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


  • Black Agenda Radio, Week of August 13, 2018
    Nellie Bailiey and Glen Ford
    Black Agenda Radio, week of August 13, 2018
    14 Aug 2018
  • Mumia Supporters Gear Up for Hearing
    Kyle Fraser , Black Agenda Radio producer
    Mumia Supporters Gear Up for Hearing
    14 Aug 2018
    Mumia Abu Jamal supporters need to converge on Philadelphia in large numbers, on August 30, for hearings on Abu Jamal’s contention that judicial bias tainted his trial process, said Johanna
  • Black Capitalism Can’t Fix Racial Wealth Gap
    Black Agenda Radio with Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford
    Black Capitalism Can’t Fix Racial Wealth Gap
    14 Aug 2018
    Black banks are useful and should be supported, but only some form of reparations can confront the disastrous Black economic condition, said Mehrsa Baradaran, author of “The Color
  • The Lies of American Exceptionalism
    Black Agenda Radio with Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford
    The Lies of American Exceptionalism
    14 Aug 2018
    Corporate media claim the economy is “booming” even though “we still don’t have as many jobs as existed” before the 2008 crash, said BAR contributor Danny Haiphong, one of the auth
  • the resistance IS the assistance
    Bruce A. Dixon , BAR managing editor
    When the Resistance is Really the Assistance
    09 Aug 2018
    We all learned in school that some countries have a single governing party. If you’re not in that party, you can’t be part of the government.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us