Chicago Teachers Union Hosts Conference Featuring Calls to "Bring the System Down" and Praise for Hamas
Union Executive Board Members Spoke Alongside Revolutionary Socialists Praising Hamas' October 7 Attack as "Justified Self-Defense"
According to an investigative report by K-12 Tracker, the Chicago Teachers Union hosted a three-day conference from November 14-16, 2025, featuring speakers who openly praised Hamas’s October 7 attack, called for bringing down the American system, and advocated for the elimination of Israel “from the river to the sea.”
The National Alliance Against Racist & Political Repression (NAARPR) conference, held at CTU Hall, brought together a coalition of communist organizations, pro-Hamas activists, and union leaders who delivered inflammatory rhetoric that went far beyond typical labor organizing.
CTU hosted the conference with the stated goal of building “the movement to defeat Trump’s agenda and win community control of the police.” CTU executive board member Kobi Guillory, a middle school teacher, declared to applause: “When we talk about fighting back, we’re not talking metaphorically, we’re talking about actually taking these streets, we’re talking about actually shutting shit down...we’re going to bring the system down.”
Communist Leadership and Alleged Terror-Linked Organizations
The conference was organized by NAARPR, whose executive director Frank Chapman serves simultaneously on the central committee of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO)—a group that explicitly states it is “recruiting and building towards the creation of a new Communist Party based on Marxism-Leninism” and whose stated goal is leading “the way to socialism and liberation.”
Chapman’s dual role as head of both NAARPR and a member of FRSO’s central committee illustrates the deep entanglement between the teachers union’s partner organizations and explicitly communist movements.
NAARPR’s affiliates include the U.S. Palestinian Community Network (USPCN), which was was co-founded by Rasmea Odeh, a former member of the U.S.-designated terror group the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Odeh was convicted in 1970 for her role in a Jerusalem supermarket bombing that killed two Israeli college students.
At the conference, USPCN co-chair Nazek Sankari received thunderous applause when she proclaimed that “people in Gaza and all historic Palestine will continue to resist until we have achieved total and complete liberation from the river to the sea and until we have freed all colonized Arab lands.” Throughout her speech, Sankari consistently referred to Israel as “Palestine,” effectively denying the Jewish state’s right to exist.
October 7 Praised as “Justified Self-Defense”
Most disturbingly, NAARPR formally adopted a resolution in 2023 characterizing Hamas’s October 7 massacre—which killed over 1,200 Israelis, including women and children—as a “morally and legally justified self-defense campaign.” The resolution explicitly states: “WHEREAS, the Unified Palestinian Resistance initiated a morally and legally justified self-defense campaign on October 7th, 2023” and declares support for the “Unified Palestinian Resistance and its self-defense campaign against over 100 years of Zionist settlement and occupation.”
The resolution goes further, demanding “a complete end to all U.S. financial, military, diplomatic, political, cultural, and social aid to Israel’s racist, apartheid regime” and upholding “the determination, which was included in a United Nations general assembly resolution for almost 20 years, that ‘Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination.’”
FRSO went even further in its 2022 congress, passing a resolution declaring: “We especially support the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and its revolutionary struggle for a free, democratic, and socialist Palestine!” and concluding with the eliminationist chant: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!”
Radical Activism Infiltrates the Classroom
The connection between revolutionary rhetoric and classroom instruction is not hypothetical. Guillory, who serves as both a CTU executive board member and CAARPR’s Labor Committee Co-Chair, decorates his middle school classroom with Palestinian flags and a poster featuring a quote from Assata Shakur—a convicted cop-killer and member of the Black Liberation Army who fled to Cuba after escaping prison. The quote reads: “It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love each other and protect each other. We’ve got nothing to lose but our chains.”
Video evidence shows Guillory, alongside Frank Chapman, leading elementary school children in chanting Shakur’s words—a troubling example of how revolutionary ideology is being transmitted directly to impressionist young students.
In 2021, Guillory traveled to Syria with a pro-Assad organization to “observe” elections in the brutal dictatorship. On social media, he has been seen speaking at rallies, as seen in the video below, in front of “from the river to the sea” signs, explicitly voicing support for Palestinian “resistance.”
In April 2024, Guillory published an article on the CAARPR website titled “All Progressives Should Join CTU In Building a Forcefield Against Trump’s Agenda,” in which he stated that CAARPR “stand[s] in complete unconditional solidarity with the resistance in Palestine. We understand that international law recognizes the right of oppressed people to resist against oppression by any means necessary.”
Financial Ties Raise Questions
The relationship between CTU and these radical organizations includes financial entanglement. CTU’s Political Action Committee donated $10,000 to CAARPR in September 2024. CAARPR then contributed $10,000 back to the CTU PAC in two installments during October and November 2024—$5,000 on October 2 and another $5,000 on November 1—creating a circular flow of funds between the union and the communist-affiliated organization that raises questions about coordination and purpose.
The purpose of CTU’s donation to CAARPR was not listed in the PAC’s quarterly report, despite the PAC’s stated purpose being to “support candidates favorable to unions and oppose those who do not support unions and to support and oppose questions of public policy.”