Black/Latin@ unity stressed at labor banquet

Black Workers for Justice held its 23rd annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Support for Labor Banquet April 1 in Raleigh, N.C. BWFJ was also commemorating its 25 years of community, workplace and anti-imperialist organizing. The major theme of the banquet was “No to war, repression, racism... yes to peace, justice, reparations, human and workers rights.”

Baldemar Velasques, Farm Labor Organizing Committee, April 1. At left is BWFJ leader Ashaki Binta. WW photo: Monica Moorehead

BWFJ has a tradition of holding its banquet on the first Saturday in April to honor the memory of Dr. King, who was assassinated on April 4, 1968. King was not only a champion of civil rights but was an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam war and a proponent for workers’ rights. He was killed in Memphis, Tenn. while supporting striking sanitation workers, mainly Black men, who were struggling for a living wage, better working conditions and dignity.

A majority of the 300 or more people who attended the banquet were labor, com munity and political organizers, mainly from the South but from other regions of the country as well. BWFJ has a close working relationship with UE Locals 150 and 160 that are carrying out organizing drives to sign up hundreds of thousands of public-sector workers into unions through out North Carolina, a “right to work” state. North Carolina ranks 50th as the state with the lowest number of unionized workers.

BWFJ’s National vice-chair, Angaza Sababa Laughinghouse, stated in his welcoming remarks that the organization’s goal has been to build class-wide unity especially among African American, Latin@, Indigenous, women and white workers. The banquet was emceed by Nathanette Mayo.

BWFJ has had a close working relationship with the Farm Labor Organizing Com mittee that represents the interests of 8,000 migrant workers in North Carolina, who won their first union contract last year. The national president of FLOC, Bald emar Velasquez, traveled from Toledo, Ohio, to Raleigh to thank BWFJ for all the years of solidarity work.

Ashaki Binta, BWFJ’s Director of Organization, introduced Rueben Solis from the San Antonio, Texas-based South west Workers Union. He remarked on the historical links between racist repression at home with war abroad and U.S. capitalist expansion.

Saladin Muhammad, National Chair of BWFJ, introduced the banquet’s keynote speaker, Malcolm Suber, a leader of the People’s Hurricane Relief Fund based in New Orleans. Suber, a Hurricane Katrina survivor, publicly recognized several other survivors in the audience.

Suber spoke about how the local ruling class has taken full advantage of the Katrina tragedy to carry out union-busting tactics in New Orleans in order to gentrify the city. These tactics have led to the decertification of the teachers union and the transformation of public schools into charter schools. The union at Charity Hospital has also been decertified.

The upcoming April 22 mayoral election in New Orleans are threatening to disenfranchise tens of thousands of African-American voters who are still dispersed throughout the country because little to nothing has been done to rebuild the poorest sections of New Orleans.

Suber described how white contractors bring Latin@ workers to New Orleans to do the most dangerous clean-up work, especially getting rid of toxic waste without any kind of protection. After the work is completed, instead of these undocumented workers getting paid a decent wage, the contractors often turn them into the Immigration Naturalization Service for deportation.

Suber stated, “If the levees had been repaired before the storm, we would not have to pay billions of dollars to rebuild...We have to take on the monster of the world that is drowning people here and around the world.... We have to join the struggle of immigrants with the struggle of Gulf Coast survivors.”