Black Belt Justice: Crucial Interracial Alliances Forged In Southern Labor Groups, Kim Diehl, ColorLines
-- Kim Diehl of ColorLines reports on new alliances in racial and labor justice campaigns. After 19 years of radical work, Black Workers for Justice (BWFJ) is making vital connections with the Latino community in the South, the region where the United States' appetite for exploitable labor and free trade began. BWFJ is a community- and workplace-based organization in the southeastern United States that responded in the summer of 1999 with a flood relief project that distributed supplies to hundreds of black, Latino, and Native American families who were neglected by the governmental programs. The connections made during the disaster relief laid the groundwork for political coalitions. 'It was logical for us to look for an alliance with the Latino community and try to find common ground there,' says BWFJ member Ajamu Dillahunt. 'If our efforts did nothing else but help emerge a perspective that both communities can use to relate to each other, I think this alliance would have served a very important role.'
--Amanda Luker
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