Welcome to the Remix. This edition marks our very last economics neighborhood spin via this newsletter. But don’t worry! The Economy Remix column itself will continue. You can expect to find future Remix columns included periodically in NPQ’s new Justice This Week newsletter, which will highlight NPQ’s best work at the intersection of health, racial, economic, climate, immigration, and LGBTQ+ justice. You can sign up for that newsletter and other new NPQ newsletters here. I encourage you to do so!
And now, on to today’s column, which takes us to Atlanta and the story of the newly created Labor Institute for the Advancement of Black Strategists, the first labor center in the United States ever housed at a historically Black college or university and the first to focus specifically on developing Black labor leadership in the South.
This is a big deal. After all, a lack of labor union power has been a central factor that has driven increasing economic inequality in the United States. A silver lining is that in recent years labor organizing in the South has begun to pick up—including organizing victories at a 4,000-person Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, TN; a 1,500-worker bus manufacturer in Fort Valley, GA; and another bus manufacturer in Alabama. Service sector workers, such as Waffle House employees, are also organizing.
The new Labor Institute for the Advancement of Black Strategists seeks to build on this momentum. Launched this spring, it involves a partnership between Jobs With Justice, a national labor support nonprofit, and the W.E.B. DuBois Southern Center for Studies in Public Policy at Clark Atlanta University. For this column, I interviewed both the DuBois Center’s executive director Dr. Joseph Jones and Sherman Henry, a longtime union local president who is directing the Institute.
What can a labor center do? A few key things: it can place fellows in organizing campaigns—both helping the campaigns and building links between academics and activists. It can sponsor research in key topics, such as the working conditions of Waffle House workers. It can educate students. And it can also educate policymakers.
Henry noted that 56 percent of African Americans live in the South. Reaching these workers requires organizing in the South, which is what the Center aims to support.
So, as you read this column, I encourage you to consider how to build leadership development pipelines and movement infrastructure in your community.
Until the next Remix column, I remain
Your Remix Man:
Steve Dubb
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