ckaihatsu
1st July 2017, 16:30
Uniting the Battlefronts Against the War on Black America - by Saladin Muhammad --- Plus Registration Information for the Labor Fightback Conference
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IN THIS MESSAGE:
(1) Uniting the Battlefronts Against the War on Black America -- by Saladin Muhammad (presentation delivered at UNAC Conference on June 17, 2017)
(2) Information & Registration for Labor Fightback Conference (Cleveland, OH -- July 21-23); a representative of the Appeal for a National Assembly for Black Liberation will address the Labor Fightback Conference -- Please Register Today!
* * * * * * * * * *
Uniting the Battlefronts Against the War on Black America
By Saladin Muhammad
[Note: Following is the presentation by Saladin Muhammad, a leader of the Southern Workers Assembly, to a plenary session of the United National Anti-war Coalition (UNAC) conference in Richmond, Virginia, on June 17, 2017.]
The intensifying state, economic and political attacks on the Black masses and the working class and dispossessed of other oppressed peoples inside the US, are the sharpest examples of the US wars at home violating US constitutional and international human rights. Therefore, some forces within the Black liberation movement have promoted the slogan – Stop the War on Black America.
The development of the US to its current imperialist stage is marked by a history of political, social, economic and military wars and domination to maintain the oppression and subjugation of the Black masses to accumulate capital, and to expand its domination throughout the Americas and globally.
This has been a major factor shaping the Black national consciousness and history of Black national and international resistance, including the emergence of an underground armed wing, and political prisoners and prisoners of war, some that have been languishing in the US prisons for over 45 years.
The demand and struggle for their humane treatment and freedom from the prison-industrial complex must be an important part of the work of the national Black liberation movement and the US and international anti-war movement.
The spontaneous character of the national Black resistance and the failure to develop a national framework to unite the fragmented forces of the national Black liberation movement around a strategic program, especially in this racist and neo-fascist period, has not helped to build the national confidence of the Black masses to see the Black liberation movement as a leading, powerful and transformative social force.
While those on the left see opposition to imperialist wars as a fundamental obligation of our Internationalism; hopefully most of us would agree that oppressed people fighting for centuries to end their oppression, exploitation and denial of basic democratic and human rights; experiencing varying degrees of unity, compromises and acts of betrayal within and by allies, don’t become internationalists simply by a moral consciousness and political rhetoric alone.
The masses of Black and other oppressed nations, nationalities and peoples inside the US, want to know and see concretely how a US anti-war movement characterized mainly as a white middle-class led movement in a country that still affords a level of white skin privilege, works to win the white working-class to oppose the criminalization, occupation, State and white supremacist racist violence against the Black masses that represents a War on Black America.
The Black and general left must be rooted in the working-class sectors of the national, social and labor movements to help them understand how their struggles are connected in a system of global capitalism reinforced by the US international military industrial complex.
Opposition to Imperialist wars at home and abroad must be one of the major battlefronts and national demands of the Black liberation movement. Without this connection to the national Black liberation movement, politicizing and mobilizing the Black masses against every aspect of the US imperialist pro-war culture and prison and military industrial complex, it will be mistakenly viewed as a separate and autonomous movement that Black people are being asked to join. This has been a factor weakening the presence of the Black masses in anti-war movement actions, especially during the Obama administration.
The Black civil rights and Black liberation movements have been catalysts helping to create the conditions for the emergence and escalation of the anti-war and other social movements. However, the spontaneous state of the current Black national resistance has not yet unified the many single-issue struggles and social movements into common battlefronts anchoring and leading a conscious anti-racist, sexist, anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist national Black liberation movement. Without common battlefronts including against imperialist wars, single-issue struggles can become isolated and smashed by the increasing State repression.
The fragmented forces of the national Black liberation movement need to hold a National Assembly for Black Liberation to unite the many single-issue struggles, social movements and revolutionary organizations in a national coordinating framework and around a strategic program based on an 80 – 20 percent principle, where agreement does not have to be around every demand, but around some core demands that connect the battlefronts in an anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, anti-racist and anti-sexist movement under the leadership of the Black working-class.
