Author Archives: jillian

by BWFJ Executive Committee

The Black Workers for Justice joins the tens of millions of people around the world who are outraged by the vicious assault by the Israeli Defense Force on the Gaza Strip.  As of New Years Eve, the death toll is 380 Palestinians with over 1400 injured, overwhelmingly civilians. Innocent men, women and children in the densely populated city of 1.5 million people continue to be at risk.

This blatant and extreme violation of human rights and international law must end immediately. We are calling on all legislators, the Bush administration and President- Elect Obama to use the considerable political and financial influence they have to make the Israelis cease the bombings. Politics and the strength of the Israeli lobby in the US cannot continue to put the lives of millions of people at risk in what is becoming one of the worst humanitarian crises of this era.

Infrastructure has been destroyed including schools and factories while hospitals have been overwhelmed with the sick and injured. The current need for food and medical supplies has been worsened by the continuing blockade that prohibits fuel, food, equipment and other humanitarian goods from coming into the city. This has been the case for 18 months. In the current crisis seriously injured people who need treatment in Egypt due to lack of adequate medical facilities in the Gaza are experiencing difficulties in crossing the borders.  There has been a lack of electricity and other essential services resulting in deplorable conditions for residents.  The UN reported a Human Dignity Crisis on December 18, days before the bombing commenced.

Occupation and Resistance

We recognize that the Palestinians are resisting an occupation and the use of military force is permitted under international law. This does not justify targeting civilians. On the same token Israeli responses that clearly cannot avoid non-combatants is not justifiable or legitimate self defense. Moreover, what amounts to collective punishment is a violation of international law and is immoral in the extreme.

The Occupation of Palestinian territory is classic colonialism with apartheid features including a wall that restricts people’s movement for work, business, culture and family life. This Occupation continues to be supported by the US government. The F-16s and Apache helicopters as well as the TOW, Hellfire and Bunker missiles that are being used are provided by theUS government meaning that our tax dollars support this carnage and oppression. The US government provides Israel with $3 billion in military aid annually.

Black People Express Their Humanity

Our history and recent experiences remind us of how white supremacist and imperialist regimes respond to misery and suffering.  The legacy of slavery and Jim Crow segregation should be a constant reminder to us. Katrina, our most recent experience with inhumane policies and treatment should move us to determined and immediate support for Palestinians. We feel the pain of the Palestinian people.

We have to resist the call of misguided Black religious leaders who think this is fulfillment of prophecy and scriptures. We have to listen to the faith leaders that understand that this is a case of politics and an affront to the very faith traditions they profess. They recall that for a century there were those that justified slavery and racism based on their distorted religious understandings.

Stand Up and Speak Out

Black people and workers in particular must be in the forefront of the growing resistance to this atrocity. We will join with religious, labor and community groups. We will unite with Arab, Muslim and other advocacy groups. We will collect funds and material aid for the embattled families of the Gaza Strip. We condemn the ramming and damaging of the humanitarian ship bringing supplies to the Gaza and support the efforts of former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney to come to the aid of Palestinians.

We especially call on President Elect Obama to take the mandate for Change to alter US policy regarding the Israeli/Palestinian situation. This means an immediate halt to the bombings. It means forcing Israel to engage in peace negotiations with all the elected representatives of the Palestinian people.

Black Workers for Justice
December 31, 2008

by Ajamu Dillahunt

Good morning Brothers and Sisters. We want to thank the Mississippi Workers Center for giving us an opportunity to make a solidarity statement. We all owe them a tremendous debt of gratitude for bringing SHROC VII to North Carolina. We are clear that they did not bring it here just because we need to come together for this kind of conversation and learning, but because there is struggle here. They identified the struggle for human rights and a union at Smithfield Foods as one that need to be supported, so they came. They saw the fight for Environmental Justice in Eastern North Carolina, and they came.

We also want to appreciate the Center and the Southern Human Rights Organizers Network for understanding the particularities of the South and the need to build a fight in a region with a legacy of Slavery; a legacy that can be seen everyday in our economic, political and social institutions.

And of course, we must lift up the Human Rights framework, which for us is the continuation of the work of Malcolm X and other Black heroes and sheroes.

