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organizer Tag

Black is Beautiful (2018) 8 – Claudia Jones

Claudia Jones was an activist, journalist, and organizer from Trinidad. She was born in 1915 and moved to the US at the age of 9. Upon moving to the US she faced the struggles of the great depression and racism in NYC, but she also benefitted from the Black cultural happenings of Harlem. She was a great writer and student who studied journalism and wrote a lot. She joined the Communist Party and quickly rose through the ranks as a writer, editor, then as a speaker and a rally organizer. She made so much noise in fact, they arrested her and deported her. She was surveilled and put on the FBI watch list as well. She was not allowed to return to Trinidad because of her great political knowledge and organizing power. So she was sent to the UK, where she also encountered racism. Even in the communist organizations there she was met with resistance. So, she saw the different caribbean peoples in the UK ( from former UK colonies) struggling and decided to start a newspaper called the West Indian Gazette in 1958. Blacks were migrating to the UK and being threatened, discriminated against, and in some cases killed. When riots started to break out and folks were struggling with how to organize she with leaders from several communities founded the Nottinghill Carnival. This still happens today and was credited with affirming Black beauty and bringing together people from Jamaica, Trinidad, Tobago, St Martinique, Grenada, and so many more countries. She struggled with many illnesses and died of a heart attack in 1964. In addition to standing up for Black rights, she was anti-capitalist, anti nuclear war, and the rights of working and poor people to dismantle their oppressive governments.


Sources: Sons of Malcolm TV, AfricanHeritage.com, BlackAgendaReport.com

February 11, 2018
in Black is Beautiful, General, Series
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Kindred Journey 16 – Kshama Sawant

I heard of Ms Sawant several years ago and with the onslaught of information one receives daily (sometimes voluntarily, sometimes not) I swept her to the back of my mind. When researching her for this I realized what an incredible feat it is to be an open Socialist elected official in a US city. As she has said in interviews, many young people do not have the same anti-socialist , red state, cold war view of Socialism that their grand parents once did. In fact they are the youth all over the US and the world who are protesting, occupying, and asking questions. Kshama is a teacher, activist, software engineer, and now a seated member of the Seattle city council which makes decisions about the direction of that city. Sawant was born in 1972 in India. She came to the US in 1994. She studied economics in North Carolina and became politically motivated by the incredible disparities between classes both here in the states and in India. She joined the Socialist Alternative (a nationwide crew of socialist activists) in Seattle and ran for US house of representative for Washington. She lost but won a seat as a city council member in Seattle in 2013 and was re-elected in 2015. One of the greatest victories she has been a part of among several losses is the winning of a $15 an hour minimum wage which so many other cities and states then began fighting for.  This is a quote from her while she was talking about past examples of socialist societies, why socialism is no longer such a dirty word, and why it is important that working people have excellent access to healthcare, education, safety, and more:

Socialism cannot survive in one country. If you have a really successful example of a workers economy, what would happen? Working class everywhere would look at that economy and say hey we want that. And thats very dangerous for the ruling class because as long as there is a successful example of and people clamoring for that they’re not going to have that kind of control that they have now over the working class” -Kshama Sawant

Sources: Richard D Wolff, Wikipedia,  Talking Stick

May 25, 2016
in General
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Kindred Journey 15 – Chhaya Chhoum

I found out about Chhaya through the NY Times conversation with Asian Americans about race. Chhaya is the founding executive director of Mekong NYC, a non profit organization dedicated to organizing Cambodian and Vietnamese Americans, recent immigrants, and families in the Bronx New York. Mekong started out as a project of CAAAV (Communities Against Anti-Asian Violence) which grew out of a lot of hatred and racism directed toward the Asian American community in NYC. Chhaya immigrated to the US with her family fleeing the violence of Khmer Rouge in Cambodia (over 150K Cambodian/Vietnamese migrated to the BX between 1975-2000), but was brought into a late 70’s world of poverty and violence in the form of city life. She joined CAAAV at a young age and became an organizer fighting against slum lords, poverty and trauma families carried with them. Her work in the Bronx is ground breaking considering the incredible challenges both Cambodian and Vietnamese families face with regards to cultural difference, language, housing, and so much more that really deserves a specific intentional support network. Chhaya’s work shatters that model minority stereotype which denies the lives, struggles, and stories of so many Asian American youth. I also dig that she talks about the use of art to heal and organize!

Sources: APA Institute, NY Times, Petra Foundation

May 25, 2016
in General, Kindred Journey
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