A Draft Freedom Manifesto has been developed as part of a process toward organizing for a National Assembly for Black Liberation. It has begun to generate discussions and input from activists in mass, social movement and political organizations. A weekly online bulletin goes out informing subscribers about single-issue and intersectional struggles in the US and internationally, about the programs of various movement building coalitions, and the cultural history of the Black liberation movement.
Following the urban rebellions and the rise of the Black Power Movement in the 1960s, national liberation and anti-imperialist demands began to emerge amidst the civil rights movement. National Black Power Conferences were held following the spontaneous urban rebellions to hammer out demands, the framing of the nature of Black national oppression and a strategic program for the Black liberation movement. They attempted to connect the struggles for reforms to a struggle for Black liberation.
Some saw it as a form of US domestic colonialism as was in South Africa, with structural racism of a capitalist system subjugating Black people in all the social and political institutions and in the economy, denying them basic constitutional and international human rights, highlighted by the conditions of Jim Crow in the US South.
This placed the struggle against racism within the context of the international struggles against colonialism in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean that were the foremost revolutionary struggles against imperialism in that period.
There were class and ideological differences at these conferences that characterized the relationship of forces within the Black liberation movement. But all agreed that the US was a racist system and a fundament part of the capitalist system that takes a major mass struggle to reform and radically transform.
Black workers at the point of production and service helped to sharpen the importance of the Black working-class in the Black liberation struggle and the need for it to have an anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist program. This was not simply an ideological declaration expressed by some forces.
Black workers had to demonstrate their power and leadership through organization, political education and action. Black worker caucuses brought Black liberation movement demands into the trade unions and the labor movement. Organized and conscious Black workers helped to give the Black masses a sense of our collective power to impact the profits and operations of capitalism and the State.
In 1965 when the US troops landed in Vietnam to begin this imperialist war, Brother General Baker, a Black worker at Dodge Main in Detroit and later co-founder of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, responded to a US military draft letter declaring that he would only fight when the call was made to free the oppressed and exploited nations and people around the world, and Black people in the US.
For too long a time, many of the left have refused to recognize the existence of a national Black liberation movement, and simply saw the struggles of the Black masses as an anti-racist struggle that could only become a revolutionary force when they become politically united as part of a radicalized majority white US working-class movement. Some, but not enough, white workers have demonstrated their revolutionary working-class consciousness and practice, but they have not been the catalyst for the US anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist struggles for many, many years.
The struggles for US reforms inside of the US led by the middle-class with no connection to radical social and revolutionary movements fighting for fundamental structural changes, can leave the Black masses vulnerable to embracing aspect of US national chauvinism against other oppressed people, especially immigrants forced to come to the US because of wars, displacement, extreme poverty and repression caused by the US and other imperialist countries.
The US ruling-class that controls both major political parties and the corporate-owned media understands, promotes and exploits this US national chauvinism. The Bush administration appointed Colin Powell as Chairman of the Military Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1989 and to the position of Secretary of State, and Condoleezza Rice as Powell’s National Security Advisor in 2000, as the US prepared to invade Iraq. Its support for the election of Obama to US President in 2008 and 2012 quieted Black mass opposition to US imperialist wars and elevated the identity of the Black political mis-leadership class.
There have been important strategic opportunities for a unified national Black liberation movement to build regional zones of struggle like around the Gulf Coast disaster triggered Hurricane Katrina. It had the potential for building a Gulf Coast Reconstruction Movement, getting support from other oppressed and working-class sectors within the US and from international forces.
It could have developed Reconstruction in the Gulf Coast as a national and international mandate for the last term of the Bush administration and for the 2008 Obama election campaign and his presidential administration. But when there is no national framework for prioritizing national struggles and demands and comradely engagement in unity-struggle-unity, the Black left can becomes divided and unable to work together at critical times and historical periods.
We see this UNAC conference as a very important step in building a non-sectarian US anti-war movement. We call on the participants to endorse and support the holding of a National Assembly for Black Liberation. A National Assembly for Black Liberation can develop demands and actions to oppose US wars as an organic part of a unifying program of the national Black liberation movement.
Unite the Battlefronts to Stop the War on Black America and on ALL Oppressed and Exploited Peoples and Struggles in the US and Abroad!
