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


  • Canadian Doctors: See No Racism, Document No Racism
    Black Agenda Radio with Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford
    Canadian Doctors: See No Racism, Document No Racism
    29 Apr 2019
    Canada’s doctors are largely in denial about “endemic” institutional racial bias in their profession, said Dr.
  • Corporate Media and Fake Leftists are the Real Traitors to Press Freedoms
    Black Agenda Radio with Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford
    Corporate Media and Fake Leftists are the Real Traitors to Press Freedoms
    29 Apr 2019
    Asked why purported “progressives” insist on expressing their personal dislike for Julian Assange, noted author Maximillian Forte, a professor of anthropology at Concordia Uni
  • Mumia: Media Joined the “War Against Assange”
    Black Agenda Radio with Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford
    Mumia: Media Joined the “War Against Assange”
    29 Apr 2019
    The nation’s best known political prisoner expressed solidarity with Julian Assange and lambasted those institutions that turned their backs on the independent publisher while claiming to defend pr
  • Bail Out a Sister for Mother's Day
    Black Agenda Radio with Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford
    Bail Out a Sister for Mother's Day
    29 Apr 2019
    Black women are the fastest growing segment of the US prison population, said Efia Nwangaza, director of the Malcolm X Center for Self-Determination, in Greenville, South
  • ADOS Opposes Free College and Student Debt Forgiveness
    Bruce A. Dixon , BAR managing editor
    Why ADOS “Reparationists” Oppose Free Tuition and Student Debt Forgiveness
    27 Apr 2019
    Reparationists have been around for a long time, but for some reason this season the bi
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us