recently won the Democratic primary in a New York City congressional district.
A map of the meeting facility, which guided convention-goers to the different rooms named for various prominent terrorists and dictators, had the name “Chicago Teachers Union” prominently displayed next to a map of Iran.
Child care facilities (spelled “Childare” on the flyer) were held in the Fidel Castro room, where a lone boy looked very ready to go home.
“The U.S. is losing,” said Hatem Abudayyeh, national chair of the U.S. Palestinian Community Network and executive director at Arab American Action Network, to thunderous applause.
“What we’ve seen since October 2023 is a radical restructuring of the world order, and it’s happening because of what folks like us have been saying for decades—that the unified Palestinian resistance and its protracted war of national liberation against the Israeli Zionist colonizers is one of the main determinants in the crisis of capitalism and U.S. imperialism, and will help lead to their defeat.”
Abudayyeh is a longtime figure in extremist circles who has in the past called Odeh ”my friend and colleague” and claimed that Hamas and other terrorist organizations “constitute the Palestinian national liberation movement.”
During his remarks, Abudayyeh lauded the “principled Iranian support for the axis of resistance in Palestine, Lebanon, and Yemen,” eliciting more cheers when he declared that “with unequivocal Iranian support, the Lebanese resistance continues to defend its people and land.”
At another moment, Abudayyeh joked that “our elder mentor, Uncle Joe,” was unable to attend—likely a reference to Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.
Flounders, the leader from the Marxist-Leninist Workers World Party who predicted “stormy” violence, laid out the importance of messaging.
“As Marxists, we know that change breaks through, change in global communications,” she said.
Flounders then falsely claimed Iran produced the most STEM graduates in the world after China (it is in fact 10th, lagging far behind the United States, India, and a slew of other nations, according to Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology).
The aptly named Flounders then took a moment to note the 105th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party.
Smaller group sessions covering everything from “U.S. imperialism in Africa” to media relations to effective tools for fundraising took place as well.
One session focused on efforts to pressure Israeli defense contractor Elbit Systems from its U.S. outpost in South Carolina by targeting the infrastructure of the mammoth Port of Charleston.
“Ports are like integral pieces of the war machine, right? So we need to be in those spaces,” said a representative for Elbit out of South Carolina, a member of the AWAN network.
“If we can shut down even one terminal for two hours, that’s millions of dollars out in logistics.”
A panel on the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement closed out day one of the conference—with members admitting Palestine fever was starting to break among their followers.
“Another challenge that we’ve faced is, generally, I’m sure many of you can relate, is the waning energy of the movement,” said Jae Franklin, a member of the Anti-War Committee Chicago.
That sentiment was seconded later in the panel by Jo Pico of the Detroit Anti-War committee.
“In Detroit, to kind of piggyback off of what Jae started talking about, we also have seen a decline in the Palestine solidarity struggle, which is like, you know, something that’s really upsetting to see. You know, we have like the largest Arab-American, you know, population in the country,” Pico said.
Pico claimed ICE “attacks” in Dearborn and Detroit and “organizational burnout” were to blame.
Throughout the event, attendees were not shy about leaning into lawbreaking.
“The best protests are often the ones that are not always within the confines of the law,” said Chrisley Carpio from the Committee to Stop FBI Repression, a line which earned her loud applause.
Conference attendees frequently bragged about past run-ins with law enforcement, often viewing criminal records as a badge of honor.
“I was arrested at the first No Kings event last year for doing safety, and the cops were dumb, and they released me before the event was over. So I was able to get back to the stage when the march was coming back, and I said from the stage, ‘Hey, I was arrested. You guys all heard about it. I have a legal fund. I’m going to need to get a lawyer.’ And they gave me $3,000 in the crowd,” one woman offered during a seminar on fundraising.
On the final day of the conference, AWAN’s member organizations unanimously approved a series of resolutions, including a demand for the release of deposed Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and a demand for the release of Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia terrorist Juvenal Ricardo Ovidio Palmera Pineda (aka Simón Trinidad). A main room at the conference was named the “Maduro Flores” room.
Other resolutions included a demand for the withdrawal of U.S. protection for Taiwan and renewed denunciations of Israel.
One attendee said she supported abandoning Taiwan to Chinese domination, citing Stalin as inspiration.
“Lenin was right in saying that the national movement of the oppressed countries should be appraised not from the point of view of formal democracy, but from the point of view of the actual results, as shown by the general balance sheet of the struggle against imperialism, that is to say not in isolation, but on a world scale,” the attendee said, quoting the communist butcher verbatim.
At the conclusion of events, the Free Beacon enjoyed a capitalist detox of filet mignon, crab-stuffed avocado, and carrot cake at Bavette’s Steakhouse.
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