* * * * * * * * * *
Information & Registration for Labor Fightback Conference (Cleveland, OH -- July 21-23, 2017)
Dear Sisters and Brothers,
The Third National Conference of the Labor Fightback Network (Cleveland, Ohio -- July 21-23, 2017) is less than one month away. We are sending you this message with the urgent request that you register today for the conference.
We have received a very enthusiastic response to the Conference Call, and dozens of dynamic and seasoned organizers and activists from all across the country have agreed to speak at our plenary sessions and in our workshops -- all with the aim of kicking off a very needed discussion on the need for a new strategy for the labor movement and for the communities of the oppressed.
We need you to be there. Information on workshops, speakers, registration, housing, costs, and other logistics are included on the conference website [click here (http://laborfightback.org/conference2017/)]. Excerpts from the Conference Call -- as well as the Conference Agenda and the list of conference workshops -- are also included below. Please register today [click here (http://laborfightback.org/conference2017/registration.htm)]!
We look forward to seeing you in Cleveland.
In solidarity,
The Steering Committee of the
Labor Fightback Network
* * * * * * * * * *
Excerpts from the Call to the Third National Conference of the Labor Fightback Network (July 21-23, 2017 — Cleveland, Ohio)
The big question now is: What direction for the growing Resistance movement? Does it get channeled back into the Democratic Party, as so many politicians are already urging, or does it chart a new and independent course?
And what should labor’s role be in all this? If the strategies employed by the labor movement in recent years have not worked, what will?
Should the labor movement continue to rely on Democrats and heed the call to bring back the Democrats in 2018? Can the Democratic Party be “reformed,” as Bernie Sanders is proposing?
Or should labor embrace a new strategy, an independent mass-action strategy (including mass strike action, following the example of ILWU Local 10’s port shutdown in Oakland, Calif., on Inauguration Day) with hundreds of thousands of union members in the streets, in union contingents, joining with the millions who, since the epic January 21 Women’s March, have launched this ever-growing Resistance movement? Should labor not be making common cause with the activists and youth fighting against misogyny, racism and police violence, homophobia, immigrant-bashing, Islamophobia, environmental degradation, and other such scourges?
And should such a mass-action strategy not be coupled with the drive to promote labor’s own independent political voice in the electoral arena, including the possibility of running independent labor-community candidates for local office?
These discussions are already taking place on the campuses, in the union halls, and on the shop floors. New appeals are springing forth calling on Bernie Sanders to form his own party, or calling on labor to form its own party.
There is a growing sense that labor needs a new strategy, a new direction. But what direction is this exactly?
We need to share our ideas, our proposals, our energy, and our dedication to a better future — indeed, simply a future — for working people. For that reason the Labor Fightback Network calls on working people dedicated to peace and social justice, whether union members or not, to attend a national conference at Cleveland State University in Cleveland, Ohio, from the afternoon of Friday, July 21, through the morning of Sunday, July 23.
We need you to be there. Information on workshops, speakers, registration, housing, costs, and other logistics are included on the conference website [click here (http://laborfightback.org/conference2017/)]. The Conference Agenda and list of workshops is also included below.
Please register today [click here (http://laborfightback.org/conference2017/registration.htm)]!
* * * * * * * * * *
Labor Fightback Conference 2017
Conference Agenda
Friday, July 21, 2017
2:30 pm—Registration, continuing throughout conference
7:30 pm—Conference Opening and Welcome
7:40 pm—Panel Discussion and floor discussion on electoral strategy
10:00 pm—Recess for the night
Saturday, July 22, 2017
8:00 am—Continental Breakfast
8:45 am—General Welcome and Housekeeping, Guidelines and Layout for the Conference
9:00 am—Plenary Session: Report on Conference Goals and Objectives by LFN National Secretary Tom Bias
9:20 am—Report on Workshop Logistics (LFN)
9:30 am—Workshops (6) [See below or go to website]
11:00 am—Break
11:20 am—Workshops (6) [See below or go to website]
12:50 pm—Lunch
1:50 pm—Workshops (6) [See below or go to website]
3:45 pm—Plenary session: Workshop reports
5:15 pm—Break
6:00 pm—Buffet Dinner
7:00 pm—Evening Program
10:00 pm—Recess for the night
Sunday, July 23
8:00 am—Continental Breakfast
9:00 am—Plenary session: Report on “Where do we go next?” It will summarize ideas presented by workshops and speakers throughout the conference and how they complement or contradict the beginning presentation on Saturday.