There is a song that is popular among jazz vocalist called “I’ll Remember April.” Another title comes to mind this morning. It should be called “I’ll Remember December.” We will remember the fight and victory of the workers at Republic Windows and Doors who, led by their union, UE 1110, occupied their plant for six days and electrified the workers movement in this country and abroad. As we have said “the plant occupation symbolized workers exercising their power to control the wealth that they produce that creates profits for the banks and corporations. They were saying by their actions that a living wage job or income is a human right.

We will also remember the victory of the workers at Smithfield Foods for recognition of their union, the UFCW. After more than 15 years of struggle they have won the right for a voice at work and a contract.

And of course we will remember SHROC VII. The song about April ends with the words, “I’ll remember April and I’ll cry.” Our song might end with, “I’ll remember December and I’ll shout for joy, dance and get ready to fight some more.”

To be sure compañeros there is so much more to be done. The fight for collective bargaining for public employees in N.C. and other Southern States is front and center on our agenda. A massive public works program aimed specifically at New Orl3an and the Gulf Coast is imperative and must be at the top of our agendas.

We have to continue our engagement in the fight for a just immigration policy. Within that fight we will strive to build unity among African descendants in this hemisphere and unity between Black and Latino communities.

We have two other challenges for workers here in N.C.  It is critical to support the members of  IAM Local W369 who have been on strike against the Moncure Plywood Company since July 21. Likewise our brothers and sisters who labor in the fields need our support as their union, the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) struggles to get the tobacco manufacturing giant, R.J. Reynolds to sit down and negotiate with them and the growers.

And we are challenged to broaden and intensify the struggle against patriarchy and homophobia. This is not a separate fight but must be integrated into every interaction we have with each other and every political project we initiate or participate in.

There is Change in the air. We made it happen in November. In fact one of the slogans in the Smithfield struggle was “we changed the White House, we can change the Hog House. The message is clear that this change will have to come from below, from the grassroots, from our communities.

All of us here embrace the need for organization. We are calling for people to build People’s Assemblies that bring together organizations, old and new activists, churches and union, to work on local agendas for change that we need to get us through this difficult period of crisis of layoffs, evictions, war and the looming repression.

Finally, we would invite you all to join us on April 4, 2009 for the 25^th Annual Martin Luther King Support for Labor Banquet. We are excited to have our friend and comrade Jaribu Hill as the keynote speaker. Please put this on your calendar.

As Salia Warren’s young daughter always reminds us, brothers and sisters, “Power to the People.”

by Saladin Muhammad

The Obama campaign and his election as the next US president, has helped to create a level of enthusiasm and hope among working class Blacks, people of color and sectors of the general working class that is beginning to break their apathy, cynicism and lack of confidence in challenging and changing conditions of oppression and exploitation in society. We can see the energizing affects on many BWFJ members and base areas that have been less active in the past.

The Obama campaign gave everyday people a sense of inclusion and control in shaping the organizational base and issues of the campaign. It was not the traditional Democratic Party campaign where the local party structures controlled the flow and resources of the campaign.

The Peoples Assemblies represent one of the new organizational and political forms that began during the Obama campaign that now must go forward to work to unite and develop the mass base and movement needed to promote a people’s democratic agenda as part of the mandate associated with this historical election and victory.

The state of the US and global economy and political situation, will make the implementing of major changes that begin to address the needs of the majority of the people, especially the most oppressed sectors, nearly impossible without a peoples movement that organizes and pushes for these changes.

It is very important that the demands and struggles for changes inside the US, be carried out within an international context, so that they don’t come about at the expense of the continued oppression and exploitation of peoples in other countries.

This raises the importance of our struggles having an international human rights framework to help shape the scope of demands, tactics and alliances that are necessary for waging the struggles in this period.

Summing up the Basics and Where We Go from Here

It’s important to assess if our work in building Peoples Assemblies had an identity within this campaign that focused on mobilizing particular constituencies and struggles.

