The Black Worker’s Congress (BWC) was created in 1971 in response to a manifesto written by the League of Revolutionary Black Workers (League). The BWC would be a separate organization that would be used to expand the League across the United States. The BWC was also used to coordinate Revolutionary Union Movement and Black Workers caucuses.
The mission of the BWC: “Our objective: workers' control of their place of work, the factories, fields, offices, transportation services, and communications facilities, so that the exploitation of labor will cease and no person or corporation will get rich off the labor of another person. All people will work for the collective benefit of humanity.”(http://lists.village.virginia.edu/lists_archive/sixties-l/4167.html).
The BWC brought in 500 people at its first convention, but was not able to exceed that number as time went on. It accepted Hispanic, Asian, and Native American affiliates. While the BWC was getting a firm foundation, the League of Revolutionary Black Workers began to split apart. The culmination of this split was the BWC being composed of intellectuals while the League continued on with the workers. The BWC never achieved its goals and was never able to establish itself with membership or influence in the great society.
Famous quotes containing the words black, workers and/or congress:
“We do not need to minimize the poverty of the ghetto or the suffering inflicted by whites on blacks in order to see that the increasingly dangerous and unpredictable conditions of middle- class life have given rise to similar strategies for survival. Indeed the attraction of black culture for disaffected whites suggests that black culture now speaks to a general condition.”
—Christopher Lasch (b. 1932)
“If the technology cannot shoulder the entire burden of strategic change, it nevertheless can set into motion a series of dynamics that present an important challenge to imperative control and the industrial division of labor. The more blurred the distinction between what workers know and what managers know, the more fragile and pointless any traditional relationships of domination and subordination between them will become.”
—Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)
“This habit of free speaking at ladies’ lunches has impaired society; it has doubtless led to many of the tragedies of divorce and marital unhappiness. Could society be deaf and dumb and Congress abolished for a season, what a happy and peaceful life one could lead!”
—M. E. W. Sherwood (1826–1903)