A Call for a National Dialogue on Black Left Participation in the OWS Movement

A Call for a National Dialogue on Black Left Participation in the OWS Movement By The Black Left Unity Network and USHRN Labor Working Group Over the last two years, the Black left unity network (BLUN) has engaged in a process that focused on reaching out to Black worker activists in the labor movement, and other core social movements that organize and mobilize the Black working class. We have looked for opportunities such as building support for the Hurricane Katrina survivors and organizing and promoting a Reconstruction movement as a strategic flank of the U.S. anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist struggle, using Survivor Assemblies as popular democratic forums; promoting a Thank You Cuba campaign to challenge attempts to isolate Cuba and socialism as a racist regime; and participating in the Human Rights movement to help ground it in mass bases of resistance to help shape and influence its demands and anti-imperialist political character. While there is much more needed in developing the BLUN as a unity process; a major aspect of the process must be that of forging Black left unity within the context of trying to unify and give a working class and internationalist perspective based in concrete demands to the struggles and upsurges that originate from or may have an impact on the Black masses. Therefore, with the emergence of the OWS as an national phenomenon with developing organizational expressions in various cities across the country, members of BLUN have taken the position that it is important to develop a process for addressing the questions that have quickly surfaced related to the political character of this movement and the role and participation of Black, Latino and Native forces. To that end, BLUN along with the Labor working group of US Human Rights Network hosted this call on Thursday, October 20. Some of the questions that were discussed include: - While our communities are weakly organized, disconnected from the occupation motion, how might Occupy Wall Wtreet be used to organize our communities for fundamental social change in the interests of the Black masses? Or can it? - How can the Black left help to build alliances between the Black and Latino working classes in particular and with workers of color in general to begin forging Black and Brown working class unity as key to driving a popular agenda and mandate for radical social transformation in this period? - How can Black left forces direct this anti-capitalist sentiment and energy of OWS to increase the existing fight backs in the labor movement and the Black communities? - Since labor is an important social force in the capitalist system, how can Black workers influence and help to mobilize the character and content of labors involvement in OWS? - How can the Black left become a force in helping to promote U.S. accountability to the UN Human Rights Conventions as a transitional program toward internationalizing the OWS movement?