Difference between revisions of "Labor/Community Strategy Center"
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| − | [[ | + | [[Labor/Community Strategy Center]] is an urban experiment to root grassroots organizing focusing in Black and Latino communities with deep historical ties to the long history of anti-colonial anti-imperialist pro-communist resistance to the U.S. empire. We teach and study history of the Indigenous rebellions against the initial European genocidal invasions, the Great Slave Haitian Revolution of the 1790s, the Great Slave Rebellions that won the U.S. civil war for the racist north as explained in [[W.E.B. DuBois]]’ Black Reconstruction in America. We appreciate the work of the U.S. Communist Party especially Black communists [[Harry Haywood]], the [[African Blood Brotherhood]] and [[Cyril Briggs]], [[Paul Robeson]], [[Claudia Jones]], Du Bois, [[Benjamin Davis]], [[William L. Patterson]], and [[Lorraine Hansberry]]. |
We applaud the great work of the [[Black Panther Party]], the [[American Indian Movement]], [[Young Lords]], [[Brown Berets]], and the great revolutionary rainbow experiments of the 1970s. We also have roots in the new communist movement of the 1970s and 1980s especially the [[August 29th Movement]], [[I Wor Kuen]], [[Congress of African People]]/[[Revolutionary Communist League]] (and [[Amiri Baraka]]) and their merger into the [[League of Revolutionary Struggle]]. | We applaud the great work of the [[Black Panther Party]], the [[American Indian Movement]], [[Young Lords]], [[Brown Berets]], and the great revolutionary rainbow experiments of the 1970s. We also have roots in the new communist movement of the 1970s and 1980s especially the [[August 29th Movement]], [[I Wor Kuen]], [[Congress of African People]]/[[Revolutionary Communist League]] (and [[Amiri Baraka]]) and their merger into the [[League of Revolutionary Struggle]]. | ||
Revision as of 04:32, 17 August 2018
Template:TOCnestleft The Labor Community/Strategy Center received grant funds from the McKay Foundation in 2006. It is closely tied to the Freedom Road Socialist Organization.
Communist ties
Eric Mann always been an anti-imperialist internationalist, in support of international campaigns such as U.S. Out of Vietnam and Boycott Apartheid South Africa as well as the historic efforts of the world communist movement to form international organizations.
- Based on lessons from these experiences, I believe the conditions for successful international work are based on support for the right of self-determination for oppressed nations and protection of the strength and integrity of constituent organizations. I do not view this as a question to individuals but to organizations. I have always been part of an organization—from CORE to SDS to League of Revolutionary Struggle, to the New Directions Movement of the United Auto Workers, to the Strategy Center. Each organization has had many international relationships.
- But not every invitation is positive or will have a positive outcome. The Strategy Center would respond to any invitation but would not participate in any initiative to form a single international organization (in which currently independent organizations become subordinate as “chapters” to the international) or any initiative based on the subordination of national sovereignty of nations and peoples oppressed by U.S. and European imperialism in the name of an abstract, colorblind, “working class” that considers movements of national liberation a threat.
Eric Mann's Strategy Center has had many successful international relationships—as an NGO at the UN World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, and the UN World Conference on Sustainable Development, in Johannesburg, where we worked on the NGO organizing committee and Mann spoke to the UN on behalf of the NGO organizations against a theory of “partnerships” between NGOs and polluting corporations. There the Strategy Center developed relations with the African National Congress (ANC), Congress of South African Trade Unions, (COSATU) and the South African Communist Party (SACP). The Strategy Center has been invited and sent delegations to Cuba, Chiapas, the SUTAUR-100 (Mexico), France, Germany, Italy, and South Korea. They have allied with trade union organizations and environmental justice/indigenous peoples campaigns. We have participated in the World Social Forums in Venezuela and Brazil.
- The Strategy Center has also allied in many nation-wide coalitions—some based on significant strategic and tactical agreement, such as the First and Second People of Color Environmental Justice Leadership Summits, the Black Radical Congress, and Grassroots Global Justice Alliance (each initiated by other organizations) and the current Transit Riders for Public Transportation (which we initiated). We also have sought participation in formations with much broader temporary unities, such as the Boston Social Forum, the U.S. Social Forum in Atlanta and, coming in 2010, in Detroit. We have also participated in explicit nation-wide left-building projects within the United States, with grassroots organizations as well as with anti-imperialist and socialist organizations—Freedom Road Socialist Organization, League of Revolutionaries for a New America, and other organizations with whom we had significant disagreements but wanted to pursue a long-term strategic unity. We want to see organizations coalesce but envision coalitions and federations of organizations, not an international or national single organization of individuals gathering in regional chapters.[1]
Radical roots
Labor/Community Strategy Center is an urban experiment to root grassroots organizing focusing in Black and Latino communities with deep historical ties to the long history of anti-colonial anti-imperialist pro-communist resistance to the U.S. empire. We teach and study history of the Indigenous rebellions against the initial European genocidal invasions, the Great Slave Haitian Revolution of the 1790s, the Great Slave Rebellions that won the U.S. civil war for the racist north as explained in W.E.B. DuBois’ Black Reconstruction in America. We appreciate the work of the U.S. Communist Party especially Black communists Harry Haywood, the African Blood Brotherhood and Cyril Briggs, Paul Robeson, Claudia Jones, Du Bois, Benjamin Davis, William L. Patterson, and Lorraine Hansberry.
We applaud the great work of the Black Panther Party, the American Indian Movement, Young Lords, Brown Berets, and the great revolutionary rainbow experiments of the 1970s. We also have roots in the new communist movement of the 1970s and 1980s especially the August 29th Movement, I Wor Kuen, Congress of African People/Revolutionary Communist League (and Amiri Baraka) and their merger into the League of Revolutionary Struggle.
Eric Mann, a member of the ATM and later LRS, was the lead organizer of the U.A.W. Campaign to Keep GM Van Nuys Open, a state-wide organizer for the Jesse Jackson for President Campaign in 1984 and 1988 and an elected leader of the UAW New Directions Movement led by Jerry Tucker.[2]
External links
References
Template:Reflist [[Category:Los Angeles]