9:30 am—Plenary discussion to include development of potential resolutions, sharing of group strategies.
12:30 pm — Closing, at which time we will sing “Solidarity Forever” and adjourn.
* * * * * * * * * *
Labor Fightback Network National Conference 2017
Cleveland State University, July 21-23
Workshop Descriptions
1. Single-Payer Health Care
This workshop will focus on the campaign to win Medicare for All, as proposed in Bill HR 676 in the House of Representatives. It will also discuss single-payer health plans on the state level.
2. Reaching Out to the Faith Communities
As clergy and lay people in many faith communities stand up for peace, justice, and the environment, we see a new opportunity for collaboration between religious groups and the labor movement. What does the labor movement need to do? What do the congregations need to do? What obstacles stand in the way of united action? This workshop will consider these and other questions.
3. Fighting for Black Lives and Against Police Brutality
How can the labor movement lend its strength to the campaign against police brutality—including police murder—of African-American youth? This workshop will examine the situation in the Communities of Color, including the murder of unarmed young men and women, mass incarceration, the so-called “war on drugs,” and other crises as well.
4. Standing Rock, Climate Change, and the Struggle for the Planet
Defending our air, water, and food supply and working to slow down and ultimately stop the climate change which threatens our continued existence could be the biggest challenge that human society faces. How can the labor movement join with environmentalists in our communities and put new winning strategies to work? Bring your ideas, and let’s talk about it!
5. Immigrant Rights and the Fight Against Islamophobia
Nothing has defined the Trump agenda quite so much its attacks on the Islamic community and all immigrant communities. Some of the largest and most effective Resistance actions have centered on standing up in defense of immigrants and refugees. How can working people help to move the struggle forward? That is what this workshop will discuss.
6. Defending the Union Shop and Fighting for a Living Wage
As Congress begins consideration of a national Right-to-Work (for Less) law, working people have been in the streets demanding the passage of a $15/hour minimum wage, a struggle which has been successful in a number of areas. What does the labor movement need to do to protect its right to organize and insure that all workers receive wages sufficient to support their families?
7. Defending Public Education and Organizing Teachers
Children’s right to an education is threatened on many levels, including underfunded and crumbling public schools and for-profit charter schools. Meanwhile, teachers from kindergarten to community college and university are finding it increasingly difficult to earn a living. Let’s discuss a winning fightback strategy for teachers and their students.
8. Organizing Students and Young People
The economic crisis has hit young people especially hard. The lack of employment opportunities, crushing student debt, and the seeming impossibility of living independently as young adults are challenges faced by young people of all communities. This workshop will discuss how young people can organize themselves and what the labor movement can do to address the challenges.
9. Defending a Woman’s Right to Choose and Equal Pay for Women
Women were the first to mobilize in the streets in resistance to the Trump administration’s agenda, and they did so in the millions. How can working women and men rise to challenges of defending Planned Parenthood, defending the Roe v Wade Supreme Court decision, and fighting against wage discrimination, harassment on the job and in the schools, and domestic violence? Those and other challenges will be discussed in this workshop.
10. Independent Electoral Activity and Winning Ballot Access
Dissatisfaction with the Democratic and Republican parties is at all-time high. This workshop will share the experiences of independent electoral campaigns and will discuss the opportunities for labor and its community allies to field candidates for public office. It will also discuss some of the nuts-and-bolts challenges of getting on the ballot, raising money, and getting out the vote.
11. Out Now! Stopping U.S. Intervention, Occupation, and War Throughout the World
The Trump administration is continuing the policy of the U.S. sticking its nose into places where it does not belong, in the Middle East, Asia, Latin America, and even parts of Europe. Its budget increases the share of U.S. tax dollars going to military spending at the expense of the social safety net. Defeating militarism and the drive toward war is what this workshop will discuss.
12. Organizing in the Southern States
Organizing unions in the South, where so-called Right-To-Work laws prevail, has been a special challenge for the labor movement for nearly seventy years. This workshop will discuss the progress that trade unionists have made and the challenges that remain.
