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


  • Freedom Rider: The Minimal Minimum Wage
    Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist
    Freedom Rider: The Minimal Minimum Wage
    03 Mar 2021
    Most Democrats either don’t want a minimum wage increase or are too afraid of bucking their party’s donor class.
  • Joe Biden: The Expect Nothing Presidency
    Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
    Joe Biden: The Expect Nothing Presidency
    03 Mar 2021
    Biden’s brand of American exceptionalism has run up against the general crisis of the U.S. imperialist order.
  • MANIFESTO: “The Crime of Being Born Black on American Soil”: Claudia Jones’s Statement Before Being Sentenced, February 2, 1953
    Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    MANIFESTO: “The Crime of Being Born Black on American Soil”: Claudia Jones’s Statement Before Being Sentenced, February 2, 1953
    03 Mar 2021
    Claudia Jones’s arrests and eventual deportation were part of the expansion of the US government’s Cold War attacks on immigrants—Black immigrants included—who were affiliated with the Communi
  • Against Big Tech's Algorithmic Cancel Culture
    Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    Against Big Tech's Algorithmic Cancel Culture
    03 Mar 2021
    Project Censored Host Mickey Huff predicted that #CancelCulture warriors would be calling stations to complain about his opposition to Big Tech censorship, writes Ann Garrison.
  • Long Live the Legacy of Lawrence Ferlinghetti!
    Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    Long Live the Legacy of Lawrence Ferlinghetti!
    03 Mar 2021
    Ferlinghetti might have been God ‘cause he almost lived forever; and Jersey Boys—Allen and Amiri— lyricized Coltrane’s “Welcome” and are singing it for him with rhythmic
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us