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


  • Liberalism Will Get Us Killed
    Erica Caines
    Liberalism Will Get Us Killed
    06 Nov 2019
    Much of the internet chatter over low- hanging fruit issues fails to address our material realities within a settler colony.
  • In Langston’s Home
    BAR Poet-in-Residence Raymond Nat Turner
    In Langston’s Home
    06 Nov 2019
    In Langston’s home Harlem You do as Langston Did Love the Jazz, the Blues, Words, acts, pages and stages In Langston’s home Harlem You do as Langston Did
  • ​​​​​​​Who’s Afraid of Alice Walker?
    Earl Hazell
    ​​​​​​​Who’s Afraid of Alice Walker?
    06 Nov 2019
    Opera singer and producer Earl Hazell reminds us that standing up for artists and their vision is standing up for free speech, democracy, and ourselves.
  • Letters from Our Readers 
    Jahan Chowdhry, BAR Comments Editor
    Letters from Our Readers 
    06 Nov 2019
    This week our readers discussed black feminism and the alleged killing of Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi.  We print your letters for “
  • BAR Book Forum: Keguro Macharia’s “Frottage”
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Keguro Macharia’s “Frottage”
    06 Nov 2019
    Instead of succumbing to xenophobia and nativism, as with anti-Somali sentiment in Kenya or ADOS in the US, we need to pursue freedom in ways that speak to our differences.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us