--
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IN THIS MESSAGE:
(1) Uniting the Battlefronts Against the War on Black America -- by Saladin Muhammad (presentation delivered at UNAC Conference on June 17, 2017)
(2) Information & Registration for Labor Fightback Conference (Cleveland, OH -- July 21-23); a representative of the Appeal for a National Assembly for Black Liberation will address the Labor Fightback Conference -- Please Register Today!
* * * * * * * * * *
Uniting the Battlefronts Against the War on Black America
By Saladin Muhammad
[Note: Following is the presentation by Saladin Muhammad, a leader of the Southern Workers Assembly, to a plenary session of the United National Anti-war Coalition (UNAC) conference in Richmond, Virginia, on June 17, 2017.]
The intensifying state, economic and political attacks on the Black masses and the working class and dispossessed of other oppressed peoples inside the US, are the sharpest examples of the US wars at home violating US constitutional and international human rights. Therefore, some forces within the Black liberation movement have promoted the slogan – Stop the War on Black America.
The development of the US to its current imperialist stage is marked by a history of political, social, economic and military wars and domination to maintain the oppression and subjugation of the Black masses to accumulate capital, and to expand its domination throughout the Americas and globally.
This has been a major factor shaping the Black national consciousness and history of Black national and international resistance, including the emergence of an underground armed wing, and political prisoners and prisoners of war, some that have been languishing in the US prisons for over 45 years.
The demand and struggle for their humane treatment and freedom from the prison-industrial complex must be an important part of the work of the national Black liberation movement and the US and international anti-war movement.
The spontaneous character of the national Black resistance and the failure to develop a national framework to unite the fragmented forces of the national Black liberation movement around a strategic program, especially in this racist and neo-fascist period, has not helped to build the national confidence of the Black masses to see the Black liberation movement as a leading, powerful and transformative social force.
While those on the left see opposition to imperialist wars as a fundamental obligation of our Internationalism; hopefully most of us would agree that oppressed people fighting for centuries to end their oppression, exploitation and denial of basic democratic and human rights; experiencing varying degrees of unity, compromises and acts of betrayal within and by allies, don’t become internationalists simply by a moral consciousness and political rhetoric alone.
The masses of Black and other oppressed nations, nationalities and peoples inside the US, want to know and see concretely how a US anti-war movement characterized mainly as a white middle-class led movement in a country that still affords a level of white skin privilege, works to win the white working-class to oppose the criminalization, occupation, State and white supremacist racist violence against the Black masses that represents a War on Black America.
The Black and general left must be rooted in the working-class sectors of the national, social and labor movements to help them understand how their struggles are connected in a system of global capitalism reinforced by the US international military industrial complex.
Opposition to Imperialist wars at home and abroad must be one of the major battlefronts and national demands of the Black liberation movement. Without this connection to the national Black liberation movement, politicizing and mobilizing the Black masses against every aspect of the US imperialist pro-war culture and prison and military industrial complex, it will be mistakenly viewed as a separate and autonomous movement that Black people are being asked to join. This has been a factor weakening the presence of the Black masses in anti-war movement actions, especially during the Obama administration.
The Black civil rights and Black liberation movements have been catalysts helping to create the conditions for the emergence and escalation of the anti-war and other social movements. However, the spontaneous state of the current Black national resistance has not yet unified the many single-issue struggles and social movements into common battlefronts anchoring and leading a conscious anti-racist, sexist, anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist national Black liberation movement. Without common battlefronts including against imperialist wars, single-issue struggles can become isolated and smashed by the increasing State repression.
The fragmented forces of the national Black liberation movement need to hold a National Assembly for Black Liberation to unite the many single-issue struggles, social movements and revolutionary organizations in a national coordinating framework and around a strategic program based on an 80 – 20 percent principle, where agreement does not have to be around every demand, but around some core demands that connect the battlefronts in an anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, anti-racist and anti-sexist movement under the leadership of the Black working-class.
