CHICAGO — Shifting in her chair as she sits at a long conference room table inside the Chicago Teachers Union offices, Stacy Davis Gates lets it sink in.
The Chicago Teachers Union president, having just spoken at length about the struggles of Black residents in Chicago neighborhoods, justice as a foundational classroom principle and the triumph of helping a former teacher get elected mayor, finally stops.
“Look at me. Like, both my grandmothers: sharecroppers. Literally, Sunflower County Mississippi. Eudora, Arkansas — and I get to lead the largest union in the Illinois AFL-CIO. They have over 100,000 members,” the 48-year-old Davis Gates told NBC News.
She continued, her voice shaking and eyes welling with tears: “I am a manifestation of that sacrifice, and I work so very hard to make good on it because I knew what it took.”
“They never sugarcoated or hid their struggle from me,” she said. “I honor them with my work and my practice. It is intense because I got to make up — I’ve got to make good on the investment they made on my future.”
It was a rare glimpse of emotion from this provocateur, who relishes public entanglements with some of the most powerful figures in the state, if not the country.
It also foreshadowed what came to pass on Saturday: Davis Gates was unanimously elected as the next leader of the Illinois Federation of Teachers. The statewide position will expand her power in a moment when she’s risen as a vocal foil to President Donald Trump, whose administration is at war with institutions like hers and is dismantling the Department of Education.
For her members, she’s delivered. As CTU president, she led negotiations for more than 25,000 Chicago teachers on two contracts — one in 2019 and one earlier this year, which was ratified by 97% of the membership. She’s negotiated to fund more nurses and social workers in schools and to shrink class sizes. As IFT president, she’ll lead teachers statewide, shaping their goals and steering activism and political involvement.
On Saturday, a spokesperson said her salary hadn’t been decided yet by the executive board, but she had requested a “significantly reduced salary in order to create a fourth officer position.” Before Saturday’s election, CTU paid her $195,000 and IFT another $78,000 as executive vice president.
“This unanimous vote to elect her to represent the largest union in the state really speaks to people’s trust in her commitment to children and commitment to her members,” said Rep. Delia Ramirez, a Democratic Chicago congresswoman. “It speaks to this moment where I think members and our community are looking for people that are willing to speak up courageously, stand up unapologetically for their cause and for their issues. I couldn’t think of anyone else that would embody that courageous truth to power than Stacy Davis Gates.”
Over her time leading CTU, Davis Gates has demonstrated herself to be a complicated and polarizing figure, one grounded by an unshakable belief that most of the challenges facing Chicago Public Schools stem from decades of disinvestment in Black and brown communities.
At the same time, deep divisions exist in a state where the CTU is viewed as winning favorable contracts in the same period when scores of Chicago schoolchildren lack proficiency in math and reading and enrollment has contracted even as administrative hires have ramped up and buildings remain underutilized.
“Stacy has put together a remarkable team that shows the breadth of who is in the IFT,” American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said.
Over breakfast at a Chicago diner this month, Davis Gates and Weingarten bounced back and forth, delivering history lessons on the interconnections between government crackdowns and community faith in institutions.
“We as a union have a lot of different kinds of leaders that together represent the next generation,” Weingarten said. “Stacy is one of them. You can see that Stacy and I are very different people, but you can see the respect we have for one another.”
“I have a lot of faith in her,” she added.
Asked whether Davis Gates has even higher prospects, perhaps at a national level, Weingarten said, “This is going to be a very important stage for Stacy.”
Davis Gates has regularly drawn the ire of conservatives, landing on The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, in Daily Mail headlines and on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ social media timeline.
Closer to home, she clashed with a former schools CEO to the point he filed defamation claims. A Chicago Public Schools principal once filed a police report against her after she said at a CTU meeting that teachers “should punch their principal in the face.” (At the time, the union said she was using figurative language.)
Then there’s the politics. The union was the top donor that helped elect Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former union member and teacher. Davis Gates talks of Johnson’s election as a proud moment where her ability to organize directly resulted in helping schoolkids. It is also an alliance that ties their fates to each other, as Johnson has struggled with dwindling approval ratings amid significant financial challenges facing the city.
In August, one poll showed the CTU itself struggled with the public perception, with just 22% favorability. The survey, though, was commissioned by a libertarian group that opposes public unions.
It’s a number Davis Gates rejected, saying to check the poll, check the crosstabs of the racial breakdown of those questioned, then take it again.
“We’re not a candidate. We’re a labor union that practices having good bargaining. So likability, favorability is not a priority,” Davis Gates said. “Solidarity is a priority.”
Later, however, she agreed that the union should be expected to “show our work” to the public, given the hefty price tag to taxpayers who fund schools and pay teachers’ salaries.
“I don’t run away from accountability,” she said.
She said she gauges public opinion by her community interactions. Elderly Black women, in particular, she said, thank her for speaking out fearlessly, saying they never had the chance to do that.
