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


  •  Black Agenda Radio for Week of October 12, 2020
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Black Agenda Radio for Week of October 12, 2020
    12 Oct 2020
    Beware the Movement’s “Controlled Opposition”
  • Roots of “Strong Black Women” Ideology
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Roots of “Strong Black Women” Ideology
    12 Oct 2020
    Systemic oppression, from slavery to mass Black incarceration, has led Black women to value self-reliance, said Dr Ashlee Davis, supervising psychologist at Fordham University’s co
  • Community Control of Police is a Right and Necessity
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Community Control of Police is a Right and Necessity
    12 Oct 2020
    In response to protests, the eastern North Carolina city of Greenville has discontinued its ties to the Pentagon’s infamous 1033 program that funnels military weapons and equipment to local police.
  •  Beware the Movement’s “Controlled Opposition”
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Beware the Movement’s “Controlled Opposition”
    12 Oct 2020
    Shannon Jones, of Bronxites for NYPD Accountability, who was among 250 people arrested at a massive police assault on protesters, June 4, warns that some corporate foundation-funde
  • Bidens and Trumps, Foxes and Wolves
    Glen Ford, BAR Executive Editor
    Bidens and Trumps, Foxes and Wolves
    08 Oct 2020
    The fox and wolf parties – both corporate canines – debate how best to acclimate the masses to their deepening state of precarity.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us