A Draft Freedom Manifesto has been developed as part of a process toward organizing for a National Assembly for Black Liberation. It has begun to generate discussions and input from activists in mass, social movement and political organizations. A weekly online bulletin goes out informing subscribers about single-issue and intersectional struggles in the US and internationally, about the programs of various movement building coalitions, and the cultural history of the Black liberation movement.
Following the urban rebellions and the rise of the Black Power Movement in the 1960s, national liberation and anti-imperialist demands began to emerge amidst the civil rights movement. National Black Power Conferences were held following the spontaneous urban rebellions to hammer out demands, the framing of the nature of Black national oppression and a strategic program for the Black liberation movement. They attempted to connect the struggles for reforms to a struggle for Black liberation.
Some saw it as a form of US domestic colonialism as was in South Africa, with structural racism of a capitalist system subjugating Black people in all the social and political institutions and in the economy, denying them basic constitutional and international human rights, highlighted by the conditions of Jim Crow in the US South.
This placed the struggle against racism within the context of the international struggles against colonialism in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean that were the foremost revolutionary struggles against imperialism in that period.
There were class and ideological differences at these conferences that characterized the relationship of forces within the Black liberation movement. But all agreed that the US was a racist system and a fundament part of the capitalist system that takes a major mass struggle to reform and radically transform.
Black workers at the point of production and service helped to sharpen the importance of the Black working-class in the Black liberation struggle and the need for it to have an anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist program. This was not simply an ideological declaration expressed by some forces.
Black workers had to demonstrate their power and leadership through organization, political education and action. Black worker caucuses brought Black liberation movement demands into the trade unions and the labor movement. Organized and conscious Black workers helped to give the Black masses a sense of our collective power to impact the profits and operations of capitalism and the State.
In 1965 when the US troops landed in Vietnam to begin this imperialist war, Brother General Baker, a Black worker at Dodge Main in Detroit and later co-founder of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, responded to a US military draft letter declaring that he would only fight when the call was made to free the oppressed and exploited nations and people around the world, and Black people in the US.
For too long a time, many of the left have refused to recognize the existence of a national Black liberation movement, and simply saw the struggles of the Black masses as an anti-racist struggle that could only become a revolutionary force when they become politically united as part of a radicalized majority white US working-class movement. Some, but not enough, white workers have demonstrated their revolutionary working-class consciousness and practice, but they have not been the catalyst for the US anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist struggles for many, many years.
The struggles for US reforms inside of the US led by the middle-class with no connection to radical social and revolutionary movements fighting for fundamental structural changes, can leave the Black masses vulnerable to embracing aspect of US national chauvinism against other oppressed people, especially immigrants forced to come to the US because of wars, displacement, extreme poverty and repression caused by the US and other imperialist countries.
The US ruling-class that controls both major political parties and the corporate-owned media understands, promotes and exploits this US national chauvinism. The Bush administration appointed Colin Powell as Chairman of the Military Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1989 and to the position of Secretary of State, and Condoleezza Rice as Powell’s National Security Advisor in 2000, as the US prepared to invade Iraq. Its support for the election of Obama to US President in 2008 and 2012 quieted Black mass opposition to US imperialist wars and elevated the identity of the Black political mis-leadership class.
There have been important strategic opportunities for a unified national Black liberation movement to build regional zones of struggle like around the Gulf Coast disaster triggered Hurricane Katrina. It had the potential for building a Gulf Coast Reconstruction Movement, getting support from other oppressed and working-class sectors within the US and from international forces.
It could have developed Reconstruction in the Gulf Coast as a national and international mandate for the last term of the Bush administration and for the 2008 Obama election campaign and his presidential administration. But when there is no national framework for prioritizing national struggles and demands and comradely engagement in unity-struggle-unity, the Black left can becomes divided and unable to work together at critical times and historical periods.
We see this UNAC conference as a very important step in building a non-sectarian US anti-war movement. We call on the participants to endorse and support the holding of a National Assembly for Black Liberation. A National Assembly for Black Liberation can develop demands and actions to oppose US wars as an organic part of a unifying program of the national Black liberation movement.
Unite the Battlefronts to Stop the War on Black America and on ALL Oppressed and Exploited Peoples and Struggles in the US and Abroad!
