In the current political climate, Black and progressive activists should focus on locally-based efforts, said author and veteran organizer Kevin Alexander Gray. “We don’t have anybody on the national scene that’s saying anything coherent,” said Gray, speaking from his hometown of Columbia, South Carolina. “They’re saying those sound bites to stay on TV, and smiling and skinnin’ and grinnin’,” but “they’re disconnected from the struggle, disconnected from their history. People see them as frauds, and that’s a good thing, as we organize at the local level.”
A consistent majority of the insurrectionists lived in counties that had rapidly diversified in recent years.
As organized labor deals with the defeat at Amazon in Alabama, another type of base-building power beckons.
“We feel like we got a heck of a start, and we’re proud of it, and we’re proud of the workers that are willing to continue that fight.”
Amazon is increasingly defining what entry-level labor now looks like in America.
Blacks and the US: a History of Resistance
