Category Archives: United Front

Moral Mondays: the Emergence and Dynamics of a Growing Mass Human Rights Movement

This article  by Saladin Muhammad is in response to a post on Black Agenda Report  regarding the Moral Monday Movement http://goo.gl/JcwZg9 Introduction  The Moral Mondays Campaign in North Carolina that is mobilizing thousands to speak out against the legislative attacks on … Continue reading →

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The Question of Power

An Interview with Saladin Muhammad

SaladinSaladin is a founder and organizer with the Black Workers for Justice, based in North Carolina. He was recently arrested for protesting at the NC General Assembly on May 13th and became a member of the 940 Moral Monday Arrestees and the first to be convicted.  He is also a lead organizer with the Southern Workers’ Assembly? This interview was conducted by Buben Solis and Niqua Douglas and published in the Fall/Winter Issue of “As Goes the South” a publication of Project South.

Ruben Solis: What was your entry point into the overall movement?

Saladin Muhammad: It was in the early 1960s, I was active in the military where I was exposed to a lot of racism. I was in Santo Domingo in ‘65 before I was out of the service and got pretty deeply involved in the struggle against racism in the military happening against Dominicans and against Black soldiers.  What probably triggered me was in 1964, a Black soldier from my barracks was lynched/hung. This brother was on his knees with a rope around the neck. Some white soldiers were sitting in the barracks shining their boots claiming they knew nothing about it. He was dead. That led to a rebellion at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. When I left the military, I joined the black liberation movement and the civil rights movement.

Ruben: That was quite a moment for liberation groups. The Caamano revolution was happening at the time as were student protesting the presence of US marines, and the shooting at students with live ammo, and even killing some students to stop the revolt.  The US Marines were responsible for putting down the military rebellion by the progressive nationalist officers.

Speaking of Black Workers for Justice and the Black and the African Liberation movement, how do you connect those to the Moral Monday protests?

Saladin: The South has always been pretty central to the oppression of African American people in the United States, and as you know, the South and Southwest have been regions where national oppression of African Americans, Mexican Americans, those from Mexico, and indigenous people in the West has happened. The examples of structural racism, which we call national oppression, has always been the strongest in the South, an anchor for how we express ourselves, an example for the rest of the country.

My mother was from the area where I live now, although she went to Philadelphia in the thirties and I was born there. I came down here (North Carolina) every summer and knew a lot of people. I got married shortly after leaving the army to Naeema who was born in Rocky Mount, NC and we moved to Philadelphia, PA.  We were very active in Philadelphia for fifteen years, and decided to move back to Rocky Mount to continue this work in the South. We began building Black Workers for Justice in 1981 around a struggle for three sisters fighting against race discrimination at a K-mart store in Rocky Mount. We developed a petition asking people to sign demanding that the K-mart rehire the workers and other demands dealing with worker rights. Some people went around to the churches and other community places with the petition. A couple of us went to work places where we spread the basic. The workers we spoke to realized they faced the same problems in their workplaces. In 1982, we began to form a state-wide organization, and we have been deepening that infrastructure since then to build consciousness in the black community and among Black workers about the need to build organization and power at the workplace.

The Moral Monday struggle grew out of a people’s assembly organized in 2007 that became known as HKonJ – Historic Thousands on Jones Street, where the state capitol is in Raleigh. We established a fourteen-point program about particular issues such as collective bargaining rights. Others were against the war, for healthcare, and public education.  That program guided HKonJ, which has 120 NAACP branches and 150 other organizations of various types that began to battle the legislature, which at that time was Democratic Party-controlled. The emergence of the Tea Party as a right-wing and racist social movement financed by elements of the 1-percent capitalist elites that was shaping a political climate of intimidation and attacks on vital needs and rights of working-class and oppressed, became a major factor in the development of the Moral Monday Campaign. The Moral Mondays are led by Rev. William Barber II, President of the North Carolina State NAACP.

Moral Mondays, began to raise challenge the legislative attacks on voting, immigrant, women’s and gay rights, on the social safety-net and the racist impacts of these attacks as morally wrong. This took the high-ground away from the so-called moral agenda of the right-wing that has consolidated a base among religious fundamentalist to dictate what is moral and what is immoral, including issues like a women right to abortion, sexual orientation, etc. We wanted to show that the real immorality is attacks on health care, unemployment, and dismantling public education. Those are the things we see as immoral.  It became a counter-movement to challenge and defeat the social base of a corporate financed push for austerity and increasingly repressive government.

