Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire

Rahm Emanuel & Bruce Rauner On Jihad to Eliminate Unions in Chicago, says Former Union Organizer Jane McAlevey
01 Apr 2015
🖨️ Print Article

by Doug Henwood at KPFA's Behind The News

US living standards for ordinary people have deteriorated the last 40 years because Democrats and Republicans have systematically de-unionizeds the country, says former union organizer Jane McAlevey.  Illinois governor Bruce Rauner and Chicago's Mayor Rahm Emanuel are on a jihad to kill the last unions in Chicago, the better to impose more privatizations, cuts in child care, wages, education and more austerity.

McAlevey, author of "We Need Syriza Here In Illinois" published last month in The Nation, declares the distinction between people working in the so-called “public sector” and “private sector” is nonsense. There are not two economies, there is one, and there are not two ways that workers get treated, depending on whether they work for government or corporations, there is one.    She reminds us that real unions create traditions and institutions of internal democracy, which is not the same as "horizontalism" that they run strikes regularly, and that they are frequently led, as the Chicago Teachers Union was in 2012 by black women.  

McAlevey was a remarkably successful union organizer for SEIU in Nevada, a so-called right to work state.

Left economist Doug Henwood, among much else the host of KPFA's Behind the News, interviews Jane McAlevey on the connection between Bruce Rauner, Scott Walker and Rahm Emanuel, how the 2012 Chicago Teachers Union strike kept Mayor Rahm Emanuel from closing 100 Chicago public schools instead of just 50, and the ultimate collective power of organizing the workplace.

Catch Doug Henwood's program every week here.

McAlevey is the author of Raising Expectations, Raising Hell.

 

 

 

 

 



Your browser does not support the audio element.

listen
http://shout.lbo-talk.org/lbo/RadioArchive/2015/15_02_19.mp3

More Stories


  • Haitian person holding their fist in the air at a protest
    MOLEGHAF
    MOLEGHAF: Public Statement on the Country's Situation
    14 Feb 2024
    MOLEGHAF released a statement calling for support of the Haitian masses mobilizing for popular sovereignty and vehemently rejects the continued attempts by the United States and the West to force a…
  • Revolt of 1811 path
    Abayomi Azikiwe
    African Emigration and the United States Civil War
    14 Feb 2024
    Through flight and rebellion, enslaved people created the conditions for their on liberation.
  • Press conference during the trial of three police officers
    Mireille Fanon Mendes France
    Does a trial mean justice? Questions asked at the end of Théodore Luhaka’s trial
    14 Feb 2024
    The brutal physical assault against Théodore Luhaka by three police officers, and their subsequent acquittal, is a heartbreaking example of the long relationship between the colonizer and the…
  • Joe Biden
    Tamara Nassar
    “Genocide Joe” sets the tone for US election year
    14 Feb 2024
    Protests have trailed Biden and others in his administration for months in response to the genocide in Gaza.
  • Pan-African Community Action
    Pan-African Community Action
    DC’s 2024 Crime Bill Is More War on the Black Working Class
    14 Feb 2024
    The DC Crime Bill is a continuation of the assault on the Black working class, created to expand control over Black communities via surveillance, hyper incarceration, and increased brutality.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us