Rahm Emanuel & Bruce Rauner On Jihad to Eliminate Unions in Chicago, says Former Union Organizer Jane McAlevey | Black Agenda Report

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.

listen

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

More Stories

Black Agenda Radio with Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford
Black Is Back Coalition: Fight US Imperialism at Home and Abroad
07 Oct 2019
The Black Is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations will mark its tenth anniversary with a march on the White House and national conference under the banner, “Turn Imperialist War
Glen Ford , BAR executive editor
The Corporate Democrats’ (and Alicia Garza’s) Get-Sanders Slanders
03 Oct 2019
Once the Bernie Sanders threat has subsided, Elizabeth Warren will be required to further neuter herself to allay the fears of billionaire Democratic donors.
Margaret Kimberley , BAR editor and senior columnist
Freedom Rider: The Phony Ukraine Scandal
02 Oct 2019
Trump’s clumsy and stupid attempts to link Joe Biden and son to corruption in Ukraine has given Democrats a chance to revive their discredited Russiagate crusade.
BAR staff
Black Agenda Report’s 13th Anniversary: An Evening of Information and Inspiration for Liberation, and a Tribute to Co-Founder Bruce Dixon
02 Oct 2019
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/black-agenda-reports-13th-anniversary-tickets-72333259727
Danny Haiphong , BAR contributor
Alicia Garza attacks Jill Stein at Behest of the Working Families Party and the Non-Profit Industrial Complex
02 Oct 2019
Servile to corporate power, Garza repeated the racist “Bernie Bro” trope to vilify the most multiracial base of the Democratic Party.