Moral Mondays drew large numbers of people, including many whites, some that had been previously influenced by the so-called moral agenda of the right.  Identifying an issue every week became part of the Moral Monday movement building process. I became part of the delegation organized by the Southern Workers Assembly (SWA) for the Moral Monday 3rd wave on May 13th. Labor is weak in North Carolina, less than 3% are organized and many don’t have contracts. The identity of the rank and file of the old labor movement was not showing itself as part of the Moral Mondays. We as a labor contingent, wore yellow bands, bringing up the issues and calling on the rank and file at workplaces to become a more visible part of this movement. The anti-worker, anti-union, racist policies and attitudes of the state legislature created a climate at workplaces that increased the management’s abuse of power to intimidate and oppress workers. We wanted to be visible at both the workplaces and the General Assembly.

The entire labor delegation, about ten of us, were arrested, mainly from my union the NC Public Service Workers Union-UE Local 150, but also some letter-carriers, workers from FLOC (Farm Labor Organizing Committee), and Black Workers For Justice. Shortly after that, we organized the Labor Fight-back Conference in late June 2013 that brought more forces together from wider areas. We’re engaged in the Workers Democracy Campaign that developed out of that conference.

Ruben: That is awesome.  There was a lot of thinking that went into that. It’s impactive, not only locally but in terms of the political moment.  What do you think the Southern Workers Assembly needs to do to bring a workers’ movement together for the South?

Saladin: Last year, at the opening of the Democratic Convention in Charlotte, NC we brought together workers in the Southern Workers Assembly to begin to develop a program of action. During the Convention, there had been a veiled threat from the AFL-CIO that they would not participate because it was being held in a right-to-work state. There was news coverage about the threat. We saw it as an opportunity to call for a convergence of unions, worker organizations and worker centers in the South in the form of a Southern Workers Assembly to begin developing a program and rank-and-file workers movement to organize labor in the South. There was national and international news coverage of the Southern Workers Assembly as the only voice promoting amidst the many activities created by the Democratic National Convention speaking to organizing labor in the South.

 Finally, we were part of developing a resolution that one of the labor councils close to us sent to the AFL-CIO about organizing in the South. To be able to appeal to the rank-and-file of the national unions to push for the carrying out of the resolution, we need a strategic campaign on the ground.  We need other forces. The rallies held by the Southwest Workers Union in San Antonio, Texas on November 1st along with those in NC, and a petition campaign with more than 1500 signers sent to the NC Government, the Courts and Obama to drop the charges against the 940 Moral Monday arrestees, shows the potential for the SWA to expand.  The question of consolidating as an assembly has included challenges, including resources to have the concentration we really need, the importance of a regional campaign, to connect more people to this campaign. These are the questions we are facing.

 Ruben: One of the working groups that materialized at the Southern Movement Assembly in Jacksonville was from a worker/labor front of struggle and brought their issues to the assembly. We still have to follow up and build that up as an Assembly. Not inventing another assembly, but converging with the Southern Workers Assembly. It could multiply geometrically the power of the workers. One of the notions that the University Sin Fronteras and the Southern Movement Assembly process has been working with is the U.S. South as the labor colony for the United States. With the labor laws that restrict collective bargaining and striking that make it almost illegal to be in a union in the south. What are some next steps to change the correlation of voices to enable more systemic changes?

 Saladin: You’ve laid out the Southern Movement Assembly. A couple of us attended to the Assembly in Jacksonville, Fla. We were impressed by the gathering of forces, the discussion of issues, and what it means for building an infrastructure and linking labor to the other social movements. I had a discussion not long ago with Brother Emery about how to look at some kind of labor commission/component of the SMA so that a part of the digging in of the Southern People’s Movement will be in the workplaces as well. That is part of your question about how to prepare for the next phase. A movement has various components. We have to figure out how to build strategic bases and areas of contending power in the South. The South has the highest concentration of foreign direct investment and global capitalism. All kinds of concessions from county and state governments. So these locations of new plants come from those new resources as a part of finance bringing industries into the South.

 In Mississippi, there’s the Jackson Plan, which seeks to use the election of Chokwe Lumumba as mayor as a part of a state-wide strategy to build areas of people’s governance and a beginning of areas of contending power. How do we as a Southern People’s Movement/Assemblies begin to help the various states and locations throughout the South to develop these strategic zones of contending power? How do we look at taking control of institutions: school boards, hospital boards, etc. To go against the forces bringing in capital. How do we develop a perspective about that as part of the broader Southern Freedom Movement? These are thoughts about the next steps.

