Shout-Out to Allies
National Black Worker Center Project
Big CWA Political shout-out to the National Black Worker Center Project for being a dynamic table of workers, organized labor, community-based organizations, clergy, students, and scholars working collectively to improve the position of the African-American working class! Black Working Peoples’ needs ARE the Labor Movement’s needs!!
The Basic Mission of the National Black Worker Center Project:
- To support and incubate Black worker centers that empower Black workers to advance their rights and improve the quality of jobs in key employment sectors;
- To provide education about the impacts of low-wage work and unemployment on Black communities; and
- To prevent racial discrimination in hiring and other employment practices and policies
“Power Concedes Nothing Without a Demand…It Never Has…It Never Will” — Frederick Douglass
Black worker centers can be essential to promoting this new approach to Black worker activism and building power. Black worker centers are membership-based (and member-driven) organizations that utilize some combination of the following strategies to build power and transform working conditions for Black workers:
- Leadership development
- Policy advocacy
- Strategic communications
- Coalition work
- Workforce development
Key Operating Principles:
Black workers face a racialized political economy in which they are exploited because of their race and their class. As the Project grows and matures, each local Black Worker Center will develop unique ways to reflect how Black workers are impacted by the local racialized political economy. However, certain overarching principles shall guide the work:
- The importance of Black worker centers building power through organizing in order to provide a collective voice for Black workers in the workplace and to change public policy.
- The importance of basing the Black worker centers among progressive elements of the Black community and Black union members.
- The importance of rooting the Black worker centers in the Black community’s essential networks.
- The importance of ensuring the activity of the Black worker centers respects the ways that gender impacts issues surrounding work in the Black community
Affiliates of the National Black Worker Center Project are as follows:
- Baltimore Black Worker Center
- Bay Area Black Worker Center
- Black Workers for Justice
- Boston Black Worker Center
- DC Black Worker Center
- Los Angeles Black Worker Center
- Mississippi Workers’ Center for Human Rights
- STAND Black Worker Center New Orleans
- Worker Center for Racial Justice
For more information or to get involved with a Black Worker Center near you, please visit: http://nationalblackworkercenters.org/affiliates/
NBWCP General Contact Information
Website: http://nationalblackworkercenters.org/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NationalBlackWorkerCenterProject/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/NBWCP
Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/user57323860/videos
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/NBWCP_Freedom/
