Claudia Jones School for Political Education

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Claudia Jones School for Political Education is a project of the Washington DC based Claudia Jones Club of the Communist Party USA.

Personnel

Board of Directors

Claudia Jones School for Political Education BOD 2021:

Claudia Jones School for Political Education BOD 2021:

Claudia Jones School founding

A group of 120 labor, social justice, international solidarity, and local campaign activists gathered at the Nicaraguan Embassy on Feb. 29 2020 for the inaugural event of the newly founded Claudia Jones School for Political Education. Featuring long-time labor and Black liberation activist Bill Fletcher, Jr., the event was co-sponsored by Trabajadores Unidos de Washington D.C. and People's World.

Debra Johnson and Gato Martinez-Bentley center

Fletcher gave a presentation on African American radicals and their place in the U.S. labor movement.

The event was opened with a welcome from Nicaraguan Ambassador Francisco Campbell, who spoke of the inspiring revolution of the Sandinistas and other important historical events in that country. His remarks were followed by a spoken word performance about the legendary Black Communist, Claudia Jones, namesake of the new political educational school.

Fletcher’s talk, the highlight of the evening, provided an historical analysis of the role played by Black workers in the U.S. labor movement. “When we are thinking of Black History Month, we’ve got to think harder, and we’ve got to introduce class and gender,” Fletcher told attendees. “We’ve got to diversify our understanding about the understated brilliance of Black people.”

He said Black radicalism should be conceptualized as consisting of several “streams of water coming down from the hill that collect in a lake.” In that “lake of Black radicalism,” there are different currents of thought:

“Marxism, nationalism, various forms of feminism, etc. And when they are coming down that hill, they are very distinct. But when they reach each other and form that lake, you can’t distinguish the stream the water originated from. Black radicalism is that lake and is made up of those different currents of thinking and actions that have existed in Black America since the moment we were brought here as indentured servants and slaves. And so that radicalism has been an attempt to fight for absolute emancipation and to fight for something Lenin called ‘consistent democracy.’”

Connecting his comments to the labor movement, Fletcher said that trade unions have been haunted by two basic questions: “What does it mean to be formed in the context of a settler state, and what does it mean to deal with this issue of race?” The Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), in which the Communist Party USA played a major role along with other forces of the left in the 1930s and ’40s, was a site where Black labor activism and Black radicalism became very important.

One manifestation of that growing importance was an organization called the National Negro Congress, a united front group that Fletcher says gets far less attention than it should. “They understood that the fight against the Depression and the fight to change the way the New Deal was operating was going to benefit from the rise of this new labor movement. They and a number of the left-led labor unions had significant Black labor leadership.”

Fletcher’s presentation was followed by cultural performances from Luci Murphy joined by the Black Workers Center Chorus and participants of the Black Youth Project 100.[7]

Cuba resolution

A group of local councilors in the District of Columbia is urging the Biden administration to remove Cuba from the State Sponsors of Terrorism List and lift the six-decade-old political and economic blockade of the island.

On Feb. 10, 2023, a resolution was introduced pushing for an end to anti-Cuban hostilities—PR25-0113, “Sense of the Council on the Restoration of Cuban American Relations Resolution of 2023.”

The resolution represents significant progress in the fight to end the U.S. government’s economic stranglehold and harassment of the Cuban people. So far, eight councilmembers have signaled support of the resolution, including Robert White (At-Large), Anita Bonds (At-Large), Kenyan McDuffie (At-Large), Brianne Nadeau (Ward 1), Janeese Lewis-George (Ward 4), Zachary Parker (Ward 5), Charles Allen (Ward 6), and Vincent Gray (Ward 7).

Council Chair Phil Mendelson has also expressed support for the resolution, which shows that D.C. Council may become the next major metropolitan area to pass a resolution showing solidarity with Cuba.

A local coalition naming itself the D.C. Network to Normalize Relations with Cuba is being spearheaded by the National Network on Cuba and the Claudia Jones School for Political Education.

Other leading partners included local business Busboys & Poets, CODEPINK, the Alliance for Cuba Engagement and Respect (ACERE), the Democrat Socialists of America – International Committee, the U.S. Peace Council, and the D.C. Metro Coalition in Solidarity with the Cuban Revolution.

