Cameron Harrison

Cameron Harrison

Southern Labor meeting

According th John Oliver, Durham NC—“Who’s got your back? We got your back!” chanted Union of Southern Service Workers (USSW) worker-organizer and Communist Party USA labor organizer Erica Meade to a gathering of dozens of trade unionists and labor activists at the Peoples’ Solidarity Hub in North Carolina this past weekend.

The CPUSA’s Southern Labor Conference faced these threats head on, bringing together trade unionists and activists for a two-day session in Durham, May 31-June 1, to strategize for the struggles ahead.

“The South has a proud and unrecognized history of fighting for democracy under the most difficult conditions,” Roberta Wood of the CPUSA Labor Commission said in opening the conference.

“This is not a new fight, but a continuation of the working-class and broad peoples’ movement for political and economic democracy,” said Cameron Harrison, a CPUSA Labor Commission member who also addressed the meeting.

However, “the South was not always as lucky” during those earlier periods of labor victories, said Mama Cookie, a USSW worker-leader, grandmother, and community leader from Durham. “There is fear in the South,” she said. “Racism was front and center, and it still is to this day. They try to create fear and a feeling of powerlessness.”

Magaly Licolli, a union organizer from Venceremos, had everyone shaking their heads when she detailed the highly oppressive and exploitative conditions at poultry and meatpacking plants in the South.

“The ground is not the end, however, it is where we find our roots,” Stewart Acuff, former AFL-CIO National Organizing Director, encouraged attendees. “There is no better place in the world than labor unions for workers to learn about their class and class struggle,” he said.

Even recently, the labor movement in the South has made the kind of gains not seen in 20 years, according to Chris Townsend, former United Electrical Workers (UE) Washington representative and the Amalgamated Transit Union’s (ATU) international organizing director.

“People are hungry. They are hungry for a better life…a life where people can grow and create value for themselves,” said Steve Noffke, chair of the CPUSA Labor Commission. “All unions across America should take a note from the United Southern Service Workers core values: anti-racism, militancy, solidarity, and soul.”^[1]