There was room for organizations with varying views on the positions projected by Obama, to participate in and maintain their independent organizational identities. In fact, some organizations projected particular slogans that gave political meaning to their involvement such as “Take Back the Vote”, a campaign by the Miami Workers Center in Miami Florida.  They brought their organizational colors, culture, local demands and developed targets, goals and broad organizational forms for their work in the campaign. This was their way of using the campaign to help build more long term peoples organization and political vision in preparation for the new phase of struggle that must take place after the elections.

Did our voter registration activities target particular workplaces and neighborhoods where we work, live, are active and want to get more active? Did we put out literature that promoted a reason for our constituencies to mobilize for Obama? Did we encourage those areas to promote their issues and demands within the electoral activities, like the platform input called for by Obama, bringing issues to the Obama rallies, organizing discussions about the issues in our unions, churches, schools and workplaces? Did we work together with other progressive forces within these venues? Were women and young people drawn to, active and playing leading roles in this work?

Now that the election is over, what is the task of the Peoples Assembly? How can Peoples Assemblies become the new forms of people’s democracy that democratically involves various grassroots organizations and constituencies in developing a Peoples agenda, mobilizing their bases, and building a mass movement that brings forth a peoples mandate for democracy? How can Peoples Assemblies be promoted throughout the South as democratic forms of a Southern Human Rights movement?  Can the Green Ribbon – We Charge Genocide Campaign be further developed and popularized as a major aspect of the Peoples Assemblies working for the development of a Southern Human Rights Manifesto?

With the election of Obama as the next US president, and the attempts by the establishment to promote it as some kind of proof that the US has abolished institutionalized racism, it is especially important that the Black working class community be a main organized base of the Peoples Assemblies, so that a mandate for people’s democracy speaks and mobilizes strongly around the issues of racism, national oppression and for self-determination.

The Peoples Assemblies must now form constituent working groups to begin targeting organizations and constituencies that become the base for organizing and developing constituent assemblies around a Peoples Agenda.

The BWFJ must recruit and train new members to help carry out the work of building People’s Assemblies, with a main emphasis and focus on organizing, training and bringing forward leadership from the Black working class, especially among younger forces, as a main task for this period.

This is a period when a new generation of activists can be more sharply politicized about the fundamental contradictions of capitalism and the need for a radical social justice alternative and transformation of society that grows out of the realities of the histories, conditions, struggles and experiences of the oppressed and exploited peoples inside the US and internationally.

The excitement about the 2008 US presidential election and the possibility of electing Obama as a candidate promising progressive change, must not let us forget about the power of those who own and control the wealth of the US and global economy to influence the decisions of the government even when it goes against the interests of the masses of people. This is not democracy for the masses; only for the rich!

Electing Obama without building a powerful peoples movement, will not bring about the changes we hope for and badly need, and those that Dr. King and millions struggled, shed blood, went to jail and died for.

Pressures are being placed on Obama daily to follow the dictates of the big banks, insurance companies and corporations. He along with others in Congress voted for the government to grant the $700 billion dollar shameful bailout to those corporations that charge super high interests on home mortgages and student loans; are closing plants, cutting jobs, and who pay their CEO’s multi-million dollar salaries.

Supporters of Obama must also challenge him to fight for the changes being called for by the millions of workers and oppressed communities who continue to be exploited by those corporations that the government is using the taxpayer’s money to bailout.

This bailout will have negative affects on the working class and our communities, especially Black, Latino and other people of color. We must be organized to demand that our communities and needs don’t go neglected – our jobs, wages, education, housing, healthcare, public services and other basic democratic and human rights.

A strong working class based democratic movement is needed to unite people at our workplaces, communities and major institutions throughout the society where our power can be exercised to directly impact those in power.

We need a mass movement that develops a vision and organizes for serious change.  It must have the energy of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60, the internationalism of the 1970s, and the involvement and leadership of workers, women, young people and students, especially from Black and other oppressed communities.

Peoples Assemblies can help to rebuild the type of movement that draws on the lessons of the past struggles, incorporates new approaches and skills developed by the current generation, and that democratically involves people in having a voice in deciding and acting collectively to struggle to improve and change conditions in society.

Dr King said: “If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.”

Launch people’s movement in your area by building a Peoples Assembly!