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


  • U.S. Corporate Media Lies for a Living
    Black Agenda Radio with Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford
    U.S. Corporate Media Lies for a Living
    10 Sep 2018
    Facebook has still not given any coherent explanation for briefly removing the page of Venezuelanalysis.com, the daily English-language political analysis publication, said reporter Jeanett
  • “Anonymous” Shows Split in Ruling Class
    Black Agenda Radio with Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford
    “Anonymous” Shows Split in Ruling Class
    10 Sep 2018
    The “Anonymous” article in the New York Times is more evidence of “a real split in the upper levels of the US ruling elite,” said Dr Gerald Horne, professor of history and Afr
  • Trump Protects Al Qaeda, "The Resistance” Applauds, Cursing “Russians”
    Glen Ford , BAR executive editor
    Trump Protects Al Qaeda, "The Resistance” Applauds, Cursing “Russians”
    06 Sep 2018
    The “Russians” had to be reinstalled as the “enemy” after Obama made his alliance with Islamist jihad. Trump has now signed on as Protector of the Idlib Caliphate.
  • HBCU Digest and JL “Booker T” Carter Attacks Howard University Protesters
    Dominica Dunbar Dessalines
    HBCU Digest and JL “Booker T” Carter Attacks Howard University Protesters
    06 Sep 2018
    The highest stage of oppression is when your own people, who speak in the name of pride and empowerment, shoot you down for trying to liberate yourself.
  • Freedom Rider: John McCain, Trump Derangement, and False Black Consciousness
    Margaret Kimberley , BAR editor and senior columnist
    Freedom Rider: John McCain, Trump Derangement, and False Black Consciousness
    05 Sep 2018
    John McCain personified the worst of United States, and his death ceremony brought out the most worthless elements of Black America.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us