 Ruben: That’s fantastic. Our strength and power will come from building that infrastructure together so we can sustain a long-term movement.  Some of us will not be here forever, but if we go beyond the single-issue approach to build people’s power, we can correct weakness form earlier decades. We appreciate your words and your wisdom, especially concerning the social movement struggles. Thank you for your time, Brother Saladin, and your commitment.

 Niqua: I would like to continue this conversation that we started on the Youth Speak Truth radio show, Friday of next week, if possible, November 29.

Saladin: We’ve got to see that as this crisis deepens, there are going to be all kinds of struggles, fight-backs that we have to be a part of, but the problem has been that we enter them and lose the focus on our bigger strategy. We have to engage from a strategic orientation for the struggles to come.  New directions are often shaped by these struggles if there is no strategic program that anchors and guides our work. This has been a weakness because the fight-back has been a protest against injustice and not struggles for power. It’s not so easy, but we have to go into these struggles with more than simply a hope to achieve the immediate objective. How do we try to reshape power relationships to give more power to the people? When we are just protesting injustice and we are not using these struggles to reposition our movement and get into a more offensive posture. We are beginning to understand and practice the difference between the struggle for the reform and the struggle for rightful change. We have to keep those things in mind and hopefully the assembly movement and other collaborations will help build this kind of thing and strategic unity. ⍟

Dock Workers to Shut Down Bay Area Ports to Protest Police Killings

By JACK HEYMAN
http://www.counterpunch.org/heyman10182010.html

Oscar GrantEmotions ran high when longshore workers at their July membership meeting were addressed by Cephus Johnson, the uncle of Oscar Grant, the young black man who was killed by a cop at the Fruitvale BART station in Oakland on New Year’s Day 2009. Recounting the sidewalk mural in the front of the hiring hall near Fisherman’s Wharf that depicts two strikers lying face down with the inscription: “Two ILA (longshoremen) Shot in the Back, Police Murder”, he appealed to the union to support justice for his slain nephew. He said, “That mural shook me because that’s exactly what happened to Oscar”.

It got even hotter in the union hall when Jack Bryson took the mike. He is the father of two of Oscar Grant’s friends terrorized by police at the train station as they sat handcuffed and helpless watching their friend die and hearing him moan. Bryson reported that police were calling for a rally the following Monday in the lily-white suburb of Walnut Creek to demand that Johannes Mehserle the convicted killer cop go free. He asked the union members to join Oscar Grant supporters to protest the cop rally and they did. Outnumbering the 100 or so pro-Mehserle demonstrators by 3 to 1.

The New Year’s Day horror scene was videotaped by other young train passengers and broadcast on YouTube and TV news across the country. Grant, the father of a four  year old girl, worked as a butcher’s apprentice at Farmer Joe’s supermarket nearby on Fruitvale Avenue. The litany of police killings of innocent young black and Latino men has evoked a public outcry in California. Yet, when it comes to killer cops, especially around election time, with both the Democratic and Republican parties espousing law and order, the mainstream media either expunges or whitewashes the issue.

Angered by the pro-police rallies and news coverage calling for killer cop Mehserle’s freedom, Local 10 of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union has called for a labor and community rally October 23rd in Oakland to demand justice for Oscar Grant and the jailing of killer cops. Bay Area ports will shut down that day to stand with the black community and others against the scourge of police brutality.

Anthony Leviege, a longshore union rally organizer, said “Many unions, including the San Francisco and Alameda Labor Councils, have endorsed and are mobilizing for the rally. They see the need in the current economic crisis to build unity with the community to defend jobs, public education, health care and housing for all. And unions defending black and brown youth against police brutality is fundamental to that unity.”

In this race-caste society there’s nothing more controversial than a white cop convicted of killing a young black man like Oscar Grant… or of a black man like Mumia Abu-Jamal, framed by a corrupt and racist judicial system, accused of killing a white police officer when the opposite was the case. Jamal was nearly murdered by the police. His “crime” was that he didn’t die on the spot, as Oscar Grant did. Mumia, the Frederick Douglass of our time, exposes the hypocrisy of democracy in America while fighting for his life on death row in Pennsylvania. His possibly final hearing is set for November 9th. Killer cops belong in jail, their victims (those who survive like Mumia) should go free. But that’s not how justice in capitalist America works. The racist heritage of slavery is still with us.