In a recent episode that caught national attention, an unusual message was posted from CTU’s X account. It read in part: “Rest in Power, Rest in Peace, Assata Shakur. Today we honor the life and legacy of a revolutionary fighter, a fierce writer, a revered elder of Black liberation, and a leader of freedom whose spirit continues to live in our struggle.”
Shakur, a member of the Black Liberation Army, was convicted of killing a New Jersey State trooper in the 1970s. Armed members of the liberation army helped her escape from prison, and she later fled to Cuba.
Seeing the post, Weingarten picked up the phone and called Davis Gates.
“I was concerned when I saw the memorial to Shakur,” Weingarten said. “For whatever else Shakur did, she killed a cop.”
The post drew backlash from conservatives nationally but also from members of the Chicago City Council.
“Chicago teachers union celebrating a Marxist, cop killer and fugitive from justice,” DeSantis wrote on X in September. “Feel bad for school kids trapped in a failing system and that are forced to listen to this leftist drivel. An advertisement for school choice.”
Asked why an official CTU account would send such a message, Davis Gates, a history teacher, remained unapologetic, maintaining Shakur has an important place in history and that she was someone her students had studied. She taught these lessons herself.
Perhaps the schools’ chief critic outside of the Illinois Policy Institute, a libertarian group, and the Chicago Policy Center, a group whose work includes regularly tracking CTU finances and policy moves, is Paul Vallas, the former Chicago schools superintendent, onetime Chicago budget director and mayoral candidate who lost to Johnson.
“They’re a political party. They don’t give a damn about the kids,” Vallas said of the CTU. “The Socialist Party of Chicago is the Chicago’s Teachers Union.”
“They have more nonteaching employees than teachers, and they have almost 11,000 more teaching employees than the city has cops,” Vallas said. “So this is a union that is taking an ever bigger part of the taxpayers’ pie and just delivering abysmal performance. And that’s why people are leaving with their feet.”
Faced with questions over a vast inventory of schools operating at less than one-third capacity, as well as low test scores and a declining population, Davis Gates spoke of deep-seated challenges. Neighborhoods aren’t walkable, she said, and funding for groups that helped students arrive at school safely were just cut. Communities around schools lack grocery stores, jobs and other anchors that would retain current Black families and attract others.
Detractors, though, complain the CTU has stood in the way of hard choices that would push forward progress.
In 2024, Davis Gates referred to standardized testing as “junk science rooted in white supremacy,” when, on a radio show, she was pressed about complaints from union members about low reading and math proficiency in schools.
Her answer inspired a Wall Street Journal editorial that called the remark “convenient for the union because it absolves teachers of any responsibility for failure. If the tests are racist, then black students are doomed to fail, therefore failure is inevitable and it doesn’t matter how or what is taught in school. So give the union a big raise no matter how students perform. Who’s the real systemic racist here?”
A year ago, she accused a reporter of being a “stalker” and said she didn’t consider herself a public figure. “Astonishing outburst of controversial teachers’ union boss on being confronted by reporter,” the Daily Mail wrote in a headline as a result.
In today’s climate, Davis Gates said she is inundated with hateful attacks. Death threats and racist, gendered hate reaches her via social media, email or physical mail. One Christmas, she said she received a card in the mail that read: “F--- you n----- b----!” Davis Gates doesn’t open her mail herself anymore.
A competitive basketball player and runner growing up — including an All-American sprinter at St. Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana — she said all of it makes her go “hard in the paint.”
Ifeoma Nkemdi, a fifth grade teacher at Chicago’s Newberry Math & Science Academy, said while she admired the late Karen Lewis, the former CTU president, Davis Gates was about “drama and theatrical — performative — rather than actionable things that can be measured.” Nkemdi left the union, a process she called painful because of pressure from Davis Gates and others. Nkemdi sought legal assistance from the Illinois Policy Institute, which regularly rails against the CTU and Davis Gates.
“I feel like she is trying to seal her own political status here in Chicago. It’s kind of ‘do it my way, this is my stamp on how to do this.’” Nkemdi said. “I see it and I feel like we have to all be more transparent and we have to learn how to collaborate and communicate in positive ways. And I don’t think she has that style at all.”
Illinois state Rep. Nicole La Ha, a Republican, said she held strong concerns about Davis Gates representing teachers statewide. She was most concerned after she heard Davis Gates made negative remarks about a schools CEO she was attempting to oust, reportedly saying he was akin to a special education student that couldn’t be suspended.
La Ha, the mother of a severely disabled child, called Davis Gates’ analogy “extremely alarming and heartbreaking.”
“This news is concerning to me just based on track record alone,” La Ha said of Davis Gates’ ascent. “Using that as a dig against somebody is in extremely poor judgment. I question if this is the right person to do this.”
Davis Gates apologized after making the remark.
A special education teacher came to her defense, saying the Davis Gates she’s known for a decade fights for children.
“I think she’s fierce. I think she’s a fighter. And I think she’s very capable of leading IFT,” said Tamica Berry, who teaches on Chicago’s West Side. “Stacy is very passionate about what she does. … It’s difficult for teachers these days, and she’s the one who stands up for us day in and day out because it’s something deep in her heart.”
