Teachers union leaders brag about removing police from schools, praise CRT scholar

“We were a part of every inch of what happened in Minneapolis” after “George Floyd was publicly lynched," the union president said.

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Minneapolis teachers picket outside Minneapolis Public Schools headquarters in March 2022. (Shutterstock)

Recently unearthed videos show the president and vice president of the Minneapolis teachers union praising a critical race theory pioneer and joking about doxing the former superintendent.

“As educators, we hit the streets,” Greta Callahan said during an interview with Richard Berg on Fight Back Radio! in November 2022. Berg is a long-time Chicago-based socialist labor organizer.

“We were a part of every inch of what happened in Minneapolis” after “George Floyd was publicly lynched,” Callahan said, touting the union’s involvement in the “uprising.”

She said the union was protesting “non-stop, around the clock, against police murdering black and brown people.”

“We as a union were successful in removing police from our schools, because prior to that we had cops in our schools,” she also stated.

Callahan was re-elected president of the 3,000-member strong Minneapolis Federation of Teachers 59 (MFT) last year despite a grievance being filed claiming that she was promoting racism and white supremacy. She was first elected to the role in May 2020.

During her interview, Callahan praised MFT Vice President Marcia Howard for squatting in George Floyd Square.

“With community, she has been occupying this space. It’s, as far as I know, the longest autonomous zone, occupied space in the country,” she said. Howard has been described as a “sentry” who spends her time “patrolling” George Floyd Square, the intersection where Floyd died.

Callahan later called former superintendent Ed Graff a “misogynistic pig” and joked about doxing his home address.

During her own interview with Berg, Howard bragged about meeting Dr. Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw at George Floyd Square.

“Dr. Crenshaw … was at George Floyd Square, so I got to meet her,” she said. “One of the most prominent critical race theory writers,” Berg excitedly replied. “She’s the one that developed it, yes,” Howard affirmed.

A self-described black feminist, Crenshaw currently splits her time teaching law at UCLA in California and Columbia University in New York City. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, her academic work has been “foundational in critical race theory and in ‘intersectionality,’ a term she coined to describe the double bind of simultaneous racial and gender prejudice.”

Callahan and Howard led the teachers union during a three-week strike last year, which concluded with the ratification of a racially discriminatory contract that calls for laying off white teachers first. They later defended the contract, saying it “doesn’t go far enough.”

 

Stephen Kokx

Stephen Kokx, M.A., is a journalist for LifeSiteNews. He previously worked for the Archdiocese of Chicago under the late Francis Cardinal George. A former community college instructor, Stephen has written and spoken extensively about Catholic social teaching and politics. His essays have appeared in such outlets as Catholic Family News and CatholicVote.org.