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Black struggle commemorated

Published Feb 17, 2005 10:04 PM

An extraordinary panel of Black leaders spoke at a Black History Month forum sponsored by Workers World Party Feb. 12. The event was held at the African American Art & Culture Complex in San Francisco.

Dr. Henry Clark, executive director of the West County Toxics Coalition, connected racism to the high unemployment and prison rates and the dumping of toxic chemicals in low income, predominantly Black communities.

"They say, 'look at all the jobs the Chev ron Texaco refinery is giving you' in Rich mond, Calif.," Clark said. Instead of jobs "we've got high rates of children's asthma, high rates of cancer and 33 percent more lung cancer than the state average."

Just as corporate greed hurts communities of color, so too is U.S. imperialism trying to dominate the world, Clark said. He pointed to the lie of the Bush Admini stration that it was removing Iraqi Presi dent Saddam Hussein because he repressed Iraqis.

"In terms of using their own people, no one can beat the U.S. government," Clark said. "The U.S. government dropped bombs on the people of Philadelphia. The FBI's Cointelpro killed people in the Black Panther Party and Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. The government is still holding Black Panthers and Leonard Peltier in prison."

Monica Moorehead, a Workers World Party national leader, spoke about the political and economic inequality that exists between Black and white--the disparity in income, education, health care and mortality.

Racism, sexism and lesbian/gay/bi/ trans oppression are special oppressions because they occur on top of the exploitation workers face, Moorehead said. Bush's 2006 budget calls for the slashing of more than 150 social programs, which will hurt Black people and other people of color in grossly disproportionate numbers while giving more funds to the warmakers.

"This is all-important to bring up because there are those in the progressive movement who still cling to the erroneous view that the class struggle is over here and racism and other special oppressions are over there, as if one is divorced from the other--that somehow even within the working class we are all equal when in reality there is inequality," Moorehead said.

"Racism is the center of the class struggle in this country. Racism is the main weapon that the bosses use not only to super-exploit and super-oppress whole peoples based on their nationality, but to divide and conquer the multinational working class to keep us from uniting against all of the injustices."

Moorehead said the only way workers can win the struggle against the bosses, who are trying to take back all the gains won in the 1930s and 1960s, is to merge the anti-war struggle with the struggles of workers and the oppressed. And the way to do that, she said, is with strong working-class leadership--like that provided by the leaders of the Million Worker March movement.

Clarence Thomas from the Interna tional Longshore and Warehouse Union, a national co-convener of the Million Worker March, spoke about the legacy on which the MWM movement is based. A group of Black trade unionists launched their own MWM--the March on Wash ing ton Movement--in 1941. The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters planned to bring 100,000 people to the National Mall to protest discrimination, particularly in the defense and civil service industries.

The march was called off when Presi dent Franklin Roosevelt signed an executive order calling for an end to discrimination in these industries and established the Fair Employment Practices Commission.

Thomas also recalled the great strike of 1934 when dock workers demanded the right to a union hall, to control the dispatching of jobs and to have collective bargaining. "At the time Black workers were used as scabs to cross the picket line," Thomas said.

Harry Bridges, a founder of the ILWU, went to the Black congregations in Oak land and San Francisco and told them he'd make them members of the union if they refused to cross the picket line.

"Harry was a Marxist ... and understood that racism was a tool of the bosses," Thomas said.

"The white working class needs to understand that the struggle to end racism is right up there with the class struggle because they're linked together--there is no either-or," Thomas continued.

Thomas said the call of C.L. Dellums, an organizer of the railroad car porters--"Fight or be slaves"--reminds him of the Million Worker March slogan, "Speaking and mobilizing in our own name independent of Republican and Democratic parties."

He called for reclaiming May Day with the slogan: "Stop feeding the Pentagon and starving the cities."

Arthur League, a member of a prisoner solidarity community group, All of Us or None, stated: "When people fight back this place is set up to make the most extreme examples of them. They won't walk out of prison unless and until everywhere we stand and everywhere we speak we remember these people."

League said All of Us or None is fighting the sanctioned discrimination that former prisoners face. Convicted felons are unable to get jobs, are cut off from welfare, are denied housing and food stamps. The group recently held a demonstration outside Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown's house after he announced plans to impose a curfew on parolees.

"If you've been convicted of a felony," League said, "you're a legal slave in the United States."

Sandburg chaired the Feb. 12 forum.