How A Rat Balloon From Suburban Chicago Became A Union Mascot

Curious City

WBEZ Chicago

Society & Culture, Education, Public, Chicago, Arts, City, Radio, Curious, Investigation

4.8 • 642 Ratings

🗓️ 19 April 2017

⏱️ 9 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Scabby the Rat is now common on picket lines around the world, but the balloon started in Chicago’s historically blue-collar suburbs.

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's Curious City, where we take your questions about Chicago and the region, and investigate, report.
0:08.0	Explore.
0:08.9	From WBEZ.
0:11.7	Hi, I'm Max Green.
0:13.6	It's a few weeks ago, and I'm at a construction site in Bridgeview, Illinois, about 15 miles southwest of Chicago.
0:20.0	About a dozen union guys are standing around with
0:22.4	picket signs. They're not paying the area standard wages and benefits. We're out here with
0:28.1	pickets protesting that. That's Mike Lowry. Secretary-Treasurer of the bricklayers and allied
0:34.4	craft workers district council. The picket seems to be going well.
0:38.2	Passers by slow down and take a look.
0:40.1	Drivers honk their horns.
0:41.6	The workers are getting attention.
0:43.4	Especially this one guy here who looks a bit menacing.
0:46.9	He's taller than the rest.
0:48.3	His skin looks awful.
0:49.6	He's kind of got these claws.
0:51.4	That's Scabby the Rat.
0:53.0	He's a 12-foot inflatable balloon.
0:56.5	Scabby the Rat is a sickly yellow color with beady red eyes, long tail, and festering sores on
1:02.2	his stomach. And he's a giant inflatable rat. Sounds kind of hard to miss, right? Curious
1:07.9	citizen Philip Williams thought so. I'm a mortgage banker, so I drive around town a lot for my job, and that's how I started noticing the rat.
1:17.5	These rat balloons appear on picket lines all over the country. The spectacle helps the union to get attention
	...

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