People's stories about the history of labor in the U.S., before the U.S., are often part of the reason they are unable to see the reality of modern economic conditions. My intention here is to make sure that more often than not, when we talk about organizing around the economy and labor, we are talking about the economy that exists today and not some imagined version based on the past. An appreciation of reality requires a clear viewpoint on the state of Black labor, which has been treated as a natural resource concomitantly extracted alongside the others since the progenitor settler colony began making the American nation-state. In this piece, I urge steps toward a clearer-eyed foundational understanding of the economy from the colonial era through the present. Perhaps thinking transhistorically might illuminate the way anti-Southerness as antiBlackness obscures the economic lens and hinders labor organizing strategy.
We can't seek to forge a resistance that "activates the working masses" if we do not understand the conditions the masses (are forced to) live under, who constitutes "the masses," what labor is required for this economy to function, and ultimately, how to interrupt that functioning.
All too often, when people reference American Labor, they allude to a "middle America" imaginary, centering white men and factories. This makes a few things clear to me. First, not enough of us in movement spaces that discuss (strategies for) economic transformation are paying attention to the economy on the regional or international scale. This indicates a bias toward either local or national(-ist) storytelling. Second, this bias ensures the American Labor narrative lacks acknowledgment of the importance of organizing the South toward halting the economy. Finally, I assert that there is no valuable attempt to organize labor without an international lens that encompasses what parts of the world are performing the labor required to sustain our lives.
In other words, if liberation is forged through labor struggle, anti-labor antagonism must be read through a Black, South-to-South lens. I offer what I've learned about the U.S. economy and the necessity of understanding the U.S. South and Southern Labor beyond border limits, such as the Mason-Dixon and the Mississippi, in relation to the Global South. Clarity around this point might reveal what true labor solidarity requires of us. Below, I share some less commonly discussed economic phenomena that Southern workers are experiencing and what they may mean for us in anti-capitalist liberation movements.