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


  • Kossi “Ayomide” Paul
    France, its Far-right, and Africa: An Update on the Ongoing Parliamentary Elections
    03 Jul 2024
    France's recent parliamentary elections indicate a rapid political shift to the right. Africans both on the continent - where several nations remain French neo-colonies - and in France will…
  • Kevin Edmonds
    The Kenyan Intervention in Haiti: Another Wave of “Diplomatic” Terrorism
    03 Jul 2024
    The invasion of Haiti that has just begun with the arrival of Kenyan police, was long in the making. It is the end result of a long imperialist war of destabilization and propaganda against the…
  • Gus Griffin
    The Sports World’s Selective Moral Indignation Part II
    03 Jul 2024
    The imbalanced and prejudiced criteria by which the International Olympic Committee chooses to take action against countries reveals the political and moral inconsistencies…
  • Black Alliance For Peace
    AFRICOM Watch Bulletin #52
    03 Jul 2024
    In Africa, there is a growing spirit of Pan-Africanism and political consciousness that is driving a movement for decolonization. Salifu Mack speaks on his experience in Burkina Faso and the changing…
  • Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    The Terrible Origins of July 4th
    03 Jul 2024
    The causes of the July 4, 1776 Declaration of Independence are rarely taught in this country. The American colonists chafed under British rules limiting their settlements and feared they…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us