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


  • Carlos Sirah
    Empire's Overseers: The Two-Party Trap of Blackface Imperialism
    30 Oct 2024
    The U.S. political system is perpetuated through the facade of choice. The false belief that we have the power to decide who our political leaders will be and what policy the government will…
  • Austin Cole
    Demanding More in the Struggle for Collective Liberation – A Conversation with Nicholas Richard Thompson, Part II
    30 Oct 2024
    As part of his research on grassroots economic projects toward Black Liberation, Austin Cole spoke with Nicholas Richard-Thompson about his community organizing, expanding definitions of economic…
  • Socialist Movement of Workers of the Dominican Republic
    We Condemn the Executions of Haitian Workers Within the Framework of the Official Racist and Xenophobic Policy
    30 Oct 2024
    Attacks by the fascist government and its supporters against Haitian people and those of Haitian Heritage in the Dominican Republic have become more and more brutal, resulting in the outright…
  • Ramzy Baroud
    ‘Text Me You Haven’t Died’ – My Sister was the 166th Doctor to Be Murdered in Gaza
    30 Oct 2024
    Since the beginning of this genocidal assault on Gaza, the Israeli entity has targeted Palestinian medical workers and hospitals to destroy the healthcare infrastructure and cause maximum damage on…
  • Sam Biddle
    U.S. Military Makes First Confirmed OpenAI Purchase for War-Fighting Forces
    30 Oct 2024
    The Pentagon explored the AI software for research, but the new deal is the first by a combatant command whose mission is one of killing.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us