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


  • Exclusive: How Haiti’s Assassination Plot Unraveled, Minute by Minute and Text by Text
    David Adams , Jake Johnston
    Exclusive: How Haiti’s Assassination Plot Unraveled, Minute by Minute and Text by Text
    10 May 2023
    Messages and texts from those suspected of the plot to assassinate Haitian president Jovenel Moise make for fascinating reading. One of them communicated with Ariel Henry, who was named Prime…
  • ‘Anti-Black’ Claim Raised About Cuba As Solidarity Activists Stopped at U.S. Border & Black Socialists Arraigned in United States for Collaborating with Russia
    Julie Varughese
    ‘Anti-Black’ Claim Raised About Cuba As Solidarity Activists Stopped at U.S. Border & Black Socialists Arraigned in United States for Collaborating with Russia
    10 May 2023
    Claims of anti-Black racism in revolutionary countries should be treated with great skepticism. This trope is used as a tool to target countries for regime change plots and other attacks. While in…
  • Witnessing Afro Cubans and Social Change
    Austin Cole
    Witnessing Afro Cubans and Social Change
    10 May 2023
    There cannot be any discussion of Cuban politics that does not include perspectives from the African descended population. There is much to learn from people who are living in a revolutionary process…
  • This is the Atlanta Way: A Primer on Cop City
    Micah Herskind
    This is the Atlanta Way: A Primer on Cop City
    10 May 2023
    Cop City is the culmination of years of "Atlanta Way" neo-liberalism intended to advantage corporate interests and affluent white people. Black people have been pushed out and those that remain live…
  • Erasure vs. Sumud: How the Nakba Came to Define the Collective Palestinian Identity
    Ramzy Baroud
    Erasure vs. Sumud: How the Nakba Came to Define the Collective Palestinian Identity
    10 May 2023
    The catastrophe for the Palestinian people began 75 years ago and their struggle against the apartheid state continues.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us