Despite the election of its first black president, the United States has still not moved beyond the Supreme Court’s 1857 Dred Scott decision: “The Negro has no rights which the white man is bound to respect.” Just how deeply racism is embedded in the fabric of American society can be seen in President Obama’s “teachable moment” in the case of Harvard professor Henry Gates (arrested by police for “breaking into” his own home!). The president, a friend of Professor Gates, upon hearing of the bizarre arrest called it a “stupidity”. When police loudly objected, Obama quickly and apologetically retracted his characterization over a photo op with the cop, the professor and him over a friendly beer.

Civil rights activists who were targets of racist attacks used to joke that the KKK wore white at night and blue in the daytime. Killer cop Mehserle was convicted of “involuntary manslaughter,” though the videotapes show him shooting Grant as he lay passively face down about to be handcuffed. The media universally has tainted outraged protesters, blaming them for rioting while favoring Mehserle whose sentencing hearing is set for November 5. During a recent Giants’ baseball game in San Francisco Mehersle’s father was sympathetically interviewed on TV. But where is the justice for Oscar Grant’s family and his now 5 year old daughter?

LABOR MUST DEFEND MINORITIES AGAINST RACIST POLICE ATTACKS

The police murder of two strikers provoked the 1934 San Francisco General Strike. Seven maritime workers in all were killed by police in West Coast ports during a strike for the union hiring hall. Every July 5, Bloody Thursday, all ports on the West Coast are shut down to honor the labor martyrs. It’s a living legacy that burns deep in the hearts of longshore and other maritime workers.

Some have asked, what’s the connection between unions and the killing of a young black man? Plenty, according to Richard Washington, an Oakland longshoreman. He recalled the history of the longshore union and its struggle against the favoritism and racism of the “shape-up” hiring system that preceded the union hiring hall. At start of the 1934 S.F. Maritime Strike, Harry Bridges, head of the militant Strike Committee, appealed to the black community. Strikers implored blacks to support the strike and vowed to share work on the waterfront after their victory in the midst of the Great Depression when jobs were scarce, not unlike today. Blacks were integrated on the docks, a shining example being set by the San Francisco longshore local, and the union has been fighting against racist attacks and for working class unity since then.

A wall mural in the union hiring hall depicts the Red Angel, Elaine Black, of the International Labor Defense (ILD) during the ’34 Big Strike which defended strikers. ILD has a rich history in the radical labor movement, originally headed up by James P. Cannon, an early leading communist. The ILD’s pioneering class struggle defense began with the mass labor demonstrations defending Italian anarchist immigrant workers Sacco and Vanzetti, uniting all of the labor movement regardless of political differences.

In 2003, at the start of the U.S. war in Iraq, protesters in the port of Oakland and longshoremen were shot by Oakland riot police with “nonlethal” weapons. The UN Human Rights Commission condemned this police attack as “the most violent” police attack on antiwar demonstrators. Then-mayor Jerry Brown, now backed by the police in his bid for California governor, gave cops the green light. The rationale for the bloody attack was given by a spokesman for the state’s anti-terrorism agency newly formed by Democrat governor Gray Davis and Attorney General Bill Lockyer. The spokesman for the California Anti-Terrorism and Information Center in a twisted tautology said that anyone demonstrating against a war against terror could be a terrorist themselves. The OPD attack cost the city of Oakland a couple of million dollars when the dust settled.

ILWU longshoremen have given up a day’s wages time and again to show solidarity with dockworkers in Liverpool, England; Charleston, South Carolina; and Australia and to protest with dock actions on moral issues of the day like apartheid in South Africa, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, in defense of innocent death row prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal and recently the Israeli military killing of civilians bringing aid to Gaza by boat.

Now, the ILWU is calling on unions to link up with community organizations under their banner, “An Injury to One is an Injury to All.” From all accounts it’s a clarion call that will muster thousands fed up with the economic crisis and the scapegoating of minorities.

Jack Heyman, a working longshoreman, sits on the Executive Board of ILWU Local 10 and the Board of Directors of the John Brown Society. He has been active in all of the union’s struggles mentioned in this article.

A Fight for Jobs is Part of the Road to an Economic Recovery for the Working Class!

unemployment-315The policies, programs and priorities of the US government in dealing with the economy have always favored the rich over the needs of the masses of working class and poor people. Corporate deregulation, free trade agreements, anti-labor, anti-immigrant and racist, sexist and homophobic laws, along with massive spending on unjust wars, have helped to bring about the current crisis in the US and global economy.