* * * * * * * * * *
Information & Registration for Labor Fightback Conference (Cleveland, OH -- July 21-23, 2017)
Dear Sisters and Brothers,
The Third National Conference of the Labor Fightback Network (Cleveland, Ohio -- July 21-23, 2017) is less than one month away. We are sending you this message with the urgent request that you register today for the conference.
We have received a very enthusiastic response to the Conference Call, and dozens of dynamic and seasoned organizers and activists from all across the country have agreed to speak at our plenary sessions and in our workshops -- all with the aim of kicking off a very needed discussion on the need for a new strategy for the labor movement and for the communities of the oppressed.
We need you to be there. Information on workshops, speakers, registration, housing, costs, and other logistics are included on the conference website [click here (http://laborfightback.org/conference2017/)]. Excerpts from the Conference Call -- as well as the Conference Agenda and the list of conference workshops -- are also included below. Please register today [click here (http://laborfightback.org/conference2017/registration.htm)]!
We look forward to seeing you in Cleveland.
In solidarity,
The Steering Committee of the
Labor Fightback Network
* * * * * * * * * *
Excerpts from the Call to the Third National Conference of the Labor Fightback Network (July 21-23, 2017 — Cleveland, Ohio)
The big question now is: What direction for the growing Resistance movement? Does it get channeled back into the Democratic Party, as so many politicians are already urging, or does it chart a new and independent course?
And what should labor’s role be in all this? If the strategies employed by the labor movement in recent years have not worked, what will?
Should the labor movement continue to rely on Democrats and heed the call to bring back the Democrats in 2018? Can the Democratic Party be “reformed,” as Bernie Sanders is proposing?
Or should labor embrace a new strategy, an independent mass-action strategy (including mass strike action, following the example of ILWU Local 10’s port shutdown in Oakland, Calif., on Inauguration Day) with hundreds of thousands of union members in the streets, in union contingents, joining with the millions who, since the epic January 21 Women’s March, have launched this ever-growing Resistance movement? Should labor not be making common cause with the activists and youth fighting against misogyny, racism and police violence, homophobia, immigrant-bashing, Islamophobia, environmental degradation, and other such scourges?
And should such a mass-action strategy not be coupled with the drive to promote labor’s own independent political voice in the electoral arena, including the possibility of running independent labor-community candidates for local office?
These discussions are already taking place on the campuses, in the union halls, and on the shop floors. New appeals are springing forth calling on Bernie Sanders to form his own party, or calling on labor to form its own party.
There is a growing sense that labor needs a new strategy, a new direction. But what direction is this exactly?
We need to share our ideas, our proposals, our energy, and our dedication to a better future — indeed, simply a future — for working people. For that reason the Labor Fightback Network calls on working people dedicated to peace and social justice, whether union members or not, to attend a national conference at Cleveland State University in Cleveland, Ohio, from the afternoon of Friday, July 21, through the morning of Sunday, July 23.
We need you to be there. Information on workshops, speakers, registration, housing, costs, and other logistics are included on the conference website [click here (http://laborfightback.org/conference2017/)]. The Conference Agenda and list of workshops is also included below.
Please register today [click here (http://laborfightback.org/conference2017/registration.htm)]!
* * * * * * * * * *
Labor Fightback Conference 2017
Conference Agenda
Friday, July 21, 2017
2:30 pm—Registration, continuing throughout conference
7:30 pm—Conference Opening and Welcome
7:40 pm—Panel Discussion and floor discussion on electoral strategy
10:00 pm—Recess for the night
Saturday, July 22, 2017
8:00 am—Continental Breakfast
8:45 am—General Welcome and Housekeeping, Guidelines and Layout for the Conference
9:00 am—Plenary Session: Report on Conference Goals and Objectives by LFN National Secretary Tom Bias
9:20 am—Report on Workshop Logistics (LFN)
9:30 am—Workshops (6) [See below or go to website]
11:00 am—Break
11:20 am—Workshops (6) [See below or go to website]
12:50 pm—Lunch
1:50 pm—Workshops (6) [See below or go to website]
3:45 pm—Plenary session: Workshop reports
5:15 pm—Break
6:00 pm—Buffet Dinner
7:00 pm—Evening Program
10:00 pm—Recess for the night
Sunday, July 23
8:00 am—Continental Breakfast
9:00 am—Plenary session: Report on “Where do we go next?” It will summarize ideas presented by workshops and speakers throughout the conference and how they complement or contradict the beginning presentation on Saturday.