A local sign-on letter promoted by the coalition has already received over 30 organizational signatures to urge the entire council to vote in favor of the resolution.[8]

The Legacy of Jack O’Dell

Jack-Odell-11-30-20-351x455.jpg

The Claudia Jones School for Political Education invites you to their next event, The Legacy of Jack O’Dell in the Black Freedom Movement. Born Hunter Pitts O’Dell in Detroit in 1923, he went on to be a militant labor organizer in the National Maritime Union, an activist in the Southern Negro Youth Congress, and a campaigner for Henry Wallace’s presidential bid in 1948 under the Progressive Party banner. Later, he joined the Communist Party USA for a brief period and then left to get more involved with Martin Luther King, Jr.’s SCLC. O’Dell was eventually forced out and became a public intellectual and writer for Freedomways magazine. In the 1980s, he helped lead Jesse Jackson’s run for the presidency. As a professor at Antioch College in Washington, D.C., O’Dell developed many relationships with community organizers and activists who will join us for this special evening in celebration of his life.

This event will feature Dr. Nikhil Pal Singh, Luci Murphy, James Early, Jaime Cruz, Jr., and Linwood “Gato” Martinez-Bentley.

Date: Monday, November 30 2020.

Unemployment and Tenant Organizing Town Hall

In July 2020 the Claudia Jones School for Political Education hosted an Unemployment and Tenant Organizing Town Hall for residents in the D.C.-Maryland-Virginia (DMV) area in the form of an online Zoom Webinar. Seven panelists who work in the local area, as well as one panelist from a national labor organization, were invited.

The panelists included: Cheryl Brunson of the Brookland Manor and Brentwood Village Tenants Association (D.C.’s largest remaining affordable housing complexes), Rosemary Ndubuizu and Shakeara Mingo of ONE DC, Zillah Wesley of Poor People’s Campaign D.C., Jon Liss of New Virginia Majority, Brad Crowder of the Communist Party USA Labor Commission, and Will Merrifield, a candidate running for D.C. Council who has worked closely with tenant associations around the area advocating for universal housing, education, and employment opportunities.

Organizers with the Claudia Jones School say the aim of the event was to facilitate a community-led dialogue between organizers in the area and to put unemployed people and tenants in contact with one another to strategize about ways to advocate for themselves as a collective.

The Claudia Jones School is currently contemplating ways to enhance dialogue between participants and panelists in an online format such as a webinar, seeking to raise the voices of everyone in the discussion while maintaining safety and technological feasibility. The intention is to create a consistent meeting place for poor and working-class people in the community so that they can organize and mobilize in the face of untenable material conditions. The School aims to replicate similar strategies that the Communist Party USA used to create the successful Unemployed Councils (UC) during the Great Depression in the 1930s.

As Jaime Cruz (who emceed the event and is a founding member of the Claudia Jones School) mentioned in the introduction to the town hall: “In moments of joblessness in the past, working people have coordinated the fightback against employers and forced the government to provide the necessary relief that working people needed…. It is this generation’s turn to pick up the mantle and build a mass movement of unemployed councils that will address the economic needs of our multi-racial working class in all areas of the country—inner urban, suburban, town and rural.”[9]

Webinars

  • Black Women Bringing It All Back Home: Honoring the Radicalism of Margaret Prescod Feat. Margaret Prescod May 10, 2022
  • ECONOMICS OF ABUNDANCE: Critiquing Economics of Scarcity Towards the Sovereignty of Black Labor Feat. Jessica Gordon-Nembhard Apr 25, 2022
  • The Role of Black Journalism in the Struggle for Freedom

Feat. Dr. Carole Boyce Davies, Jarvis Tyner, and Amandla Thomas-Johnson.


Nicaragua: What We Saw, What's Next Feb 17, 2022

Feat. Margaret Kimberley, Jemima Pierre, Luci Murphy, Terri Mattson, Fred Morris, Arjae Rebmann, Fiorella Isabel

Jan 30, 2022 thumbnail image DMV Youth Reportback From Nicaragua Feat. Julie Varughese, Chris Guevara, Wyatt Reed, Garrett Harris, Makeda Sheffield, Nico Torronte

Dec 12, 2021 thumbnail image State of Black Liberation Panel Feat. Aaron Booe, Jacquie Luqman, Sean Blackmon, Jared Ball, Yvonne Bramble, Quiana Johnson, Kevin Cramer, Jr.

