The Organization for Black Struggle presented its 34th anniversary celebration on Saturday at the St. Louis Gateway Classic Foundation, 2012 Dr. Martin Luther King Dr. Montague Simmons, OBS chair, said the celebration is a time to reflect on the past and plan for the future.
“If your 2013 was anything like my 2013, you were busy,” Simmons said. “And a lot of us were out there standing shoulder to shoulder.”
OBS was active in the Show Me 15 campaign to increase the minimum wage to $15. Glancing at two reserved tables of Show Me 15 activists and supporters, Simmons joked that he had spent “an awful lot of time” with the young fast-food workers. He said they were an inspiration to him for courageously demanding a living wage, better working conditions, and the right to form a union without fear of retaliation.
Rasheen Aldridge was a key organizer and participant in the Show Me 15 campaign, formerly the STL735 campaign (referring to the $7.35 minimum wage). Aldridge was presented with OBS’s 2013 Jamala Rogers Young Visionary Award, which recognizes young adults, age 17-24, who have made efforts to promote social justice, equality, diversity and human rights.
“It takes so much courage for you to stand up against these big corporations,” Aldridge told the fast-food workers and their supporters.
Aldridge received a $2000 scholarship to continue his studies at St. Louis Community College-Forest Park. Past awardees include Jessica Burns, Simone Bernstein, Sharifa Taylor and Jonathan Long, who presented the award to Aldridge.
Also in 2013, after “a long, hard struggle,” Simmons said, the City of St. Louis regained control of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department after 152 years of governance by a Board of Police Commissioners appointed by the governor.
Mayor Francis G. Slay pushed for the final passage of local control via ballot initiative, though OBS and the Coalition Against Police Crime and Repression had led the local control movement for decades.
“That wasn’t Francis Slay’s victory,” Simmons said. “That was your victory.”
This year is looking just as busy for OBS. On February 4, the Missouri Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on Reginald Clemons’ petition for his freedom or a new trial. OBS’s activism in the Justice for Reggie campaign was critical in opening a new evidence phase for Clemons, who was convicted of murder in 1993 and sentenced to death in a case marred by police and prosecutorial misconduct.
Simmons and keynote speaker Maureen Taylor also said that the fight for economic justice continues in 2014, and it’s not solely a black issue.
“We have to get more Latinos in this fight,” Taylor said. “We have to get more Native Americans in this fight. The broad net needs to say, ‘We’re not looking at the color of the skin, as much as we’re looking at the content of the character.’”
Taylor brought greetings from the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization, which she serves as state chair. She is also treasurer of the National Welfare Rights Union. Taylor said she also brought “grave warnings.”
“When you select a campaign slogan that says ‘economic rights,’” she said, “you’re in trouble. You’re going to get parts of your body handed to you when you fight for economic rights.”
The Michigan Welfare Rights Organization is a union of public assistance recipients, low-income workers and the unemployed fighting for equal rights and poverty elimination. Jamala Rogers, OBS chair emeritus, worked with Taylor on the National Planning Committee for the 2010 U.S. Social Forum that was held in Detroit, Mich.
Taylor’s comments, as colorful as the lime green scarf she wore, centered on this year’s celebration theme: “Black Liberation and the Fight for Economic Justice.” She said she travels nationwide as an organizer, and everywhere she goes people are fighting for economic justice.
She said the fight for economic justice is about “straight up survival.” She said the richest 85 individuals (not corporations) in the world have as much wealth as the poorest 3.5 billion, according to an Oxfam report. She said the needs of the many must always outweigh the needs of the few.
But, she said, past activist efforts are not enough.
“It’s not enough!” she repeated several times during her address. “If we were doing what we should be doing, people would be laying on this ground tired. But, we’ve still got energy.”
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