Saturday coffee.

Jim Fennerty of the National Lawyers Guild. 

Illinois teachers are still shaking their heads over Squeezy’s choice of Paul Vallas as his running mate.

One teacher friend wrote saying it was enough to make her pull a Republican ballot in the primary to vote against Rauner. She was convinced a Quinn/Vallas combo could not win in November against Rauner and is terrified that Rauner would win.

This kind of stuff makes my head hurt.

Rauner. Quinn. Vallas. Brady. Dillard. Rutherford. Whatever.

The Tribune’s John Kass asks an interesting question:

What surprises me is that Rauner didn’t get Vallas on his side. Vallas had soured on the Democrats after the 2002 campaign, and even considered running as a Republican for the Cook County Board. The two of them — with their knowledge of budgets and finance — would have been formidable.

As for the governor’s race, I’ll go with that old sage advice: Don’t vote for any gubernatorial candidate. It only encourages them.

And union teachers should make it clear to our leadership that there should be no endorsement of any of these clowns for governor.

Meanwhile, I’ll pull a Democratic Party ballot in the primary and vote for Will Guzzardi for the 39th House seat. A victory for Guzzardi will encourage others to change the political landscape, as CTU President Karen Lewis says.

Speaking of Karen Lewis, Anne and I were at the annual dinner of the Chicago National Lawyers Guild last night. They were honoring the lawyers who represent the Chicago Teachers Union.

A banquet hall full of lawyers would normally make me nervous. But this was a room full of multi-generational lawyers who serve the progressive Movement.

If you take part in protest demonstrations in the City you can always recognize the lawyers from the National Lawyers Guild. They are the ones wearing the bright green caps. They are there to see to it that the first amendment still means something. Even in Rahm’s Chicago.

The NLG was founded in 1937 as a progressive alternative to the American Bar Association by the general counsels of the major labor unions. It was the first integrated bar association.

Our friend and neighbor, Robin Potter, heads one of the law firms honored last night. Responding to those who claim the teachers unions are not really part of the labor movement, she said that the CTU has not only disproved that theory, but has drawn labor back into the Movement and put the Movement back into labor.

And CTU lawyer and honoree Robert Bloch was introduced with this story:

When some rank-and-file union activists approached their union’s lawyers about an action they wanted to take that might lead to their arrest, the union’s lawyers told them they couldn’t do it because it was illegal.

The workers responded by saying, “We don’t want lawyers who keep us out of jail. We want lawyers who will get us out of jail.”

“Well it that’s what you want,” the union lawyers told them, “Go get that god-damned Robert Bloch!”