Black Workers Unity Network
Uniting Black Worker Voices in Struggles for Global Justice
The passage of the U.S. Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA) will greatly impact the conditions of life for the most exploited and oppressed sections of the Colombian people – Afro-Colombians and Indigenous people.
Their exploitation as workers and oppressed peoples takes place in the mines, sugar cane fields and in the plants, while their communities experience underdevelopment, state repression and massive displacement in the millions. This combination of exploitation and oppression points to structural racism that deepens to the destructive impacts of the U.S. Colombian FTA on the Colombian working class.
Opposition to the FTA must therefore be more than a job’s saving campaign for U.S. workers, showing little to no regard for the deterioration in the conditions of life faced by the working class in other countries, who suffer because U.S. capitalist globalization places profits over human needs and rights.
We the undersigned Black workers, who are active members in our unions, the U.S. labor movement, and the social movements challenging structural racism, know that worker solidarity is limited and narrow, if it only speaks to the rights of others in the labor movement, and fails to address the conditions rooted in their communities and histories that partly shape their identities as super-exploited workers and oppressed peoples.
We call on our unions, U.S. Congressional Representatives and President Obama to oppose the U.S. Colombia FTA because it deepens the structural racism against Afro-Colombians and Indigenous peoples and thereby denies worker and democratic rights outlined in the UN Declaration of Human Rights and the UN Durban Declaration Program of Action.
Organizations list for Identifiable purposes only:
Saladin Muhammad – Black Workers For Justice; Retired UE Intern. Rep – Rocky Mt, NC Angaza Laughinghouse – Pres. UE Local 150 – Raleigh, NC
Clarence Thomas – Executive Board Member of IWLU Local 10 – San Francisco, CA
Shafeah Mbalia – National Association of Letter Carriers Branch 1729 – Greenville, NC
Ashaki Binta – United Electrical Radio & Machine Workers Union Organizer – Raleigh, NC
Chris Silvera – Secretary Treasurer Teamsters Local 808 – New York City
Charles Jenkins – Division V- Pres Transport Workers Union Local 100 – New York City
Royce Adams – International Longshoremen’s Assoc. Local 1291 – Philadelphia, PA
Kenney Riley – Pres. International Longshoremen’s Assoc. Local 1422 – Charleston, SC
Brenda Stokely – AFSCME Local 371 – New York City
Christine Williams - Executive Board Member TWU local 100 – New York City
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In Unity and Struggle,
https://theblacklist.net/
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