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


  • Greens Take on Barbara Lee
    Black Agenda Radio with Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford
    Greens Take on Barbara Lee
    09 Jul 2018
    Green Party candidates won the right to challenge Democratic incumbents, one-on-one, for three California congressional seats, including Barbara Lee’s San Francisco Bay area district.
  • The “Bought-Off” Black Caucus
    Black Agenda Radio with Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford
    The “Bought-Off” Black Caucus
    09 Jul 2018
    “They won’t do anything for us and, in fact, they’ll vote alongside our enemies,” said BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley, referring to the Congressional Black Cauc
  • Black Caucus Support for Anti-Lynching Law is a Sham
    Glen Ford , BAR executive editor
    Black Caucus Support for Anti-Lynching Law is a Sham
    04 Jul 2018
    “The lynchers-in-blue run amuk because they are aided and abetted by the Black Misleadership Class and its Democratic elected representatives in Congress.”
  • Freedom Rider: Ocasio-Cortez and the Left
    Margaret Kimberley , BAR editor and senior columnist
    Freedom Rider: Ocasio-Cortez and the Left
    04 Jul 2018
    “Ocasio-Cortez deserves credit for beating a corrupt but powerful system.”
  • Political Theater and the Immigration Crisis: A Two-Party Problem
    Danny Haiphong , BAR contributor
    Political Theater and the Immigration Crisis: A Two-Party Problem
    04 Jul 2018
    “No oppressed people or group in the US knows what it is like to be separated from their families, locked in cages, and murdered by the state more than Black Americans.”
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us