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 Margaret Kimberley
New York Politicians Prepare to Weaken Kalief's Law
18 Apr 2025
We are joined by Conrad Blackburn, policy counsel and staff attorney in the Criminal Defense Practice of the Bronx Defenders. The Bronx Defenders is a public defender non-profit organization and a…
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
"Abundance" and the Democrats' Neo-Liberalism
18 Apr 2025
We’re joined by Anthony Rogers-Wright, a Black Agenda Report contributor and a climate/environmental liberation and racial justice advocate, writer, and policy expert. He is an active member of the…
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
Western Nations Join the United States in Repressing Dissent
16 Apr 2025
Trump is not unique in the collective west. As the crisis of capitalism deepens, "democratic" states intensify repression and criminalize dissent.
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
ESSAY: Racism and the American University, Addison Gayle, Jr., 1971
16 Apr 2025
The appraisal of American universities as liberal institutions remains one of the purest examples of the elasticity of the English language.
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
NATO Was Founded to Crush Communist, Socialist, and Anti-colonial Movements Worldwide
16 Apr 2025
NATO was never a good idea gone wrong. It was founded to crush communist, socialist, and anti-colonial movements in Europe and around the world.