Over 1,000 coal miners have been on strike against Warrior Met in Brookwood, Alabama since April 1. A massive solidarity rally was held in Brookwood on August 1 drawing over a thousand supporters from the South and other areas of the country.
Southern dock workers, members of ILA (International Longshoreman’s Association)locals from Charleston, Savannah, Jacksonville and Mobile joined other union members of supporters in the massive show of solidarity. The Southern Workers Assembly interviewed two activists who participated.
Black Workers for Justice, for the past 34 years, has held an annual banquet to lift up the role Dr. King played in support of workers across the country as well as in Memphis where he was assassinated. While we all acknowledge on his birthday in January his contribution to the fight to lift the oppressed out of their suffering we have focused on April 4th, the date of his assassination. We feel that it is critical to never lose sight of why he was killed, what he was engaged in and the political and economic forces that wanted to silence him.
As we await today’s count of the Bessemer Amazon union vote, it’s important to remember what this campaign means regardless of the outcome of the union vote. Bessemer has opened a new period for the labor movement’s opportunity to organize in the US South, and of the important role of Black workers in championing this strategic direction.
Taking on the world’s second largest corporation in a region where all of the Southern states combined have less union members than the state of New York alone, and where the legacy of Black enslavement still divides the working-class in social, political and economic ways, the Bessemer campaign objectively represents a struggle to build workers power against the power of a global corporation and thus against global capitalism.
February 20th witnessed support actions across the country in support of the efforts of Amazon workers in Bessemer, Alabama to be represented by the Retail Wholesale and Department Store Workers Union. In total, there were 23 across the South and between 50 – 55 nationally. The broad support for this organizing is encouraging and an indication of how much people across the country understand the need for unions and are willing to get involved.
Organizations representing and advocating for oppressed communities have historically taken a stand in support of the right to organize understanding the importance of organization for all workers in general and Black workers in particular. Black civil rights and Black Liberation organizations have always engaged in or supported efforts to build the power of workers on the job and in the community
The BWFJ is an organization of Black workers formed in December of 1982 out of a struggle led by Black women workers at a K-mart store in Rocky Mount, North Carolina against race and gender discrimination. After organizing a boycott of the local K-mart store and reaching out to workers at other workplaces and communities, Black workers and community activists from 10 counties met at the First Missionary Baptist Church in Fremont, NC in December 1982 to form BWFJ as a statewide organization.
