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

Editors, The Black Agenda Review
HISTORY: The Mutiny at Dominica, 9 April 1802
22 May 2024
As a Black army of mercenaries from Kenya, Barbados, Jamaica, and elsewhere arrives to continue the West’s colonial project in Haiti, we remember the history of the 1802 mutiny of African soldiers at…
Jemima Pierre, BAR Editor and Contributor
Haiti: An Anatomy of Invasion
22 May 2024
The US is behind the multinational military invasion and occupation of Haiti. How did we get here?
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
Congo “Coup” Was Reality TV; Morehouse Congo Protest Was Real
22 May 2024
Morehouse College professors protested US complicity in Congo Genocide by unfurling a Congolese flag behind Joe Biden as he addressed the 2024 graduating class. A brief, quixotic coup took place in…
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist , Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
International Criminal Court Arrest Warrants Requested for Israeli Officials and Hamas
22 May 2024
Ajamu Baraka, Black Agenda Report contributing editor, discusses his thoughts on the request for International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrants for Israeli and Hamas officials with Executive…
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
Boss Tweet’s Trial V. Trial of a Freedom Fighter
22 May 2024
"Boss Tweet’s Trial V. Trial of a Freedom Fighter" is the latest from BAR's Poet-in-Residence.