Nov 16, 2021 thumbnail image Maida Springer Kemp: Labor Organizing with a Heart for African Freedom Feat. Paul Prescod, Yvette Richards, and Christina Springer

Nov 08, 2021

A Call to Negro Women: The Radicalism of the Sojourners for Truth & Justice Feat. Mariame Kaba, Ashley D. Farmer, Erik S. McDuffie

Sep 17, 2021 thumbnail image Three Historians Speak on Tulsa 1921 Feat. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Robin D.G. Kelley, and John Womack Jr.

Aug 07, 2021 thumbnail image Louise Thompson Patterson: A Life of Struggle for Justice Feat. MaryLouise Patterson and Keith Gilyard

Jul 14, 2021 thumbnail image Claudia Jones, Afro-Asian Solidarity & Black Left Feminist Visions of Peace Feat. Zifeng Liu

Jun 29, 2021 thumbnail image How Community Control Over Police Empowers Women, Trans & Gender Non-Conforming Folx Feat. Queshia Bradley, Jazmine Salas, and M. Adams

Jun 17, 2021


Cooperativas y Socialismo: Una mirada desde Cuba Feat. Camila Piñeiro Harnecker, Sonia Umanzor, and Arturo Griffiths

Jun 02, 2021 thumbnail image Radicalism at the Crossroads: African American Women Activists in the Cold War Feat. Dayo F. Gore

Apr 28, 2021 thumbnail image Paul Robeson 123rd Birthday Celebration Feat. Vernoca L. Michael, Shana L. Redmond, Joyce Mosley, Gerald Horne, Jordan T. Camp, Christina Heatherton, Anthony Monteiro, Paul Robeson High School Students, Tayo Aluko, Abdur-Rahim Muhammad, Charisse Burden-Stelly, DC Labor Chorus (Susan Rogers and Larry Bostian), Luci Murphy, Michael Coard, Jaimee Swift, Janice Sykes-Ross, Christopher R. Rogers

Apr 09, 2021 thumbnail image Noname Book Club: Women's History Month Meetup Feat. Anna Malaika Tubbs

Apr 02, 2021 thumbnail image Black Women, Black Radicalism, and the Black Midwest Feat. Melissa Ford

Mar 24, 2021

Edna Griffin & the Struggle for Civil Rights: 1946-1980 Feat. Noah Lawrence, Joe Henry, Matè Farrakhan Muhammad, Jerry Avise-Rouse

Mar 06, 2021 thumbnail image What is AFRICOM? Feat. Maurice Carney and Ajamu Baraka

Feb 22, 2021 thumbnail image The People's Tribunal: Debt in D.C. Feat. Zillah Wesley II, Yasmine Arrington, Adrian Rakochi, Dante O'Hara

Jan 27, 2021 thumbnail image Elizabeth Gurley Flynn: My Life as a Political Prisoner Feat. Mary Anne Trasciatti

Jan 11, 2021 thumbnail image Community Control of the Police: What It Means and Why It's An Essential Demand Feat. Frank Chapman, Max Rameau and L. Gato Martinez-Bentley

Dec 15, 2020

The Life and Times of Black Wobbly: Ben Fletcher Feat. Peter Cole

Dec 09, 2020 thumbnail image The Legacy of Jack O'Dell in Black Freedom Movement Feat. Luci Murphy, Nikhil Pal Singh, James Early, L. Gato Martinez-Bentley, and Jaime Cruz, Jr.

Nov 30, 2020 thumbnail image Claudia Jones School Presents: Poetry Night Oct 30, 2020 thumbnail image Anti-capitalism In These Times: A Conversation with Boots Riley and Charisse Burden-Stelly Feat. Boots Riley and Dr. Charisse Burden-Stelly

Oct 27, 2020 thumbnail image Worker Cooperatives and the Movement for Socialism Feat. Prof. Richard D. Wolff, Dr. Camila Piñeiro Harnecker, and Dr. Jessica Gordon-Nembhard

Sep 28, 2020

  • The Role of African Americans and the Communist Party in the Struggle for Peace, Justice and Liberation Feat. Dr. Gerald Horne Jul 14, 2020
  • From #FreeAngelaDavis to #NoNewJailsDC: An Intergenerational Conversation Feat. Cassie Lopez and Jaime Cruz May 18, 2020
  • African American Radicals and the American Labor Movement Feat. Bill Fletcher, Jr. Feb 29, 2020 [10]

References

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  10. ↑ [10]
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