9:30 am—Plenary discussion to include development of potential resolutions, sharing of group strategies.
12:30 pm — Closing, at which time we will sing “Solidarity Forever” and adjourn.
* * * * * * * * * *
Labor Fightback Network National Conference 2017
Cleveland State University, July 21-23
Workshop Descriptions
1. Single-Payer Health Care
This workshop will focus on the campaign to win Medicare for All, as proposed in Bill HR 676 in the House of Representatives. It will also discuss single-payer health plans on the state level.
2. Reaching Out to the Faith Communities
As clergy and lay people in many faith communities stand up for peace, justice, and the environment, we see a new opportunity for collaboration between religious groups and the labor movement. What does the labor movement need to do? What do the congregations need to do? What obstacles stand in the way of united action? This workshop will consider these and other questions.
3. Fighting for Black Lives and Against Police Brutality
How can the labor movement lend its strength to the campaign against police brutality—including police murder—of African-American youth? This workshop will examine the situation in the Communities of Color, including the murder of unarmed young men and women, mass incarceration, the so-called “war on drugs,” and other crises as well.
4. Standing Rock, Climate Change, and the Struggle for the Planet
Defending our air, water, and food supply and working to slow down and ultimately stop the climate change which threatens our continued existence could be the biggest challenge that human society faces. How can the labor movement join with environmentalists in our communities and put new winning strategies to work? Bring your ideas, and let’s talk about it!
5. Immigrant Rights and the Fight Against Islamophobia
Nothing has defined the Trump agenda quite so much its attacks on the Islamic community and all immigrant communities. Some of the largest and most effective Resistance actions have centered on standing up in defense of immigrants and refugees. How can working people help to move the struggle forward? That is what this workshop will discuss.
6. Defending the Union Shop and Fighting for a Living Wage
As Congress begins consideration of a national Right-to-Work (for Less) law, working people have been in the streets demanding the passage of a $15/hour minimum wage, a struggle which has been successful in a number of areas. What does the labor movement need to do to protect its right to organize and insure that all workers receive wages sufficient to support their families?
7. Defending Public Education and Organizing Teachers
Children’s right to an education is threatened on many levels, including underfunded and crumbling public schools and for-profit charter schools. Meanwhile, teachers from kindergarten to community college and university are finding it increasingly difficult to earn a living. Let’s discuss a winning fightback strategy for teachers and their students.
8. Organizing Students and Young People
The economic crisis has hit young people especially hard. The lack of employment opportunities, crushing student debt, and the seeming impossibility of living independently as young adults are challenges faced by young people of all communities. This workshop will discuss how young people can organize themselves and what the labor movement can do to address the challenges.
9. Defending a Woman’s Right to Choose and Equal Pay for Women
Women were the first to mobilize in the streets in resistance to the Trump administration’s agenda, and they did so in the millions. How can working women and men rise to challenges of defending Planned Parenthood, defending the Roe v Wade Supreme Court decision, and fighting against wage discrimination, harassment on the job and in the schools, and domestic violence? Those and other challenges will be discussed in this workshop.
10. Independent Electoral Activity and Winning Ballot Access
Dissatisfaction with the Democratic and Republican parties is at all-time high. This workshop will share the experiences of independent electoral campaigns and will discuss the opportunities for labor and its community allies to field candidates for public office. It will also discuss some of the nuts-and-bolts challenges of getting on the ballot, raising money, and getting out the vote.
11. Out Now! Stopping U.S. Intervention, Occupation, and War Throughout the World
The Trump administration is continuing the policy of the U.S. sticking its nose into places where it does not belong, in the Middle East, Asia, Latin America, and even parts of Europe. Its budget increases the share of U.S. tax dollars going to military spending at the expense of the social safety net. Defeating militarism and the drive toward war is what this workshop will discuss.
12. Organizing in the Southern States
Organizing unions in the South, where so-called Right-To-Work laws prevail, has been a special challenge for the labor movement for nearly seventy years. This workshop will discuss the progress that trade unionists have made and the challenges that remain.
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