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


  • Empire’s Fleeting Leadership in Its Yard
    Farooque Chowdhury
    Empire’s Fleeting Leadership in Its Yard
    16 Jun 2022
    The U.S. effort to control the narrative at the Summit of the Americas ended as a diplomatic and foreign policy disaster. The imperative to dominate blew up in the collective faces of the Biden…
  • The Problem with Juneteenth
    Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    The Problem with Juneteenth
    15 Jun 2022
    Juneteenth was a people's holiday with deep meaning for the descendants of enslaved people. But the declaration of an official federal holiday has turned it into an opportunity for corporate…
  • Hubert Harrison, Tribune of the People: Part Two, The Voice of Harlem Radicalism
    Sean I. Ahern
    Hubert Harrison, Tribune of the People: Part Two, The Voice of Harlem Radicalism
    15 Jun 2022
    Hubert Henry Harrison was one of the foremost Black socialist and nationalist thinkers of the early 20th century. He was known as "the father of Harlem radicalism." This is the second of of a…
  • EXCERPT: On the Pan-American Congress, José Martí, 1889
    Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    EXCERPT: On the Pan-American Congress, José Martí, 1889
    15 Jun 2022
    José Martí’s account of the 1889 Pan-American Congress offers lessons for last week’s failed Summit of the Americas.
  • The Trend Toward a Multipolar World is Defined by Class Struggle
    Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
    The Trend Toward a Multipolar World is Defined by Class Struggle
    15 Jun 2022
    The emerging multipolar world is the result of struggles for national sovereignty and self-determination, which are connected with the world wide class struggle.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us