Category Archives: Human Rights

Justice for Tyre Nichols! Stop the War on Black America

When Dr. King was murdered, Nina Simone, in song, raised the question “are they men or are they beast?” On January  7, 2023, the Memphis PD Scorpion Squad once again answered the question. They, representatives of a racist system,  are monsters in service  of controlling oppressed communities, defending the social order and the profits of the capitalist class. Policing in the US is a  system that has grown out of the history of slave catchers (paddy rollers) and the enforcing of  Jim Crow chain gangs. This is what colonialism looks like. Continue reading →

Saladin Muhammad, Black Workers for Justice Founder and Leader Joins the Ancestors

It is with great sadness and profound loss that we announce the passing of our exemplary revolutionary warrior and leader, Comrade Brother Saladin Muhammad.   Saladin passed this morning after a long battle with illness.   His wife, Naeema and son Muhammad were with him as he transitioned.  He fought until the end.  They described him as being at peace.Saladin on courthourse steps

Brother Saladin leaves an outstanding legacy of revolutionary commitment, leadership, consciousness,  and direct organizing of our people’s struggle for liberation.   He was a commander-in-chief of revolutionary forces throughout the Black Liberation Movement and a staunch fighter for the Black Working Class.   He worked tirelessly and with phenomenal energy to organize, guide, and lead our people’s fights and battles against oppression.   He was an internationalist, upholding the world-wide struggle against capitalism and imperialism.   His intellect, insight and analysis was outstanding in the theory and practice of organizing class and revolutionary struggle and the tactics and strategy of social transformation, national liberation, and socialism for the African American people.

Saladin’s unmatched organizing skills led to the formation of the Black Workers for Justice, UE Local 150, and the Southern Workers Assembly, just to recognize only a few of his impactful accomplishments.   And these organizational formations of the Black working class were built in the context of North Carolina, a state widely recognized for it’s anti-unionism and racist history and in the US South where the lack of a strong, progressive labor movement in the southeast region has been the Achilles heel of the US national labor movement.   The struggle to build a “new trade unionism” in the US South must continue.

His leadership and guidance, upon which thousands around the country and the world relied, is irreplaceable and will be sorely missed by all of us.  Saladin was active in the struggles for justice and liberation  for more than 50 years.

Saladin Muhammad, PRESENTE!!!

The Executive Committee,Black Workers for Justice

Black Human Rights Organization Demonstrates Black Community Support for Southern Amazon Workers

February 20th witnessed support actions across the country in support of the efforts of Amazon workers in Bessemer, Alabama to be represented by the Retail Wholesale and Department Store Workers Union. In total, there were 23 across the South and between 50 – 55 nationally. The broad support for this organizing is encouraging and an indication of how much people across the country understand the need for unions and are willing to get involved.

Organizations representing and advocating for oppressed communities have historically taken a stand in support of the right to organize understanding the importance of organization for all workers in general and Black workers in particular. Black civil rights and Black Liberation organizations have always engaged in or supported efforts to build the power of workers on the job and in the community

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Reparations Now!

The Biden administration has promised to issue scores of Executive Orders reversing many of the Trump policies. He has gone on record saying how vital the Black vote was in his win vowing to have our backs. The call has been made for him to uphold that vow by making a down payment on the Reparations owned us as a result of our enslavement. The campaign is being led by the Brooklyn, N.Y. based December 12th Movement (D12)

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THIS 2021 DR. ML KING DAY… STATE OF EMERGENCY…LET’S REMEMBER KING’S REAL LESSONS !

The following is a recent speech given by Angaza Sabubu Laughinghouse  a BWFJ leader.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is more remembered by most for his “I have a Dream Speech” and not his radical political actions or radical views about the failures of U.S. capitalism and its systematic racism or embedded white supremacy! Why are so many of us fuzzy, forgetful or just content with the political and media myth makers or just plain intentional lies about King?

Along with many others, I am a product of the 1960’s-70’s activism and movements. As an inquiring Black working class youth, born to Gloria and Charlie Jr. of Jim Crow segregated Greenville, NC, I was deeply impacted and shaped by this historic period and his April 4th,1968 assassination which occurred nearly 53 years ago.
 
 My family, by then, had long migrated, like many African –Americans, to New York City and the North. They escaped the intensity of southern brand of repression just to endure a more sophisticated systematic racism up North.  As we know, King was also influenced by the northern & large urban  Black leaders and movements ( ie.  militant  self-defense/anti-police brutality, youth organizations, Malcolm X ( Ballot or Bullet speech), Black workers unionizing/ tenant organizing/fighting for affirmative action, anti-Viet Nam War, League of Revolutionary Black Workers, etc.). So in the late 1960’s, King attempted to bring his southern civil rights tactics to Chicago and the North, with not only violent racist resistance from whites, but the more militant urban Blacks who wanted to challenge the entire systematic racism and economic oppression of this capitalist society!