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


  • The Black American Amputation Epidemic
    Lizzie Presser
    The Black American Amputation Epidemic
    27 May 2020
    Black patients lose limbs at a rate triple that of others, despite the fact that diabetic amputations are, by some measures, the most preventable surgery in the country.
  • ​​​​​​​Getting a Covid-19 Education: From Race to the Top to a Plunge to the Bottom 
    Stan Karp
    ​​​​​​​Getting a Covid-19 Education: From Race to the Top to a Plunge to the Bottom 
    27 May 2020
    As bad as the Obama/Duncan era was for public education, the current administration is even more hostile.
  • Black Agenda Radio for Week of May 25, 2020
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Black Agenda Radio for Week of May 25, 2020
    26 May 2020
    Black Is Back Coalition’s “Ballot and the Bulllet” Electoral School
  • Lasting Legacy of Combahee River Collective Statement
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Lasting Legacy of Combahee River Collective Statement
    26 May 2020
    In 1977 a group of Black feminists issued a statement that “has been a kind of touchstone over the decades for women who are thinking about women’s issues through the intersectional lens of racism,
  • Another ALD, But Africa Still Not Free
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Another ALD, But Africa Still Not Free
    26 May 2020
    More than a half century after most African states gained nominal independence, the continent is still economically and politically dependent on “external actors,” said Ndubuisi Christ
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us