The massive unemployment is a major aspect of the crisis facing the US working class. Some estimate the real unemployment at 25 million and growing.  Youth unemployment, especially among African Americans is over 40 percent.

The big corporations that closed profitable companies in the US over the past 30 years, to relocate to other countries to exploit cheap labor for greater profits, affecting worker’s pensions and healthcare coverage; and the banks that financed these corporate runaways and overpriced mortgages on refinanced homes for workers, are receiving hundreds of billions of dollars from the federal government to “stimulate” the economy, while the conditions of the working class get worse.

The funding for the education that is suppose to allow workers to “compete” in the global economy, is being cut in order to bail out the rich.  Working class young people are told to join the military and fight and die in unjust wars as the way to get an education.

A federally funded and corporate taxed jobs program must be part of the answer in addressing the crisis facing the working class.  A jobs program must have as its first priority, addressing the social problems facing the working class: the construction of affordable housing, universal healthcare and the construction of more hospitals and clinics; the construction of schools; the conversion of plants to serve the needs of the communities, especially the most oppressed; and cleaning up the environment.  Such a jobs program can create millions of family supporting and socially developing and productive jobs.

However, history shows that it takes a massive movement among the people, especially the working class, and led by the most oppressed sectors, to bring about the changes that benefit the masses of people. This was true in the struggle to end slavery; and during the civil rights period in the 1950s and 60s under the leadership of Dr. Martin L. King, Jr. and the many young activists that worked tirelessly to organize and empower people.

We cannot allow our deserved pride of electing a Black president, to silence our historical struggle for justice, democracy, power and liberation. There is too much at state not to hold everyone accountable for using their positions of power in government, and in organizing and mobilizing the power of the people, to help address the needs of the masses in finding solutions to the economic crisis, and to the capitalist system that continuously causes these crisis.

The fight for jobs must be organized in every city and community.  The trade unions must take up the fight for jobs, both in defense against the attacks on their members who are becoming increasing unemployed, and to help to build and support coalitions and unemployed councils that give the millions of workers, employed and unemployed and their allies, the organizations and a broad framework to fight for jobs, unionization and worker empowerment.

Peoples Assemblies should hold unemployed worker speak outs and rallies in communities and at unemployment offices to form unemployed councils, that develop the demands for jobs and income, and to build a powerful local, statewide and national movement for jobs.

Join or Form Peoples Assemblies and Help Build the Fight for Jobs.

The Representation We Need: An Open Letter to District 33 Candidates, RWCA Forum Participants and the Community at Large

The selection process to fill Dan Blue’s vacant seat is a sad reminder that in the last two and a half years our community has lost two strong advocates for the needs and rights of working and poor people. They set the bar fairly high.

Filing this vacancy comes at a unique and unprecedented time. We are calling it a “State of Emergency.”  The situation is well known to all: Depression level unemployment, mortgage foreclosures, and cutbacks in services from education to mental health care, with the promise of more furloughs for state employees. This is only the tip of the iceberg. They come on top of decades of underdevelopment in our communities.

We need leadership that is bold and accountable to the community.

1.)We need Representatives who are willing to fight for our community without fear of retaliation from business lobbyist, corporations and wealthy donors. In other words we do not want a representative whose chief concern is being re-elected.

2.)     We want Representatives who will RESIST efforts to use budget cuts as a way of dealing with the State financial crisis. We want them to raise revenues.

3.)     We want Representatives to fight to reform our tax system so that corporations and the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes to keep our state running.

4.)    We need Representatives that will continue to uphold our community’s historic tradition of supporting unions and workers rights. We want them to lead the legislative fight for collective bargaining rights for public employees.

5.)    We want Representatives to be accountable to the entire community not just party leaders and activists. Our representatives should meet with the community as a whole on a regular basis. We mean a People’s Assembly of CAC’s, civic and fraternal groups, congregations and unions and young people.  People’s Assemblies are being built in Raleigh, Rocky Mt. andOrange County. Many HKonJ partners are planning to build Assemblies.

In November we voted for change. Not just change in Washington but in our state and local communities. Change means real democratic participation. It means “from the bottom up.”

This is the change we need. This is the change we want. We support a new Representative who will rise to this level of accountability and leadership that our community so desperately needs. It will be our responsibility as a community to make sure this happens.

Black Workers for Justice-Raleigh/Wake Chapter
www.bwfj.org
bwfj@earthlink.net